02 - The First Break: Discussing all the Major Issues

On this episode of the podcast, we tune into an interview that Joanna did that broke open the campaign on an influential political podcast in Michigan. Joanna sits down with Lori Goldman of Fems for Dems on her show For the Sake of the Argument by Distill Social. In the interview, they discuss how Joanna's track record and experiences tie into fighting for the everyday issues. 

CITIES IN JOANNA'S DISTRICT: Allen Park, Lincoln Park, Melvindale and Southgate, MI

PRIMARY ELECTION DAY: August 4th, 2026

DONATE TO THE CAMPAIGN: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/joannawhaley

VOLUNTEER WITH THE CAMPAIGN: https://www.joannawhaley.com/volunteer

(Paid for by the Committee to Elect Joanna Whaley)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Before we start today's episode, I need your help. Can you go to Joanna Whaley.com and support this campaign today? We are doing good work on the ground as a campaign and we need your support. Today's episode is going to be completely without commercials. So we want to make sure that you have the opportunity to support this campaign financially or volunteer. Go to JoannaWaley.com to get started with a donation or to volunteer today. We are talking today about one of those moments. One of those moments that changes everything. You're listening to Blaze the Trail. Let's do that together right now.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

But that promise is yet a hump. I stand before you a queer person in America, wondering where the promise is, and I am seeing it in front of me today. No worse.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

There are moments in life where it just seems like you caught a break. Being new into this campaign on the campaign trail, we were really in the beginning stages of trying to figure out our voice. Trying to figure out how do we get my voice out to the political world in the state of Michigan. As someone who had never run for office in the past, as someone who really has only had experience within the church space, it was important that we had the conversations with the right people about why my background as a pastor translated into the political world and why people should elect a former pastor to public office. And we had one of those breaks happen early in our campaign. And this news source really is one of the leading voices of progressives in the state. And as we worked through and as I kept showing up in our political spaces, it was clear that the people of Downriver, the Democrats of Downriver, are ready for more progressive leaders. So when I got the call and the text message from Distill Social to come on one of their flagship podcasts called For the Sake of the Argument, it felt like one of those breaks happened. What you're gonna hear today is the full unedited version of that interview. And it it really was one of those moments that tipped over the domino of credibility in this campaign within the democratic world in our area. This podcast, we cover a lot of topics. Some that we covered in the first episode, but many that really drilled down into the issues that the people of our community are worried about. So without any further ado, let's take a listen to my interview, one of the pivotal turning points in the early stages of this campaign to get our voice and to get this campaign moving within our community. Let's listen right now.

SPEAKER_03 4:56

Thanks everybody for hanging out with us again on For the Sake of the Argument. Today's guest, Joanna Whaley, is running for House Rep in Michigan District 2, which is parts of Allen Park, Lincoln Park, and Melvendale, and Southgate. So she's got an uphill battle as a transgender woman who went to the seminary and came out and went through 15 years of um conversion therapy. I I can't even, I can't even wrap my brain around that. Our world is a pretty fucked up place. So if you want to learn more about who's running, who's on first, et cetera, et cetera, check us out on for the sake of the argument anywhere that podcasts are heard. Thank you so much. Hey, welcome to For the Sake of the Argument. I'm so pleased to have you here today.

