Bring A Folding Chair

[00:00:00] Quinn: How do we tackle huge systemic intersectional environmental justice issues at the local level? That's today's big question, and my guest is Jacqui Patterson. Jacqui is the Founder and Executive director of the Chisholm Legacy Project, which helps connect Black communities that are being disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis with the resources they need to create systemic change across connected challenges.

Jacqui was recently named to Time Magazine's 2024 list of Women of the Year, and she took home the Earth Award for her work. Jacqui was previously the Senior Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program. Since 2007, she has served as Coordinator and Co-founder of Women of Color United.

Jacqui's worked as a researcher, a program manager, coordinator, advocate, and activist working on women's rights, violence against women, HIV and AIDS, racial justice, economic justice, environmental and climate justice. [00:01:00] She has served as the Senior Women's Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid, where she integrated a women's rights lens for the issue of feud rights, macroeconomics and climate change, as well as the intersection of violence against women and HIV and AIDS.

Previously, she served as Assistant Vice President of HIV and AIDS Programs for IMA World Health, providing management and technical assistance to medical facilities and programs in 23 countries in Africa and the Caribbean.

Jacqui served as the Outreach Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Research Coordinator for Johns Hopkins University. She also served as a US Peace Corps volunteer in Jamaica.

Welcome to Important Not Important. My name is Quinn Emmett. And this is science for people who give a shit. In our weekly conversations I take a deep dive with an incredible human like Jacqui who is working on the front lines of the future to build a radically better today and tomorrow. So our mission is to understand and [00:02:00] then unfuck the future.

And our goal today is to help you answer the question, what can I do?

Jacqui Patterson, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for coming today all the way from Curacao. What a hero.

Jacqui Patterson: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Quinn : Absolutely. We'll see if it stays that way. I really appreciate your time. Jacqui, we like to start with one important question. It's ridiculous. I kind of can't believe I still ask this of people because it's been like a hundred and I don't know, 80 episodes or conversations or something like that.

But instead of tell us your whole life story really, what I want to know is why are you vital to the survival of the species, and I encourage you to be bold and honest and you can also have some fun with it, cause it's a ridiculous question.

Jacqui Patterson: All right. I don't know about me being vital to the survival of the species. I think that the leadership of the communities that we serve is vital to the survival of the species. Many of the communities that we work with [00:03:00] have historical relationships and traditions that are in harmony with the Earth.

And so we know that the Earth will sustain no matter what. It's the species, as you say, that are really under threat if we continue to treat the Earth the way that we've been treating it. And if Mother Earth continues to fight back the way she's been fighting back with the weather and so forth.

The communities that we work with, whether it's Black communities that have traditions of working the land in a respectful and honoring way, or the allies we work with in indigenous communities that have such a respect for nature and so forth, the ways of engaging with the Earth, the ways of actually living in a way that not only is in harmony with the Earth, but actually mirrors Earth regenerative practices and regenerative systems in terms of biomimicry, like really acting like the earth system is really the [00:04:00] way that we can all survive instead of pushing back against it, instead of harming, actually being in harmony is really the path that the communities are showing us and we just need to follow it.

And I think that's vital to the survival of the species.

Quinn : There we go.You nailed it. Perfect. I love that because obviously the environmental movements, plural, whatever it is for decades now, there's obviously been informally, a lot of the save the planet thing. And of course the nerds among us love to push off our glasses and go like the planet's going to be fine.

Like we've mistreated it obviously in a thousand different ways. It's us and the ecosystems around us that have been harmed and obviously some very particular groups historically. So the planet is going to be okay. It's easy to remind yourself how small we are.

A friend recently, I mean, this is a ridiculous example, but this weekend showed me a YouTube video of one of those, like the world's biggest container ships, just getting its absolute ass kicked by the ocean. And you're like, that's like the [00:05:00] biggest thing we make. And the ocean's like, no, thank you.

Nice try.

Jacqui Patterson: Yeah, I'd love to see that video because those are the types of reminders we need.

Quinn : Yeah. Which is just like, you can only screw around so much here before it's just like, I'm done with you. So Jacqui, I would love if you could tell our listeners a little bit about Shirley Chisholm and why she is such an inspiration for you. And we've all got you know, hopefully a legion of those that we try to live up to and measure ourselves by, but you really formalized that. Tell me a little bit about that before we get going.

