Abolitionist Sanctuary
Join Founder and Executive Director of Abolitionist Sanctuary, Rev. Nikia S. Robert, Ph.D., in a podcast about Black women/mothers, religion, and mass punishment. Connect with us to be apart of a faith-based abolitionist movement!
Abolitionist Sanctuary
From Loss To Leverage: Reimagining Government With Black Women At The Core
Start with the sting, end with a plan. After a brutal political cycle and a year of losses, we refuse to romanticize resilience and instead ground it in what Bishop Leah Daughtry calls the ripple effect: small, faithful actions that travel farther than the splash. Together, we unpack how to turn communal values into public power, why the most radical choice today is real community, and how churches can move from Sunday language to Monday policy.
We get specific. Community isn’t a vibe—it’s an operating system for change. You’ll hear how to map the most urgent local needs, identify who holds the policy levers, and meet electeds like employers meeting employees: with clarity, receipts, and accountability. We break down voting rights, disinformation, and the false lure of perfectionism at the polls. No candidate is flawless, but values show up on ballots every time. Choose the closest alignment, organize for the rest, and don’t cede ground to suppression that fights so hard precisely because our votes work.
Strategy runs through every beat of this conversation. Project 2025 didn’t appear overnight, and neither will our counter. We outline a great reimagining—rebuilding agencies and systems not as they were, but as our communities need them to be, from education to health to global partnerships. That requires year-round organizing, local party engagement, and a willingness to lead. The leadership line is short. Step in.
At the center stand Black women, whose civic muscle and economic impact move families, churches, and cities. Invest here and you lift entire ecosystems. Bishop Daughtry shares updates on Power Rising and her relaunch of The Faithful Citizen, inviting all of us to practice a public faith that protects dignity, expands opportunity, and wins material change.
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Welcome to the Abolitionist Sanctuary Podcast, where we talk faith, abolition, and Black Motherhood. I am your host, Reverend Dr. Nikia Smith Robert, the founder and executive director of Abolitionist Sanctuary. We are a national coalition leading a faith-based abolitionist movement. Thank you to our audio and visual audiences for joining us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and all streaming platforms. Let's build abolitionist sanctuaries together with this critical and candid conversation for today's episode. Happy New Year! I'm excited to be here for another episode with Abolitionist Sanctuary. I am your host, Reverend Dr. Nikia Smith Robert, and I'm so excited to join a conversation with Bishop Leah Daughtry, who is a nationally sought-after organizer, activist, political strategist, author, faith leader, and public theologian. She represents the fifth consecutive generation of pastors in the Daughtree family. Bishop Daughtree serves as the presiding prelate of the House of the Lord Church in Washington, D.C. She is also the president and CEO of On These Things, LLC, a boutique strategic planning firm. Bishop Daughtree has worked as chief of staff to notable political figures such as former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Alexis Herman, and former chairs of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean and Terry McAuliffe. She served in 2008 and 2016 as the chief executive officer of the Democratic National Convention and is the first person in the Democratic Party history to hold the position twice. In 2018, Bishop Daughtery launched Power Rising, an organization designed to support Black women in leveraging political, economic, and social power to ensure equity, opportunity, and representation. In 2023, President Biden appointed Bishop Daughtery to serve as vice chair of the board of directors of the Wilson International Center for Scholars. Additionally, Bishop Daughtry is co-authored along with Donna Brazil, Yolanda Caraway, and Minion Moore, the book titled Four Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics. Bishop Daughtry served as a resident fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics, where she focused on the role faith and values play in American politics. She has directed the Democratic Party's Faith in Action Initiative to reach out to Protestant, Catholics, Jewish, and Muslim voters. She is also the co-founder and co-chair of Black Church PAC. Bishop Daughtry served as an equity advisor for Sephora and on the editorial board of the Global Women's Forum for the Economy and Society. She held seats on the boards of directors of Wesley Theological Seminary, the National Council of Negro Women, Higher Heights for America, and the Katie Geneva Canon Center for Womanist Leadership, as well as co-chair of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. Bishop Daughter is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, a loving aunt, dedicated mentor, and avid shoe lover. From pulpits to public forums to public platforms, Bishop Daughtry is an alchemist, an electrifying teacher, speaker, an advocate full of power and charisma, transforming corporate teams, congregations, and communities for the better with strategic prowess, vision, and compassionate leadership. Welcome today, Bishop Leah Daughtre. Hello, hello, my sister.
SPEAKER_01:How are you? I am holding on. How are you? I'm holding all too. I'm tired, but I'm good.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, I'm with you. Let's jump into this interview. I'm excited for our conversation today. Before we begin, tell us your pronouns. Give us a visual of how you are appearing in this space and who are your people.