SPEAKER_00 5:54

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_03 5:55

I'm excited. My pleasure. Oh, my stomach just scrawled, but that's okay. I hope you heard that. That means you're really listening out there in the audience. Um, you're a Democratic candidate for Michigan House District 2. Give us a bit of your background and let us know why you're running for the seat and what communities encompass Michigan District 2.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Yeah, so the communities are Allen Park, Lincoln Park, Melvendale, and Southgate. Um, and the reasons, this is going to turn into a long-form podcast, if you want all the reasons, but uh, you know, for me, it kind of goes back to where I started in life. Uh I grew up in a Christian family and uh, you know, became a pastor at a really young age and was raised in Christian nationalism as a young leader. And for me, I, you know, we'll get into this, I'm sure, a little bit later in the show, but for me, I found my way out of that world. And coming out of that was really a challenge to be myself. I came out as a trans woman about four years ago. And the complete hatred that I experienced in that time of my life, um, was so difficult to manage. So I started doing LGBTQ rights uh work within religious spaces, very niche, uh, but I started doing that work. And it was then that I started to um, you know, really begin to see the egregious things that our community, me being new to the LGBTQ community within, you know, the last four to five years uh outwardly, seeing the egregious things that are happening politically in our world to our community. Um, so I started doing that rights work. And over the last few, you know, months, I kept getting invited to speak at a lot of the protest rallies in our area. Um, and after the first one was a hands-off rally, I was invited to speak by one of our local indivisible groups, and they were like, we're looking for somebody to talk about LGBTQ rights and to talk about Christian nationalism. I'm like, I got both of those for you. Ding ding, ding, ding. Yes. So I shared my story. Um, and it was then that people in the community started to ask me if I would run for office, which was really interesting. It was never on my bingo card. Um, and so I yeah, I was like, no, thanks. I don't know if that's for me. Um, and then some things started to happen within our state house, um, specifically with my state representative, who is a Democrat, who started to uh exhibit signs of not supporting the LGBTQ community. Wow. And for me, that was a big trigger for me to say, you know what? I was starting to think about it. The the people of my district, the people of Downriver were saying, you need to run for something, you need to do it, and I wasn't sure where to turn. And then when these things began to happen in the state house, that's what told me that's the seat that I want to run for, um, to stand up for the marginalized people of our communities. So that's why I'm running. That's what got me into this. Um, I've been trained my whole life, and we'll get into more of my training. Uh, you know, I went to seminary. Uh, I'm a seminary grad. I studied liberation theology in school, which is the study of marginalized people within the story of the divine. Um, so I've been trained. Well, it seems like such a contradiction the way religion is doled out. Right. Right, yeah. And so I've been trained to listen to the cries of the people. Um, and so what I began to do was I began to hear the cries of even the people of my district and the things that are plaguing them. Um, and it just put a fire under me to say we need representatives who are listening, absolutely the things that people need and who can actually move other people towards fixing and and eradicating those systemic problems.

SPEAKER_03 9:53

Well, I want to, I don't know if you know this. Why would you know this? But I am from Downriver. I grew up and lived until I was almost 30 years old in e-Course. Yes, you're our neighbors at Lincoln Park. Absolutely. And I am a realtor and I sell in Lincoln Park and Allen Park and Downriver, every little corner of Downriver with pride and pleasure. It'll always be my home, even if I'm not living there now. And I'm curious, uh, what do you think some of the major issues facing the residents of House District 2 are? And how do you plan to address them?

SPEAKER_00 10:30

One of the number one things, and every Democrat right now is talking about this, is affordability. But in our context, in our district, affordability, yes, is a huge problem, but really the root causes are from bad corporate behavior.

SPEAKER_03 10:44

Affordability for housing, food, gas, or all of it.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Everything, yeah, right. So, you know, I had to go get food for my kids this weekend, and the bill was shocking. It was even more than I remember it being, even from even weeks ago, it was more. You know, and so, um, but what people in our district are wrestling with is I can't afford to keep up with the way things are going, but specifically because of the way I'm being paid, because of the way that my company is treating us, the existential crisis of am I going to lose my job? And this is something I'm trained in, is to hear existential crisis. I'm hearing this over and over from our community. You know, um, my bosses are getting raises while my job is getting cut or my hours are being cut. And uh so for me is really, you know, having my eye on how are corporations behaving within our state that are affecting my residents, the residents of our community. Um, so those are the that's the number one thing. The number two thing is creeping utility bill costs. Oh, God. Yes. And, you know, even right now, there is a proposal before the Allen Park uh planning commission for an AI data center in the city of Allen Park, uh, which is, you know, new and developing and it's starting to show up. But our bills are already high. Each and every, you know, week I go to one of our local city council meetings. I sit in every city council meeting. I've been in every council meeting I possibly can in though in those four cities for the last six to eight months. I have sat in every one, and not a week goes by that a resident doesn't say, what's going on with this bill? Why is it so high? Um, so you know, our utility companies are also just practicing gouging on our residents. Yeah, unabated. Yeah, and and there's no accountability because a lot of our politicians have taken money from them. Um, so those are those are things that our district are talking about. Um, and also not a week goes by that I don't get a call from a wife who's crying whose husband has been picked up by ice.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

Oh, so so many things. But I want to go back. Are you gonna take money from the utilities?