Jacqui Patterson: Yeah. Thank you for asking. I admired her spirit, her ability to kind of to push forward, even in the face of opposition, to be focused and to be very principled in a time when people were encouraging her to compromise those principles. And then on a personal level, I appreciated some of our commonalities in terms of being born to Caribbean parents.

My dad was Jamaican and her parents were from Guyana and [00:06:00] Barbados. Her starting off as a school teacher, which is what I also started off as a school teacher and then her just continuing to see these connections and starting to work at the systems level and really engaging around community change and being community driven from the very beginning.

And then certainly in the work that we were doing at the NAACP, where these polluters and other corporate entities were always trying to co-opt our communities in different ways and push them to do things that were out of the principles, out of their self interest and so forth. Her mantra unbought and unbossed became a rallying cry for us as well.

So she just in so many ways just pushing forward and making a way out of no way, as they say. Is, we're all that combination and also doing it with a smile and with a sense of humor and grace and the fact that even the fact that she crossed the aisle and went to George Wallace's bedside [00:07:00] after he was, was it stabbed or anyway?

Yeah, somehow shot or stabbed? Anyway just that kind of spirit of grace and love that crossed political lines, I thought was also something that was inspiring to me. So all that whole package of love, of determination, of fierce commitment to principle and then also some of the personal aspects for all the reasons why she became the legacy that we wanted and whose footsteps we wanted to walk.

Quinn : Yeah. I mean, again, this is both the easiest thing for me to possibly say and the easiest understatement to ever make, but it cannot have been easy to be the first African American woman in Congress, but to do then what she did, like you said, with such grace, but also being so steadfast to those principles and then acting through them was amazing.

Our guests over almost 200 conversations, are almost 50 percent people of color and folks who identify as women. And that's, it's important to me because people have heard enough of [00:08:00] folks like me. And a lot of guests have talked about how important it is, whether they're trying to be an astronaut or they're a cancer scientist or whatever it is to simply take up space where there might not be any, and I really love again, and I might mangle at her idea of if there's not a seat at the table, bring a folding chair. Is that correct? Am I getting that right?

Jacqui Patterson: Yes. And in fact, I almost called our organization, The Folding Chair Initiative instead, so I'm so glad you brought that up because it's so kind of ingrained that it's such a given that I fail to say it sometimes. But yeah, that really is the biggest because the work that we do is with communities that some don't even know there is a table, much less that they have a seat the table.

They're so disenfranchised by society and we really serve as a bridge. We serve as that folding chair to get folks to that table. And yes, that is definitely our number one favorite quote from Shirley Chisholm.

Quinn : But, just what you said, [00:09:00] makes so much sense. I mean, I was a liberal arts major. I was a religion major. I'm an atheist, I'm like a Pagan. You know, but I loved learning about why people do what they do because that applies to history and war and civil rights and politics and all these different things, right?

Because in so much of the world, it's not just like a church you go to on Sundays. It's how you live your life every day, right? So that all really stuck out to me, but I think it's so important to understand that so many people don't know there's tables. Like you said I started doing this work, I had no idea what FERC was. I mean, I didn't know what FERC was until about a year ago. And I was like, what? And then you're like, Oh, they’re the whole thing. It's the whole thing.

Jacqui Patterson: The whole thing.

Quinn : But even on a more local level, public utility commissions. I mean, again, the keys to the kingdom.

No one goes to those meetings because they don't know that that place even exists, but how powerful can you be if you show up? So I want to get into that and I really love that idea. And Time said your [00:10:00] work, your approach is at once obvious and revolutionary. And to me, I thought about that because it makes sense, right?

The issues faced and put on marginalized people so often revolve around the inability to access and or afford or rely on in any way are most fundamental needs, right? These aren't just climate issues, they're survival issues and civil rights issues. So on that note, obviously you've done so much amazing work over the years and worked in so many bigger places.

I'm curious why you would start your own organization instead of continuing to work from within these bigger existing organizations who theoretically can move the needle quite a bit.

