In this episode, we explore the relationship between communities of color and political power by turning to a case study of electoral organizing in the US Pacific Northwest.
On this episode of Untying Knots, we explore the relationship between communities of color and political power by turning to a case study of electoral organizing in the US Pacific Northwest. George Cheung, Director of More Equitable Democracy (MED), joins us to discuss how the American winner-take-all electoral system is not only failing to generate real democratic governance but also creating disproportionate harm on communities of color. In response, MED is organizing Black, Indigenous and people of color voters as critical stakeholders to advance electoral reform and racial justice. Cheung and team are keen on learning from examples throughout global history and working towards a more equitable future. As he notes, “We’ve constructed these systems, we can deconstruct them too.”
Notes:
Untying Knots, co-hosted by Nikhil Raghuveera and Erica Licht, explores how people and organizations are untying knots of systemic oppression and working towards a more equitable future. Each episode features special guests and a focus on thematic areas across society.
This podcast is published by the Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project in collaboration with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center.
Music:
Beauty Flow by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5025-beauty-flow
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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George Cheung:
Once we have these changes in the rules of the game that really fosters a multi-party system, we'll have the ability for perhaps one or more parties that fully embrace racial equity as a value and organizing principle.
Erica Licht:
Hi, I'm Erica Licht.
Nikhil Raghuveera:
And I'm Nikhil Raghuveera.
Erica Licht:
And this is Untying Knots. Today, we'll be building on a conversation we had about two years back on the show, on the Relationship of Communities and Political Power. In 2020, we had the pleasure of speaking with Nse Ufot of New Georgia Project and Chris Bruce of the ACLU of Georgia. And we talked about Black, Indigenous and people of color voter suppression, and community organizing around voter rights injustice.
Nikhil Raghuveera:
And we'll be deepening that conversation on elections, by turning to the Pacific Northwest and the work of George Cheung, director at More Equitable Democracy.
Erica Licht:
George work focuses in a powerful way on advancing racial justice through electoral reform. More Equitable Democracy organizes with Black, Indigenous and people of color voters as critical stakeholders. But also questions the very ways that our supposed democracy operates. Do we actually have a fair system of representation? Or actually, have we just been boxed in by the very notion that we can only have two major parties?
Nikhil Raghuveera:
The winner-take-all system just isn't working, especially, given its impact on communities of color. And without political representation, how can we expect to advance real racial justice or even democracy in the US?
Erica Licht:
George will share with us how he and his team are building more equitable electoral systems throughout the country here in the US and also what we should be learning from examples throughout global history.
Nikhil Raghuveera:
And just as a reminder, all of you expressed by guests of their own. Thanks for listening.
Erica Licht:
It's a pleasure to have you here, George, today. Thanks so much for joining us.
George Cheung:
Yeah. Thanks for having me today. [foreign language 00:02:26] may the tiger bring us strength for the road ahead.
Erica Licht:
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Thank you. Well, it's really a pleasure to sit down with you in this conversation, both as someone who's been connected to IRA's work previously through our Truth and Transformation Conference, as well as a fellow Kennedy School alum, but most of all, because you lead such incredible work at More Equitable Democracy. So I think just to get us started, it would be wonderful if you can give us a flyover of what does More Equitable Democracy do? And what are you really day-to-day working towards, day-to-day, year-to-year to envision and build an equitable democracy and particularly for Black, Indigenous and people of color in the US?
George Cheung:
Yeah. Thanks again for this invite to join you. More Equitable Democracy is a National Racial Justice Organization. We work to advance racial equity through transforming our electoral systems. And we do that really through working with BIPOC-led organizations at the state and local level. We've been around for about five years now and we really provide a lot of deep technical assistance in the past. It started with the census and more recently around redistricting. This has really allowed us to build strong and meaningful relationships, and at the same time, planting seeds for future work around electoral systems change. Which I'll go to a little bit later.
Nikhil Raghuveera:
Got it. And thanks so much for that quick flyover. I know there's a lot more that we can dive into, and I'm really excited to do that, but before doing that and going more into the specific work of More Equitable Democracy, we'd love to hear a little bit more about your journey getting here and your work in the Pacific Northwest over the last 20 years. I know part of that was going through HKS, but could you tell us a little bit more about your journey to this work?
