Host and "Movement Meteorologist" Ejeris Dixon welcomes Sendolo Diaminah, co-director of The Carolina Federation.
Ejeris Dixon sits down with organizer, strategist, and Carolina Federation co-director Sendolo Diaminah for a powerful conversation about what it takes to build a political home strong enough to confront the Far Right. Sendolo shares the story of how workplace organizing and a clear-eyed assessment of power led him to help build one of North Carolina’s most significant independent political organizations. Together, Ejeris and Sendolo explore voter suppression, the criminalization of mass participation, and why the fight against fascism requires movements that can organize and overwhelm systems designed to keep people from power.
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Podcast production by Phil Surkis
The following is presented to you in “around sound.” It was recorded with whatever was lying around.
Sendolo
We're hoping we can have a conversation with everyday people, that what's really going on in this period is that these people who sold you these lies are now exposed. And you are welcome to join a movement that says enough.
Ejeris
Hi friends, welcome to The Fascism Barometer. I'm Ejeris Dixon, your movement meteorologist. And The Barometer is an educational project where we learn together what fascism is, how to stay safe, and how to create democracy and liberation for all of us.
As a black queer feminist, I exist at the intersections of communities that fascists see as the enemy. And for a really long time, I have desired a way for us to understand and measure the threat of fascism and how it impacts all of us. So here on The Fascism Barometer, episode by episode, we work to learn what fascism is and what we can do about it.
And as barometers measure pressure, we unpack the pressure that fascism puts on all of us. I'm going to quickly say here that we are so grateful to all of you that listen, that use the listening guides and the resources that we put out, and support and share the barometer. And we are currently in the process of doing some fundraising.
So if you're able to and a fan of the work, please donate to The Fascism Barometer at fascismbarometer.org, and it'll support us to keep creating educational content for all of you. So now when we talk about fascism here, we're often talking about a far right, radically conservative mass movement of people who've taken over the Republican Party in the US. Fascists tend to believe that they should rule society, and society should mirror their image, and that their rightful place has been taken from them by communities that they see as undesirable.
So it's a movement based in revenge, and it's what folks call ultra-nationalist, or motivated by a deep pride, almost a worship of their nation at the expense of others. So it's an incredibly violent movement, and people within fascist movements, they see themselves as victims who are being persecuted by oppressed communities. Therefore, they seek to harm, arrest, cause violence to, deport marginalized communities, political opponents, and to get rid of democratic systems and practices. Or really, they want to get rid of anyone that can get in their way, and any system or process that can help them.
So these movements and beliefs have existed even before the word fascism was coined in Italy. Fascism has existed in the United States for quite a while.
And the strategies of violence, the removal of rights, the processes of imprisoning communities and resistance leaders that have been used here in the US have been a blueprint for fascist movements around the world. So there's a lot to name here, and we'll keep discussing this definition throughout this season.
So I'm looking at The Fascism Barometer today, and its reading continues to be very high.
And now, we've been discussing fascism together for three years. And in that time, on all the indicators that we review, the power of fascist movements in this country has increased. Now recently, there have been a series of Supreme Court decisions that have increased the power of the fascist government.
There's a ceasefire in the war on Iran that has kind of unceased or unraveled, leading to continued war, violence and instability, and continued attacks on activists, resistance organizations and targeted communities. But in all of these challenges, we're seeing increased anger, discontent, and an increased willingness to make change in local communities. So yes, the fascism barometer is rising, and yes, we are building power.
And this year is a critical one in how we turn the tide in the struggle. I know we can navigate this storm, and I believe we will come out the other side, but we're going to need all of us. And as you know, fascism is best fought with massive amounts of people power.
And that's what we're building together. Thank you for listening and joining our movements. Before we get to today's conversation on building governing power, here are the latest updates in fascism.
Welcome to the Fascism Roundup. In this segment, we talk about current trends in fascism in the United States. There's so much happening in the news that this is just a snapshot.
So according to the LA Times, President Trump's financial disclosure forms reveal that his personal income has soared, and it soared to 2.2 billion in the first year of his second term. And due to this, there's a growing backlash against Trump using the presidency to enrich himself, and there should be. This is horrible, and it's huge.