Jacqui Patterson: Yeah. Thank you. It's a very good question. One is that unfortunately, as you said, the need is so [00:11:00] extremely vast, and it's so interesting because we are like the land of milk and honey, we're the land of abundance and so forth, but the distribution is so clogged in terms of the system, and so, for example, when I was with the NAACP, we were working with communities that had NAACP chapters that were folks who definitely needed the assistance of a large organization to help, to organize, to achieve their rights within their community situations.

And then there were communities that we found that didn't have an NAACP branch or chapter and we were working through this NAACP branch and chapter system. And like I said, at least the NAACP branches and chapters through being connected to that organization had a notion that there was a table and they were collectively thriving and individually striving towards a seat at those tables. And then it was really [00:12:00] in working within the NAACP that I got a window to the communities that didn't have a chapter or branch, didn't have any connection to any other organization and definitely didn't have a seat at the table or even a pathway to get a seat at the table.

And so I really wanted an organization that was sheerly devoted to those places where no one was working. And to have that be our sole focus and really to say, to really work ourselves out of a job, because once we've created those pathways for all those organizations, that's literally the reason that we exist.

And so from there, we should hopefully work our mission into being obsolete, you know, and that's the idea.

Quinn : I've talked to so many incredible people who have that same idea, and obviously that is sort of, you know, an underlying ethos, I guess, under the best organizations, right? Whether it's you know, Against Malaria, or one of the organizations I love is Alex's Lemonade Stand, and they fund pediatric cancer research.

Jacqui Patterson: Oh, yes.

Quinn : And I remember talking to two [00:13:00] women scientists who were explaining things that I could never even begin to understand, like the level of which they're smarter than me is just not even in the room. And they were like, we don't want to have to do this work. Hopefully we are able to unlock things that make it so kids don't get cancer.

Like what? Okay, it's not even a question, you know, or that at least they're treatable quickly. Like that's what we should do. And it's funny, because I'm so thankful for folks like that, and I could never be, in any capacity, someone who's able to do those things. And it turns out our organization exists as much as possible to help people answer this question: what can I do?

And, it's interesting because I grew up watching sci fi and all these things, and I think maybe I thought I got into this because of what the new tech could be and what tomorrow might look like and all these things. And it turns out most of our issues are because of the inability to access or afford the most basic things.

And I [00:14:00] appreciate your explanation of why your new organization needed to exist to go to these places where they didn't know there was a table. There was no pathway to get there. Must less having a chair. For any of these just fundamental issues. So it seems as though you've been fighting for what I guess we could call primary stakeholders for most of your career, right?

People who are most directly and often purposefully affected by climate, but who are excluded from environmental movements sometimes and policymaking. You start the Chisholm project. You say, I'm gonna found it. I'm inspired by this incredible person who did so much, who dragged a folding chair to the table when she had to. And it seems like that's what a lot of the project's work is, community building, movement building to people who were left out of those, even though they've been doing it informally.

They're the most affected. Was that the original intention? Is that how you're spending most of the time now?

Jacqui Patterson: Yes, that was the original intention. And, [00:15:00] what we thought was that we were going to work with scores of communities and that we would be, facilitating the communities for them to come to a vision of not just what they need or what they want to stop in terms of the bad things that are happening in their communities or need in terms of the basics, but how to go from barely surviving to actively thriving. Helping with visioning, helping to develop a strategy, helping to develop an action plan, and then as a resource hub, connecting them to folks who have technical resources that they might need, learning how to start a local food project.

Doesn't necessarily take money. You can get some seeds. Or financial needs that they might have, connecting them with a community foundation or whoever might have finances, with all this federal funding coming down. So we thought that's what we would do.

Our principle thing would be helping folks to do the visioning, the strategy, the action plan, walk alongside them as they implement, but then pulling in from the ecosystem to help them get those resources that they need to reach the finish line of self [00:16:00] determination.

So that's still our mission. But as we started to work with the data, to identify the communities that we would send the organizers out to, and as organizers started going out to communities, one thing that became clear, we always knew we were going to draw on the ecosystem, but the sheer number of communities that are in this situation of not even having a pathway to the table.

There are so many and just the level of depth of need that there is. Community in Maryland that has the median household income is 7, 416 dollars. Annually.

Quinn : I mean, how is that possible?