George Cheung:
Yes. So I am the son of immigrants. My parents grew up in Hong Kong, which at that time was a British Colony. And I remember my father talking about feeling like a second-class citizen in his birthplace. And obviously, under British Colonial rule, never really had any meaningful way to participate in democracy. And so fast-forward from that experience of those stories that my father told in particular. My first job out of college was as a civil rights investigator for state government. And I was really excited about the job. I felt like I was standing on the shoulders of giants. And it gave me an opportunity to really reflect on movement-building policy change. And then what happens after policies get enacted into law? It started to trouble me, because my focus on Fair Housing led me to these questions about, "How does adjudicating individual acts of prejudice lead to the dismantling of segregation?" Which as we understand now is largely a creation of racist federal public policy.
George Cheung:
So at that time, I also followed the nomination of Lani Guinier to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the first Clinton Administration, and just want to pay homage to her leadership and scholarship, because she passed recently. So at that time, she was criticized for her scholarship, very unfairly, about affirmative action and voting rights. And I really read and thought deeply about what she wrote, particularly, on voting rights. She essentially argued that the Voting Rights Act was necessary, but stuck in the 1960s, and in many ways, in conflict with the Fair Housing Act. So let me unpack that. Under section two of the Voting Rights Act, it's illegal to dilute the vote strength of protected classes, particularly, communities of color. There was a landmark decision called the Thornburg v. Gingles Case in which the US Supreme Court established a three-part test or set of pre-conditions to determine who's protected under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
George Cheung:
The first pre-condition is, "Can the racial or language minority group constitute a majority in a single-member district?" And if it is, and the other preconditions are met, the main remedy is the drawing of the so-called majority-minority district. And on its face, it seems very logical. You want to give an opportunity for certain groups that are shut out of power by making sure that they have a path to win in that particular area where they are highly concentrated, but in order to create a majority-minority district, you need residential segregation. And then, really, when she started to draw those connections, I was really stunned that under our current electoral system, generally speaking, it's called the winner-take-all electoral system. We need segregation to achieve some level of basic political representation for communities of color.
George Cheung:
I really didn't know what to do with that conclusion because it really undermined my confidence in our representative democracy. And thinking about Asian Americans who don't have the same experience of segregation that Black and Brown communities have faced, very difficult to draw a majority Asian American district anywhere in the country, outside of Hawaii and maybe California, New York. And so at that point, there really wasn't any place for me to plug in to focus on advocacy for electoral systems reform from that racial equity perspective. So very uneasily, I tucked that back in the back of my mind for a while. I went on to do my master in public policy. I studied geographic information systems, so at least I'd have some tools to get engaged in this whole process. And then I just threw myself into a lot of organizing work.
George Cheung:
I directed in Washington State, our statewide LGBTQ Equality Organization, Equal Rights Washington where we're able to pass anti-discrimination and I help lay the foundation for Marriage Equality that happened several years later. I worked for a group that promoted civic engagement in communities of color by providing tools to groups, to support their voter registration and get out the vote work. And then I ended up in philanthropy for about five years supporting democracy reform work in the Great Lake States, but then the 2016 Elections happened. I think that I just saw so much more conversation about systems change, that many people started to question, "How did authoritarianism creep into our politics? And what is the connection with our electoral system?" And for me, I really saw that the piece that was really missing was, "How to center communities of color in this change-making process?" Which then led me to establish the organization that I currently lead, More Equitable Democracy.
Erica Licht:
That was just incredibly, incredibly laid out for us. And I mean that really seriously, that was not only such a beautiful journey to hear about of making these connections, conceptual connections, but literal and organizing connections, but just also the meaning-making that you've done out of both through lived experience and professional academic make this analysis of how, not only as you said, this electoral system has failed us, but also particularly harmed communities of color. And frankly, exploited them as you've really indicated for us. I just want to say too, I'm so grateful for your homage to Lani Guinier who passed recently, and who, for the Harvard community, I think was such a landmark person, as you said, who was really pushing for a critical racial equity analysis very much long ago. So just building on so much what you've talked about, and I just have to say too, shout out to GIS, which I also studied years ago in my human geography degree.
