Run for Soil and Water and Farmworkers

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[upbeat music] Hey, it's Quinn. How's it going? You may feel like you're giving it all you have, but obviously things are tough out there.

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We're working on all of it, but in particular, you, our listeners and readers, viewers, whatever, have asked for over and over more examples of a fight and, and actual progress that you can see and touch and feel.

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And in these, the new second batch of conversations, in partnership with our best friends at Run for Something, we're gonna give you more of exactly what you're asking for.

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Going forward, not every conversation will be the same. So some, like today, might feature a single guest, a candidate or an alum or an incumbent, I guess, and others might feature two guests.

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But all of them are sourced from the Run for Something pipeline, so they could be candidates or they could be among the graduating classes. But these are no doubt the next generation leaders of this country.

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For example, today I'm gonna introduce you to an incredible candidate who's running for a local office in their home state that is specifically, specifically working on something they can, and you can see and, and, and touch and feel, an issue that they were born into and care about deeply, that they represent.

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And it's important, I believe, that we paint that picture because there's gonna... there's gotta be something you care about in your community that you wish you could, if not f- just fight for, but represent.

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We're gonna talk about what they're working on and why, where they've made progress, where they've struggled, and either tactics and strategies that might be transferable to other

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school districts or towns or cities or whatever. I do have a few asks for you though, because this person has stood up to do their thing.

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If these conversations inspire you, you can do two things today because, to be clear, again, it's not their job to save us. They're working on one specific thing. Excited to share that with you.

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After you listen, it's your turn. One, find out what office you or a young person that you love and trust can run for at runforwhat.net.

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Two, find and support incredible candidates who are running right now, who are endorsed by Run for Something and other incredible groups we love and trust at whatcanido.earth. And three, share these conversations.

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Sh- send, send people the link. If you and I both need this desperately, there's a lot more people that do. So please do that. As always, you can send us feedback at [email protected].

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Let's go meet our guest today, Quinny Perez. [upbeat music] Quinny Perez, welcome to the show. Thanks for jumping on. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Quinny, I gotta tell you, not a lot of people with our name. Yeah.

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[laughs] Yeah, when I saw that, I was like, "Oh, yes, this is gonna be a great time." It's so, it's so rare. I, uh, I was so excited.

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Besides all of the amazing things you're doing for, for farm workers and agriculture and, and soil, you know, it's a great day. We have to make our name for ourselves. 100%. There we go.

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Quinny Perez, please introduce yourself if you can and tell us a little bit about the very specific office you are running for.

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Like you said, my name is Quinny Perez, and I'm running for Orange County Soil and Water Conservation District, Seat 1. It is an elected position. What it really focuses on, it...

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I would say that it's more of an advocacy role than it is a legislative or a tax authority.

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One of the main jobs is to educate people on things like land and, and water management, advocating for the environment, advocating for farm workers, advocating for any issue that has affected it in my county.

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That's something that I really wanna focus on. I think this role can be used to, you know, better people's lives. I love that, and often in US politics, more on the national or state level, you see folks maybe sweep into

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jurisdictions that they don't know that well or haven't been part of or maybe they were or, or whatever it might be, but you grew up in Ocala.

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Yeah, Ocala is a very environmental and agricultural-focused area in North Florida, North Central Florida. Growing up there, uh, I was around farms all the time. My, my parents are agricultural workers themselves.

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They work in the- Mm-hmm... equine. Big part of Ocala. Ocala is known to be the horse capital of the world. You, you'll have a lot of people come in and, you know, sell horses, especially race horses. Big industry there.

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And we have places like Rainbow Springs, Silver Springs there, which are like our waterways that we are really trying to preserve in that area.

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Obviously, and, and this is something that I feel like especially kids now really struggle with, but in the US, so many kids just don't have access to...

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It's one thing if your family, you know, I believe Mexican immigrants working- Mm-hmm... in, in agriculture. You didn't really have a choice but to have a relationship with the land and the water and the soil.

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When did you have this moment where you felt like, "I needed to do more. I needed to use this relationship and where, how I grew up and how I'm working in it now to, to represent this relationship"? Does that make sense?

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So I work in the, in the medical cannabis i- industry. Mm-hmm.

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And I, I work my cultivation and harvesting part of the, the industry, and a lot of the, the people who I work with are immigrants of Hispanic descent, Latin descent.

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A, a lot of Venezuelans, you know, Mexicans, and a lot of them struggle to, you know, a- a- afford a place to live or very much like the, the immigrant story that you're often familiar with.

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I've always been very involved in, in immigrant issues just 'cause it's a very personal thing that, to me, my parents came to this country. I could tell you a story of my mother.

