The Black & Brown Vote

De'Ara Balenger w/ Paola Ramos

Co-founder of Maestra, attorney, and Hillary Clinton alum De’Ara Balenger sits down with journalist, Vice host, author of the newly released Finding Latinx, and Hillary and Obama alum, Paola Ramos, to talk about voting and the upcoming election.

De’Ara Balenger: Welcome, welcome to this session that’s all about politics and voting, particularly the Black and Brown votes. So I know that could be a little, little bit of a mix up with all your cultural creative folks, but we thought it’s super important to have this conversation. Want to thank Social Studies, our Social Studies family who has made voter engagements, civic engagement a part of the program and a part of their work. So I just want to thank them for that, because without the creative community, without the artistic community, we won’t be able to keep the momentum going about you know why it’s so important to know who is running for office, why it’s so important to be involved, yada-yada-yada-yada. So I am De’Ara Balenger and this is my fiancé Paola Roma.

Paola Ramos: Paola Roma, yes.

De’Ara Balenger: So we both have long histories, me longer because I am old. Long histories in politics and government, but we, I just want to kind of break down like how this-this time is going to go just so you guys know the plan. So we are going to talk a little bit about our backgrounds and what got us to this moment. And then we are going to talk about kind of like where we are with voting in the election particularly with Brown and Black communities. Then we are going to go into what the hell is going to happen on November 3rd and a little bit beyond. Also we are going to throw in like what you all can be doing right now. So I think that’s the general gist.

Paola Ramos: Right.

De’Ara Balenger: So why don’t we start with you Paola, tell us a little bit about your background and your work in politics and government?

Paola Ramos: Yes. So I am -- I was born in Miami, but I started my career in politics when Barack Obama was suddenly elected. So I'll take you back to 2008/2009, and in that moment I truly believed in the hope and change message that he was delivering. And so I moved to Washington, D.C. and I worked in the Obama White House for a couple of years. I did his-.

De’Ara Balenger: Also just so I know, people don’t usually just end up working in a White House when they go into politics, but I'm -- but this is-

Paola Ramos: Well no, I started as an intern. I mean I started by delivering turkey sandwiches and-

De’Ara Balenger: Okay there we go.

Paola Ramos: And coffees, yes, I mean it wasn’t like, I mean I was like at the bottom.

De’Ara Balenger: Okay.

Paola Ramos: Just obviously and thank you for noting that. Anyways, so been in the Obama White House, I worked in the 2012 reelection campaign. And you know after a brief period in grad school, then I met you in the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign which is where De’Ara and I met for the first time. And my role in the Clinton campaign was, I was a Deputy Director for Hispanic Press, which essentially entailed doing all of the communications outreach to Latinos across the country. That’s kind of -- that’s the story of the 2016 campaign, right, when obviously we wake up the day after the election and we lose, is what now has sort of driven my aim to work in journalism and to work in storytelling. And so now a lot of my work is on Telemundo, on MSNBC and I do a lot of stories for VICE and VICE News. And you know the heart of those stories is telling stories about Brown folks and about the you know Latino voters, all of that driven by the idea that I didn’t really think, I didn’t really know who Latinos were in 2016 is kind of a lesson learned from my time in politics. And so that’s why I am doing storytelling now.

De’Ara Balenger: Got it, okay.

Paola Ramos: In case you didn’t know.

De’Ara Balenger: Well, there also there's another story that it would be a part of another piece of programming, she actually stalked me on the 2016 campaign and now we are together. So that’s a whole nother story. So also the point being, if you work on a campaign, it will find you somebody, so that’s something else to keep in mind.

Paola Ramos: You find love in campaigns for sure.

De’Ara Balenger: But anyway, well let’s talk about the Latino vote, how and particularly the term Latinx. So that’s a term that now a lot of folks are using, mainstream folks actually are using to define the Latino community. So can you tell us what the hell it is? What Latinx means? And then also we can move into kind of just a, we will get into like where we are with the Latino vote.

Paola Ramos: Right. I think you are right. There's many words that have been tossed around. You know people say Hispanic, do you call us Hispanic, do you call us Latinos, you call us Latinx, and I am for Latinx simply because in this moment I believe that it is the only word that accurately captures who the 60 million Latinos are in this country, right. The X is meant to, it’s meant to be more inclusive, right. The X is meant to include folks that look like me, but more than anything folks that are Afro-Latinos, Indigenous Latinos, Queer Latinos and you know Liberal and Conservative and young and old. And so it is a word that is meant to simply break stereotypes about all the stereotypes that people have about Latino. When I say the word Latino and Hispanic I am sure an image comes to mind.