George Cheung:
Nice.
Erica Licht:
But I would love for you to tell us more about this work that you've built through marketable democracy, based on this, the origin story which you shared. Now, that you're deep in the work, one of the projects that we were reading up on about is this cohort-based work. And particularly, this coaching that the organization provides. And in one of the videos documenting the work, I love the coach-athlete metaphor that was mentioned. And obviously, More Equitable Democracy being in that coaching role. Can you talk to us a little bit more about the impact? And even the development of these state-based cohorts? And what do you see as making them unique? And also, what is offered by this type of collaborative model?
George Cheung:
Yeah, thanks. I'll tell the story about our work, which predates the formal cohort that is just launching now as a good reflection of the type of support that we have been providing to groups across the country. So Washington is our home state. Most of our staff is based here in the Seattle Metropolitan Area. And so when we started about five years ago, I knew that the census was going to be a major challenge for communities of color. Rewinding 10 years before under an administration that was very much was willing to invest resources and had leadership at the head of the Department of Commerce. Actually, our Former Governor Gary Locke, who did a lot of work to promote the census. It was just a no-brainer. Everyone should participate. And it leads to an equitable share of resources for your community. There was nothing controversial about it at all. It was kind of boring, in fact.
George Cheung:
But then, fast-forward, we had an administration. Well, I knew that the census was moving to largely an online data collection process, which I knew given the uneven access to broadband, that this would be a big challenge for a lot of communities of color, as well as the administration using a lot of scare tactics to depress participation. So the other side of the coin was that given all of this controversy around the census, I knew that there would be state and local government resources and philanthropic resources that would really move to try to promote a full count. So at the very early phases of More Equitable Democracy, we helped convene a group of BIPOC leaders to really start talking about how do we prepare for the census and how do we use the resources that are going to come for the census as a means to a longer term end, how do we build capacity and engage organizers to really deepen their skills on communicating with communities who are largely left out of the process.
George Cheung:
And then the pandemic hits, which made the whole engagement, the person-to-person relational organizing work, even that much more important. So we really started to really make lemonade out of these lemons. This group of community leaders came together. We provided as much technical support as we could to establish the Washington Census Alliance. And I gave a shout out to my colleague, Heather Villanueva, who's our deputy director who led the effort to advocate for additional resources at the state government level. And in fact, the Washington State was one of the states that allocated the most amount of money, $15 million to support census engagement work. So with that money allocated, we then turned to helping create a relational organizing model for the Washington Census Alliance to apply for a good chunk of that money. We ended up getting about five of the $15 million hired and trained organizers across the state through a lot of community-based partners. And which led to one of the best counts that we've had in Washington State's history and Washington performed at one of the highest levels compared to other states.
George Cheung:
So from that experience of building capacity, working together in terms of a multiracial coalition, the organizers and the leaders decided to continue moving forward and we helped birth the Washington Community Alliance as the next iteration of the work that started with the census work. And from there, the organization I'm really proud to say has started to take on a lot of democracy reform work, because it sees that systems change work as critical to the long-term empowerment of communities of color. So they've been doing a lot of work around enforcement of our State Voting Rights Act. Washington is one of just a small handful of states that has its own state-based Voting Rights Act. So it's using that new authority to challenge inequitable electoral systems at the local level.
George Cheung:
And has also been advocating for more local options for cities and counties to adopt more equitable electoral systems, as a way to make sure that communities of color have a voice at the table. So that's just one example of how we've been able to show up, provide technical assistance on pieces through the census. And we also, one piece that I forgot to mention is the Washington Community Alliance led Redistricting Justice for Washington to advocate for the best lines possible. So we've been right behind the scenes, but very critical in ensuring that partners like the Washington Community Alliance have the capacity to take advantage of these systems change opportunities.
