Hope Won! (with Jess McIntosh)

By now, you’ve probably heard that Democrats won big across the country last night. From Governor and Lt. Governor in Virginia to Proposition 50 in California to school boards and city councils across the country, the people made their voices heard. And some of the biggest swings, especially in Virginia, were amongst suburban women.

This win goes far beyond the races that were on the ballot last night. This is a win for every American who wants to preserve democracy, common sense, and decency.

Ever since the devastating losses in 2024, we’ve been saying “when they go low, we go local.” Some people were skeptical — how could “going local” stop ICE from invading our cities? Or Trump from cutting food stamps for children? But it was about planting seeds. Those seeds have already grown into some pretty incredible results… who knows what our harvest in 2026 or 2028 will look like?

The work doesn’t end, but we all deserve a little rest. In fact, we deserve to rest and celebrate! So let’s take a moment and feel all the feelings. Let’s thank someone who worked on a campaign or turned out their friends to vote. Today reminds us what’s possible. Even in the face of all the darkness this year has brought, we can shine our own light. And when we shine together, there’s no stopping us.

We’ll be sharing more wins and inspiring stories over the coming weeks. Celebrate, get some rest, and stay tuned!

For a transcript of this episode, please email comms@redwine.blue.

You can learn more about us at www.redwine.blue or follow us on social media!

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Transcript

Katie Paris: Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us on How to Not Lose Your Sh*t. I'm Katie Paris, the founder of Red Wine and Blue. 

LaFonda Cousin: And I'm Lafonda Cousin, a part-time yoga instructor, self-care advocate, and the chief people officer here at Red Wine and Blue.

Katie: LaFonda, you know, what's helping me not lose my shit right now? 

LaFonda: I'm gonna be able to guess. 

Katie: I think that a lot of people, because it's been on all the social medias and all the big medias, you know, yesterday, last night and today, know that there were these huge wins in New York City with Zohran Mamdini, there was Virginia with Abigail Spanberger, in New Jersey for the governor's race, in California for the Proposition 50. 

But you know what fires me up? You know what fires me up? It is all of these local elections and unexpected places where I think people have just been feeling so much chaos and like, what can we even do?

Are these elections even gonna work? Yes, they did. And it's just, I feel like it's, it's giving me some semblance of solid ground. You know, to stand on where it's, there's been so much uncertainty, so much chaos. We've been saying all year, let's block out the chaos of D.C., let's focus on our local communities.

This can work, this can work. But I'm gonna be honest, I was trying to like, manifest that into existence through the power of all of the incredible women that, that we have been working with all year. 

LaFonda: And it worked. 

Katie: It worked, it worked. 

LaFonda: There was some incredible, incredible wins last night and it's exciting to be here. It feels very, very different than it did on November 6th last year. So I like sitting on this side a whole lot better. 

Katie: If I had to choose between the day after the election in 2024 or today? I choose today. 

LaFonda: I choose today too. A hundred percent. 

Katie: Oh, it's, it's just, it's relieving. It's restoring. Um. Yeah, it's restorative. 

I'm super excited that today we are joined by Jess McIntosh, a political strategist and one of Red Wine and Blue’s very favorite people to help us make sense of elections. Hey Jess, thanks for joining us. 

Jess: Hey, I choose today too. 

Katie: Unanimous.

We're not going back. We're not going back to that shit that that was a big time losing our shit moment. And, you know, we rallied together and we believed in something better. Jess, you and I were talking yesterday and like scenario planning of what were we possibly gonna do if things didn't go the way we wanted them?

And I believe that, I think I just sort of rejected the conversation altogether. 

Jess: You did. We talked about what message we were hoping was gonna be sent by voters and how we would talk about that. And then I was like, so what if it doesn't go our way? And Katie was just like, no. 

Katie: Nope. 

Jess: I'm not, I'm not able to go there.

