by Kay Curry
Northwest Asia Weekly
City Hall hosts Naomi Ishisaka (right) and Anand Giridaradas (photo by Kai Curry)
Seattle-based journalist Anand Giridharadas and his latest book, “The Persuaders: On the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy,” were greeted warmly at the town hall on Oct. 26 and drew audiences who weren’t ready to let him go, Maybe forever.
Time passed, and both Giridharadas and host Naomi Ishisaka jokingly begged City Hall to ask, “One more question?” “Two more questions?”
They succeeded, then quickly opened fire, “Are you going to run for president?” to which they replied, “No.” Is Trump back? Answer: “I think he might try to do that.”
Giridaladas calls left-wing efforts to discredit Trump a ‘detour’: “The investigation is a detour. Pray for the allegations – detour…dunk on him – detour.” For Giridaradas, All of this is a delay because the country shouldn’t be sitting around waiting for Trump to run again.
“The only work we have to do is build a movement that is bigger, better, more dynamic, more magnanimous, open-minded, more strategic, more fun, more exuberant, more transcendent than they have built. Everything else is A distraction.”
According to Giridharadas, it happens that women of color are very good at launching the movement, and he mentions several in his book, of which he says about a third of them are about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), including those that have never been published before interviewed. Giridhiradas argues that many Democrats are not doing a good job of “persuading” voters to support their cause or candidate.
“The main way to convince Democrats is to persuade by dilution,” says Giridharadas, every cook knows, joking (but not really) that adding water doesn’t make anything taste better. Take health care, a topic of great interest throughout the evening. Barack Obama, in Giridharadas’ eyes, started out as “a bold and lofty ideal” that “everyone should have health care,” but then, to reach people, Especially “white working class”, this ideal is “diluted”. What all this has accomplished, Giridaradas argues, is that those white voters still see people on the left as communists, while the left’s own voters are sad because “you didn’t do what they asked you to do.”
To assuage his own desperation and anger at an “increasingly authoritarian and fascist right,” Giridaladas began interviewing activists like the AOC who he felt knew how to “put things against themselves,” rather than just resist. what does that mean? It incorporates characteristics observed by Giridharadas on the left. One, the left often takes the “high road” — it doesn’t succumb to dirty tactics, so to speak. Second, the left seems to have “written off” fellow citizens as “untouchable, unchangeable, they’re MAGA heads, they’re anti-vaxxers, they’re… trapped in their white privilege…they are It’s never going to change,” so the only method used by the left is “to boycott them, organize around them, mobilize our camp, unite the faithful .
In Giridaladas’ view, these qualities of the Democratic Party are ineffective. To get around this, he found that people like AOC “refused to log out.” Instead, they use technology that not only caters to those already on their side, but also wins over those who are “interested in the idea of building a movement…for progress, for greater inclusion, for continuation and expansion” Democracy, for a society in which we can all thrive” and importantly, “None of them are mild, milk toast, mushy middlemen.”
Giridharadas cites examples such as AOC wearing a dress emblazoned with “tax the rich” to a party.
“She’s been criticized from all sides… what no one among the haters understands is [that] She has the entire United States of America talking about her “three words” for two days, thereby using her fame to bring attention to causes that matter to her. This kind of AOC thrives in a system not designed for minorities or women The method, “Take advantage of cracks and use things against yourself,” resurfaces in response to audience questions about how people of color should “convince” them often at face value.
“This book is for a reason [about a] So many women of color…they’re persuaders,” explains Giridharadas.
“When we think about persuasion…we think about moderates, we think about…white people trying to speak to the middle…it’s really a different book…about some very radical women of color…interested in Some people are less interested in their own movement.” What they’re trying to do is make the left more appealing. “What I’ve written about women of color in particular ties them together, and what separates them from some of their allies is that they’re more focused on the evangelistic side of things. Did we win?” Are we connecting? But they’re both pretty aggressive people, so none of them are like, ‘Let’s cut the bread in half to reach people.’ They’re thinking about a really different set of tools.”
In other words, “How do we throw a better party?” asks Giridharadas and the activists in his book. For the left who lectures too much and doesn’t convince enough, he suggests “more belonging and connection, not just more justice, more facts and figures … that’s not defeating fascism right now.”
In his view, the left must work to make its sensible policies more attractive. For example, who made a video about what universal healthcare actually looks like? nobody. To a local activist who claimed that many supported Washington’s initiative for “holistic health” but no one came forward to help, Giridaladas responded: “I would happily dispute one of the things you said, that the persuasion is done. .”
Halfway through a question, someone’s phone rang. “That could have been a call from my mom,” joked Giridaladas. “Tell her, and I’ll be right back for her.” His demeanor, smooth black boots and rhinestone jeans, voice hoarse with the cold—”Like our democracy, my voice is eroding. I have feelings for them both. hope.”
His biting humor, paired with equally acerbic political commentary, flashed nearly two hours of conversation and ended with a standing ovation.
“There are a lot of forgettable rooms, forgettable places, and forgettable hotel rooms, just the blur of a lot of travel. This is one of the rooms I remember,” Giridaladas said of Seattle and its city hall. “I always remember it was such a committed community.”
Kay can reach info@nwasianweekly.com.