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She came to this country under a false bottom of a van while pregnant with my sister at 16. I do the work that I do to honor those sacrifices that my, my parents made to give us a better life.

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E- ever since 2016, when Trump decided to run for office and the first thing he did was disparage Mexican immigrants, that kinda motivated me to change where I was.

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It, it was just so personal to me that I just did a 180 in my career, and I've just been doing that for the last decade. Well, thank you for sharing all that, and, and thank you for stepping up.

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You know, big thing weI'm interested in personally, and I think our listeners are always interested in, is not just, oh, this is the cool science or the cool whatever someone is doing or, or health or whatever.

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It's, it's why they feel like they have to do it. And, and I, I, I really thank you for, for explaining that a little bit.

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Obviously, again, since Trump, as everything is getting harder, obviously the agriculture in Georgia and Florida, in Central California, so many of these places is, are really changing, you know, our soy production and who's buying it and who's not all over the place.

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You are choosing to, even if you were not to get elected, to stand in for people, the people who grow our food and tend the land.

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Or medical marijuana, which provides relief to so many people, but they're usually the most invisible in these conversations, right?

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When we're talking about heat protections or, like you said, affordability of anywhere to live. Wh- why is it so important to you to do that? You know, because they are being, they are being targeted right now.

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My parents and my, and my other relatives, you know, they, they aren't the, the most educated, like, when, when it comes to school because they were kind of forced to, you know, stop the- their education so that they can tend to their families and, you know, provide.

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They aren't the most political people, but when, when an issue like immigration comes up, they are really on top of it. It's a very personal thing. My parents are scared.

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You know, I know f- friends who have, know, know people who have been, you know, picked up and haven't been able to contact them. So these, these are real stories, that they're personal, and that's why I fight for them.

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But it, it's just people that, that I've been advocating for my whole life. You know, I, I've lived in these communities, and I know the struggles from these people. A lot of them are, are day laborers.

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And, and the relation it has to the environment is if we have natural disasters, these people are, aren't able to work.

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So I think it, it's on us to be able to help through mutual aid and, and other a- advocacy to support these people who are n- not just farm workers, they're service industry workers.

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They're, they're everywhere in our community, and I think we need to recognize and appreciate them a little bit more. And they're people. Exactly. Mm-hmm.

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You know, they're, they're parents and grandparents and, and children often the time or uncles, aunts, whatever it might be, who, you know- Mm-hmm... are, are attempting to

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build a life for themselves, much less for their families, like it sound like, you know, your, your, your mother did. So you've been advocating for, for 10 years.

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Tell me about how this office in the Soil and Water Conservation District came across sorta your desk, your, your awareness, and what made you wanna do it? 'Cause like you said, it's really an advocacy role, right?

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It's, it's nonpartisan. Mm-hmm. Uh, I don't believe there's any tax funding to it. I was looking up the Virginia equivalent here. What, why this seat?

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Like I said, I, I, I work in the, in agri- cultural industry when it comes to medical cannabis.

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And when it comes to this role, one of the requirement is for you to have either be working in agriculture or have retired from agriculture. Okay. So I, I, I felt like I was qualified on that end.

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And then just the passion I have for, you know, my advocating for farm workers, them being the people who ultimately provide the food that we have on, on our kitchen tables, affordable food on our kitchen tables, and if we don't have these workers, and if we're not supporting the farmers as well, then w- we're gonna be paying that price ultimately.

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You're also in one of the fastest growing counties, I think- Counties... in the, in the country. It's crazy. For a while it was Arizona, and now Florida is... This part of Florida is really exploding.

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As someone who's trying to advocate even more formally for soil and water and the, and the people who tend to those, how do you imagine advocating for them while balancing this crazy growth in industry and things like that that are coming into the county?

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Like I said, I, I've been involved in the work for the last 10 years and, and over that time, I, I've been able to build a lot of relationships with, you know, different legislators, county government officials, many people from different parts, d- my community leaders.

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One of my main goals through this job is to be able to just direct lobbying with these officials when it comes to issues that I, I, I know people are concerned about in my community. I love that.

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I, I, I, I mean, it's the relationships are the whole thing, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. However, however you can tend to those and, and use them- Yeah...

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and get someone's ear who might otherwise not be as connected to the community and the issues and the land- Mm-hmm... and the water. E- exactly.

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And, and I've been fortunate enough to earn the endorsement of officials like Representative Dr. Anna V.

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Eskamani, big name in, in, in that area, Senator Victor Torres, Representative Sean Young, Representative Rita Harris, a lot of big effective leaders in that area.

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And that's because I've been working in the, in the county o- on all different kind of issues, j- not just immigrant issues.

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I, I've worked with Senator Marco Guillermo Smith when he was a, a state representative, and we advocated for the Puerto Rican community much throughout Hurricane Maria and, and other tragedies like the Pulse nightclub shooting and, and things like that.