SPEAKER_01:My pronouns are she and her. And I am right now sitting in my den. I'm wearing something green with curls, Alpha Katha Alpha. And my den is the walls are yellow, and I'm surrounded by artwork. I'm a little bit of an art collector. So right over my right shoulder is a quilt piece that Renita Weams made for me. So she's one of my favorites and hangs on my wall in my den. I've got a couple other pieces here. My people, I'm from a long line of preachers, fifth generation, dating back to the days of enslavement. My father's people traced themselves. My oldest relative I've been able to trace so far was born in 1789 in Savannah, Georgia, and she was on the Daughtery Plantation. My mother's people are Gullah, Gullah Geechee from South Carolina. And my set right now, the people who surround me are my sisters, Sharon and Dawn. My parents, I'm fortunate to still have them with me, and my group of girls. We're known as the colored girls, Mignon Moore, Donna Brazil, Yolanda Caraway, Tina Flournoy. Those are my girls, my sisters. And I have a bunch of daughters that I'm in relationship with who surround me, keep me protected, up to date. So I understand what the latest is. So those are my people. And I got one brother. He's the baby. And we love him like he's the baby.
SPEAKER_00:That is a powerful cloud of witness that you have. I'm also blessed to have one of the creations by Dr. Weems. She is indeed a gift to us. I am wearing Sequin, trying to match the vibes of a new year with strands of pearls around my neck and pearl earrings with blondish boho braids and this abolitionist sanctuary t-shirt that anyone can purchase in our swag store at abolitionistsanctuary.org. My pronouns are she, hers, and my people are strong black women who hailed from North Carolina to New York, Harlem, where I was born and raised. I like to call my Trinity Aunt Ruby, who was a powerful organizer, president of the Tenants Association and Martin Luther King projects in Harlem. Most politicians who wanted to get elected locally knew they had to stop by her apartment on that first floor to get her support. Also, Joan Loretta Brown, who was a church mother, we recently lost her at the age of 93. My mom, who this organization begins from her story growing up, me growing up to a poor single black mother who had my brother at the age of 15, showed us what it means to make something out of nothing and to do everything necessary to survive. Those are my people, and I am happy to bring all of our village into this conversation, Bishop.
SPEAKER_01:That's wonderful.
SPEAKER_00:So this is a new year, 2026. For many of us, 2025 was hard. Life was life. Tell us what are some of the lessons you learned in 2025 and what are you looking forward to this year in 2026?
SPEAKER_01:You know, 2025 was a hard year, particularly coming off the election of 2024, what we carried with us from the defeat of Kamala Harris into the new year. Whether you're a political person or not, the lessons from that loss were hard, sharp, as it reminded us once again how this country does not honor or respect the gifts that we bring to the country. And so it was just a reminder that we carried into the new year. It's been a hard year of loss on many levels. The loss of the election, the loss of loved ones, the loss of dreams, the loss of hopes, and the daily reminder from our government, from our president, that we are not valued. And those things are tough. And so the key lessons for me were about resilience, consistency, and how to be faithful to a task and a charge, even when you don't get amens. So those were really important lessons. The biggest one I think I came to realization just a couple of weeks ago as I was listening to someone on television and they said something meaningful to me. He thought he had no impact and he was doing all this stuff and didn't have, and then he said he realized it's all about the ripples. And so you may throw a stone into the ocean and you just don't see anything, but it's about how the ripples extend and extend and extend, and someone you may not even know is being impacted by you, has been impacted by something you said or something you did, or something, and and you didn't even know. And so sometimes we look for impact in the stone's throw when really the impact is in the ripples.
SPEAKER_00:That's powerful. Sometimes we look for impact and the stone throw when the impact is in the ripples.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for that. Yeah, so I've been sitting with that as I walked into this new year. Let me focus on the ripples, let me be more conscious of the ripples than I am of what I think the immediate impact may be. Powerful. It's kind of like Jesus, you know. He had his 12. But really, the impact of that exists until today, right? The ripples extend far beyond what Jesus did when he was physically on the earth. And the ripple effect includes me now and you and those who are still to come. But we are the ripples of the impact of what Jesus did. And so if we think about our lives like that, then I think we can think more broadly and not just think about what's happening right this minute in the moment when I do this thing. But what are the ripples? Who does it reach? Six circles away from me, ten circles away from me, two years from now, ten years from now, what's the ripple of that? And if we calculate that, we have a better sense of our own impact.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that concludes our interview. We came to get the word we needed, and now we know why you are a fifth-generation preacher because that'll preach.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I've been sitting with that, so yeah. That's my word for 2026 for myself is focus on the ripples.