Erica Licht:
Fabulous. Well, I mean, yeah. Organizing power in action. It's really a treat to hear about just the... Yeah, the real power of what you're building on the ground, and with people, and in their communities, and being engaged directly with both the tools and processes. And just congratulations also on the work that you've done that you're seeing the impact of directly in Washington State right now, particularly, around the census, but also as you said much beyond any given specific census or census year.
Erica Licht:
Before we hear a bit more about the mission overall of More Equitable Democracy. Can you paint us a picture a bit of working in Washington State and/or the Pacific Northwest, because I think just speaking as someone who grew up in new England and lived elsewhere, but also has never lived in the Pacific Northwest, I think it would be helpful perhaps just to, yeah, if you could share with us more about what the landscape, I guess, politically and socially feels like working there? Both in terms of how systemic racism is operating. But also, I essentially, I'm asking you to just say like, "Is it beyond the Amazon and Microsoft Metropol, what is it like to be in Seattle and Washington State and the Pacific Northwest?
George Cheung:
Wow. Oh, that's a super interesting question, because I feel like Seattle and the rest of Washington are in many ways, very, very different places. So I'll start with the Seattle Metropolitan Area. One of the things that has been really powerful is the legacy of multiracial organizing in the Seattle Metro Area, that over the course of our development as a regional economy, there hasn't been one dominant racial ethnic group. And so there has been this really interesting legacy of cross-racial coalition-building that happened a lot of it was spurred in the 1960s, where there were some radical leaders who were really speaking truth to power. Bob Santos from the Filipino and Asian American Community. Larry Gossett, who did a lot of Black student organizing. And Bernie Whitebear, who was a very powerful Native American activist. They came together and a lot of other activists to form organizations and to demand resources for communities that were largely left out of public budgets and really established a legacy of working together across racial, ethnic lines, and having lived in other places like Chicago, where there's a lot of tension between Black and Brown communities.
George Cheung:
I feel like that growing up in Seattle and doing a lot of organizing in Seattle, I approached that as given assumptions that folks of color should work together, because we're all in it together. And we don't have enough power separately to make change on our own. When I reflect about the rest of the state, I really think largely about Central Washington, which is a largely agricultural economy. It's largely exploitation of farm workers, frankly, Latino farm workers to make money off of apples, and cherries, and other crops. And so I feel like that is a completely separate story, which is parallel to what a lot of other people see in places where there is one large racial ethnic group. I will say that Yakima County, which is the base of a lot of this agricultural industry is also a home to the Yakima Nation, which is our largest Native American tribe and reservation.
George Cheung:
But still, in terms of just sheer numbers, it is Latinos who have organized for decades. And because of, once again, the electoral system, which puts them at a huge disadvantage, they can get to almost 50 plus 1% of the total population and still be completely shut out of power. And so we have very different dynamics in Central Washington, where there has been not a deep investment in organizing and one community in particular, the Latino community, which has really not been able to have a real voice at the policymaking table there. So I think we're really talking about tale of two regions, if you will.
Nikhil Raghuveera:
Thanks, George. I know that's a lot to cover for an entire region, but helpful. Erica mentioned that she's familiar with the Northeast. I grew up in the Southeast, so there's different aspects, right? To think about. And I appreciate that you went back and thought about history, right? You talked about looking at the 1960s and the organizing there and that history and how that affects present day.
George Cheung:
Yes. We still are standing on the shoulders of giants. And I think about that every day.
Nikhil Raghuveera:
Right. Exactly. And it's building on their work, right? It's taking that work that they've done, that foundation, and then building on and pushing that forward.
George Cheung:
Yes, exactly.
Nikhil Raghuveera:
So shifting gears a little bit. Early on you mentioned something that I thought was quite powerful. You said that, basically, that residential that in our winter-take-all system, we essentially need segregation, right? Segregation is entirely built into the system of how we elect and how we designed our democracy for this kind of winner-take-all. And I think that looking my understanding of More Equitable Democracy is that this is very much tied to the work that you all are doing. And really looking at voting in America, it's that we have a winner-take-all system that's resulted in elected officials who don't represent the very communities that they're meant to serve.