There's a lot of people who were manipulated into voting for Trump because they thought he would lower prices, that he would improve the economy, that he would improve the economic realities for their lives. And this is something that fascists do. There is a scholar and researcher, Ruth Ben-Giott, who has a body of work around strongmen, which is another way to talk about authoritarian leaders and fascist leaders.
And in it, she talks about how it's pretty common for these leaders to use public office as a way to enrich themselves and to increase their private profits. So I guess we would chalk this up to to being both terrible, but not surprising. Now for the rest of the roundup, we're gonna focus in on the Supreme Court, but it's not the only thing that's happened in fascism.
There are more activists who've been given large horrible sentences connected to the protest at the Prairieland Ice Jail. There's a new Florida law that's targeting Muslim organizations and activists. So there's a lot. And for any stories we didn't get to cover, we've added information to the Resource Hub, and we're gonna discuss more in future episodes.
So now in the past two weeks, the Supreme Court has taken several steps to expand the power of the president, and also really increase its own power over lower courts and away from other branches of government. Recently it upheld Trump's ability to fire the heads of independent federal agencies, everything from labor to product safety to nuclear energy, with the sole exception of the Federal Reserve.
And there's a history within fascist and authoritarian regimes of consolidating power under the leader, and then removing the ability to challenge the leader. This is another step in that history. Additionally, the Supreme Court ruled that the Department of Homeland Security has full discretion to end temporary protected status, which strips protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitian immigrants and Syrian immigrants, and potentially hundreds of thousands of other immigrants.
Now losing this status can be devastating. The court removed one of the few remaining judicial checks on the executive branch's ability to end immigration protections. This ruling can lead to people who were previously documented becoming undocumented, putting people at risk of deportation.
And also, it makes it harder to challenge these decisions. With the recent news that ICE or Immigration Enforcement has detained more than 10,000 people, 10,000 people, in the last five days, and that's doubling the amount of people who are usually arrested weekly, we've really got to keep an eye on the targeting of immigrants and continue to resist. And this is a familiar part of the fascist playbook, using citizenship laws to redefine who counts as a member of the nation, quote-unquote nation, right?
And exclude targeted groups the way that Germany's Nuremberg Laws stripped Jewish people and Black Germans and Roma people and many others of legal citizenship. The Supreme Court also ruled that Trump's executive order trying to end birthright citizenship was unconstitutional. So that order tried to ensure that children born in the United States were no longer citizens if their parents weren't citizens.
Now, this is a win for our communities, but it's also concerning. It's a very close ruling, five to four. And you see, fascism doesn't just stop because it loses in court.
Trump immediately posted on Truth Social that the ruling was too bad for our country, but we can easily make it up in Congress through legislation. And that's a direct quote. And Stephen Miller, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, has named that the administration in response will consider barring pregnant tourists or pregnant immigrants from entering the country, which is an incredibly fascist idea.
The Supreme Court also in a six to three decision upheld Idaho and West Virginia laws barring transgender girls and women from participating in girls and women's school sports teams. This decision reinforces similar laws in at least 25 other states opening the door for more states to pass similar bans. And this has broad implications.
This is part of an all out attack on trans communities. And we've seen time and time again that removing rights is just a step that fascists use to justify more harm, more violence, imprisonment, more. The Supreme Court also made a few big decisions about elections right before the midterms in November.
It struck down limits on how much money political parties can spend in direct coordination with their own candidates. This opens the door for an incredibly high amount of money to flow directly into individual campaigns at a scale we haven't seen before, right before the November elections. On the other side, the court let stand Mississippi's law allowing mail in ballots postmarked by election day to be counted for up to five days afterwards.
A win that also preserves similar laws in 18 states and in DC, the District of Columbia. This comes after Trump signed an executive order seeking a strict election day cutoff and has repeatedly claimed without evidence that mail-in voting drives fraud. He's also pushed the Save America Act in Congress, which would restrict mail-in voting nationwide.
Over time, this can mean our votes matter less. But in order to fight this, we need to continue to organize our people. And in good news around how we organize our people, we're seeing evidence of the efforts to build power against rising fascism.