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Absolutely campaign contributions? They they already don't like me. I met some of them at uh at a chamber of commerce event and they avoided me with everything they possibly could. Um, you know, I I will not, and uh, you know, my current state rep has taken the money and I will not because anymore.

SPEAKER_03 13:15

Being a former evangelical pastor, yeah, can you tell us a little bit about the experience, what you experienced getting kicked out of church leadership due to your identity?

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Yeah, well, that's was that a big surprise? Uh yes and no. Um, so I'll give a little context to this. I became a minister, a pastor at the age of 17. Wow. No training, what could go wrong? It's gonna be fine, right? So I started working at one of the largest mega churches in our area uh at the time. So at the age of 17, here I am pastoring in a church of two to three thousand people. Um, and on the front door of the church, it said, All are welcome, right? And you see that in a lot of churches. So this is a mega church, right? Big rock and roll music, you know, lights and smoke and sirens and lions and tigers and bears and my. That was that was my experience of church. Um, but you know, the backdrop here, getting hired at the age of 17, is my whole life, since the age of eight, probably eight or nine, I started to realize there's something going on with me as far as my gender. Now, when I was a kid, we didn't have language for it. When I was a kid, my mom used to ask me questions like, Are you gay? And I'm like, I don't think so. You know, I didn't know what was going on, but my mom always knew something. Um, but it wasn't until I got into college that I actually had language for the first time that I believed I was trans and that I knew I was trans. Um, so I began to um talk about these things because I believed my pastors loved me and that they accepted me. And actually, a lot of times our pastors uh told us, hey, we want you to be real here. We want you to feel like you can uh trust us with the deepest parts of life. So this was the deepest part of my life. Um I began to talk about it when I was uh an undergrad at Eastern Michigan University, I think it was a junior at EMU, when I first started to talk to my pastors about my gender. Um and it was then that I was subjected to 15 years of conversion therapy. 15 years.

SPEAKER_03 15:27

And how old were you when you started?

SPEAKER_00 15:29

I was in my early 20s when I started this.

SPEAKER_03 15:32

Oh my God, that's longer than a prison sentence in the Trump administration.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yeah, it's uh in and the whole time, you know, I was being told, like, you know, this isn't God's best for you. Um and and so I I believed that and I, you know, subjected myself to it. And this is when it was really fully legal in the state of Michigan, and there was really not a lot of laws nationwide to fight this practice. Um, and so, you know, I I just remember how it spiraled me. You know, my mental health spiraled to a point where I dropped out of college because I couldn't handle the mental health load that uh conversion of what conversion therapy was doing to me.

SPEAKER_03 16:15

Was your family on board with all of this?

SPEAKER_00 16:16

My family had no idea it was happening because my church isolated me from my God, yeah. Cult cult mentality. Yeah, so that's the context of everything I had been going through. Um I had finally kind of, you know, I was still going through conversion therapy when I was uh I ended up working for two, one of the largest church in America, which is stationed in Oklahoma City, their main campus is in Oklahoma City. Um, about 100,000 people a weekend, over 40 locations nationwide, ended up working there. Uh, learned a lot about how to lead, you know, large groups of people and how to, you know, listen to the things that the community is needing in multiple places. Um, but I moved back to Michigan, worked for another large megachurch here in the state of Michigan. Um, and one weekend I had left my journal sitting on my desk in my office, and I had been processing all these things going on with my gender over the years and just really kind of, you know, processing these things theologically. And someone in the church read my journal and reported it to the board of directors, and I was fired three days later.