Jacqui Patterson: Exactly. And the number of communities that we've found in those kind of, you know, 10, 000 dollars a year, 11, 000. I mean, that one was the worst number that we found. And it was interesting that was in Maryland, but just the sheer [00:17:00] number has really expanded us a little bit into calling on the ecosystem, not just to be a part of the tapestry, provide those resources, but also calling on more organizations to do what we do.

And more people to help with the visioning, the strategy, the action planning at that level as well, because we can’t, I mean, in Mississippi for the criteria in our mapping, there were like 219 communities that met our criteria in Mississippi alone.

So, yes, we're trying to work ourselves into obsolescence, but we also don't want to grow into this like empire with like hundreds of more, you know, so we're not like, as you said, like I might've moved on from the NAACP to start this organization, but it wasn't to start a massive organization.

It was trying to fill a gap. Yeah. But we really want to help those other organizations to be able to do more with these communities. We want everybody to feel this responsibility towards these communities who in the land of plenty, and [00:18:00] especially, a number of the communities we work with, I'll stop here, are Freedman settlements.

So, they're communities that were started by people who were emancipated from enslavement. And so, some of the communities that are in the worst circumstances in terms of lack of water, lack of this, lack of that, are the communities whose enslaved labor built the infrastructure of this nation. And so, we really want folks to feel a collective obligation to support these communities in reaching self determination.

And so that's kind of the part that has expanded a bit in terms of not just calling on the ecosystem to fill patches in this tapestry, but to actually wrap arms around collectively a responsibility to get a seat at the table for each and every one of these communities to build a true democracy and to build self determination that we all should have access to and my new kind of mantra is that there are no necessary evils, like people feel like, oh, well, some people are just going to be poor, you know, like, this is just the way it is, you know, [00:19:00] I'm like, no, absolutely not.

Quinn : It was just designed that way.

Jacqui Patterson: Right.

Quinn : We can make different choices.

Jacqui Patterson: Exactly.

Quinn : Now, I love that because there is a lot of self awareness there, right? Hey, I came from these big organizations. It seems like doing the math, I might need to become one, but we don't really want to do that. We also want to become obsolete. There’s its own systemic problem there. And I was really excited then to discover Policies for the People, because one of the things we're really excited about here, is looking at state and local policies that address these fundamental needs to secure and then lift up this baseline for people who should never have their water shut off, right?

Again, that's so far from a seat at the table, but that's where we are for a lot of these folks. And like you said, so many of them are from our most penalized and disadvantaged communities going [00:20:00] back a very long, I'm calling you from Colonial Williamsburg. I was really excited to see Policies for the People, I mean, these are water billing systems.

Right. You've got worker collectives. You've got, I think I saw Just Transitions away from coal, which again, systemic that benefits everyone, not just the coal workers, right? It improves the air quality, which improves education, which, you know, all of these different things. And so again, they are intersectional because they have to be.

So talk to me about how we got to Policies for the People. And then I guess, what is your team look for in these state and local policies? What is most repeatable? What is most problematic? Basically, how can we keep extending these so that they can have the most effect in more places? Because obviously you guys can't do everything.

That's the point.

Jacqui Patterson: So thank you. Yeah. So that was one thing, Policies for the People was one thing that has always been a part of our model, because we do have these four buckets of how we work. Community building, [00:21:00] movement support, bending the mainstream arc towards equity and justice, and Black women's well being,

But with Policies for the People, we actually were originally going to call it BALEC, which was a play on ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. And we were going to call it the Black American Legislative Equity Council or something like that. But then we thought we didn't want to name ourselves as a counterpoint to something else.

But yes, we need to build community by community to get folks a seat at the table and ensure that they have the self determination, not only for themselves, but to play a part in the economy and in the true democracy. And we also need to simultaneously have the systems change work that actually ensures that the lid on the jar is loosened as they try to do all of that, that we lift up the places where communities have been able to come [00:22:00] together and push for the types of policies that we need, not only for the wellbeing of communities, but for the wellbeing of us all, these communities model the pathways that we need to take, whether it's universal basic income and where we've seen places that tried that and where after the pilot ends people have been thriving years later, or the examples that you talk about the work that we did a report who holds the power about the public utilities commissions and public service commissions to really lift up that if they truly act in a democratic way, if they truly represent the interests of people, that there's ways that you can operate energy systems where people pay their bills and nobody gets cut off of the things that they need to actually survive. And so policies for the people supposed to kind of, it's supposed to lift up the fact that it is possible to have the types of policies that are rooted in civil, human, and earth rights. And here's the pathway to do so. And also, not only the policies themselves, but [00:23:00] the processes that the communities have engaged in to advance those policies that represent what true organizing, true people's leadership looks like.