I have such PTSD around just the phrase scenario planning. I have written so many election night docs, so if we win, this is what we're, if we lose, if it's a draw, this was just one of the, like, I went to bed happy last night and early that has not happened. I mean, I was, I, it's been, it's been well over a decade since I went to bed happy and early on election night, and that really shows you what's happening in the country right now.

We were expecting slash hoping for a good night, not a night like that. Katie and I did not talk about, well, what do we do if everything is a blowout? 

Not just we win. Everything is a blowout. We win things we did not even know were on, and no one told me about the Mississippi legislature possibly being able to break their super majority for the first time.

That was not on my Bingo card, and yet here we are. They did it. You know, I did not understand that. The Georgia Public Service Board that controls your utility bill costs. Had flipped Democratic for the first time because people were making the affordability case. I didn't know about that. I mean, at Red Wine and Blue, obviously we were laser focused on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court race that got called early.

We have to sit and wait for the school board results to trickle in a little bit, but– 

Katie: They're already looking so good. 

Jess: Just going through the Red Wine and Blue channels last night. I think I saw one disappointed comment. Out 100s, like I, I went looking like specifically somebody must have lost somewhere, right?

LaFonda: When you have to start looking and scrolling for the disappointment, that's the kind of night that you wanna see, right? Like that's the kind of, that's the kind of place you wanna be in. I was in the airport like, yes, 

Katie: I mean, for a podcast about the intersection of politics and self care to have. What happened in the political arena last night actually enable you to have a good night's sleep.

I mean, I think sleep lafonda, you're the expert that sleep is good for us, right? 

LaFonda: That is what you're supposed to wanna do. 

Jess: Sleep of the righteous, 

LaFonda: take a little melatonin, get real snuggled in. And 

Jess: I mean, it's hope, isn't it? Like, it's hope, you know, and that's what, uh, I'm a, I'm a New Yorker. I'm a, I'm a native New York City, new Yorker.

Um, and so that was, there were very few candidates that I personally dislike at the level of intensity that I dislike Andrew Cuomo. So it was very exciting to see that happen. But watching Mamdani's speech, I remember texting with you, Katie, about this, like, what kind of message do we hope? And I like, I hated myself for saying it, but like, I hope that the message is hope.

Which made me feel very 2008, and that world is long over and we don't hope anymore. Now we common sense and, and sure enough, there's Mamdani from stage saying this is, this is Hope. Hope won. I know a lot of people who do not live in the states that, that were voting yesterday. Had major fomo, and I think that's awesome.

Um, apparently the Secretary of State in Kentucky had to put out a big notice being like, we're not voting because there aren't elections here, not something to fairy is going on. 

LaFonda: This is not our vote. Everybody calm down. 

Jess: I mean, that's what, that's what people who didn't get to vote yesterday, they still get the hope.

And that's, that's why it matters so much. 

Katie: Yeah. The most inspiring thing that Mamdani said in my view, in the victory speech, just what I love so much was politics is not something that is done to us. Politics is something we do, and we talk here a lot about this idea of like, could engaging in politics actually be good for you?

And to me that captures it. If we are engaging in politics, like it's, you know, it's nothing but corporate, big special interests and big money in politics and whatever the pundits are saying on, you know, the cables, it just feels like you're inundated. It's chaos. It feels like it's just something that's being done to us and we can't control.

But when we take it into our own hands and we say no. No, no, no. This is something that we do with people we know, with our communities to protect our kids in our local communities, and like seeing it through that framework makes it, I don't know. I loved what he said so much, and also because it just felt like people all across the country, not just in New York City, but were playing that out in their local communities, you know, they were doing it.

Saying, yeah, politics sucks, but you know what doesn't suck? Me and my friends and my community getting together to say like, these are our values and this is what is right here, and we're gonna send extremism, packing. This is still our community. This is still our country. 

Jess: I mean, politics is fighting to create the world you wanna live in.

