Host and "Movement Meteorologist" Ejeris Dixon sits down with Adrienne Evans, the Executive Director for United Vision for Idaho.
Ejeris sits down with organizer, sociologist, and United Vision for Idaho Executive Director Adrienne Evans for a powerful conversation about belonging, authoritarianism, and what it really takes to build a movement that can stop rising fascism. Drawing from more than 107,000 conversations across rural communities, Adrienne challenges the idea that people in rural and conservative areas are fixed, unreachable, or already lost. Instead, she makes the case that many people have been waiting for an invitation, for someone to ask what they think and feel, and for movements to stop ceding whole communities to the far right.
Together, Ejeris and Adrienne explore why belonging can be the strongest political force and how deep listening can open up transformation.
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Podcast production by Phil Surkis
The following is presented to you in a “around sound.” It was recorded with whatever was lying around.
Adrienne
So I introduced myself to Randy, the shop owner, and he said, I'm guessing that we're on opposite sides of the political spectrum. And my response was, let's find out. And I went back about six months later with a group of national organizers. And I said, Randy, would you mind showing my friends the Confederate flags that you were selling last time I was here? And he hung his head and he said, no, I can't, because since our last visit, we don't sell those anymore.
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 true 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 long time, I have deeply desired a way for us to understand and measure the threat of fascism and how it impacts all of us. Now, we are so grateful for all of you that listen and support, and we're continuing our fundraising. So please donate at our website, fascismbarometer.org, to support us to keep producing educational resources.
Now, when we talk about fascism here, we mean a far-right, radically conservative, mass movement of people who've taken over the Republican Party. Fascists tend to believe that they should rule society, and that their rightful place has been taken from them.
Fascist movements can exist everywhere, and they are often led by people who are in the majority, and they see themselves as people who are losing power and prominence, and who will soon be in the minority. In this country, fascists believe that white people are superior, that immigrants and people of color and so many communities are less than, but not only less than, that we don't belong here. They believe that women should have fewer rights than men.
They believe that the US is a Christian nation and that all other religions don't belong. They believe a lot of other horrible things. Fascists often see themselves as victims, victims who are being persecuted by oppressed communities, and therefore, they believe they're fighting for their survival. And they seek to eliminate everyone who would oppose that, marginalized communities, their opponents, and democratic systems and practices.
There's a lot to unpack with this definition, and we'll keep working on it throughout the season. Now, in each episode of The Fascism Barometer, 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. So as I'm looking at The Fascism Barometer today, its reading continues to be very high. There are escalating attacks on organizations and activists.
This continued war on Iran, the continued genocide in Palestine, attacks on voting rights, and on immigrant and trans communities. But in all these challenges, we're also seeing people building power to push back against the Make America Great Again movement and its hold on political power. So yes, the fascism barometer is rising, and we are also building power.
But it's a very volatile time, and we're going to need all of us. As we've said before, fascism is best fought with massive amounts of people power. And that's what we're building here together.
Thank you for listening and joining our movements. Now, today's conversation is exciting, and it's about how to recruit people away from fascist movements. But before that, here are the latest updates from the news.
Welcome to the Fascism Roundup. In this segment, we talk about current trends in fascism in the United States. And there is so much happening, as usual, that this is just a snapshot, and we've placed everything we didn't get to and wanted to in the Resource Hub.
So the war on Iran continues, and the US is currently in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program and reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow sea passage where one-fifth of the world's oil is shipped. And despite negotiations, Trump said, and I quote, “I want to give them every last chance before decapitation,” which is terrible.
And he was saying this when he was discussing what would happen if Iran didn't agree to a new deal. But you know who's benefiting from the war on Iran? Oil companies.
According to Democracy Now, in recent quarterly earnings reports, oil companies have been making huge profits due to the rising oil prices. Meanwhile, Trump announced an agreement that would disarm Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza. The agreement would be overseen by the Board of Peace, which is a new international body created by Trump to oversee Gaza's governance and reconstruction. Essentially, Trump attempted to create his own shadow United Nations, except that this one's only accountable to him. Now, despite these agreements, violence continues.
Israel has continued military operations in Gaza despite this ceasefire, with more than 1,250 Palestinians killed since the ceasefire and 4,000 injured. It's horrific. Now as y'all probably know, fascist governments use war and crises to expand power, creating states of emergency, suppressing the opposition, and framing violence as necessary for survival.
Do y'all remember last month when Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the Trump administration would start targeting what they're calling far-left terrorist organizations? Well, it's continuing and escalating. House Republicans have subpoenaed multiple organizations, including Breakthrough News, the People's Forum, and Tricontinental Institute for Social Research.
And this is part of an investigation into tech millionaire Neville Roy Singham. A congressional subpoena is a legal demand. It's a legal demand to produce records or testimony as a part of a congressional investigation.