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So I, you know, I've, I, I've been involved in the community to a big degree, and I just wanna keep advocating.

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And, and to be honest, b- being somebody who is trans, I, I think Orange County i- is a good place to run that kind of campaign.

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Soil and Water is a good place to start 'cause I think it's very important for especially someone like me to be able to build that power and community from the ground up in a more organic way. Literally, right? Yeah.

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[laughs] I, I appreciate you, you, you talking about that part and, and again, it's, it's wild to look back over the 10 year, last 10 years and look at everything that's has happened and been done throughout the world and the US and, and, and Florida.

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Mm-hmm. You, you spoke about Pulse. You know, there's a lot of folks who would look to you in a lot of different ways as, again, the, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, and as a trans woman- Mm-hmm...

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someone who grew up working in agriculture to, to represent them in some way.

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How much do you think about that and carrying that burden as you're running for, again, an office where you're like, "This is a formalized version of what I've been trying to do all along"?

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I've definitely felt the pressure more recently as I've been getting a little bit more national attention.I, i- if I'm being honest, this is where I wanna be.

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This is my- the, the platform that I wanted and I've been working on for the last decade so that I can advocate for my community. It- it's been a lot of pressure.

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I- I- I'm grateful for the support I've gotten in my community. I can approach people in a way that i- is non-partisan. Mm-hmm. I- I- I lived in rural areas.

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I- I've built relationships with, with conservative elected officials as well in Marion County. One time,

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I, I- I had a group of people, I think, protesting some election or something like that, or some issue, and the Republican young Democrat reached out to me and gave me a warning that some MAGA people were gonna be m- uh, counter-protesting our event.

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And so, you know, I think I have a good pulse on, you know, being able to bring an issue down to a very fundamental way so that we can at least agree on that.

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I think it- it's more about moral and ethics, and if you get to the basic of that in an issue, then it, it doesn't matter if I'm trans or whatever have you, you know, we're just gonna be talking about the issue.

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No, I love that, and we're, we're trying to refocus on that here as much as we can as well.

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If there are so many things, nine out of 10 things that so many folks are disagreeing on because of disinformation or whatever it might be, these core fundamental things that every person deserves, we have to be able to agree on those.

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And if we don't agree on those, then that's just... Our work is probably not for you. But if we can, let's start there, right? Like you said, it's, it's soil and water.

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There isn't anyone who doesn't need soil and water, right? [laughs] Exactly. Like, the position is a good place to start, and it- it's non-partisan. People love the environment.

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Doesn't matter where you're f- you know, what walk of the life you are. The environment is precious to a lot of us.

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Absolutely, and if you can help reestablish people's more visceral, tangible relationship with it, even if they're not, they didn't grow up in the agr- agricultural community, or they're new because it's growing so quickly, whatever it might be.

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You said you've gotten more na- national attention. I know you mentioned all those incredible endorsements, and Run for Something, and I think the Victory Fund.

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Have you had conversations with other people who might be interested now and going, "Oh, I didn't know that's a local office that existed." Basically, how do we get more people to run for local office?

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How do you use all of that to, to attract more folks to do the sort of roles you're looking for? One thing I definitely advocate for is I tell people it, it doesn't have to be just soil and water. A- advisory boards.

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Your cities have advisory boards. That's a good place to start. That way, y- you at least have some influence on, on local policy.

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If you wanna make change, you, you have to be in the room where that change is made, and I think that e- even the volunteer positions that people do are, are very important 'cause they are the ones who are influencing the, the policy.

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And interesting, I'm, I'm in Virginia, and I was in Los Angeles for a long time, and I've been kinda all over, but, but here it's, we've got sort of a...

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We're in the city of Williamsburg, which is v- v- very old, sorta colonial city, and it's quite small geographically, and there's a bigger county that's growing quickly around it, and figuring that out and, and so we've got your city council meetings, and obviously your school board meetings, and you've got co- you know, all this.

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And I always tell folks, "Look, if, if you don't go to those meetings, even if you're not serving a role, even just to listen,

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someone else is gonna go, and that's gonna be the only voice that that council or whoever it might be will hear." And I know it's inconvenient if you're a, a parent or you're working or whatever y-

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but that's it, you know? That, that's the math of it. They're gonna say, "This is who we heard from." And that can go a long way. Yeah, a- and that voice is gonna represent you ultimately- Correct...

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whether you like it or not. Yes, yes, absolutely. I love that.

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Okay, you're, you're running to give farmers a baseline voice, right, in a world that's changing quickly, in a county that's changing quickly, and you're someone who has represented this county and, and many different people in so many ways.