According to Mother Jones, Democrats across the country are smashing down ballot recruitment records and fielding Democrats in races we haven't seen in decades. For example, Minnesota has a Democrat running for every state legislative race. Texas is fielding candidates for every legislative seat.
In Arizona and South Carolina, and in all but two seats in North Carolina, candidates are running for every seat trying to break Republican strongholds, MAGA strongholds, fascist strongholds. In New Hampshire, every Senate seat is being contested, and a majority of statehouse seats as well. And in New York City, all of Mayor Mamdani's endorsed candidates for Congress won their primaries. From Brad Lander to Claire Valdez to Daria Lisa Avila Chevalier. So this shows us if we keep clear-eyed on how we build power, we can do this y'all.
I'm very excited to welcome Sendolo Diaminah to The Fascism Barometer. Sendolo is the co-director of the Carolina Federation, a statewide organization that brings people together across race to build a new political majority in North Carolina, one rooted in a culture of belonging and strong enough to win elections and wield governing power in North Carolina. She's a strategist with over 15 years of experience in community and electoral organizing, as well as experience winning and holding elected office.
Before founding the Federation, Sendolo worked as the training director at Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, also known as BOLD, where he developed somatically-based leadership curriculum for organizers and executive directors. I've known Sendolo for a really long time, and I'm consistently inspired. Sendolo is a visionary, a strategist, and a tactician.
And I can't tell you how hard it is to hold all three of those lanes. I'm constantly learning from our conversations, and I've been overjoyed ever since Sendolo started the Carolina Federation. I've watched with admiration how an idea became an organization, and then became a force to be reckoned with in both North Carolina politics, but in national power building overall.
Welcome to the Barometer, my friend.
Sendolo
Thank you, love. Thank you. I feel special.
What an intro.
Ejeris
It's the intro you deserve, my love. It's the intro you deserve. So it's our third season.
It's our third year of the Barometer. And I would love to start with asking you, where do you think we are on the Fascism Barometer and why?
Sendolo
Well, if I were to say a 10 was like full throttle.
Ejeris
Yep.
Sendolo
Right?
Ejeris
Ultimate fascist.
Sendolo
Ultimate fascist, like we missed all the off-ramps. And now we are going to have to do everything from the inside. And one is the fascists have a good plan, but they haven't started implementing it.
I think that we are at a six or a seven.
Ejeris
Okay.
Sendolo
And that's starting with a vibe. As I was just kind of feeling into it, okay, now as I think more past feelings, I'm thinking seven, eight. And that's really coming from the deployment of state entities in order to repress and intimidate, the level of attacks on organizations.
I'm thinking about the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, who was raided by the FBI recently because of their incredible work around moving people into action, both in community organizing and policy, and moving folks into action around elections. They're just good at what they do. And the weaponization of the FBI, I'm thinking about as I'm sure folks who've been following your podcast are watching as well, the cusp and border patrol and ICE deployments that have been happening.
I am thinking about the election interference from the executive branch that's going on right now, and the attempt by the Trump administration to extend the power of the federal government, which they control, into county boards of elections, trying to get voter rolls, and trying to get, you know, it's a pretty fundamental shift in constitutional power. The US Constitution says that elections are run by states, not by the federal government, and the attempt of the Trump administration, through the FBI and other entities, to intimidate and to extract information and voter rolls from county level institutions, I think is a very big leap from where we were before.
You know, before we were talking about their claims, their ridiculous claims, about voter fraud and their refusal to recognize election results and their attempts to get election administrators to participate in their foolishness, and then their kind of extra state intimidation. Now that they're actually in control of the federal administration, their attempt to disrupt and interrupt elections, I think is at a whole other level. So all of those things together is what has me at the 7-8.
Ejeris
Yeah. 7-8, it's like we can turn it around, but this is dangerous.
Sendolo
Yeah, incredibly. I mean, I think once civil disobedience and elections are so criminalized or repressed, that they cease to become vehicles for mass participation.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Sendolo
That puts us in a completely different place than we are right now. I don't think we're yet there. I think it is possible that in this year's midterms, we will reach that threshold or part of what we're going to be fighting about in this year's elections is whether or not we cross that threshold or our movements are able to divert things away from that threshold.
Ejeris
Yeah. That's an incredibly clear marker. I'm so appreciative of that.