SPEAKER_03 17:29

Well, I think there's there's something against all of those things in the Bible, but they don't pick those pieces out. I want to read a quote that has been attributed to you, and uh I'd also I'd like you to talk a little bit about how these experiences that you've gone through since being a child uh will shape the way that you lead. The quote is LGBTQ people should instead embrace resistance through existence rather than becoming docile or easily governed by the state. LGBTQ individuals should make it impossible for the state to dictate who they are or whom they can love. Fuck yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:15

Yes. LGBTQ people do need to resist by existing. It is absolutely, I I stand by that statement. I wrote this article, it's called Gender in Jesus in a response to the Trump to Trump this is Trump's second inauguration, and just the absolute disgusting use of my faith to tell people who they can be and who they should be. And it was in that moment that I said, you know what, I am not, and I was getting counsel at this point in my life to just kind of be quiet, to kind of uh, you know, settle down and just exist as a trans person. Don't be so loud, don't don't be so, you know, over the top an advocate for people. You know, you're just gonna get yourself in trouble and frustrate yourself because you can't change the system. And as soon as I heard Donald Trump say it is the official position of the United States of America that there are only two genders, I said, hell no. I am not going to sit for you anymore in my home and throw things at my TV and watch them use Jesus as a weapon against an entire people group. Um, we are better than that. Christianity should be better than that, and it can be better than that, and I've seen it be better than that. Um, and so, yes, uh queer people in general, it this is our time to tell the state, you're not gonna tell us who we can be and who we can love. And so for me, I think it's important, and I see this as I have be as I have become a candidate for the state house. I go across the state and I talk to LGBTQ people across the state who have a deeply homophobic or transphobic representative, and they say, please represent me because I'm not being heard in my government. And so I think this is the time for queer people to flood the the county, uh, the county office and run for office. It's time for more and more of us. If you're gonna if you're gonna create dehumanizing policy, do it to our effing face.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

What do you say to queer people who are having a struggle that are embedded in their faith, but are struggling with the um hypocrisy?

SPEAKER_00 20:37

Yeah, I was there. I I hear you. And the first thing I'll say is if you don't have clear affirmation from your faith community, you are not safe. And it's time to find a way out of that community.

SPEAKER_03 20:51

Wow, that's strong. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

And if you are not in a church that will fly a rainbow flag on its side of its building, um, you are not in a safe place. And and always, always, always remember that God is way bigger than one person's interpretation of Christianity. There are there are hundreds of thousands of different sections and denominations of Christianity, and each one of them thinks that they have the corner on God. Yeah. Right? Everyone's trying to climb this mountain, and they each say, they each put their flag in the top of the mountain and say, look, we figured it out. But what they don't realize is that there's a cloud covering an infinite mountain that's going up. No one can know and have the exact corner on exactly who God loves and who God is going to accept, you know? And so for me, for those who are in faith, who are struggling, maybe you're in the closet, maybe you're that pastor who's like in the Christian nationalist church. Um, I get calls every all the time from pastors who say, I wish I could be more bold. But I'll lose everything if I come out clearly with what I believe.

SPEAKER_03 22:04

Wow, and for Christians, that should really sound very hollow because you know I was raised Catholic, converted to Judaism when I had a child. But we're taught as Catholics and Christians that Jesus gave his life for our sins, which took standing up, speaking out, forfeiting the greatest thing you have, your life. And yet they're telling people to be quiet. That's crazy. So what do you think over the last few months? Democrats such as Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttig have retreated on trans issues. What's your take on that trend within the party? Betrayal. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

And it is a cancer within our party. It is absolutely crazy to me that standing up for human rights is now a progressive issue, right? It should be an all of us in the party issue. Human issue. Human human rights should not be a political game. Because right now there are many people in in the LGBTQ community who are just just done. There are many people in marginalized community who who have been done. Look at how many minority groups voted for Trump in the last election, right? Right. It's because they haven't been, they haven't been heard, they haven't re been represented.

SPEAKER_03 23:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

This is what Trump has normalized in our society. And our party just saying, you know what, we have to soften our language and just not talk about trans people anymore and just not talk about, you know, LGBTQ rights.