That's awesome. That is so much fun. That is like a purpose in life. Like, yeah, no, I get that. Politics sucks. But as somebody who, you know, devoted their entire life to the endeavor, if you keep focused on what it actually means, it's empowering, it's joyful. It's even, even the setbacks are like, yeah, you know, every, every century of human existence, there have been people.

Who were fighting to make the future a little better for the next generation and every century of human existence has had bad guys trying to do the, the opposite. And yeah, we have a pretty odd stretch of it, this particular century of human existence, but there are still people fighting for our kids and, and we're, and you know, now we're winning.

Katie: Yeah. Look what happened in Virginia. People are talking a lot about the governor's race and somewhat about the Lieutenant Governor and the Attorney General's race. 'cause those were all statewide. And there was this hope that Democrats could maintain a majority in order to have Abigail's Spanberger's back in Virginia and have that be a really robust pushback to Trump and all the chaos from DC.

Expectations are absolutely crushed in those House of Delegates races. We are looking at, it looks like we're on track to see 13 flips. They're gonna have more than 60 votes to have this, this agenda that Virginians are actually excited for and to stand up to Trump in ways that the current administration was refusing. To do. 

I mean, Red Wine and Blue is one of our, our key focus states of course was Virginia. So we've been watching this really closely and some of these races we were like, we need to get involved here. This candidate has no chance of winning, but we need to see if we can drive up the vote here in order to help these statewide races.

And maybe in the future some of these candidates can win in these areas. We can just grow support a little bit, maybe lose a bit better than we have in the past. Many of those candidates won like five of them. It's not just these sort of big races where a lot of money was spent. The country sent a big message last night.

Jess: My big wonky takeaway from this is we're, we're watching the Republicans play out this redistricting fight, right? They get, Texas is like, we're gonna do this unprecedented thing and redraw all of our lines in the middle of the decade, even though we don't do that to give Republicans more seats. And they're doing that because they know they can't win on their agenda because their agenda is very unpopular as we saw last night.

So they need to like game the system in order to win. 

LaFonda: Mm-hmm. 

Jess: Even if they game the system. If people show up like they showed up last night, they're still going to lose, and they're not able to game the system because look at what happened in California. All of these voters, they didn't show up because the cost of eggs was high.

They showed up because they knew the best way to stop this extremist takeover of our country was for them to counter the Texas political strategy, asking a bunch of voters to be political strategists when they have enough on their plate. And they did. And then Abigail Spanberger, who is a moderate, this is not a Gavin Newsom, this is a Virginia governor.

She's willing to get into the redistricting fight. So what happened this morning? Kansas backed off. A couple of the other Republican states are like, oh, hey, nevermind. We're not going to pursue this strategy. So this win goes far beyond the races that were called last night and the, the, the states and cities that, that were, that were impacted.

This is a win for every single American who wants to preserve democracy and common sense and decency. 

Katie: Sorry, I just needed that in for a second. 

LaFonda: I was gonna say, it makes you feel like you wanna have like a. A little bit of a deep breath. 

Katie: I mean it does, and I think there is the immediate, very tangible, important thing that happened that there are so many communities that are going to have a greater degree of protection as a result of these elections.

That despite, you know, the onslaught of attacks coming from the federal government, in many cases it's state governments, that they're gonna have local people. Representing them that can protect our communities, our kids, when it comes to school board from these attacks coming from dc. But then to think about what's coming in 2026, you know, it just, there's been so much kind of like pundit pontification, and like, oh, what kind of candidate can win on the ballot possibly in 2026.

And what I think we've actually learned is that. All kinds of different candidates can win on the ballot in all kinds of different places. This idea that there's like only one certain type of candidate that, you know, voters will only accept if they're this much left of center or this much moderate, but more, you know, liberal on this or that or the other, like.

That's not how voters operate. There is no one face of what our, our winning candidate should be. There are so many different faces of Americans, and I just love this idea that I think a message from voters that is very clear last night is that they want democrats who fight for them, who stand up boldly, authentically, and they're, and Republican politicians are, have gotta be hearing the same message too.