We've got a couple of themes this season and elections are one of the big themes. I remember before the Carolina Federation existed. I think we were in North Carolina just talking.
Maybe I cooked. There was food.
Sendolo
You definitely cooked.
Ejeris
And I would love for you to share the story of the creation of the Carolina Federation, because my memory is that there are particular types of interventions you were trying to make with power and power building. And so I would love for you to tell us the story of the Carolina Federation and what building power kind of means to you in the communities that you're from in North Carolina.
Sendolo
Yeah, I think I'll start with a story. I had kind of burnt out of activism in New York, not hating on New York, I love New York.
Ejeris
No, no, I know. It's tough here.
Sendolo
But I had burnt out of that work and had moved to North Carolina actually thinking that I was going to leave organizing and I was going to become a sustainable farmer. And in order to get into the training program for that, I had to raise money and I came out of working in hotels and waiting tables. And so I was working in a hotel.
And very classic, the front desk staff, black folks, Jamaican, African-American, the hospitality staff, all immigrant Latinas. The head of housekeeping were these two South Asian folks, a couple who lived in the hotel and were kind of indentured by the folks who had brought them over as their quote, unquote, family and kind of kept them under control with visas. And then the white general manager.
And the white general manager would pit all these groups against each other. And I speak very bad Spanish. So I would joke with people basically.
And I had a relationship with a lot of the different folks. And we started learning that all of our wages were being stolen. Like literally we'd put in our time cards and then we'd get our checks and there would be hours missing.
And my coworkers were basically like, so you're telling me you know how to do this organizing stuff and you're not going to help? And they basically peer pressured me into getting back into organizing. And there was a particular moment where we did not have a union.
What we had was each other and the knowledge that we had. And we were like, we know that when the holidays come, we have a lot of leverage because if we all quit, they're going to lose a lot of money. We threatened to and we got back wages.
We got a public apology for racism. And then they tried to recruit me to management. But that moment was really important to me because I was like, this is in my soul.
This is work that I need to do. And the amount of stories that our folks had about each other and my own struggles with some of the homophobia among my coworker and some of the pain that that caused me, all of that together had to be transformed in order for us to become a force that could challenge management. And that really pushed me into a place of wanting to make a contribution to creating a new people, being like there can be a new us that can really confront the things that keep us apart and the things that keep us all at the bottom of society.
So that was a heart initiation for me. At that point, I was strongly anti-electoral. And I got into public education, public housing organizing from there.
And we kept going to elected officials, asking them for shit. And at about the same time, the far right captured state government, both houses of the legislature and the governorship. And they just started slashing and burning.
And it was really clear to me, this is about 2010, it was really, really clear to me that the work that I was doing at the local level, if I kept doing it for the rest of my life, we would be worse, like there would be less affordable housing, there would be less public education, even if I ground myself to dust. The things that I was doing were never going to even balance the attacks that they were making. So it became very, very clear to me that governing power was essential and that entering into the electoral arena was a necessity, it wasn't a moral question, it was a strategic question.
And my co-founder, Theo Lupke, had been doing electoral organizing much longer than me, and he is from Durham, I'm not from Durham, and he had been trying to talk sense into me for a long time. And he was like, basically, you ready? And we kind of brought our two experiences together in order to start Durham for All.
Well, at that time, it wasn't Durham for All, it was just to start running elections. I ran for school board a year later, our comrade Jillian Johnson ran for city council, and we just kind of built off of that. We kept winning, and we were like, oh, thousands of people actually want to say yes to this vision.
So we built an organization out of that, Durham for All. And from there, continued to kind of fuse community organizing and electoral work, and got very clear that while it was working in Durham, we weren't yet at a scale at the state level to be able to combat what we had originally been looking at. And so the Carolina Federation came out of the response to the far right, and the response to success in the resonance among our people of saying we need a political home for folks who want to create this new people and who want to defeat the right.
Ejeris
Yep. I'm still loving the vision. I'm still loving the vision.
And it sounds like there's this piece around you had to transform yourself to be able to be in the kind of transformation of others and the work. And one of the stories that is less told is around the role of progressives and some of our anti-electoral tendencies that as we add them together really become questions about power.
Sendolo
Yeah.