And if you refuse to comply, it can lead to further legal proceedings and even potentially arrest. But it is different from a subpoena in a court, and I'll leave it to the lawyers to kind of explain more, but we'll drop some resources on our website.
Now, those three groups were named alongside 40 other groups and individuals in a report released by the State Department. And this report is part of a strategy to target Cuba and progressive organizations here in the US. For months, the Trump administration has expanded restrictions on Cuba, labeled its government a national security threat, and increased devastating economic pressure on the island.
The report is playing out this strategy or is naming that Cuba is the force behind leftist organizing in the United States, and that's a huge stretch and it's also a scare tactic. But the administration isn't even trying to hide the tactics that they're drawing from.
The report boasts that McCarthy-era investigations and prosecutions and a slate of anti-communist laws on the state and federal level were effective in dismantling the Communist Party in the 1950s. So they're trying that strategy again. This is exactly what happens when fascist movements gain power.
They move their agenda into policy and they work to target the people they see as enemies. The US's strategy to target opponents of the regime has even raised concerns from the United Nations, which has issued a report where it names that these practices could violate international human rights law. But what do we do?
We must continue to show up for each other. We must support all the groups that are named in this report and are currently being subpoenaed. We must speak out against rising repression and continue to fight for our communities.
Also, the fight around birthright citizenship isn't over. This week, Trump signed two new executive orders aimed at restricting birthright citizenship and to stop what they're calling birth tourism. And this is in response to the Supreme Court rejecting his broader executive order in June.
Birth tourism is when pregnant tourists come to the US intentionally to get their babies citizenship. And we've been seeing the far-right and fascist movements really exaggerate the degree that this is happening. But another part of this executive order is that there's an attempt to expand the categories of US-born children who could be denied citizenship, including those children whose parents are labeled what they call alien enemies or members of designated terrorist organizations.
And we're already seeing how the Trump administration is calling groups who oppose fascism far- left terrorists. So these two things in combination could create a serious problem for just activists in the United States. Now, we know that fascists target citizenship before increasing violence against communities later, just as the Nazis removed citizenship from Jewish people through the Nuremberg laws.We're definitely concerned and we're going to keep monitoring this.
Finally, this week, five states held primary elections that could decide the control of Congress next year. Primaries determine which candidates run in the upcoming general election, and it's usually an election within a party, within the Democratic Party or within Republican parties.
Now, for some districts, there are so many more Democrats or so many more Republicans, that these primaries can effectively decide the general election results. These races have revealed a few key themes.
There's growing frustration over the cost of living.There's a continuing power struggle within the Democratic Party between progressive and socialist wings and the moderate wing of the party. And there is an increasing and concerning influence of outside spending, including spending from pro-Israel groups like American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, also known as AIPAC, and the way that this outside spending is really impacting the election outcomes. So as fascism continues to grow, we need a broad coalition to push back against fascism and to create actual democracy.
These wins highlight the increased power and desire that voters have for more progressive policies that's going to impact what the midterms look like and what the questions and debates are. In a teeny snapshot of the results, in Missouri, former representative Cori Bush lost the Democratic primary to Congress member Wesley Bell, which is definitely a setback and a loss of a prominent progressive voice. Pro-Israel groups spent really heavily here, and former representative Cori Bush was outspent 27 to 1, which just highlights exactly how much outside money is impacting local politics.
But in Michigan, progressive Democrat Dr. Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate primary, defeating representative Haley Stevens in a closely watched race that reflected the broader debate within the Democratic Party between its progressive and moderate wings. This election had a ton of anti-Muslim statements. It had $30 million in spending from or AIPAC, and a total of $60 million in outside spending from a whole collection of groups.
This means that he overcame a 9 to 1 spending advantage. If El-Sayed wins the general election, he would become the first Muslim to serve in the US Senate. Now, there's a lot more to say about these primaries and these races, and some of the information is still in development at the time of this recording. So anything we didn't cover here will include in our resources.
I am beyond excited to welcome Adrienne Evans to the Fascism Barometer. Adrienne is the Executive Director of United Vision for Idaho, an Idaho-based nonprofit and the state's only multi-issue progressive coalition. A sociologist specializing in democracy, authoritarianism, polarization, and movement building, Evans has spent more than 17 years organizing in one of the nation's most conservative states, while building a nationally recognized model for strengthening democratic participation.
While rooted in Idaho, UVI operates the National United Vision Project, a pioneering research and organizing initiative that has conducted more than 107,000 conversations across politically diverse communities, across multiple states, examining authoritarianism, political identity, and democratic resilience. Adrienne and I have shared space multiple times, and it often feels like we're the odd kids out in the democracy conversations, but from very different vantage points. We have a shared passion that social change requires personal transformation, and then actually a shared desire to figure out exactly what that looks like.