SPEAKER_00:That's your next sermon, your next book, your next campaign. That's it. It's all about the ripples. Wow. And so I might as well throw out my interview notes and that threw me off. We're gonna move out of order based on that. That's really powerful, and I love how you jump right into the political climate and how it shapes and informs our lives. I'm curious, in this current political climate and social landscape, what do you see as some of the most pressing issues morally and socially confronting the black community?
SPEAKER_01:I think that we are at a time where everything around us challenges the notion of community and communal living. It's all about the individual and what works best for me and mine. Sometimes it's just me. And so the current ethos makes you question about what's good for community. We see it among our Latino brothers and sisters who made a decision in November that is now impacting their communities in ways they had not intended. But when you talk to many of them and you look at the polls, they thought it would be good for them and their family because they came the right way or whatever their issue is, without thought of what it would mean for the whole. I think one of the pressing issues for us as Black people is what does it mean to be part of community? And how do we live in community when the sole consideration cannot be what simply works for you, what simply works for me, but what works for all of us, not just one of us. I think that so many of the decisions we are seeing in our communities, whether it's from the wealthy or from those with little, is about the individual need. If we could come back to an understanding of what church and community is, which is to be together and have all things in common and meet each other's needs, we would be in a different place. So that's my moral challenge to our community and to our people. In terms of issues, I think it flows from that. So I'm concerned about people who are unhoused. I'm concerned about people who don't have health insurance or the education that they want or the job that they want or the things that help us to live the full and abundant life that God promised to us. It challenges me about how we force our government, how we activate our government, maybe not this government, but in general, to treat the people's needs as holy, as my friend Oprah Hendrix said. The things that people lean to live abundantly, clean air, clean what clean water, good food, be safe and secure. What are we doing to ensure that everybody has those same opportunities? Those are the things that weigh on me and that I think about as we think about policy and government.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I agree. That's the work we do at Abolitionist Sanctuary. How do we shift blame away from the individual? Particularly, we focus on poor black mothers who bend rules and break the law to survive, whether that's stealing food to feed their children, or in my mom's case, forgering a doctor's report, doctor's note to get a day off work so she could pick me up from school when she couldn't afford child backup care. So, how do we shift from individual blame to structural accountability? How do we interrogate the systems and structures that deny us access to those basic needs? And how do we no longer punish people, right, for just trying to circumvent these unjust social conditions? That move from individualism is really important because this communal ethos you're sharing is a counter-value system to neoliberal capitalism, right? This narrative of self-responsibility and everyone pulling themselves up by their bootstrap and thriving on this caste system. And that communal value is consonant with our heritage across the diaspora. I stand with you in solidarity and a call back to those communal values are very important.
SPEAKER_01:You know, everything in this society currently drives you toward individuality and oneness. Think about the fact that you can live your entire life without seeing another person because of social media, because of you can get your groceries delivered, your food delivered, your dry cleaning, your laundry. You don't have to ever see and interact with another human being if you don't want to. It becomes okay for us not to go out to dinner, not to go to church. We can watch it. It becomes okay for us not to be in human contact and relationship. And so I often say the most radical thing you can do is to be in community. Yes, to touch somebody, to go outside of the four walls of wherever you reside and sit with a sister and sit with a brother and be in the congregation and feel the communal heartbeat of another person. It's a revolutionary thing these days. And when we need to challenge ourselves, because in doing that, you get to really see another person and to hear their stories and to understand their circumstances. And when you do that, then the issue of blame and the issue of whose fault it is recedes into the background. It's hard to hate up close.
SPEAKER_00:That's good. That's good. And and biologically, right, our anatomy is wired for touch and relationship. And without it, it undermines our longevity, our life. And that I think is what makes the church so powerful. The church is a body, the community of believers that is a radical witness of the church, right? So you have a powerful way of making complex issues simple and relatable. I want you to help educate myself, our audience, on the public policy process. You opened up about the importance of public policy. How can churches as this communal body influence political decision making and the public policy process?