De’Ara Balenger: Yeah, and also I dare somebody to call me Hispanic, because I hate the term Hispanic.

Paola Ramos: Right, but you are?

De’Ara Balenger: I mean-

Paola Ramos: I mean De’Ara is Afro-Latino, right, you are Afro-Mexican, your family is Black and Mexican. One of the things that you and I have talked about many times is that when we worked in the Clinton campaign in 2016 no one ever included you as a part of the Latino group. That’s why you were never seen as a Latino and that translates into vote, right.

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right.

Paola Ramos: When we talk about politics, people forget that De’Ara is also Mexican and that’s part of the conversation that you know we will have today which is how do you reach all Latino voters and all Black votes.

De’Ara Balenger: Right. So I think and you know I think beyond the PTSD from working on the 2016 campaign and obviously losing. I think we both walked away with theories and philosophies on what the Democratic Party should be doing when it comes to Latinx voters, Black voters. And I think you know obviously that I know that’s part of what your journey was with Latinx and in writing a book about -- writing a book about Latinx Book Club y'all Finding Latinx. So you know but I think part of that was because we saw all the gaps, right within the campaign and the gaps within the party. So talk a little bit about and I will do the same on the Black side, but talk a little bit about on the Latinx side like what do you think the campaigns are doing right this go round and what are they still missing? Does that make sense?

Paola Ramos: Yeah I mean I think, even just before the general election, right, you have people like Elizabeth Warren tossing the term Latinx on a primary presidential debate, you know that that meant something. Elizabeth Warren, Latinx vote director was an Undocumented Black Queer immigrant, right. That in and of itself starts to tell you that the way that they see Latinx, Latino outreach is completely different from what we say it, right --

De’Ara Balenger: Which was what?

Paola Ramos: Which was simply like the Warren’s-

De’Ara Balenger: Well I guess for a Hillary style like what was that outreach?

Paola Ramos: Right. I think when I think our work in 2016 when we were reaching Latino voters, they would talk to us in Spanish right, they would talk to us about immigration and they would go on Spanish language media outlets. We would go on Spanish language media outlets to talk to us. And so I think we weren’t thoughtful enough, obviously and campaigns are like you really don’t have time to think, right, but you go to what you know. And what we knew was that Latinos you know primarily spoke in Spanish and that they were on TV on very specific networks. And that when you talk to us, you talked about immigration and you sort of walked around certain taboos that you weren’t supposed to talk about such as abortion, right like people think that among Latino, they are not supposed to talk about abortion. And so we never talked about abortion. And so that is slightly different from what we are seeing now with Joe Biden’s campaign, they have invested a lot of money in ads, they have invested a significant amount of resources in battlegrounds days where Latinos are extremely present whether it’s Arizona, Florida, Texas and more places. But I think they are still, there is still fear to ask basic questions right about like who young Latinos are, how diverse we are and I think they are still like very, very scared to like you know it’s like make mistakes right and look beyond the like prototypical Latino.

De’Ara Balenger: Right, right.

Paola Ramos: Do you think people have made like-?

De’Ara Balenger: Go try and ask me questions, go ahead, what?

Paola Ramos: No, I mean based on your experience in 2016 I mean you were pretty much in charge of a lot of the engagement and you are now very vocal, like do you think people have made progress when it comes to like outreach to Black voters and Brown voters?

De’Ara Balenger: No, I mean here, I mean no and I understand why, I just don’t understand why we continue to do the same thing over and over and over again. So I think well let me back up to just talk a little bit about my background and then I will go into that. So I started my career as a lawyer, I was a prosecutor for three months in Miami, it didn’t last long obviously because I couldn’t put people in jail. And I actually did and got in trouble for it. So that was back in 2000s that when Hillary was running for office, was running for President. And so moved from Miami back to D.C. where I grew up and called everyone I knew to basically get me an interview to work on the campaign. Long story short, ended up working for this woman who is incredible, her name is Cheryl Mills. She was an attorney, she actually worked in President Clinton’s White House. So anyhow I ended up being a lawyer on Hillary’s 2007 campaign which then led me to work in the State Department then I continued with Hillary when she got the State Department and worked on her speaking engagements, her book writing and all that kind of stuff and then ended up being Director of Engagement on Hillary’s 2016 campaign.

And so what I ended up having to do on that campaign -- and because I have been with Hillary for so long and actually had a lot of flexibility around how I moved, I ended up helping a lot with Black outreach, I did what I could with Latino outreach. You know the way campaigns work it’s really siloed and silly, it’s not intersectional at all. So it’s like Black people for Hillary, Latino people for Hillary, Queer people for Hillary, Business Leaders for Hillary so there is really no, and that’s how outreached continues today on the Biden side and on the Trump side frankly.