Ejeris
How we grapple with power. Do we believe we should have power? Do we think power is good?
Are we trying to get power? Right. All of those types of questions.
So I'm curious around when you are talking to people, because I'm sure that whether it's community members who feel like their votes may not mean a lot, or leftists who are like anti-electoral, everything. How do you speak to people about the role of elections and power building? Like, do you see it as an inherit necessity?
Do you see it as a current necessity?
Sendolo
I don't know if I think of anything strategically as inherent. I guess I could say I think short of fascism, which has existed and controlled the South for long periods of US history.
Ejeris
Yes, centuries.
Sendolo
You know, for longer than electoral democracy has existed. But outside of conditions where that's the case, I think the structure of this country is such that engaging in elections is absolutely essential for the kind of political struggle that needs to happen. And in this particular historical moment, one way I think to talk about it is restoring an integrated strategy for political power.
Because I think part of what happened really post-reconstruction with the defeat of reconstruction was the fragmentation of vehicles of power building, and that essentially the ruling class in this country wanted to cut off elections as a vehicle through which popular movements could exercise real power. And that wasn't just telling people that their vote didn't matter. It was literally creating structures that made it difficult for people's vote to matter.
You know, like, so whether we're talking about the creation of Jim Crow, like literally being invented, not just for the economic exploitation, it was definitely that, but also very literally and specifically in the state of North Carolina being like, we need black people to stop voting if we are going to defeat reconstruction.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Sendolo
If we are going to defeat this populist, multiracial struggle to bring down economic elites. So the attack on electoral power by fascists was one of the reasons that people felt that. The same thing happened with the populist movement that was post-reconstruction, where mostly white and black sharecroppers came together and tried to wield electoral power and got close.
And many of the two-party system structures that we have now that prevent third-parties or prevent parliamentary approaches to elections were invented in response to the success of previous movements. And the Republican Party of the Civil War and Reconstruction could have never come into existence under the current rules that we have now, and that is not an accident. So when we talk to people about who are like, my vote doesn't matter, we start with a like, it makes sense, like it makes sense that you're saying that, like let's talk about like, yeah, in our state, the gerrymandering, the drawing of lines, intentionally in order to dilute, disappear the votes of in particular black folks.
Literally in the last electoral cycle in 24, there was an attempt, we were in an election around our state Supreme Court, and literally our opponent tried to get thousands of votes thrown out. He was like, oh, I think these 15 or 16,000 votes, he was like, I just want them removed, I just want them canceled in the election. And so the fact that people are like, I feel like my vote doesn't matter, makes sense giving the rigged rules, and we talked to people about that.
We are clear that the current electoral structure is designed as a rigged game. The strategy of our organization is to overwhelm that rigging. That is fundamentally what we are trying to do.
And we're basically like, my friend Aaron, I think he's quoting Cornell West often when he says this, that the ruling class is powerful, but not all powerful. And that time and time again in history, it has been possible for masses of people to overwhelm the schemes and the structures that the ruling class puts in place in order to try to keep us at bay. And that is the strategy of our organization.
We ask people to join us in overwhelming their systems of disenfranchisement by bringing their folks in mass into election. And we defeated our opponent in 2024 and got Allison Riggs re-elected to the state supreme court because we were able to move masses of people into action and we won by just over 700 votes. So the question of whether or not your vote matters to us isn't a question of, should you trust the system?
The question of whether your vote matters is whether or not you're organizing matters, whether or not you are part of bringing masses of people into the process of struggle against a group of people who want to disenfranchise us, not just politically, but economically, spiritually, I could go on. That's how we think about that work. We don't spend a lot of time trying to convince leftists who think that elections aren't essential.
We just point to our work and we're like, this is what we're doing. If you would like to join us, we would love to have you because leftists are some of the most committed folks in our bones, our souls about the kind of change that we want to see. And we just hope that our work demonstrates the worthiness of this work for people to put their souls into.
Ejeris
And I would love to kind of for our listeners talk about what you've built over time. So it started with you and Theo. Take me through the years.
Like, where are we at in terms of scale, in terms of membership, in terms of the elections chapters? Where are you at these days?
