Quiet No More

How to Empower Voices Through Political Engagement

• Carmen Cauthen

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What if the power to transform your community was right at your fingertips? J

Join me, Carmen Cauthen, on "Quiet, No More" as I unravel my compelling journey into civic engagement, revealing the profound influence political participation can hold for those historically left unheard. I will share my personal awakening through early involvement in election campaigns, where I discovered the human connections that drive political change. 

Together, we'll confront the challenges of political transitions and societal polarization while uncovering the potential for dialogue and understanding across divides. 

My story is not just a recounting of past experiences but a passionate call to turn despair into proactive advocacy, encouraging each of us to take meaningful action in our local governance.

Journey with us into the past as I highlight the invaluable work being done to preserve history through the WPA slave narratives. By tracing these oral histories, families are reconnecting with their roots and discovering a rich tapestry of heritage previously unknown. 

 It underscores the importance of dialogue and active engagement in shaping our political landscape, with organizations like Better Angels leading the way in fostering understanding between diverse viewpoints. Whether through writing, attending civic meetings, or simply showing up, every action contributes to the collective journey of learning and community involvement. 

This episode is more than a listen; it's an invitation to be part of the conversation and a catalyst for change in your world.

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Carmen Wimberley Cauthen is an author, speaker, and lover of history, Black history in particular. As a truth teller, she delights in finding the hidden truths about the lives of people who made a difference - whether they were unknown icons or regular everyday people.

To Learn more of Carmen:
www.carmencauthen.com
www.researchandresource.com

Speaker 1:

Unseen, unheard. We've lived like that far too long. I'm Carmen Coffin and this is Quiet, no More. So I've talked to a lot of people since the election and it's amazing that one of the first things especially Black women ask me is so how are you feeling? Well, I wonder sometimes if I just don't have feels, because a lot of times people ask me how I'm feeling about stuff and I'm just merely going along my way. I'm just merely going along my way because I can't fix or change things that have happened. I just have to deal with them. So, after the election and before the inauguration, I just have questions for you. So, first of all, were you ever personally involved in any kind of campaign, election campaign? I was.

Speaker 1:

I grew up being involved in election campaigns. I grew up canvassing. I grew up standing at a place where people were going in to vote, passing out ballots, especially starting around the time when my mom ran for the school board. I was still a kid and I would stand in front of the elementary school that was down the street from us and pass out ballots that said, please vote for Cliff Wimberley. And I would say will you vote for my mom? Will you vote for my mom, will you vote for my mom? And so that has never been a thing that I was afraid of. I would work the polls, I would work in campaign offices, I would volunteer, and so I would get to see the inside of what politics looks like, and it was no different than when I worked at the legislature. I saw the inside of what politics looked like. I saw end results of what happens after an election is over people take office and what the workload looks like, and one of the things that I had to and I think all of us are going to have to do that if we haven't in the past is recognize that everybody's a human. We're all humans and we all come to everything. We come to with what we learned, with what somebody else has shared with us maybe good knowledge, maybe bad, but we're just people. Somehow in there there was a female and a male who got together and they made a kid, and the kid grew up until they were of age to run for public office.

Speaker 1:

Some people run for public office because they want to create a better life for others. Some run for public office because they're angry about something that happened to them or their family members, and in a lot of cases, we want the same things. We don't necessarily want them the same way, and the things that we want may not be named the same, but we are not as far apart as we think we are. We just don't talk about it. We don't sit down one-on-one and talk with people who are on the opposite side, and it's gotten so bad now that we just we cut people off. But that's not how we solve problems. That's not how you solve things when you've got an issue at work.

Speaker 1:

But, be that as it may, what are you going to do between now and the inauguration? And, furthermore, what are you going to do afterwards? There's always been a period of time between an election and an inauguration and the American public has never really paid attention to that, that space. What's going to happen there? What the transition looks like? We are so polarized today that we are looking for things to demonize.

Speaker 1:

Now, I'm not saying that there is anything in Project 2025 or that I supported President-elect Trump, because I didn't, but I've been down this road before. I think our elders went down this road, and there's always, for me, been the choice between the best candidate and the other candidate, the choice between the best candidate and the other candidate. It hasn't had necessarily anything to do with race or how they were going to treat people. It's just been this one or that one. That's the choice I have, and so I talk. I want to find out what you're doing, what you're planning to do, and I don't want to get left out because it's too important, right? So what did you do after the election? I know a lot of people cried. I didn't have time to do that either. I had concerns. I know that there are people that I haven't talked to since 2016,. Not because I cut them off Well, maybe one or two people I cut off but just because we've gone down different paths. We're growing in different directions and everything that comes down doesn't normally come down from the federal government.

Speaker 1:

But I think that's going to change and I think that people who have not in the past, been involved in an election other than to vote or what happens afterwards, are going to find that they need to speak out. They need they're going to need to go to city council meetings or town council meetings. They're going to need to find out what's on the agenda. They're going to need to find out what's on the agenda. They're going to need to have some input Surveys that come out. They're going to have to fill them out. If they don't have time to do that, they're going to have to write letters or emails and send them to people who represent them at the state, at the local level and at the federal level, because life as we knew it is going to change. So it's time to stop feeling bad about it and get on with what comes next, and I'm sure I'll get some pushback on that.