SPEAKER_01:So churches are not just buildings. They are gathering places, a gathering of people in the purest sense, whether they have a building or not, whether they're standing on a street corner, it's a group of people who are bound together by a set of beliefs and who then live those beliefs in a variety of ways. Those people are also, if you're in a campaign this season, are voters. That's the same thing you say about voters. A group of people bound together by similar interests who are pressing forward with their values in the places where they are. They may be union members, they may be teachers, they may be firemen, whatever it is, they've got a set of values that they believe in and that they want to see pressed forward in the public square. So I want us to first take away the idea that the church is this building, the church is the people. So I try to encourage churches. What are the issues that you care about, that your members care about that are impacting your community? And it won't be the same every place, but do the exercise of what's important in this place where our people gather for the fulfillment of their lives is going to be different in rural America than it is in Brooklyn, New York, where I'm from. We got a different set of issues than folks in rural America. Identify them. Identify what those things are. And what do you believe about those issues? What do you believe that your faith says about being healthy, prosperous, or at least about poverty? What does your faith say about how children are raised or what people's autonomy or agency is? What does your faith say? And then does the government, does the public policy align with that? Now I'm not talking about proselytizing, because we want everybody to believe in you. I'm not talking about that. I am talking about a community of believers who say our healthcare sucks because we have no healthcare facility within a mile of this community. We got to travel 90 minutes for a doctor. That's a problem. This community is rife with diabetes, and we have no endocrinologists here. That's a problem. We don't have any clean water. That's a problem. Those things interfere with the idea that God has for us to live full and abundant lives, to understand that there's a problem that is preventing that, that is getting in the way of God's will. And to do nothing is to side with the enemy and to get in the way of God's plan. So what can we do? Identify the issues. Who can impact the issues? What elected official can impact issues because they are making the policy. They are the ones creating policy that stands in the way of your full and abundant life. Those are the people who need to be challenged. And he need to know that you are a set of people that cares about clean water, clean air, good schools, health care, whatever it is you care about. Go see them, talk to them. Say, here's what we care about. You don't have to have fancy language. Talk about what you care about and hold them accountable. This is what I pay you to do. Remember, they work for you. You hired them and you can fire them. Go and see your employees, call the congressman, call the mayor, call the city council person, go see them and say, we need something different. I'm trying to live my life as God intended, and you getting in my way. I need you to change these policies so that I can have what God has for me. Hold them accountable and watch what they do. And if they don't do what you need them to do, fire them and get somebody else.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And we do that as a block, as a community. We are stronger together. That's right. That's right. That community.
SPEAKER_01:I don't pastor anymore. I oversee our denomination. We have churches around the country. Part of our membership requirement is that you're registered to vote. We don't tell you how to vote, but we want everybody who can have an impact on our lives to understand that we are paying attention, that we are registered voters. And if we feel so inclined, we will be hiring you or we will be firing you. You are accountable to us as individual voters in your community, but also as an institution which helps this community to move forward. All of our members in the new member process know who their elected officials are. Who's your senator, who's your councilperson, who's your congressperson? Because that means that we are actively engaged in the community around us. And the church is not someplace we come into and go out of, but church is the community, the whole neighborhood is our parish. And so we want to be engaged, and that's one way that we do it, to ensure that our members are engaged and paying attention, but also that elected officials, those who represent us and who are making policy about our buildings, understand that these are voters who are engaged in the community and want to have a positive impact on the community around them.
SPEAKER_00:This is really important. The church is not just the building, that we are stronger together, and as a collective witness, we can identify the problems in our community and identify the elected officials who work for us to demand that they do something about it. And if they do not, we hold them accountable and we fire them. You're also moving into the importance of the electoral process. And the church, I know there's this separation between church and state, but what we see, which is becoming less of a separation, but that's another conversation. But what we see is that it was largely white evangelicals or Christian nationalists who voted for Trump. So talk to us about how the black church and progressive faith believers who are aligned with justice can use the electoral process as a way to stand up and even win back our democracy. So give us a quick 90 or 120-second reel on the U.S. government and the voting rights in America and why that's important for the black church.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So the US Constitution, as amended, allows every adult person over the age of 18 to participate in how our government functions through your voting rights. We have the ability to vote for the candidates that we like who we think will impact our government for the better. Our voting rights are under attack, and there are some who would rather not see us vote. The president himself was challenging birthright citizenship, which was created post-slavery to allow black people the right to vote. Now they say they want to change all the rules. Government is the name we give to the things we decide to do together. If we agree to be governed, then we agree that we want to have a say about how we are governed. What does that mean for us as individuals and as institutions? What we know from this past election is that for black folks, 92% of black women voted for the candidate whose last name was not Trump. More than 80%, 86% of black men voted for Kamala Harris. We had a different vision of what government can be and what government should be. Is either candidate perfect? No. Was our choice for candidate perfect? No, but you know what? Jesus is not on the ballot. You're not going to get perfection. So who comes the closest? Jesus is not on the ballot, but his values are. Who comes the closest to the values that mirror us? We look for perfection. I can't even agree with my own self in the morning about what I'm going to wear. So why am I looking for a candidate who agrees with me about 100% of the things? I'm good with 70%. I work on the other 30. It's our power that we either decide to exercise or we decide to vote for the couch. It's up to us. But the consequences also fall upon us, whether we voted for Trump or not. We are still living in an America governed by the candidate that wins. So what do we do? I watch social media and I see so many people, everybody's got an opinion. You can find a reel, a post, a feed about anything. Everybody has an opinion about everything. Have the same opinion about who the candidates are. If you can have an opinion on Instagram about the latest thing that Diddy did or 50 Cent or Cardi B or whoever, have an opinion about who's running for president. Have an opinion about who's running for mayor and exercise your voice. Your voice is important. And here's what I want you to get. If it wasn't important, if you didn't matter, they wouldn't be fighting so hard to take away your right to vote. It is precisely because every individual vote matters that they are working so hard to change the Constitution. They're working so hard to disenfranchise you in your local election, try to reinstitute poll taxes, all of these crazy things to stop what they know is a powerful move when you decide to vote.