Like, oh, okay. So this whole thing of just attacking trans kids maybe isn't gonna work like that. That's been our playbook. And you know, the idea that voters sent such a message to every politician who will be on the ballot in 2026, and my really, really big hope here is that it's gonna result in anyone who wants to get elected in 2026 is gonna need to check how they are acting right now, because voters are gonna judge them. And it's like, are you standing up? Are you fighting for our country? Or are you just, you know, giving in to one person who wants all the power? 

Jess: You know, in 2024 voters sent a message that the, you know, the, the Biden administration wasn't hearing their pain, right?

It wasn't, it wasn't feeling it. They were trying to say, Hey, the economy is actually quite good to people who couldn't afford to feed themselves. That doesn't fly. So I, I, you know, I understand, I understand what happened. I understand why people made the decision that they did. I wish they hadn't. But, but I get it.

And what we're seeing now is, is the same message. Voters want people who understand their struggles and are willing to do something about it. I mean, Trump lied. Trump and Republicans just lied to everybody in 2024. They, that this was gonna bring down the cost of eggs. This was an affordability thing. And what they have done since taking power is just prove in evermore elaborate ways that they couldn't possibly care less about the pain that you might be experiencing or your ability to care for your family. I mean, 

Katie: they care more about golden ballrooms and– 

Jess: They threw a Gatsby party on the same day that food stamps were cut off for kids. Like you couldn't, you can't, I mean, if I tried to write that in a Hollywood screenplay, somebody would be like, Hey, that's pretty hacky.

Yeah. I think about something real like, and that, you know, that's what's happening. So I think a lot of people who who sat out last year were like, whoops, I'm gonna get right back in the game. I think a lot of people who voted, Hey, I need someone who cares about me. Continue to vote. Hey, I need someone who cares about me.

And I think that, you know, we saw the suburban women come out in Virginia. I mean, we're gonna see it in New Jersey too. When those demographics come out, like we've been talking about the unprecedented suburban women street, how many more are left? Can we grow any numbers from. Have we hit a ceiling? 

Katie: We sure can, and we sure will, Jess Macintosh. Suburban women in Virginia last night swung 22 points to Abigail Span Berger. They were like plus six for youngin in 2021, but there was, yeah, a 22 point swing. If you compare the margins, independent women swung 44 points. So yes, I do. Love the idea of like how suburban women, you know, just like dismissed in terms of being fickle or just not liking those Trump tweets from 2016.

All those women who got involved, sort of dismissed as like, there's nothing more here for them. And you know, I think that we're just seeing women moms. We mad about what's going on in this country and whether it's a school board race or one of these bigger races, being able to make a tangible difference and having a good time doing it together.

And you know, I do have to shout out, for example, the Suburban Women Problem Podcast that we had going for years here at Red Wine and Blue, one of the hosts, Amanda Weinstein, won her race for city council in Hudson, Ohio, and Democrats had sweeps throughout those communities that have all been historically red.

She won. They all won. We are seeing that happen and you know, I think Ohio gets dismissed as this red state and things. Good news happened there, just like we saw, you know, in, in Mississippi. Um, my town where there was, I'm wearing my t-shirt today representing for my kids' elementary schools because we had a school levy on the ballot that there were a lot of headwinds we were facing.

We won with almost 67 percent of the vote for our school. 

Jess: That is wild. 

Katie: Yeah. Yeah. Um, that was like an eight point increase over a couple years ago when there was funding for schools on the ballot. Then for some school construction, this was a day-to-day operating levee, and the community just came together and it just has, I'm just, I'm just feeling this today on the most personal, local level and.

Just so proud of the number of women we saw. Step Up La Fonda. What is it like over, I think it was like 150 Red Wine and Blue members who ran for office this time? We keep getting good news. Good news, good news. We don't have all the numbers yet, but I mean, I think these rates are gonna be not, maybe not even just in the 70%, but in the like 80% of these women winning, uh, many women of color running for the first time we went so local. 