Yeah, so I'll stop there.

Quinn : No, I love that because that's really it, right? Because when you sign up for our email, when you get this little automated response, it's just, I think right now it says what problems do you want to solve from this sort of prism we operate in and it used to say, why are you here? And we get these incredible responses of, I don't know, someone who manages a college endowment to a third grade teacher to a grandmother.

It can be anything, but, yeah, it's so often like I don't know where to start, much less like being pulled towards 40 Gofundme's. I imagine you run into situations with so many of these communities again, most of which I imagine you haven't even been able to reach yet where they go. Oh, there's a table.

How the hell do we even get started? And you just talked about how important not just the policies are, but the processes that different communities take to get there. What have you found? [00:24:00] Are there any, I don't want to say lowest common denominators, but any like basic tenets of processes that go from, Hey, there's a table.

Here's how we get you to at least a presence on that table.

What have you learned so far? And what could be applicable to more and more communities?

Jacqui Patterson: Yeah. Thank you. Some of the things where I've heard great work, like in Buffalo, New York, for example, with the work of PUSH Buffalo, People United for Sustainable Housing, that they really went door to door. And not just went from the beginning, but they continue to go door to door to really make sure that they are meeting people where they are literally.

And then they also engage in other processes just to make sure that they are to the greatest extent possible reaching every last person. They have a high bar because you see some communities where they'll kind of use the words about community led or people led, [00:25:00] but it's really just like a handful of folks who are doing all the things.

And sometimes, you know, that's still its own brand of community as Margaret Mead says, never doubt that a small group of people can change the world. Indeed, that's the only thing that ever has. And at the same time, I've really appreciated those models where people have made sure that they are touching every person, even if they can't literally sit at the table, but they're listening and ensuring that their thoughts and their desires are included at the table.

So that to me is super basic. Two is really coming together around making sure that there are, there's multi stakeholder engagement, not just in terms of numbers of people, but that there is really an in depth way to ensure that whether it's returning citizens, you know, frontline laborers, people who are differently abled and so forth, that they're not just tokenistically engaged at the table, but there's real thought around ensuring that there is, that the [00:26:00] interests are centered in what's being developed as a policy or a program and so forth. So that's been really critical as well, just like really ensuring that all segments, populations, sub populations and so forth are very intentionally engaged and interests are very intentionally centered.

And then another thing that I've appreciated is when people come together and develop common principles, principles of engagement. So it's not just like how we've done this at the beginning, but they develop and iterate on principles, guiding principles for the work, so that it kind of ensures the way that people work together, that they've all agreed on what those community agreements are, and that they all check in to make sure that they're adhering to them at every point in the process.

So those have been, to me, some of the keys to the most successful, collaborative community led processes.

Quinn : I love that and I love how you talked about[00:27:00], and I don't think this is specifically the word used, but at least sort of a variety of those stakeholders. Right. I mean, you can always tell with all the shit we've gone through with school boards in the past four years, how many of them just don't have any teachers on them.

I had a wonderful conversation with, oh God, when was it? I'm sorry. Time doesn't exist for me anymore. With Congresswoman Lauren Underwood last year, year before and her talking about, you know, of course, there haven't been nearly enough African American women in Congress, but just nurses, you know parents and moms or people who have tried to give birth and haven't been able to.

And we think back to, I use this example recently, but I remember in 2009, when we're arguing over preexisting conditions and just thinking to myself, oh, if you're against this, like you just must not know anyone with one of these because you can't know someone much less have one and possibly argue against it.

But I think about how much that must matter in these community things to think about, like, [00:28:00] okay, no, but really, who are all the stakeholders here.

Jacqui Patterson: Yes. Exactly. That's exactly it.

Quinn : Organization started 2001. Obviously, you've been doing this forever. Since then, there's a lot of money theoretically coming down the pipes for the Green Banks for Justice 40 and things like that.