Sendolo
Yes. So our staff started with me and Theo, the two of us. And I had actually recently left leadership of Durham for All, which at the time, I think maybe we had two staff people, but I didn't have no salary.
You know, like.
Ejeris
Yes, baby. I know. I know.
Sendolo
You know? And yeah, so we started with two staff people. I think we're at about 40 now.
And we started in Guilford County where Greensboro is in Forsyth County, where Winston-Salem is, and in New Hanover where Wilmington is, and built those chapters. And we are actually now Durham for All merged into the Carolina Federation. So there are those four chapters, and then we're building a chapter now in Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is the largest metro area in the state.
And so our piece of the pie that we contribute to the North Carolina ecosystem is organizing the major metro areas in North Carolina. We have not yet started a chapter in Wake County where Raleigh is, or in Asheville, but that is where we focus our work. And in 2024, we were the largest voter contact operation in the state.
That was just kind of astounding to me. You know, I grew up working class, black person raised by my mama. Like I was like millions of dollars, I'm in charge of millions of dollars.
You know, like my co-director, Jen Fry and I look at our budgets and we're like, wow, okay, this is what we're responsible for. So yeah, we are now one of the major players in elections and politics in our state in terms of electing and unelecting people. Earlier this year, in the primary, we unseated one of the Democrats who were voting with the far right in order to override the governor's veto.
This woman, Carla Cunningham, who was cutting up right now and was one of the people who was absent from the vote that happened two days ago where the far right created a law to turn our state highway patrol into immigration agents. And Carla Cunningham in Charlotte, North Carolina, stepped out of the room on purpose, which allowed them to get the supermajority to override the governor's veto.
So we went after her earlier this year because she had supported another anti-immigrant, anti-worker bill that the far right had put forward. And so one of our roles in the state is removing people from office who are in the cities and counties where working class people and black folks in particular are the majority and saying, you can't represent us if these are the kind of politics that you're putting forward. And we do that alongside a lot of our other partners.
I'm thinking about Unite Here, the union is another powerful partner of ours in the state. Siembra NC, who is leading the work right now around the law, I was just mentioning, they do Latinx organizing, an incredible organization who helped to really lead the work against Custom and Border Patrol's attacks in Charlotte, North Carolina. So we're part of an ecosystem with those organizations.
Ejeris
It's inspiring. What you're doing is inspiring. I want to zoom in on the midterms.
And here for y'all, what do you think is possible and what's at stake for your organization and in North Carolina in general
Sendolo
Yeah. I'm taking a beat because I've been so nose to the grindstone about this. And to be honest, often I'm like, what does the work require right now versus like, what are the ups and downs of the things that are going on?
Because there's so much that's going on and kind of staying right in front of the work keeps me grounded. But, you know, MAGA, the far right, the fascist movement in this country made a lot of populist promises. And all those checks are bouncing.
Ejeris
Lying ass liars.
Sendolo
You know, like y'all remember when the 2024 election was happening, like Democrats are responsible for all this inflation. Girl, if the amount of inflation that's been happening over the last year had been happening then, these fools would have been unhinged.
Ejeris
Yeah. Yeah. And then what did Trump say?
Like, I like the inflation?
Right.
I like the inflation. Like, we can't track words that were said.
Sendolo
No. And, you know, you know this. I'm sure your listeners know this, that so much of the Fascist playbook is playing fast and loose with, oh, I said this doesn't mean that.
You know, and that kind of fundamental gaslighting of whole countries is part of their orientation. And people are feeling the pain. Like, their ploy was to dupe people and say, oh, this is for, in particular, white men, American class white men, y'all are about to live it up.
And the amount of suffering that they have been dishing out is just extraordinary.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Sendolo
And that's showing up. That's showing up. People are feeling that.
The levels of approval, the levels of dissatisfaction, the levels of disillusionment that are happening among the MAGA base, I think are significant. I think they're very, very significant. In our state, Phil Berger, who was the leader of the MAGA Republicans in the Senate, the state Senate, lost his primary earlier this spring, which is unprecedented.
It's incredible. And he lost it. No, the guy who beat him is not some left revolutionary.
He is still a Republican. And he's still a conservative. He's a bit more of a kind of like a traditional conservative, but he's also like a populist.