Nikhil Raghuveera:
And in my mind, at least it seems to give people a false sense of choice. And then building from there. This is particularly bad, right? For advancing racial and economic justice. And so it seems one of the things that MED has looked is looking at a proportional representation and more of a multi-party system. And my understanding is that some of this is similar to what's done in Ireland and Australia, but could you explain a little bit more about what this is and exactly why you think this is needed?
George Cheung:
Yes. This is one of my favorite topics. I guess, one of the things about the pandemic is I don't go to cocktail parties, because this is what I would talk to everyone, all the other guests. So I'm very grateful to have this opportunity to talk more about something that maybe some people might feel will be boring, but maybe by the time that I'm done, people will be more excited about thinking about this. So I want to start by talking about where does the winner-take-all system come from? There is a very specific history. In 1430, the English Parliament established the first electoral system in Western Democracy. And in that system, which is now called the winner-take-all system, they already had counties that provided some level of governance. And so after the Magna Carta, the King was forced to give up some power.
George Cheung:
And so there was a system of elections to elected officials that were called Knights of the Shire. Here's where I'm supposed to insert a clever joke about Lord of the Rings, but I don't have one. So Knight of the Shire were essentially delegates to represent the White... Well, of course, I guess everyone was White there. The male landowners of land over a particular value to provide feedback on tax policy to the King. And so based in the county, you got to vote and whoever got the most votes was selected as the Knight of the Shire. And so they'd go to the King and do what they would do. And so that was the only system in place for hundreds of years, literally, about 400 years. And so fast-forward to about the mid-1800s. By this time as nation states were emerging and there was an expansion of the franchise.
George Cheung:
So you started seeing men without property, women and people of color in different political context getting the right to vote. There was a lot of conversation about, "Does this winner-take-all system actually adequately represent all these voices in our political system?" Because if you think about it, the winner-take-all system where just it's a plurality vote, whoever gets the most votes in a particular area. It's like electing your student body of representative in a little popularity contest in homeroom, right? Whoever gets the most, you send off to be part of whatever student body. But if you just run that exercise a hundred times over, "Will you get a legislative body that actually represents the whole electorate?" Put in that similar analogy, "Will you get a student body representatives that actually reflect a whole high school?" Probably not. You'll probably get a bunch of kids that are Native English speakers who are wealthy, who are well-connected. And that analogy applies to our winner-take-all elections.
George Cheung:
And so by the mid-1800s countries and cities in the US started to experiment with other forms of electoral systems to get around this conundrum of the winner-take-all system, not leading to a reflective democracy. And so yes, Australia, Ireland, Denmark were some of the first countries to implement a form of proportional representation. But I want to tell two quick stories of places that use them that I think are really important for our conversation today. The first one is actually Northern Ireland. So in the early 1900s, after the establishment of the Irish Republic and the separation of Northern Ireland, there was a lot of hand ringing by the pro-unionists. And when I say union and not Labor Union, pro union with England and the United Kingdom, because in the establishment of Northern Ireland, there was a lot of anxiety by the pro-unionists about, "Well, what if the Catholics who are whose population is increasing quicker than the pro-unionist, the Protestants?"
George Cheung:
"What if they become the majority and are able to start to win governing power in Northern Ireland? Like that is an existential threat to our control of this place that we call ours." And so though at the beginning of Northern Ireland, they had for just a few years of a system of proportion representation, very quickly the pro-unionists were able to impose winner-take-all elections very, very similar to our system here in the US, of single-member districts that they were able to heavily gerrymandering and essentially manufacture a majority for the pro-unionists. And so this really was one of the cornerstones that led to generations of conflict between the Protestants and the Catholics, the so-called troubles, if you will. And a lot of the Catholics because of the scalpel used by the pro-unionists to draw these lines, to disadvantage the Catholics, a lot of them started to feel like, "It doesn't matter if we vote because we can't win."