SPEAKER_00:And changing congressional lines, what we're seeing happen to represent Crockett.
SPEAKER_01:Exactly. They're changing the lines. Why? Because they want to ensure that their point of view and their view of the world is the view that governs our government, how our government works, that governs our politics across the sea, across the water. They want to change that and concretize it so that black folks, brown folks, have no chance of participating in an alternative view of our policy. They are rigging the system in an off-year lines are drawn after the census is done. That is the traditional way, and it has always been done that way. Now we have for the first time them redrawing the lines in an off-year, not connected to a census, and it's all to play partisan games that disenfranchise voters who they know are ultimately powerful.
SPEAKER_00:Talk to us about the Electoral College and what are your thoughts there?
SPEAKER_01:It needs to be abolished. It is a throwback to an old system that worked when rich white men owned all the land in America because it was really about landowners and who gets a say. It's anachronistic, it needs to go and it needs to be who wins the most votes is the winner. Like everything else in our lives, whoever gets the most votes is the winner. Why is it different in presidential elections? The system is so crazy that you can get the most votes and still be the loser. Why does that work? So we've got to work on this electoral college and really getting it abolished. It's not impossible. There are ways to do it. Some folks are working on it now. So wherever you are, pay attention to who's working on electoral college issues, follow them. We can work on this. It's going to take some time. It's a thorny process because it's in the Constitution. So you have to figure out workarounds, but it can be done.
SPEAKER_00:Do you think voting is a generational issue? I had someone say to me as we were talking in our organization of how we should plan our next program year, and I mentioned voting, and a younger person said to me, voting isn't abolition. And so this idea that voting reifies the system, it's petitioning the system for something where the system needs to be overhauled altogether and that it hasn't been effective. What are your thoughts about a younger generation losing hope in the voting process?
SPEAKER_01:I would correlate the loss of hope in the voting process with the lack of civic education in our schools. I think the two go together. You can choose not to participate. That does not exempt you from the impact of the election results as we are feeling and seeing right now when so many people chose the couch on election day. So you can say it doesn't work. Then fix it. Part of abolition is not just the tearing down, but the rebuilding something better of something new, of replacement with a new system that does work for everybody. To refuse to participate, I say you're not a good abolitionist. A good abolitionist is going to work to tear it down while working to build something better.
SPEAKER_00:That's powerful. Thank you, Bishop. I want to stay here for a little bit. During the 2024 election, there were great division across the Democratic Party. Some Democrats did not vote because of their support for Palestine. Others voted independent to defy the failures of a two-party system. And others reluctantly voted Democrat in hopes of defeating Trump. Still, we lost the election and arguably U.S. democracy. What insights can you offer about these varied approaches to our collective struggles? And when disagreements impede our progress, how do we find mutual ground to stand as movement, community, and faith leaders?
SPEAKER_01:That's a hard question because you're right. So many people chose different paths. And part of my walk this year has been trying to reconcile my anger about that. Because you just watch what the aftermath has been, and you just want to say to people, was it worth it? Was your issue, was your anger, was your disillusionment worth what we're dealing with now? And we're not even a whole year in. We got three more years of this. Was it really worth it? I think we have to think about, especially as black people, who are often closest to the pain. And the pain is inflicted on us in ways that other communities may not have the history of experience with, that we have to be smart and say, yeah, she wasn't perfect, but the prospect of going back to this man whom we have already experienced says, I don't need perfection. I needed to be mostly okay. And I can work on the rest later because the fact of the matter was that whatever our disagreements were, we would stand a better chance in her administration having them addressed than we do in the current administration. So I think we've got to be pragmatic voters. But the other thing I would say to you, Doc, is when you look at the election results and how various communities voted, even black folks. I said this to a group the other day. I want to understand how we all heard the same things, how we all were subject to the same misinformation and disinformation. Black folks not living on an island. We're hearing it like everybody else heard, all of the propaganda, all of the media, this, that, and the other. We heard it all, but black people said, yeah, no, nah, nah, and still voted overwhelmingly for the candidate they thought would best represent their interests. Whereas other communities heard it and said, Yeah, we're gonna try him out again. What is it about black voters that makes us be able to look at the information and make different decisions than other communities? I submit it's because we are pragmatic voters and we are inextricably tied to our history in this country that precedes the 20th century, going back 400 years. And so we're able to look at issues and say, this might not be the best, but this is the best for me right now, because we understand what it looks like to live under authoritarianism, to live under quasi-fascism, to live under a system that blatantly disregards, demeans, diminishes, dismisses our humanity. And we're not trying to go back to that. So we know how to make different decisions.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I'm also wrestling with the idea that incrementalism and the lesser of two evils isn't going to save us. And I think that's what deters perhaps younger voters. I don't know what the polls are saying, but it certainly deterred voters within the Democratic Party. Also, on the other side, this zero-sum game of all or nothing. How do we nuance that where we are principled and demanding for a better system, but we also aren't throwing away our democracy, you know, throwing away the system for not even a lesser evil, but just worse, right? Like, uh, and so this zero-sum game is all of nothing, right? We don't vote, and then we're left with an authoritarian fascist regime. And what's better, right? So I don't know. I think in this world it's hard to escape dichotomies. And even if you are voting against a two-party system or the lesser evil, that zero sum is another binary where you choose all or nothing. And so somehow we're still complicit, right? I think we also have to be real about it.