SPEAKER_03 23:44

Afraid of being too woke.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Yeah, yeah. Like you are bending the knee. And and Gavin needs to buy some of his own knee pads that he has, you know, that he has told people that he's gonna have, uh, you know, and sell on his website. Like we have had so many uh progressive institutions bend the knee, right? Oh yeah. I was working at the University of Michigan. Oh, disappointing. When they revoked the care of trans youth. Disappointing. And so this is, you know, we we have to remind our entire party, and this is why we need to flood the the halls of our state houses and the state senate and and the governor's mansion with progressives. And I think that our party really needs to move forward in that direction.

SPEAKER_03 24:32

I just got chills. I believe it so much. Uh let's shift to the economy. One of the main priorities of your campaign site is economic fairness. How should we reshape the Michigan economy to better serve people rather than corporations? And this is the question that I've been waiting for an answer from any elected official of any stripe for the last 10 years since we started Femmes for Dumbs. Love to know what you think and if you're gonna carry that out when you're elected.

SPEAKER_00 25:05

Yeah, well, Lori, we're gonna get along because I am vowing to be a politician who actually answers the damn questions. Hallelujah. Right? Like Hallelujah. Yes. And I get so frustrated when we when we get non-answers, right? Um every Democrat right now is talking about affordability. And even Donald Trump is talking about affordability. Like Republicans are calling it a Democratic hoax, but we know, we know that affordability is a huge problem, right? But I'm gonna, I am actually going to go after affordability in a very different way. And I think that this comes from hearing, as I said, the cry of my people in the in my district, right? The cry of the people in our district are talking over and over about how unfairly they are being treated in their jobs, right? And so I think one of the number one ways that I want to go after economic fairness and the affordability crisis is fighting bad corporate behavior. We have companies who have, if you've seen the ratios of pay from CEOs to the to the moderate or the middle of the pay scales within these companies, they are outrageous. I mean, you're talking like 500,000s to one, right?

SPEAKER_03 26:19

And and back in the 50s and 60s, the CEO would make maybe three times as much as that middle exactly.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

Back when America was great. When America was great, right. Like that's the thing. We have what's called a K economy. And so a K economy says the rich are getting richer and the rest of us are getting. Holy shit. That's the strong visual. That is right. Exactly. I love that quote from uh from the the late great theological text of Moneyball that says, you know, there are rich teams and there are poor teams, and then there's 50 feet of crap, and then there's us. This is our economy right now. And it is because of poor corporate behavior. For example, I work in spiritual care in hospitals now. That's what I do professionally. I am a chaplain in emergency and ICU and end of life. Um, I got the only full-time job in my field within maybe a hundred miles. You're kidding me. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

So But everyone's dying in hospitals and needing spiritual guidance and care.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

When I started my residency at the University of Michigan a year ago, maybe a year and a half ago, there was a lot of full-time jobs in my field everywhere. My my advisors, oh, don't worry, there's going to be plenty of jobs. As soon as Trump got elected, as soon as, you know, Republicans took over this economy. Now, when I graduated from the University of Michigan with my clinical pastoral education, there was one full-time job in the area. The rest of them had been changed to part-time and contingent jobs. We need to get tough on corporations who are replacing full-time jobs with part-time jobs and contingent jobs just so that they don't have to pay the insurance, so they don't have to have the risk. We need to get tough on these companies. We need to, we need to close the loopholes when it comes to these behaviors. And also when they're, you know, when they're trying to get sweetheart deals on their taxes, um, can the rest of us get that? I I don't get that in my home. So, like, you know, but these companies can't afford it. They can afford it. And so we need to get tougher on these companies and their behavior.

SPEAKER_03 28:26

So that is a goal to try to curtail these corrupt, the corrupt influence of DTE and other regulated, and I say that loosely, utilities. So, do you support the ballot initiatives that are out there right now? Invest in my kids and Michiganders for money out of politics?

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Yes, I've signed both of them. Um, I work with the Downriver Schools Coalition, um, which is a group of uh, you know, education activists within our within our area who uh have been leading this charge in our area specifically. Um I have I have sat in many of their meetings. I go to their meetings almost every month just to listen and to support and to um to support our educators. I talk to children.