But it's also a little crazy out there. And a little bit, there's 50 different versions of this. How has that affected your organization's work? How much are you stepping in to take some of that clarification and distribution on because it really is, it's great to see the numbers, but there's a lot of work to do here.

Jacqui Patterson: So much work to do. Three key things that we've tried to do around it. One is as things were being designed and so forth, we really tried to get in and give as much input as possible on the design and our biggest thing was really pushing for ensuring that there's resources for unincorporated communities, for [00:29:00] example, and they actually did end up with a carve out for that, which was great, that there's some obligation that they include mapping in their work so that they are identifying these far flung communities and figuring out what is their obligation to build those pathways because it shouldn't just be these nonprofit organizations coming up and trying to do that, but there should be, you know, we're all paying taxes, including those far flung communities.

And so they have just as much of our obligation, if not more to those communities. so design was one of our roles.

And then secondly, as the monies are coming down we've played a role on some of the grant review committees for some of the RFPs that have come out with NOAA, the Department of Energy and others.

And in so doing, not only have we been able to have a role in evaluating some of the proposals that have come through. But we've also encouraged them to ask questions differently and to be more, so that don't [00:30:00] just kind of someone says environmental justice over and over again, or says disadvantaged communities over and over again.

But yet, beyond kind of repeating the words, like, it's not really showing up substantively and how they're actually designing their programs or when they talked about kind of sub-granting, one of the entities in one of the proposals I looked at that they were planning to sub grant to, was actually the part of one of the big fossil fuel conglomerates in the South, like an actual company was listed as and so again, and other people might not even know that, like, might even like, look to even recognize that because I was the only one who said that out of all the people who were reviewing.

So those kind of things being a part of the grant review is as money to get out the door. And then also, so now we are playing a role as monies are being received by different folks with a couple of the entities. We're playing a role of like helping to identify the communities, you know, [00:31:00] now that the money's out there say, don't forget about this community in this place.

And so really doing that mapping that we had called on the feds to do of the communities. And then finally mapping all of these entities that are getting the money so that we can as ourselves, as we're engaging with communities, we can, again, serve as that bridge or that folding chair to get them to the table and, and really call upon that tic tac to say, here's the way that you need to be serving those communities. So really acting as a true intermediary between the holders of these resources and the communities that need them.

So but then the very last thing is that we're also saying, okay, we know that these monies and even the systems of delivery of the money are still rooted in a system that's been designed to oppress. And so how do we ensure we don't become like those lottery winners who blow through the money but it doesn't actually appreciably change their lives in an ongoing way. We just hear story after [00:32:00] story, like how do we actually use these monies to transform the system?

In a very deliberate way. So it's not just about getting more money to certain places. It's actually ensuring that money is utilized in a way that's system's changing as much as possible, acting within the very system that, you know, that we're trying to, in some ways, dismantle.

Quinn : It's a small amount of work. Good news. Oh my God. It's, you can't stop running, right? Isn't that the fortunate and unfortunate idea? I've stumbled on this phrase I kind of use everyone always talks about, you know, compound interest is like the greatest thing.

We think about compound action here, which is how did we get as much progress as we have? Right? Children live so much longer than they ever have. You know, infectious diseases are way down. We wash our hands now. That's a real win. All these things. Voting rights, civil rights, all these different things.

But it took decades and centuries. It took everyone [00:33:00] participating. Not just the most marginalized groups, intentionally marginalized groups. But it's also really precarious, isn't it? I wrote this whole thing about, I'm a nerd. You may have noticed, that J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of Lord of the Rings.

He wrote this piece about, someone said, you know, Did they lose in the end? Like, what, what happens here? Basically, because so much of it came from his experiences in World War I, which were not great.

And he wrote this piece about the long defeat. Like, are we constantly fighting the long defeat and why we can’t stop. And it is because it turns out with for example, a Supreme Court like ours, so much progress can be taken away so quickly, no matter how many hours and how much time and how many people have put into it. So we have to keep showing up, which is what I try to tell my kids all the time. And so again, we try to help people answer the question, what can I do?

And so I would love if you could talk me through how we can help so that we can keep reinforcing [00:34:00] the progress, knowing that it can inadvertently be taken away, but also very purposefully be taken away. Because there are, look, I try not to focus on it too much, but there are bad guys out there. There always have been, and there still are.