SPEAKER_01:We're both from New York, and so we have multiple parties in New York. We've got the Working Families Party, we got the Rinse Too Damn High Party, we got all of these parties. So we're accustomed to having those options. And so maybe we have a slightly different lens, but when it comes to national party politics, hate you hate it, but it's a two-party system. Wasn't always, and in the future, I don't know that it always will be. But for the election we're looking at right now, it's a two-party system. And so I can vote third party, but it's really a vote that is in some sense a waste because that third party candidate is not set up to win. And I'm and it the technicalities of getting on a ballot, every state has its own timelines, deadlines, and requirements to get on a national ballot, they're daunting. And it's not for someone who doesn't have the means. I know we hate money in politics, but it's just the truth. To get on state ballots costs money. To say I'm gonna vote third party because I hate the two-party system is essentially to say I'm not gonna participate in this cycle. And that's a real shame.
SPEAKER_00:I agree. The uprising has to happen before the election cycle. You can't wait to the election cycle to come with strategies of resistance and saying we need an independent party or a third candidate, right? Like it has to happen way before that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and as we know from New York, working families has been building for decades and has reached now a place after all of their work and organizing where they can run a citywide candidate and win because they've done the work it takes, and that's just in one city. It takes work. If that's something you're really interested in, you got to be interested in that year-round and working on it year-round in every state, not just in the urban areas, but in Iowa, in Alaska, where presidential candidates have to run and win too to get the electoral votes they need to become president.
SPEAKER_00:And the reality is that the opposition is unified. Yes, very unified. Whether you want to call them MAGA, Republican, alt-right, conservatives, there's a unification there. There's a unity there. There's a long game that's being played, particularly Project 25 is a plan that has been in motion for decades, yeah, that we have to stop, right? And so you are a strategist. What do you think is the necessary counterplan to a project 2025 or another plan that our churches and communities can support and lead?
SPEAKER_01:Let's be clear that Project 2025 didn't get written in 2024. These are things that these folks have been working on for years, if not decades. This included them making sure the judges were elected, making sure they had the right people on the bench, making sure the city council was set, making sure the sheriff's office and the police department. This was a long-term plan that we are seeing come to fruition. So when they won the White House, they were ready with the plan they had already written 10 years ago. We have to have on the Democratic side the same kind of laser focus on reimagined government. I've been calling this the great reimagining. We will have an opportunity, or the Democratic Party will have an opportunity to reimagine what government looks like, to reimagine. What society looks like in the aftermath of this administration? One small example, USAID, which was the government agency that dealt with partners around the world and sent vaccines and all of the wonderful things that was the first thing that this administration dismantled. So, in the great imagining, should the Democrats get power back again? How do you reimagine that work? Do you just say, going back to USAID, we're just going to reconstitute? Or is there another way to think about it? Is there a better way to think about how we deal with our partners around the world and nations around the world and supporting their people with vaccines and medicines and food? Same with the Department of Education being dismantled. What do we reimagine it to be? Do we just put it back like it was? Let's admit that everything was not working the way we wanted it to work, particularly for black people. So how do we in our communities imagine a future? It's that prophetic imagination that Walter Bruegelman talked about, right? How you imagine the task of the prophetic is to imagine a future while critiquing a present, right? So what do we want the future to look like? Have we really done the work of thinking about what a government would look like that works for us, that serves our needs, that helps us to raise our children into whole and healthy individuals? What does that look like? And let's start planning for that now. Write it down, write the vision, and make it plain. How do we think about it? But most times we don't think about it, and then we elect somebody and go, oh, what do we want? Too late. We needed to have asked those questions and gotten answers for those questions and be ready to press those answers when we're thinking about candidates. And sometimes when we're not thinking about candidates, we have the luxury. We got three more years of this fool. Three more years. This is the time for us to reimagine everything and then to begin to work so that when we have the opportunity to get this government back, what does it look like? Because the shame and the crime would be to win it back and not have a plan and not have a reimagined society. He's broken all the toys. So now we get to create our own toys. What does that look like?