George Cheung:
And a lot of them ended up becoming part of Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army, because they felt like, "If my ballot is useless, perhaps violence is the only alternative that I have." And so by the time of the early 1990s, where the Clinton Administration was very pivotal in helping to promote the Good Friday Peace Accords, one of the biggest tenants of that peace agreement was the banning of winner-take-all elections in favor of proportional representation in order to make sure that the Catholic communities had a real path to political power and voice in their system. And in fact fast-forwarding to now, of course, there's lots of challenges with Brexit and the implications there, but it went from a very two-party system of the pro-Catholic versus the pro-unionist Protestants who were just at war with one another to essentially a five-party system where there are two Catholic parties, two Protestant parties, and one non-religiously affiliated party in which they can create coalitions based on whatever policy that they're deciding on to make a good public policy.
George Cheung:
And once again, the Catholics, because of the Good Friday Accords felt like they really could be part of Northern Ireland Democracy. So they did not. What they did not do is they did not form bipartisan redistricting commissions to draw lines that could give majority Catholic districts as the only way to provide, let's say, minimal representation for the Catholics. They just went to systems change altogether to some form of proportional representation. So that's one really interesting international or comparative story. The other story that I love to talk about is New York City. For those listeners out there who live in the city, if you vote, you probably experience Ranked-Choice Voting for the first time this past election for the mayor's election. And that obviously was a big change because now Ranked-Choice Voting is being used in the largest jurisdiction in the country, local jurisdiction.
George Cheung:
However, it is actually not the first time that New York City has used Ranked-Choice Voting. Actually, New York City used Ranked-Choice Voting with multi-member districts beginning in the 1930s. So we have this legacy of the Progressive Reform Movement that really saw as one of the things that they really wanted to focus on was corruption by mostly the democratic machines in big cities as the thing that they really wanted to tackle. And so here is the machine that is able to, once again, manipulate maps for their single-member districts. And though they largely were 60% of the electorate in terms of those who favored machine candidates, they were able to manufacture about 90% to 95% of seats in terms of winning at the city council level. And so a lot of reformers got together and proposed based on the experience in other jurisdictions, particularly, over overseas, a similar model, a proportion representation that's called Single Transferable Vote, where you have multi-member districts and Ranked-Choice Voting.
George Cheung:
I won't go into the specifics about the math behind it, but suffice it to say, each borough had a set number of council members based on their, I think, voter turnout in a previous election, you ranked your ballot and then the top X number would get elected. So without districts, African American voters were able to combine their votes. Let's say, those who lived downtown in Manhattan with those who lived in, let's say, Harlem, they were able to elect the first African American to New York City Council, Adam Clayton Powell, who ended up going to run for Congress and represent New York State in Congress. And then after he leaves, I think after one or one and a half terms, another African American gets elected also from Manhattan, a guy by the name of Ben Davis, who actually runs as a member of the American Communist Party. Clearly, communism doesn't have the same sting that it had back in the time of the Cold War.
George Cheung:
But let's say that those who are more progressive than the non-ideological democratic machine consolidated their support around the American Labor Party and the Communist Party, and Ben Davis was able to really speak truth to power and run unabashedly as a progressive, as a communist and win a seat. Something that would've never happened had New York City still continued to have a winner to call single-member district system. So those are two really good examples, both internationally and here at home, where we've experimented with alternative electoral systems and come up with results that really are better reflections of who we are as a community, as a country, as a city.
Erica Licht:
Yeah. I mean, the sense of better electoral systems, it's just fascinating and it's wonderful to hear about these real-life examples in practice, building a healthy democracy. In the US's case, a democracy that has never really existed. And most of all, I think that, as you've said, is that could actually represent voices of the people in the system. I just have to say, too. I don't think I mentioned to you, George, I and my close colleague, Dr. Khalil Muhammad were going to Northern Ireland in just a few weeks-
George Cheung:
Ah.
Erica Licht:
... for our research work, to better understand a lot of the history that you described. But, in fact, it might have come up in some of my pre-reading about the tenants of the Good Friday Peace Accords, what was established, and policy, and societal change. But I did not recall that. And so you're painting the picture of that was extremely fascinating. And I can't wait to report back also on the trip and just being able to see that more in action in-person.
George Cheung:
Take me with you, please?
Erica Licht:
Yeah, I hope so. Next time.
George Cheung:
Okay.
Erica Licht:
Next time.
George Cheung:
Okay.