Like you said, a fossil fuel company that slips its way into money for green banks or what have you, which is completely insane. So, what are some of the most successful actions and platforms that we can support? Where do you and your group need the most support?

What can people do specifically to help you in again a job where you never get to stop running? Which a lot of pros and cons there.

Jacqui Patterson: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, wow, it's such a big question but yet there's simple things that folks can do, like, that have outsized impact. So, for example, when we talk about, like, getting folks to the table, I really hope that folks can see that it's both [00:35:00] altruism, but it's also that having a true democracy benefits us all.

I mean, there was a poll that was done recently around one of the elections, and everyone agreed that the outsized influence of money in politics is a problem. Like, everyone agreed to deal with that across the aisle. And the thing that's going to defeat authoritarianism, which is really what's happening with the corporateocracy, is like really building a mass, mass based true democracy.

And so, when we get down to some practical things that folk can do, like specifically to help with the mission of the Chisholm Legacy Project, for example, even if people are a part of like, one of the communities we work with that hasn't had running water since the mid 80s is just 14 miles outside of Dallas, one of the richest cities in the world.

So we're in there, we're holding these town hall meetings, we're having these conversations, we've been able to get folks access to the hydro panels, we've been able to get [00:36:00] EPA and USDA to start to really pay attention and they're on the pathway to getting that infrastructure. And interestingly enough, that same community was founded by 11 people who had been emancipated from enslavement in 1878.

And so, but if we had like for every one of those communities, like whether it was a church group from Dallas, for example, that was willing to go out to that community, let's say one Saturday a month and take a little, we have a little guidebook on how you do the visioning, how you do the action planning, and so forth, and then we're there to help to connect folks to resources that they need, like, given that, like I said, there's 219 communities in Mississippi alone even the organizations that we're trying to call upon to do it, there's still kind of this, a bit of a scarcity mindset.

So we need us all to the, whether it's, you're part of a sorority or a church or a community group or a mosque or whatever, kind of to be able to like say, oh, I will [00:37:00] work with that community to step up and say that they can, cause it's not like you don't have to be a professional organizer. You don't have to be a professional anything.

We have the things that we can help folks to be able to do that work. But if they would just give their time and their heart to be able to go out even once a month to being in community, it would make a huge, huge, huge difference. That's one example. Two is, of course, paying attention to those when we're at the voting booth, paying attention to some of those down ballot things, getting educated around the Public Service Commission and the Public Utilities Commission and ensuring that you have a commissioner who is not like a retired fossil fuel exec, or someone who still has all of their literal pension and investments tied up in the fossil fuel company, who is then going to be carrying the interest of the fossil fuel industry instead of the people. So ensuring that we're voting the right people into office, whether it's at the public service commissions or the school board, as you said, because each and every one of these [00:38:00] offices make a difference. Another would be running for office because again, we need good candidates who are going to count on the folks who are out there without the people's interest in mind. We also need folks to be able to volunteer at local organizations to the extent that, you know, again, it's a variation on what I was saying before about going out to community, but volunteering at local organizations, whether it's food justice organizations, environmental justice organizations, all these different things.

Also just going back to voting is if you see any initiatives, ballot initiatives or otherwise around campaign finance reform. Please pay attention again to get money out of politics is really critical for us all. Those are a few things that I would say. I have a longer list, but.

Quinn : I love it. We'll happily take your longer list and all of your lists of organizations and things like that. And again, Policies for the People, will link to all of that. And by the way, one of the things I really love about the way you have shared that [00:39:00] is that so many of the ones that are listed are ones that have already passed.

And anybody who lives their life in checklists like I do, which is some of them are completely insane, is you can really bum yourself out if you're constantly looking at what you haven't done yet. And you don't look at what we've built, look at what we've passed, where are the patterns, where are the lessons, where are the processes we can extract from these to go, oh, maybe we can take this one and go here.

Cause it's completely abhorrent that there is a community in the United States that hasn't had running water since the 80s. I'm trying to wrap my head around that. And again, like you said, there's 200 plus communities in Mississippi. That unfortunately does not surprise me. A 7,000 dollar household income in Maryland. Again, there's parts of Maryland that have suffered obviously, but that's, I mean, again, you look at this and go, it's a little bit like when you find a little mold in your house and you start pulling back the wall and you go, Oh Jesus.