Speaker 1:

I'm not saying what you need to do, but I'm saying you need to be prepared. You need to be prepared to do something, to speak out, to be your community advocate, to be the advocate for yourself and your family, for your children and your grandchildren, for your parents, for your aunts and uncles, because there are some people who aren't capable of speaking out because of age and illness. There are some people who aren't capable of speaking out because they don't know they're being treated badly, and if you haven't been practicing that, then you need to get into practice. So, between now and January 20th, look, see what's happening around you, see what things you need to talk about. If your legislature is meeting and you have a concern about something, write your legislator. If you know somebody that knows somebody, talk to them. If you have the opportunity to speak to people, do it. It doesn't have to be a fight.

Speaker 1:

When I talk about history and legacy, I'm just telling the truth and I try to have things that back up what I say. And I try to have things that back up what I say, and so I think it's important for you to do that. And you know, a lot of times we only listen to people or podcasts or read news that says what we want to hear or what we want to say. Well, maybe we need to take the opportunity to look at something that somebody else says that we don't agree with, and see what's in there. And let's just use trusted places. Let's just don't go to the dark side of anything. Let's look at places that have actual facts. That's important. That have actual facts. That's important.

Speaker 1:

Were you concerned about the election? Were you concerned about what was going to happen in your county or your city or your local district? Have you been concerned about things in the past? And when you're concerned about something, what do you do? Do you just say to yourself oh, I can't change that, I can't do anything about that. I'm going to tell you about a friend of mine who moved to North Carolina from another state and he said he really hadn't heard anything about racism, didn't know anything about it. And I laugh at him and I just tell him you know, there weren't any Black people in your state. So he's white and so, yeah, if you're white in a Midwestern state, you may not have ever heard anything about racism because you don't see any people who look like anybody but you. So that wasn't an issue. But when you come here sometimes it just slaps you in the face because it's so different. Well, he didn't know what he could do other than speak out and he didn't know how speaking out would make a difference. If you see the back of his car, you'll know that he has learned that putting stickers on the back of his car that are anti-racist is one way of speaking out, but another way that he speaks out.

Speaker 1:

He has taken the WPA slave narratives and some of you may not have ever heard of them. I'll tell you about them in a minute. But he takes those slave narratives and he digs in the background of people whose oral histories were done and he finds out where they were enslaved. He finds out where they lived after slavery ended. He comes forward, he looks for what their family members have done and then he tries to find somebody from their family and tell them about their family member. And you know, for a lot of us we don't even know that people that were part of our family were written up in the WPA slave narratives.

Speaker 1:

So the WPA slave narratives were the Works Progress Administration oral histories that were done in the early 1930s. The WPA was a federally funded program. In many sections. That was actually how our highway system started to be built. Urban Renewal came out of that. That was part of the Works Progress Administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt after the Depression and this was a way that the federal government was able to help pay people and help put them back to work to keep there from being so many long food lines, from being so many long food lines, and there were housing projects built. As I said, there were highways. The transportation system for the country started out of that.

Speaker 1:

But there were people who were writers and poets, who actually got money to go into the homes of formerly enslaved people who were still alive and to do oral histories to let them tell their stories and those were bound up. There are 17 states that people were able to go in and interview people. There are hundreds of names and there are books for each state and they're online at the Library of Congress and other places. You can buy these books in the bookstores or on Amazon and read the stories, and this is how we know so much of the history from the point of view of people who had been enslaved. These people were still alive and they were interviewed, and I've heard that you have to take some of that with a grain of salt, because actually some people say that they thought they were better off enslaved, because it was hard to live without having an education, without being able to read and write, without being able to farm as other than a sharecropper. But everybody was not that way, and so it's important that my friend has gone back and done these histories and then reached out to family members and shared this information Because, as I said, some people have no idea that they have this part of their genealogy and history written in a book, and so there are ways we can make a difference. Sometimes there are very small ways, sometimes there are large ways.

Speaker 1:

The point is you have to do something, you have to have conversations.

Speaker 1:

There's an organization that I have belonged to called Better Angels, and it's for reds and blues to sit down and talk, and invariably we find out that the heart of it we kind of want the same things, but we want to go about it in different ways and a lot of times we don't recognize that some ways hurt people that we don't think about because we don't have those experiences to build off.

Speaker 1:

So how did the election affect you? What are you going to do between now and the inauguration and what are you going to do afterwards? You have to learn to speak, and your speaking doesn't have to be with your mouth. It can be with your hand. It can be typewritten, it can be emailed, it can be put in an envelope, it can be with your hand. It can be typewritten, it can be emailed, it can be put in an envelope, it can be showing up, just showing up at a city council meeting and making your presence known. But there are things that you have to do because you will be affected, just like you have been affected by every other election since before you were born, and you're going to have to learn to be quiet. No more you've been listening to quiet no more where I share my journey. So you can be quiet, let's connect at wwwcarmencoffincom.