He is an actual populist. And the Educators Union did a May Day rally, and he attended. And he was like, I think we need to support public education.
Ejeris
Okay.
Sendolo
So this is the guy who defeated Phil Berger. And this is evidence that something is happening inside of what is a fascist party. And I think that disruption in the enemy camp is very important.
That's one of the things that is happening in this midterm. It's not just about elections. That is true.
But there are real shifts and conflicts happening inside of the fascist party that I think has the opportunity, if not to break it apart, to weaken and disorganize it in such a way that we can make more interventions. In response to that, the people who currently have the reins in their hand of MAGA are tightening their grip. And so in North Carolina, what that means is so many reactionary bills are now being moved quickly before Berger loses his seat.
And so this anti-immigrant, anti-worker, repressive bill that I was talking about with the State Highway Patrol is a reflection of that. They are also making a very big move right now. They are putting at least two constitutional amendments on the ballot, both of which are designed to choke revenue for public services and to basically be giveaways to the wealthy and corporations with a fig leaf, with a cloak of a few dollars to working people.
And so they are defunding our public schools in a massive way, billions of dollars every year by dropping the corporate tax rate to zero over time. Like these are the kinds of things that they're implementing. And they are like very quickly, how do we dismantle the public services while increasing the repressive aspects of the state?
So this year, in our elections, there will be two tax ballot initiatives for amending our state constitution to put a cap on income taxes and to constrain local property taxes, both of which are major mechanisms through which our public schools and other public services are funded. And so for us, they're basically trying to distract folks from their utter failure, not even just failure, to help people, the active harm that they are doing.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Sendolo
Which in North Carolina includes their obscene failure to support hurricane recovery. They're trying to distract from that by saying, aren't your taxes too high? But they are not actually providing real tax relief for everyday people, hidden within each one of those things as actually huge tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.
And while everyday people might save $100 a year through these tax giveaways, wealthy folks and corporations are saving tens of thousands of dollars with these giveaways. So that is at stake. Really, are we telling the story about who's suffering and who's benefiting in this moment?
We're hoping we can have a conversation with everyday people that what's really going on in this period is that these people who sold you these lies are now exposed and you are welcome to join a movement that says enough. Part of that means also voting down these amendments, we hope, which if we succeed, shifts... What is both old neoliberal and the new fascist kind of thing about being like taxes are a terrible thing that government is stealing your money and you shouldn't trust the government except for our police?
Ejeris
Yes, yes, this branch is fine.
Sendolo
This branch is fine.
Ejeris
This branch is fine.
Sendolo
One of the things that's at stake in North Carolina is, can we actually change the story? Can we change the story too? Taxes are one of the ways that wealthy people are robbing our country, our children and our future.
And what we could have instead is true public investment, protecting working people from taxes that overburden us, and requiring wealthy people and the corporations to pay what they owe so we can live well. Like, that's what we're trying to shift the conversation to.
Ejeris
This conversation is stunning and I want so much in it, but I can't talk to you forever. Well, I can, but I can't talk to you here forever. We're seeing pockets of some really inspirational electoral work.
You're leading one of those pockets. We're seeing some of that here in New York City. But then we're also seeing a lot of places where people are upset with the Democrats.
It feels like there's a lot of confusion still coming out of the Democratic Party. So from team winning, what is the special sauce? Like when we're feeling that so many of the Democrats are disappointing us or losing or confused, and y'all are winning, what's your special sauce?
Sendolo
I know what you're getting at. What's coming up for me is old church lady things in my mind. It was just like, oh, pride goes before the fall.
Ejeris
I'm not asking you to brag. I am asking you to educate.
Sendolo
Yeah. I think the reason I want to say that is, there are choices that we have made that I think have set us up to face this moment, and I do think other people can make similar choices. I think at the core, it's this:
We are not a grievance group relating to the Democratic Party. We are an independent political organization that is insisting on governing, and we have a strategic orientation towards the Democratic Party, where we will operate inside or outside of it in order to accomplish our governing power agenda. If we either feel optimistic that the Democrats will become what we hope for them to be, or we are pessimistic that they ain't shit those are both distractions from asking the question, how are we going to be the people who govern, and what are the possible options in front of us?