Jess: And it worked.

LaFonda: We had at least one story of like the, we go local inspiring one person to run and she won. 

Katie: That's right. Charlotte City Council. 

Jess: You know when we, when you first debuted this, when we go low, we go local slogan. I remember having some conversations with folks who were like, oh, I don't know if I wanna be local because like.

The Trump administration is fascist, right? Like that is, I'm very scared about, you know, the military in cities and ice Yeah. And, and, and thinking school board kind of feels small ball almost. And I care about kids, but ah. 

And we had those conversations and like now, now this is, this is the proof when you go local, not only do you get the school board, you get the statewide candidates because you are driving up the vote everywhere in areas where they can't. And you get the biggest repudiation of Trump we could have possibly gotten this year. And we did it by going local. So like you wanna mess with them. Go local, like you're gonna get what you went for and you're gonna piss them off and you're gonna repudiate them.

It's an and strategy. And now. And now. Now we have the proof point. So those conversations will be a little bit easier. And I also don't think we'll have to have as many of them, but Yeah. 

Katie: Yeah. 

Jess: When they go low, we go local. 

Katie: I think we keep doing that. I think that, I think it's a thing. All of these candidates who are gonna be running for federal office in 2026 now have to look at the results of what happened in 2025.

So that's gonna completely shape. Federal. 

LaFonda: That's right. You're planting the seed. That's what the, the, they go low. We go local, I think means to me like you're starting local, but you're planting the seed. And I think right now we're showing that you planted the seed. So next year we're, we're, we're watering.

And we're watering. And then. What is the harvest that comes from planting the seed? And I think right now we've shown that it works. 

Katie: Love the harvest. I can tell you're just really doing great at that gardening, LaFonda. 

LaFonda: I know. You know, I've seen a little sprout now and now it's showing everywhere. 

Katie: So La Fonda, after the 2024 election.

LaFonda: Yeah, 

Katie: We were devastated and you were really helpful in grounding us, recognizing what we needed to do for ourselves. We talked a lot about what we need to do for our kids, our communities, to kind of check in with ourselves, buckle up for what's ahead, but like feel the feelings that we need to, 'cause there ain't no way through anything without going through it.

What, how do we think about it now? Like we got all this good news and so we're sort of on a high and there's like the dopamine is coming, you know, but like, how do we sustain this? 

LaFonda: I think you feel it. I think it's the same thing, right? Like, um, and and last year was, uh, a front that was all, uh, me trying to do both the feeling and the helping people feel, but also fake it till you make it for myself.

Yeah. I was feeling all the feels. I mean, the celebration and the joy and the fun is meaningful. I think it last night reminded us that we are not. Dead in the water that there's hope, right? Like I think that's what I was feeling. I was like scrolling was the opposite of like the doom scroll. We need all of those moments for when it felt dark and it felt heavy in this last year.

But the rest I think is also essential. Um, and you, I, you can rest and you can celebrate and I think you should. And I think that's the message that I would give. Right now, it's like after the hard work and the meaningful wins, it's okay to take the rest. When a team wins a championship, they celebrate, they have the big parades, everybody comes out.

They're, you know, throwing confetti and doing all of the things. They have that moment of like. This is what we worked for all year and what our bodies went through and what our minds went through and what was difficult about the entire process. But then they take the rest, they give their mind and their body the space that it needs to heal and prepare to do it all again.

And I think that we're probably in that same place. Like celebration sort of helps anchor us in the effort. And then, you know. We achieve like incredible things as a community, and I think it's time to like think about how we rest as a community and– 

Jess: You can rest and celebrate at the same time. 

LaFonda: Yeah. Rest and celebrate.