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's really powerful. That reimagining is an abolitionist exercise. How do we create the world that we deserve that we want to live in, where we can be safe, where we can meet our basic needs, where we can thrive, where we can have communities of care? And so I've W.E.B. Du Bois talked about abolition democracy and what does that look like today? I appreciate you invoking that question, particularly on a podcast titled Abolition of Sanctuary, because that's the work that we're called to as well. As I'm thinking about that question, how do you get buy-in for people who think that the Democratic Party is compromised? You, as the former chief executive officer of the Democratic National Convention, what would you say? How would you win back the confidence of Democrats?
SPEAKER_01:So I think there's this. I always start with who do you mean when you say the Democratic Party? Because that's such an amorphous term. Do you mean the current sitting elected officials? Do you mean the 77 million people who voted for who are we talking about? And I'll tell you a story. My friend Farag lives in Texas. He decided one day to get involved with the local Democratic Party. He went to the meetings in his little corner of Texas. And he went to two or three meetings and he would raise ideas and they would shoot him down. He raised ideas and he would shoot them down. But what he consistently noticed is that there were only three people going to the meetings, him plus two others. So he decided these people are not listening to me. I'm going to take this party over. So he got four of his friends, they went to the next meeting when there was an election and they voted him in. With four people, they just decided I'm going to do this. So him and three of his friends voted out the two that were sitting there. It's not that hard. It's not that hard because a group of people, you and your friends who decide that the party ought to act differently, do differently, behave differently, make the change. As my friend Mignon says, the leadership line is short.
SPEAKER_00:Get in it. Speaking of which, where are you in your leadership line? Because I'm seeing Doll Tree for president in 2012. No, no, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_01:No, it elected work is not my testimony.
SPEAKER_00:So tell us about these things, LLC, which you founded and why is it important as a boutique strategic firm and what kind of partnerships do you look for in the work that you're doing there?
SPEAKER_01:I started it after one of my convention tours of duty as a consultancy, a management consultancy. I work with a variety of interests, corporate, some unions, some C3s who are looking to create energy and synergy with other folks. They need connections and a way forward. I'm also a management consultant. People have problems in their businesses, I help them solve them. So I'm at the point now in my age and career that I take clients that I like, that I think the work is important, that the people are nice and would be good to work with, and that's going to make a difference in the work that they are doing and help them be more effective. So I do a lot of leadership retreats, organizational retreats to help folks get aligned. And I do a lot of interventions when folks are having problems. So it's fun work. I like it, besides my travel and church stuff.
SPEAKER_00:So that's that's that's what on these things is. That's good to know because abolitionist sanctuary could certainly benefit from your expertise. We have an open board application process right now for our cohort. So maybe we might be if you look us over an organization you like, you might consider getting to know us a little better. Okay. Thank you. And you're an innovator. You also launched Power Rising, an organization designed to support Black women to leverage political, economic, and social power, to ensure equity, opportunity, and representation. We talked about the church, we talked about communities, we talked about black voters, but with power rising, why is black women important?
SPEAKER_01:You know, for all the reasons I think we take for granted, black women are in our communities the backbone. We make things go, whether it's church, our sororities, our organizations, we show up, we do the work, we put our shoulders to the wheel, and we help make things move. When you can convince a black woman, when you get a black woman engaged, it's not just her vote. It's not just her work. She's going to bring her sorority sister, her church member, her auntie, her sisters, her mama, her boyfriend, her man, her partner, whoever, we never go alone into any enterprise. We got a village that's coming with us. And the fact of the matter is the issues that affect Black women, from wages to health care to education, these are life issues. These are family issues. And when you address those issues and give Black women the room to expand and to grow their leadership, communities change, organizations change, churches change. And so that's why we plant and really try to help Black women understand their power, how to use the power that they have, and then how to grow that power in the places where they serve.
SPEAKER_00:That's really powerful because Black women are the primary stakeholders in our churches, the moral pillars in our communities. Black women also vote in some of the highest numbers for presidential elections. We're the most educated. And so the attack on Black women is not by accident, right? The 300,000 Black women who were forced outside of the workplace is not by accident. The disparities where Black women make 63 cents to the dollar of their white male counterparts, that black mothers are the primary income earners in 80% of the households. Yet 80% of women who are incarcerated are also black mothers. And so when you punish and criminalize and incarcerated black mothers, you are essentially harming an entire ecosystem.