Jacqui Patterson: Right.

Quinn : It’s everywhere. What, who is the specialized company who can help me redo all this?

And that's what you do, but [00:40:00] you can't do it all. You can't do it all. So showing up. And like you said, any kind of campaign finance report so that we're not just, it's great to help these organizations in these cities and non incorporated localities in a one off basis, but building new systems. and making it so we can stop thinking about water shutoffs, you know, would be just so great to have that off the list entirely.

Jacqui Patterson: Exactly.

Quinn : So anything else that people can do to resources with your organization or other you can share them now or we can list them later if you have those things. We try to be specific because people literally tell me what button to press and I go, here's the button you should press.

We've already done the research for you. So we would love to have anything you got.

Jacqui Patterson: Okay. Thank you.

Quinn : A hundred percent

Jacqui Patterson: I appreciate that.

Quinn : Jacqui, last couple of questions before we get you out of here, who is someone in your life that has positively impacted your work in the past six months?

Jacqui Patterson: That's a good question.

I will say Mariah Barber. Who started an [00:41:00] organization called Invisible Strengths, and it's specifically for people who are differently abled and it's connecting, it's ensuring that employers are equipped to be able to work with people who are differently abled, that their resumes are put forward and are available. But the reason that Mariah's an inspiration is because she's now on the board of the Chisholm Legacy Project and she started to do outreach in the very communities that we've talked about.

She's 30 this year, but I still think of her because I've known her since she was born. She sends back these pictures and stories and she just has such a generous and warm and loving spirit and every community she goes to, she's invited to the cookouts, she's invited to the churches, she's invited to the city town hall meetings.

She really is embodying the fact that if you just go with an open heart, communities will welcome you in and she really is serving as that folding chair for those communities with nothing but an [00:42:00] open and loving heart. She hasn't necessarily been a community organizer before but she just goes because these communities aren’t communities where we can get an email address or a phone number in advance So she just is walking in cold.

We just give her a list and she walks in cold and makes magic just with the beauty of her open spirit. And so she inspires me every day. She tells stories from the field. Yeah.

Quinn : That's amazing. Thank you for sharing her story and her inspiration. It really is the people who don't want to be emperor that should be emperor for at least like a day.

Last one, in all of your free time, what is a book you've read in the past year that has changed you in some way, changed your thinking, opened your idea to something else. It could be fiction, could be nonfiction, could be a coloring book. I don't really care, but our readers love hearing about it.

Jacqui Patterson: Okay, long story short, there's a author, Nora Roberts, and I can't remember the name of this book series that she wrote now, and I feel sorry about that, but anyone can find it pretty easily.

Quinn : That's why we're not doing this live. Come on.

Jacqui Patterson: Yes, yes. [00:43:00] And the story that she written is about like a catastrophic event that happened in the world and people having to start over.

And it was just interesting kind of her thoughts about how people were organizing themselves, how they developed a system where they didn't have prisons and those kind of things because the world was pretty decimated yet like, they had think about what accountability looks like when people did harm each other and so forth.

They had to think about how to create tools and how to grow food and how to do all the things just to build a society from scratch. And that really inspired me just in terms of thinking in that way of how to start from the beginning again.

And it reminds me of like this Buddhist concept of the beginner's mind, which is another thing that I've been really leaning into these days.

Quinn : Is it, does it include Of Blood and Bone possibly? I'm looking at a list here. There's like six [00:44:00] books. Says 13 years ago, a catastrophic pandemic known as the doom killed billions for those left behind it's a chance to build a new world.

Jacqui Patterson: Okay. That sounds right.

Quinn : Well, we'd like to throw them all up on Bookshop so people can check them out. And we've got truly like such a wide collection of those things. And I love the Buddhist beginner's mind thing. Again, I was a religion major for what it's worth and talking to folks like yourself and folks like Lauren Underwood and like incredibly smart scientists and young people.

It requires a beginner's mind because I'm not any of those things.

Thank you for this conversation. Sorry if it was a little all over the place, but you're doing work that's both so specific and intentional, but also all over the place, it turns out.

So we want to help as much as we can. So thank you for your time.

Jacqui Patterson: Thank you so much. It was a wonderful conversation.