Jess: You can, you can when, when, when I, when I got my rescue puppy. This dog loves sleep, like loves beds, anything that seems like a bed. He loves a pillow. He uses it like a human. He loves a blanket. And this animal. We'll celebrate his naps. 

LaFonda: I need to hear more about this. Actually. 

Jess: I have photos. We figured it out like right away actually what was going on here.

He would like do that thing that dogs do where they turn around a lot, but then he would like wag his tail with excitement and like do all, he's got a really big pit bull smile and like sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the nap and do it and then go back to sleep and I'm like this animal is celebrating his naps. 

LaFonda: Yes.

Jess: And I think we need to be doing that right now. 

LaFonda: Yes, Yes.

Jess: We need to have little nap celebrations, 

LaFonda: Nap, celebrations. 

Jess: Sometimes you gotta take a break in your nap to celebrate the fact that you're napping. 

LaFonda: We need a nap celebration on video so we can learn. 

Jess: Yes, I'll put it on this. 

LaFonda: Because it's important. It's important not to let the rest become idle, right? Like we don't wanna think that like we had these great wins and so like we're done. There's still so much to do and like this is step one. It's okay to celebrate, but like. We gotta do it again. There's more. There's more to be done.

Katie: I also think the rest might be, I mean, I'm gonna be real honest, I was up pretty late last night because a lot of these, you know how much I care about these school board races. And I love these local races, and that took a lot of time to come in. It's still coming in. We're tracking it all. It's. Very exciting.

It's very nerve wracking even with all the good news. You know, I'm still sort of bated breath on so many of these and I honestly do have a hard time, like I don't think it's hit me yet. Like I am excited. I have adrenaline 'cause like it's like good, good, good, good. You know, it's good news, but. It hasn't hit me yet.

It hasn't. I haven't like soaked it in and I know, that those are the things that are necessary to actually fully learn what I need to learn. 

From where we won, from the places where we did lose, like what did work in terms of our community, all of these red wine and blue members, these leaders of troubled nation groups that just created some of these groups in the last months and have been.

Building these communities of women locally and working in these local races. Like there's so much to learn from the creativity of everything that was done and like how we can do it better and support women, you know, throughout our community to to do it even better and ha be more effective and have an even better time in 2026.

'cause we've gotta sustain all this. But I'm just like, it's just something I struggle with. I feel like I haven't even taken a deep breath yet. You know, it's like sort of this shallow breathing of, I mean, do you guys have any advice for me? Like how do I, how do I soak it in? 

Jess: You know how you, you, you gotta, you gotta let yourself feel the bad feelings.

You know, like, you, like when, when something really bad happens, you know, you gotta sit there and cry about it. You just do. You're not, you have to sit here and laugh about it too. Like, this, this morning I was, I was, I was scrolling and I, it was like some TikTok auto tune of Mamdani’s speech sent to like a famous Bangladeshi song, and I'm watching it and I just started crying and I'm like, you know what?

Yeah. I'm going with this. I'm just gonna sit here on my hotel bed and I'm gonna sob watching a TikTok mashup of an Auto-Tune speech. 


And like, like, just like when you'll feel it, when the, when the moments cut, just take it like however it does. And if you wanna, if, if, if you're like, man, I haven't had that moment yet.

Text five people who worked on the election and thank them for it. You'll get it. 

LaFonda: Yeah. That's, that's the advice is like, feel all the feels like don't rush to anything. Whatever you're feeling in the moment, just feel that thing. I think that was what was really difficult about last year is that like everyone was really.

Sad, but then we were like, okay, so how do we get happy so we can keep moving forward? How do we get to the joy so we can keep moving forward? It's hard, like when you experience those losses, even when they're like, they feel like smaller losses than they did last year. You wanna rush to like the next thing.

'cause that feels better. But sometimes it's okay to just like. Hold the truth of the loss and not rush to the joy or the optimism and just kind of sit in the place of like, let me just take a deep breath and like find something to cry about. 'cause the crying sometimes can be cleansing and then make the space to feel the disappointments.