SPEAKER_01:And that's the point, right? That's the point of white supremacy and of patriarchy to take what is the backbone of American society. This is not just in black communities. We make this nation go. So if you diminish us, if you demean us, dismiss us, if you devalue our worth and our ability to contribute, you are really attacking the very fiber of the communities. But you're thinking you're attacking black communities. No, the ripple effect of attacking black women extends into businesses. If we're not working, guess what? There's no cars being bought, there's no cell phones being bought, grocery stores begin to fail, doctors and nurses have no have no patients because our income has been impacted. That means Apple and Microsoft, Target, all of these other places get impacted because we've been impacted. So the attack on us is really miscalculated and misplaced because of the outsized impact we have on the American economy.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. I want to thank you for the heavy lifting that you've done to help educate our viewers and bring clarity to very critical issues confronting the Black community. I want to invite you to share with us what's next for you and how we can support you. Are there any call to actions that we can be in solidarity with?
SPEAKER_01:Sure. You can find me on all the socials, and I am about to relaunch my own podcast, which will also be part of a substaff, The Faithful Citizen, which explores the intersection of faith and politics. I launched a couple of years ago and then COVID put a pause on things. So now we're coming back in the new year. And then the other thing I tell you is that Power Rising is coming. Our next conference is April 16th to 19th in Chicago, Illinois. And you can go to our website, powerising.org, to get more information. We just opened registration. And if you haven't been, you need to come. You don't want to miss Power Rising. It is a conference like no other. We cap it at a thousand women, and it's just wall-to-wall sisters from every walk of life. We come together, have a great time, learn a lot. We see, see a lot, we have amazing speakers, and so we love to have you be part of our convening in 2026. Tell us the dates again in Chicago. April 16th to the 19th in Chicago, the Wendy City, with my new favorite mayor, Brandon Johnson. I love him. If you're not following him on the socials, you need to follow him. Power Rising is a conference by, for, and about black women. All the speakers of black women, except we're gonna make an exception for the mayor, all the entertainers of black women, and it's black women together, plotting our path, encouraging each other, inspiring each other, pushing each other forward into our next.
SPEAKER_00:That's amazing. Abolition April is what we have with Abolitionist Sanctuary, where we dedicate the month to raise awareness around abolition. And that conference is certainly aligned with the work we do, and we would love to partner with you in promoting it. We also have events planned out. So I want to make sure as we get our program calendar together that we do not plan on that weekend. We want to have an abolition academy, and maybe you'll consider joining us where we lead an in-person training around some of the issues that we talked about today. So we'll be a conversation around that. I'm excited about your podcast. Tell us the name again and where to access it. It will be The Faithful Citizen.
SPEAKER_01:It'll be on Substack, which I have a website, faithfulcitizen.org, if you want to catch the past episodes. They're also available wherever you get your podcasts. The new series and my Substack will launch in January.
SPEAKER_00:Excellent. Well, we thank you for the ripples that you have going on and the impact that you are making where you are. As we conclude this episode, I have this rapid round, and I'm gonna throw off some phrases, words, sentences, and you tell us what is the first thing that come to mind. You ready? All right, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Powerful.
SPEAKER_00:New York Knicks. New York Knicks, Spike Lee. Black women.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my goodness, black women. Impactful.
SPEAKER_00:The church. Love Loutons with your shoe fetish. They hurt. They do. They do the whole line. Sunrise or sunset. Sunset. Beach or mountains? Mountains. Book or movie.
SPEAKER_01:Book if it's on audible. Favorite food? Chicken wings. A Bible verse. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
SPEAKER_00:You ready for this one? A rap lyric, New Yorker. Come on. Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_01:Biggie, Biggie, Biggie. Can't you see? Sometimes your love just hypnotize me.
SPEAKER_00:And I just love you, fancy wave. That's why I'm broken. You're so paid. Finally, abolitionist sanctuary. Freedom. Thank you, Bishop Daughtery. It was an honor to have you on this episode. Thank you for joining this conversation on the Abolitionist Sanctuary Podcast. Thank you. This was fun. Okay, please download and share this episode on all platforms. Again, I am your host, Reverend Dr. Nakia Smith Robert, founder and executive director of Abolitionist Sanctuary. Follow us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and download our mobile app. Also enroll in our courses and become certified at abolitionacademy.com. Don't forget to become a member and subscribe to our mailing list at abolitionistsanctuary.org. As we conclude this episode, remember that abolition is not only a practice, but it is a way of life. And for me, abolition is my religion. Let's lead a faith based abolitionist movement together. Thank you so much.