Erica Licht:
Yeah. Well we're, we're soon closing out our time here today, but I did want to ask you one more question about, essentially, what is at stake and you've already said this in so many ways, but I feel it's important for us to just ask you more pointedly when we talk about electoral power, power of the people, especially women, gender nonconforming people, queer people, trans people, people of color, immigrants, Black people, Indigenous people, marginalized people, what is at stake? And what do you hope to see in the collective organizing that you're a part of in the next few years, decades? So it's, I guess, both a question of what is at stake, and also, how you are seeing long and short-term change right now when it comes to electoral power, electoral districts, representation, et cetera?
George Cheung:
Yeah. Wow. I think what's at stake is the ability for us as a country to really dismantle systemic racism in our country. When we think about the winner-take-all system, there was a French social scientist who came up with a Duverger's law, which basically says that when you have a winner-take-all system, you inevitably will end up with a two-party system. So-called minor parties end up abandoning their efforts, because they can't get elected in a winner-take-all system. And so that two-party system that comes from the winner-take-all system really has exacerbated differences within our communities and has led to the deep, deep polarization that we're in now. Such that, communities of color largely feel treated as cattle. That at least from the viewpoint of the Democratic Party, communities of color are those that need to be turned out because they will vote for a particular party.
George Cheung:
They have no other choice that is viable. So they just need a call to remind them a few days before the election that, "Hey, you got to vote for us because what else are you going to do? We're way better than your other choice." So there it is. And so much more energy gets focused on this dwindling number of the so-called Swing Voter, and what are their interests? They're not paying attention. They don't have many opinions, but everyone wants to spend so much money and figure out like, "How do we create a whole policy agenda that will respond to them?"
George Cheung:
And that's not really leading us anywhere to the deep conversations around reparations for slavery that we need to have before we can really move on. And so part of why I think what's at stake is the ability for us to really tackle systemic racism is that we fundamentally believe that a multi-party system is necessary to achieve that. Once we have these changes in the rules of the game, that really fosters a multi-party system will have the ability for, perhaps, one or more parties that fully embrace racial equity as a value and organizing principle. And then the negotiations around policies related to racial equity become completely different as well as how communis of color are engaged and mobilized not being asked at the 11th hour, "Hey, you got to vote for us because we're not those guys," but rather, "This party's for us, this party is about building political power so that we can transform this country and really live up to the values that we profess to abide by."
Nikhil Raghuveera:
Thanks. That's quite powerful. And that was very helpful. I think talking about the idea that a multi-party system is necessary, right? For broader transformation, that it's not going to happen from a two-party system, because it's simply not going to be designed to even represent the people who it's meant to represent in the first place.
George Cheung:
Yes.
Nikhil Raghuveera:
And so I know we're coming out of time, unfortunately. I know there's so much more we can talk about, but I do want to wrap up and say, thank you, thank you so much for this, George. I think at least for me, this was incredibly helpful. I think you brought in both this perspective of, "What's happening now," but you also went through history. Explain how the work that you're doing today is building on the shoulders of others, as well as exploring how the systems' in place are now in place because of history. But these are the things that we have to change. And so thank you, thank you absolutely so much for joining us, George, and all the work that you're doing in the Pacific Northwest.
George Cheung:
I appreciate this opportunity. We've constructed these systems. We can reconstruct them, too.
Erica Licht:
Absolutely. Well, here's to that and in this new year. Thank you again. Be well.
George Cheung:
Thank you. [foreign language 00:43:49]
Erica Licht:
Well, that's a wrap of our show and our conversation with George Cheung of More Equitable Democracy. It was really a pleasure to hear much more deep in the weeds about what the work to advance racial justice looks like in policy and practice when it comes to our electoral systems and all the ways forward to organize in community, relationship-building, and also for a more equitable society.
Nikhil Raghuveera:
This is Untying Knots. Thanks for listening.
Erica Licht:
Untying knots is hosted by Nikhil Raghuveera and Erica Licht. It is a collaboration with the Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability Project and supported by the Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center. We'd like to thank George Cheung for his time. In speaking with us.
Nikhil Raghuveera:
Music is Beauty Flow by Kevin MacLeod.