I really think that her work is essential to ensuring that all of us, from those who are being manipulated into supporting fascism, and those who are the most targeted by fascist movements, that all of us get to create a future where everyone has the ability to thrive. Thank you so much for joining us, Adrienne.
Adrienne
Oh, it's such a delight to be here with you.
Ejeris
So I always like to start with asking folks, you know, scale of 1 to 10, 10 being like really, really fascist. Where do you think we are on the fascism barometer?
Adrienne
I mean, I think it's difficult to locate on just one spectrum. I would say that we are further along than most people recognize. You know, an example of that, Ejeris, is that when Joe Biden won the 2020 election, so many people were just ready to take the win and move on.
Yet 75 million people still voted for Donald Trump after four years of what should have been a massive wake up call to the country. That kind of division doesn't just go away. And so we can look at all of the horrors of the last year and a half or so, right?
And we can see how we're losing ground constantly. And that power is being concentrated in a way that would have seemed unimaginable to most of us. At the same time, we've done very little to address the division that continues to divide our societies and leads us to the same path regardless of who occupies the White House.
Ejeris
Yeah. I know we've both been in this work for a while. When I, when I started researching fascism, almost I think 10 years ago, it was like so that we could prevent honestly where we are.
And then just being like, okay, well, maybe, maybe at this inflection point, maybe at this point, you know, but there's still so much work to be done. In that vein, I'm really excited about these 107,000 conversations. And I know that a lot of them are focusing on rural communities.
I would love to just hear, what are you learning and particularly if there's anything that was surprising.
Adrienne
Yeah. So a couple of things make this project very different. You know, a lot of people talk about talking to people across difference, and yet very few actually do.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
We were very intentional that we wanted to couple very progressive, left-leaning folks with people who are living in parts of the country where they are actively being recruited, and many of them actively engaged in authoritarian and extremist groups and ideology. So yeah, 13 states, 107,000 conversations. What have we learned?
We learned a lot. One of the things I think in particular that really deserves being lifted up is that in our spaces, so many people say we're not going to go talk to those people.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
Those people are fixed and immovable. So one of the big learnings I can share is that that is absolutely not the case. It is not that people are unreachable, it's that they have been waiting for an invitation.
One of the number one things that we hear from people throughout all of these different states across the country is no one from your side has ever reached out to ask me what I think or feel before. And it's not to say that these conversations start out very lovely. We hear a lot of stuff, but our approach is to really address those statements with endless curiosity, a restatement of purpose. I'm really just reaching out because I want to know, I wanted more deeply understand your thinking and how you got there. Right?
And when those dialogues open up, it's really incredible. People feel seen, heard, and valued. And who doesn't want that?
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
One of the newest reportings we can show from these conversations is that people move from very hostile in the beginning to very positive at a rate of 32.7 percent. And you know, in our work, even the best measures have said on a voting initiative, right? An 8 to 10 point shift.
And we're showing a 32.7 percent shift. That means, no, it is not that these places are out of reach, and it means that we should not still be seeding them to the far-right.
Ejeris
I mean, so then let's go even deeper. It sounds like there's a vacuum that's happening. And if you were to give us kind of top lines, and I want to be clear that this is both about rural communities, but one of the things that animated me in this work was when I started to have family members that were parroting back MAGA talking points and being like, oh, okay, the concept of those people versus our people started to kind of disappear and break down.
It sounds like that belonging is a core piece and being invited. If you were to give us kind of the array of reasons why people join the Make America Great Again movement, where a lot of people are characterizing it as authoritarian or even fascist or having fascist members, why are people joining?
Adrienne
Yeah, I think it will surprise a lot of people to learn. There's a lot being said right now that the economy is bad, the price of gas is high, and all of that is true, but that that would be a determining factor in how people vote. And one of the things I can share is that time and time again, and it doesn't matter if we're talking to folks in Idaho or North Carolina or Georgia, their primary motivation is their sense of belonging to a group.
And it is more difficult to break with that despite however hard things might be, than it is to vote for someone or a party that they have come to view as their arch enemy. And we do hear a lot of that parroting back, you know, Fox News or whomever, they're getting their information from YouTube. But I think one of the critical things about what we do is, to be really honest, one of the things that we often hear is, you know, the thing that is causing so much division in the country is all of the, an insert, an ethnic identity.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
And so one of our folks might say, that's really interesting, Ejeris, would you mind sharing with me? When did you first start developing your ideas around race? What did life look like?
What influences were in your community and in your life that caused you to develop these ideas? Have you had experiences that reinforce those ideas? And have you ever had experiences that ran counter to that?And how did you grapple with the hypocrisy between the two?