SPEAKER_03 29:14

And that's regarding the invest in my kids in my kids where if a single person makes more than $500,000 a year and one million for joint funding. Yeah, a million for joint. Anybody in this big office doing that right now, making more than that? I don't think so. Um then they'll pay an additional tax that will go directly into the schools to help raise, because we're near the bottom of 50 states right now when we used to be near the top. Uh so that's the invest in my kids.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Yeah, so I will I support that. I have, I've signed it. Um, and I also to get money out of politics, I know the people who have been running the ballot initiative in our area. They go to every Democratic club. I have signed that as well. Um, I support it. And as I said, I will not take corporate money. My my primary challengers have taken corporate money and they will take corporate money. Um, and and it is something that we just have to get out because DTE is getting these sweetheart deals because they have these legislators in their pockets.

SPEAKER_03 30:16

Even Republicans are on board. A lot of Republicans are on board to make sure that money out of politics is a thing.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Right. It's gonna be hard for these utilities to even get a meeting with me. Like it, you know, is that like that's the level of no thank you that I want with my legislative work. I don't uh they are not gonna have a seat at my table.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

I'm very impressed by you. Um we have one more question. I knew I liked you. We have one we have one more question. And um so what do you think the biggest threat to the state of Michigan is right now? I'm really interested to hear what you're gonna say. Christian nationalism.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

Okay. Christian nationalism is the number one threat to our state, to our nation, to our municipalities. I call it trickle-down crap, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:07

Trickle-down crap, I like it.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Trick down crap. We have the Heritage Foundation who has totally jumped into bed with our president, and they're and their policies have gotten their way into our our uh Congress, and those things have started to trickle into, and we now have a state house, we have Republicans in the state of Michigan who are mimicking what they see from the top. Christian nationalism, I was trained in this, okay? So I was trained when I was a pastor to uphold what is called the Seven Mountains Mandate. What the Seven Mountains Mandate is, is it says instead of just trying to get Christians to come into our church, what we're going to do is we're going to raise up leaders to take over society. And so each what they do is they raise up leaders and they say, okay, we want you to go run for office. We want you to become the CEO of this corporation, we want you to go make movies, we want you to be in these different areas of influence within our world. And what's happening right now is that we have a religious ideology that is trying to force its interpretation of what they think morality is on everyone else. I hear it each and every day from the statehouse floor. We hear it every day in the committees in our statehouse. We hear, and I think what's important is to have leaders who can hear Christian nationalism coming a hundred miles away rather than when it's right on top of us, right? We need to be able to hear when it's coming before it even becomes a problem. You know, and we hear this sometimes in invocations in the statehouse. I've heard rep Wolford, you know, just have some some real bonkers prayers, you know, to begin our our state house.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

Which we shouldn't be praying in state government under any circumstances.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

It is a wild thing.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

And as someone who works in religion, you know, disgusting.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

You know, we've heard. So I think the number one threat we have to deal with is Christian nationalism. And I think we need leaders who are competent to know what they're hearing and listening for so that they can fight it at every turn, even at its root, before it even grows. Um, because we've seen the results of what the Heritage Foundation has tried to do. Moms for Liberty is deeply steeped in Christian nationalism in a biblical worldview, which what the hell is that, right? The Bible doesn't say anything, it's interpreted by people. Um, so I think these a lot of our most, a lot of our worst ideas right now in this country and in this state are coming out of uh Christian nationalism, and we have to be able to fight it. It's the biggest existential threat to all of our uh public policy right now.

SPEAKER_03 33:49

Joanna Whaley, I wish you well, and I'm gonna do what I can to make sure that people know about you because you're speaking truth to power about what religion should be. And I thank you so much for coming on for the sake of the argument today. Be well.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

A huge thanks to Distill Social for giving us permission to use this podcast recording. Uh thanks to Lori Goldman for her interview and her time, uh, to Julie and her team, and to uh our campaign team, uh, campaign director Isaac Shore, field director Selena Peters, our uh campaign researcher is Patrick. Uh so thank you so much for all of you who contribute to this campaign. And you, the listener, can contribute to this campaign as well by going to Joannawaley.com and clicking the donate button and supporting our campaign as we fight to win this year.