So what ends up happening every single time, this time included, is that we sort of ignore Black and Brown voters to some extent, because we assume that they are going to vote for us, right. So there is less work in terms of like the engagement. Then we get I don’t know two weeks out and it’s like a mad call, we need Black and Brown folks to come out to vote, and it’s like well da; and you’ve known this every single cycle so why are we operating this way each time. And I think this is a lot of why we have you know kind of disillusionment with the Democratic Party, is because younger folks particularly Black folks feel like the Democratic Party doesn’t do enough to really, to seek our votes, right. And you know they are, I think we are in a moment now where like there is so much fear around this election and rightly so, that like we got to get this dude out of office that we really can’t have like a really constructive conversation on like what the Democratic Party needs to be doing with Black and Brown people. Like we need to have this conversation but we just don’t have time, because we have to get this dude out of there. But I think knock on wood, if we do, I think it is definitely time for both the Black and Brown community, quite frankly all people of color to say to the Democratic Party, like this is what, this is how we are going to hold you accountable, this is how we will no longer let you wait to the last minute to engage us, this is how we will you know, we need to you spend add dollars, you know equitably across communities of color, we need you to spend at you know put the radio time in, there is all these like there is all of these operational things that go into like advertising and commercials the things that you all are all seeing every day.

So anyhow, I think you know obviously we have a long way to go, but I think we are definitely, I think the difference between now and ’16 is that we have brands, we have cool folks like all of you all who are watching, who are so much more engaged now than you were in 2016. And I think that’s all for the better, because that’s kind of the momentum and the push and the accountability that we need to get more folks of color elected, more trans folks elected, more queer folks elected, because representationally we are just not where we should be. It also makes politics not exciting because and I am not being ageist at all but what you know a lot of our leaders and Congress and Senate are older folks. And it’s not that they can’t do the job well but there is no legacy plan, right, no one that’s been in Congress for a long time is thinking, oh who could fill my shoes, you know what I am saying.

Paola Ramos: Yeah.

De’Ara Balenger: So-

Paola Ramos: But-

De’Ara Balenger: Yes.

Paola Ramos: A little bit of optimism.

De’Ara Balenger: Yes, what, on what?

Paola Ramos: On what we are seeing, I think what we are seeing already is pretty historic and I think --

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right.

Paola Ramos: It speaks to a lot of the work that you all are doing which is this idea that Brown and Black folks didn’t have to wait for politicians to give them answers to mobilize.

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right.

Paola Ramos: They started mobilizing on their own, right, they didn’t wait for answers, they didn’t wait for instructions, they are doing it. And they have been doing it for years, particularly after 2016 and that’s --

De’Ara Balenger: That’s a good insight.

Paola Ramos: That’s a huge story of this election, is that you know maybe Joe Biden wasn’t people’s first choice, maybe it was, but that didn’t matter, because people already started mobilizing, we already started seeing those improvements in 2018. And we are seeing it now, just the fact that Georgia is in play, right, like that is because of Stacey Abrams and that is because of the incredible organizers in Georgia, right a State that Democrats haven’t won since the early '90s. And what Stacey Abrams did, knowing what organizers did without sort of any instructions was amazing right like more Black folks and more Latino folks and more Asian folks voted in that 2018 midterm election in Georgia than they did in 2016.

De’Ara Balenger: Right.

Paola Ramos: Right. And the only reason Georgia is in play at this moment, the only reason Joe Biden even dared to go to Georgia in the last week before the election, which is unprecedented, is because of that.

De’Ara Balenger: It’s because yeah.

Paola Ramos: Is because people are mobilizing. And you see that in every battleground state that was one solidly Republican including Arizona, and now things are shifting. And I think it speaks to the like self-organizing, it speaks to the art, it speaks to everything that we have been doing for years and I think it’s going to historic.

De’Ara Balenger: Alright. Okay so why don’t we move into like state of the game, right now, because I am sure, I hope, you all have been watching and reading and seeing how we are having record breaking turnout right now for early vote -- record breaking mail-in, absentee ballots. So I think for right now I think as of last Sunday we were at 60 million, a little over 60 million votes that are in. What’s your perspective on like where we are right now and what’s going to happen on November 3rd?