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What does week one look like for you in this new role? What does year one look like for you in this new role? I think one thing that we, we, we need to focus on is kinda modernizing the, the Soil and Water Board brand.

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Good communication is very important.

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Instead of just a yearly change, 'cause people change logos, people change these things, but I think building a, that foundation, even if it's like, unfortunately, you know, it, it's not a paid position, you know, it doesn't take much to kind of

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create a brand around something, and I think that's very important, ma- to build legitimacy for the board. I think that would be the first start when it comes to that.

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A- a- and then just ma- keep doing what I've been doing. I, I'm gonna keep going to different meetings that are related to the work that I do, and just any other issue that are going on in the county.

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People love to see someone who is present a- and who is listening to the community. That's what I've been doing for the last 10 years. Just being present.

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You know, like I, I really do wanna be a public servant for people, somebody that they can feel comfortable coming to me for any kind of question, not just the environment or agricultural.

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I love that, and I love the idea of, again, the self-awareness and knowledge of, "I've been doing this long enough. I know what this board can do and can't do, and so much of it's gonna be advocacy."

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So, like you said, sort of modernizing the brand and the communications is actually a really big part of that, right? To say you're, "This is what I'm representing.

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This is at least part of what I'm representing when I go in this room, even if it's not paid, and even if I don't have, you know, legislative, direct legislative ability. You know, this is, this is who we are."

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Quinny, in what sounds like all of your free time, which is, which is probably not much at all. [laughs] Which... No. No free time. [laughs] My kids are, my kids are always like, "What are your hobbies?" I'm like, "I...

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What are you talking about? I don't know." [laughs] I got, I got nothing. This is. Yeah, like- This is my hobby. I try to be honest with, with, with guests, and also our listeners, and, and anyone we talk to.

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Things can feel- Yeah... especially for, certainly for some folks m- much more than others, pretty tough right now. Besides- Right... injecting yourself further to say, "Well, I'm gonna be an antidote to these things.

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I'm gonna be a representative," how else are you taking care of yourself right now that other people might be like, "Oh, that's something I hadn't considered"?Oh, well, for me specifically, you know, being trans, I've definitely been surrounding myself in, in the queer community here in Orlando.

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We, we do have a, a, a, a large thriving queer community here in Orlando. We have this market called Goblin Market, and it's very queer focused. It always has high attendance.

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I used to be on the board, uh, of the Goblin Market myself. It's a great space to not think about politics and just be within community. I recently started attending a support group for the trans community.

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So it, it's little things like that, finding the time to just make sure that you surround yourself with some positivity is very important, especially in, in, in this kind of fight.

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'Cause if, if I'm elected, I, I would likely be the first elected trans woman in the state of Florida. It's, it, it's, you know, no pressure. [laughs] No pressure.

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Well, well, I have such huge admiration for what you're doing. I love that, again, you're aware of what you have been doing and building and why you've been doing it and why this seat and how...

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I think you just said, you're, you're already looking for these positive environments that can reinforce yourself and, and your ability to do this work. Because if you can't do the work, it doesn't matter.

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And I really wanna see representation like me more out there and I, and I want people to feel confident enough to see someone like me and be like, "Hey, if, if they can do it, then why, why not my, I?" I love that.

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I, I think that's beautiful. Quinny, where can the people find you online, support your campaign? Sure. So you can find me at quinnyforsoilandwater.com.

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You can also find me on social media on Facebook and Instagram as, uh, quinnyforsoilandwater. I'm always out in the community. Like I said still, I tend to update everything.

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We have phone banking going on right now as well, so it... You don't have to live in the district to make phone calls, and I, I, I think that's one way that people can really, uh, contribute to our campaign.

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Uh, and, and you can also donate it, it, as well. On my website, you can find our donation link.

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You know, we are a grassroots campaign, a very small campaign, but I, I do have plans on working on digital ad messaging a- as we get closer to the election, so that's the best way people can support our campaign.

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I, I can't thank you enough for all the work you've been doing the past 10 years and, and for, for being so candid and putting yourself out there.

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Yeah, we do need more folks like you to do it, and I hope we can feel, make you feel safe and supported just to start with, if not encouraged to, to go further and to really do this.

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Obviously, again, none of us are anything without soil and water, so having someone like you- Exactly... working on it would be pretty great.

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I really appreciate you, you know, giving me the platform and opportunity, you know, to speak to people about, you know, why I'm doing this. I, I thank you for that. No, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your time.

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Good luck. You got this. We believe in you. Thank you. Appreciate it. [outro music] That's it for this week's conversation.

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For more conversations, scroll back in the feed or visit podcast.importantnotimportant.com to search by name, topic, whatever. Thanks for sharing, thanks for leaving a review, and thanks for giving a shit.

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