'cause sometimes you feel like you learn. What you need to learn in that disappointment because you give yourself the space to think about it and you don't rush out of that emotion. A lot of times we wanna push ourselves out of that emotion and we don't learn what we need to learn from it. 

Katie: Yeah. I do plan on making thank you calls today.

I've already been doing some thanking, you know, just like our, our team. Our team is just so incredible and it was so great to get to talk to everyone, all of us just thanking each other for all the work and everything. But you know, there is something to that one-on. You know, outreach of just, you know, connecting with people.

I, my, given that our school levy passed, my mom group chats have been so lovely this morning. There's something about gratitude and that being a really helpful window to, um, go through to fully experience. Feelings of a moment because it's so big. You know, there's just like, there's hundreds of thousands of us out there doing this and cheerleading each other on and then, but just really feeling it together on that human level because that's what we're fighting for anyway here, is like human decency. 

Jess: I mean, the entirety of Brooklyn was a victory party last night, like the entirety of the borough. Every street you were on, people were cheering. Strangers are high fiving and like, that's like.

Katie: I love a stranger High five. 

Jess: Oh no. It is absolutely like that in the city right now.

Like, like you can just grin at somebody across from you on the subway and they will just grin back at you and everyone knows what you're grinning about. It's the community of it all. Like really everything that, everything that fascism does, everything that extremists do is try to divide us. They try to make us afraid of each other.

They try to make us hate each other, think that there's not enough for everybody, so we gotta grab what we can for ourselves. Mm-hmm. And anybody who wants them is trying to take it from me, like. That they need us to feel that way in order to win. And last night we did not feel that way. Last night we were hugging strangers and, and that is the energy that's gonna take us through.

LaFonda: Yeah. 

And the different kinds of candidates that won in the different places that they did, there's no way that people are going to be able to say, look. Spanberger's win means that we need moderate candidates everywhere across the board, and they have to fit this mold. Zohran Mamdani's win is not going to mean, Hey, we have to run Democratic socialists everywhere across the country.

It just means we have to run authentic people who really care about the people whose votes they're asking for. 

Katie: Yeah. 

Jess: It's a big tent when you put it like that. 

LaFonda: Jess, I am not someone who experiences fomo, like my therapist knows that about me. We're working through it. But you explaining like the feeling that people are feeling in New York and my daughter coming back from New York and explaining how it felt and new, I actually feel a little bit of fomo

Jess: It's a good feeling 

LaFonda: about the energy in New York this weekend. This is new for me. 

Jess: I mean, you. You have to, in the downside of everybody being packed on top of each other so much that you, the only way to party is by spilling into the street. 

LaFonda: I take it back.

Katie: Okay. So none of us are moving to New York City, but we're really, really glad to know about the high fives from a park. I mean, there are no strangers in my community and you know, I'm all about relational organizing, so I'm gonna be go given some high fives. To all the people in my community though, because we did this for our schools in the same way people did all across the country, and it really does.

I kind of have that feeling today, not just in my community, but I feel like I could go into so many communities today and just feel like there are no strangers. We did this. 

Jess: Yeah. 

Katie: We did this together. 

LaFonda: That's amazing. Now we keep going.

Katie: Jess. Thank you for coming and talking with us, doing your thing. 

Jess: Thanks for inviting me 

Katie: The day after elections. I gotta learn not only from your dog how to take naps. That's something I suck at, but then how to celebrate them. 

Jess: Celebrate the F outta your naps, man. 

LaFonda: Your dog sounds like a self care expert and I need to know more.

Jess: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's the rest And celebrate, I think is the watch word of this conversation. I think that’s, I, I wanna make sure that everybody listening is doing the appropriate amount of both. 

Katie: So that's our self-care tip of the week. Rest and celebrate. 

LaFonda: This podcast and all the work we do at Red Wine and Blue is about building community.

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