Paola Ramos: I mean, I will talk about Latinos right, more than 4 million Latinos have already voted as of today, where we were today exactly 4 years ago, it was about like 1.7 millions had voted, right. And so that gap is incredible. When we look at a place like Texas, right a battleground state that same was solidly, it has been solidly red and Republican, [00:16:30] suddenly it’s in play. And where they are today, they are almost at 90% the total votes casted in 2016. That’s insane, right, and-and that’s happening-that’s happening everywhere. And so I mean, yeah I think it's -- I think it is going to be a wave, it is a wave, but but as the story, you know the analysis tell you that Democrats are more likely to do mail-in ballots than Republicans. And so now it’s just a matter of like we can’t let go, right we have to keep going.

De’Ara Balenger: We got to keep pushing, yeah.

Paola Ramos: Because Republicans and again this to this election really isn’t about like Democrats or Republicans, it’s just like-

De’Ara Balenger: Oh that’s how it is, that’s for me it is, it’s about the-

Paola Ramos: I mean right, but it’s a more, it comes down to like a more of a question of-

De’Ara Balenger: Of what?

Paola Ramos: Can you really-

De’Ara Balenger: But I think, you know and I because here is my fear and this is why we have to keep pushing, because we are 60 million votes in. What you, all the things that you are saying, same things happened in the Black community like we are having record breaking numbers of early votes turnout, mail-in etc. yada-yada-yada, but a lot of the mail-in voting I think is happening on the Dem side because Democrats were, majority-wise believed that the coronavirus is an actual thing where on the Republican side there seems to be a perspective that you know it’s-it's not as big a deal as everyone is making it. So for that reason, I think a lot of Republicans will come out on voting day, which means those votes will be tallied on November 3rd where the -- I think it’s 40 million mail-ins aren’t going to start being like pull down at the envelope, and count it until November 3rd. So I am just imagining like how long it will take to tally up 40 million mail-ins.

Paola Ramos: And some states won’t accept, right, there are some states like Wisconsin that if your mail-in ballot arise after the evening of Election Day, it won’t count, right.

De’Ara Balenger: Right.

Paola Ramos: And so of course, I think now it’s just a matter of like continuing the momentum and just try and inspire people to you know if they comfortable to vote in-person.

De’Ara Balenger: To vote in-person. And I think that’s no matter where you are, I think that’s our advice to you, if you can do that safely for you to go in-person. In New York, for example a couple of weeks ago, like a hundred thousand absentee ballots went out and they had the wrong names and addresses on them - a hundred thousand. So that’s probably the reason we have had like long lines here in New York is because those folks are like saying basically, if it’s a mail-in, we are just going to show up in-person. And I think that is now, that’s our advise to all of you like if you haven’t, you know if you haven’t mailed in your ballot already just kind of you know go show up in-person and safely can safely vote.

Paola Ramos: Yeah and --

De’Ara Balenger: What?

Paola Ramos: No, and my last advice would be, if obviously as you said right everyone is freaked out about COVID, everyone is in fear, everyone -- the choice is very stark right now, the message has been made, the closing arguments have been made, it’s black & white for folks right, like people know what people know. But at the end of the day what I always think is, people don’t vote because they are scared, people stay home if they are scared, people need to be inspired to vote. And that’s where I think you all come in or like you have an ability through art and through you know, your-your incredible abilities to inspire people. And that’s perhaps something that like the Joe Biden campaign can do and some other campaign can do, but that ability to inspire is what gets people out to vote, right. That’s what makes someone randomly wake up one day and be like you know what like I am going to do it, because at the end of the day, you need to believe that you are worthy of change in order to get up and vote. And that’s where art can do their magic in a way that like politics can’t.

De’Ara Balenger: I feel like that’s a good place for us to-to end on. That was so inspiring. But I think also if you all want to get you know, get involved these last six days, you know Joe Biden has an app, you all can download, but there are also like what work should people be following?

Paola Ramos: Depends on your state, it absolutely depends on your state. There are local -- the Joe Biden app will pull into the field offices or it will allow you to make calls from your house very easy. And then depending on where you are, you can find incredible local groups doing-

De’Ara Balenger: Doing things, and I think a good place to start on the Latino side is the Latino Victory Fund, because you can see a lot of the candidates that are running now in local races and on for Black folks the Black Collective Pack, because state by state it will tell you who is running and how to get involved with those local races, because the local races and/or Senate races are-are also really important this-this election as well. So you can also follow us on Instagram, follow me @dearabalenger and-

Paola Ramos: @paolaramo and we will be posting.

De’Ara Balenger: And DM us too if you have questions, happy to answer them. But thank y'all so much for your time, good luck out there. Thank you to Social Studies, Shaniqwa, and Angelo for all that you do. So peace y’all.

Paola Ramos: Thank you.