And so for us, it's not that we're like, aha, the wonderful Democratic Party is a concrete analysis of concrete conditions, the best vehicle through which for us to move candidates, either to block the right or we're actually our champions, right, to build what we're talking about, in North Carolina right now is through the Democratic Party. There are other places in the country where the Working Families Party is a fantastic vehicle for doing that work.
It's not some abstract position about, for, or against the Democrats. It is simply asking in your concrete conditions, how can an independent organization of people who want to see fundamental transformation move that through the existing structures outside and inside? And we started that even at our local level.
There's the Democratic Party, there's a group called the Durham Committee for the Affairs of Black People, and an organization called Durham People's Alliance. And we were like, great, at the local level, who actually moves stuff? Well, our assessment was when the Durham People's Alliance makes an endorsement, those people win.
So we need to join the Durham People's Alliance and shape what those endorsements look like. It was a majority-wide organization, still is, but it's been fundamentally transformed by our people's participation in it. Right?
And Durham For All grew up alongside that strategy. Even our orientation towards the Educators Union, it was like we actually need this union to be more powerful. And so our folks who were educators rebuilt that union.
Right? So the question isn't, do existing institutions want to have a revolutionary transformation of society, and are they going to be accountable to us? It's how are we going to build the institutions that we need?
How are we going to move the institutions that exist that we need to move?
Ejeris
I love that. If there's one or two things that our listeners can do to support you to take action, to build power alongside you all, the Carolina Federation, what can we do?
Sendolo
Two things. I think the most important thing right now is actually supporting Siembra NC and their work against the militarization and the weaponization of the highway patrol in our state. And if you are not in the state of North Carolina, I'm like, give them money, give them resources.
Then the second thing is our state will be one of the key battlegrounds in the fight over the US. Senate. And our state is one of the front lines, you know essentially, we've been living maybe at an eight or a nine in the fascist barometer in our state for a while. And this year we have the opportunity to defend another state supreme court seat and potentially actually flip our state house. And one of the ways that folks from all over the country can contribute to those fights and to the fight I was saying about the amendments, the tax window amendments is actually to join our phone banks.
And those won't be starting until later this summer, but folks can start connecting to our organization and signing up for those. We do those jointly with one of our partners Down Home North Carolina. And so those are two things, supporting Siembra NC and joining our phone banks for this fall.
Ejeris
Friend, this has been a master class in power, in building independent political power to achieve goals and dreams that were planned out and plotted many years ago. I'm so grateful to have you on The Fascism Barometer, but I'm so grateful for what you're doing in the world. Thank you for joining us.
We've reached the end of today's episode, and while the pressure continues, I also feel hopeful to keep growing the movement against fascism, and I hope you do too. In this episode, we got to hear from Sendolo Diaminah about what it takes to build substantial political power, and then what's possible when we are honest with people about our strategy. We discussed the term populism a bit, and that might be newer to you.
Here's my best shot at explaining it. Populism is a set of politics that kind of put people into two groups, kind of “the people” and the elites. And the elites are politicians, or rich people, or academics, and populists are anti-elite.
Now, this can occur within progressive politics or on the left and conservative politics on the right. Progressive populists tend to talk about unfair systems and corporate power and how those systems and that power reduces the economic ability for everyday people. Think of how people within Occupy Wall Street used to talk about the 1 percent versus the 99 percent.
Now, right-wing populists have some similarities to fascists, and they often will target immigrants and outsiders, and they also will talk about the system and how the system and politicians are enforcing their way of life on others and oppressing the desires of everyday people. Think of messaging around like drain the swamp, right? How this corrupt system is ruling the lives of an everyday person.
Now, for more information on populism, how it relates to fascism and resistance, we've dropped some resources in the hub at fascismbarometer.org. We appreciate you joining us, and we're working so hard monitoring the fascism barometer for you. Together, we can keep fascism at bay.
So watch the skies and subscribe to this feed, as we have a lot of incredible episodes and conversations coming up. And when you share this show with a friend, you've got it, you fight fascism. Our producer is Phil Surkis.
Our theme is by McLeet Hediro. This podcast is a project of Ejerie Labs. I'm your movement meteorologist, Ejeris Dixon, and see you next time on The Fascism Barometer.