Most people are never asked those questions. And it's in that inquiry, right? Where a lot of the rhetoric starts to fall apart. And people sort of have this, I'm not sure why I believe the things I believe. I'm not sure where that came from. And I'm not sure maybe that it continues to serve me.
Ejeris
No, I love this so much, cause it's also just, it's the basics of building relationships, right? I mean, one of the things I was taught in early organizing was just like how much more important listening was than talking.
Adrienne
And a lot of people don't, that we've lost or never had that skill.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
And so it takes a lot. You know, our training program really teaches people how to do that. And there are many, many hurdles, including our own biases, right?
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
These litmus tests, this idea that someone, they are the worst of the worst because of the vote that they cast. And there's no road to redemption.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
And so we have to challenge a lot of those assumptions on both sides. Right? And I think that's where the listening and the genuine curiosity has really been missing from our movements.
We spend a lot of time with these scripts that tell us the thing that we have to say, or time-bound, like only spend 10 minutes at a door because you've got to get to the next one and prove your metrics. But just with a little extra time, deep, deep transformation is possible. I can share a story.
So we had a funder that came to town, and I'd been talking with them for a long time, and I thought they've already seen all the stuff in writing. Let's just go.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
And so we started traveling throughout rural Idaho. And we stopped at, I identified a store, it was a little old store, town of like maybe 200 or 300 people. And at the time, this couple was selling fresh local goods. So corn, watermelon, and Confederate flags.
And I said, that's where we're going to go. And her eyes kind of widened a little bit. And but it's like, this is the work, right?
So I introduced myself to Randy, the shop owner, and he said, well, I'm guessing that we're on opposite sides of the political spectrum. And my response was, well, let's find out.
We spent 30 minutes talking about what they were witnessing and how they were fearful about the changes in their community and economic struggles that they had, and a lack of belief that the systems were actually for them.
And by the end of it, you know, I asked, would you tell my friend what's going to happen if I go to start my car right now and it won't start? And he looked at me puzzled and he said, it's okay, my friend Bob up the road is a mechanic. We'll get him down here. We'll get you fixed up and don't worry.
And I went back about six months later with a group of national organizers, and we met with Randy again. And I said, Randy, would you mind showing my friends the Confederate flags that you were selling last time I was here? And he hung his head and he said, no, I can't because since our last visit, we don't sell those anymore.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
It's just we're not taking the time. And it might seem slow, but the fast is impermanent as should be demonstrated to everyone who's doing organizing in this country.
Ejeris
Yeah. I'm really curious about how this became your work. Because this, you're not speaking from the place of this being a profession. This is like life work. This is soul work. This is something that you're like deeply committed to.
How did you decide that you wanted to be the person to help move people in these conversations?
Adrienne
There's a lot to that question, both in my personal experience growing up. So I had grown up in Minnesota and then moved as a child to Idaho. And it was a vastly different experience for me.
It was very jarring because I had not lived in a really regressive, conservative place before. And so the racism and the way that things were happening here, were really clear to me because I was able to juxtapose it with a different experience.
And so when I started organizing, I'm working for the state's only multi-issue progressive network in the state, right? And we were writing legislation, we were pushing for legislation, and it was just a never ending battle. We weren't making progress. And what I was seeing at the time, I thought was a wake up call for the rest of the country.
Our state once was a Republican trifecta, right? It is no longer. It has been taken over by right-wing and authoritarian actors. And I have been watching for 30 years the slow and steady decline of democracy at the state level. And the only way that we can build a movement is we can't seed rural and conservative places. Even if you don't consider it rural, places that aren't considered to be relevant because of their electoral power.
We seed these and what is lost is very, very deep. And for a long time, people just were able to say, well, that's just Idaho's problem. You know, that's just a regional problem.
We don't live in that country anymore for a lot of reasons. But the other is that because we have lost our institutions that once provided guardrails, it only takes a bill coming out of a place like Idaho or North Carolina to make its way to a federally stacked court, a politicized court. And now it becomes the law of the land for every American in this country.
And that should make it very clear that rural is not a rural problem anymore. It's an American problem that we need to invest in if we're going to build a coalition that we need for a real pro-democracy movement.
Ejeris
So I feel like I have a strong sense of the 30 percent of the conversations that are movable. And I also don't want to take the other 70 percent, 60 percent, math is math, off the table. But I think people make decisions from a place that makes sense to them, or they form opinions.
And in my sense, there are people who genuinely like deep-seated multi-generational hate, right? They genuinely hate immigrants or trans folks, black people, see our folks as enemies. And then I think there are people who go along with the program and it sounds like one of the big kind of questions and answers is about belonging, it's about listening, it's about the invitation.
When you all are having these conversations, trying to think about like what's movable and who's movable, are there times where you feel like some of this is intractable and then there are times where you're like, this is absolutely movable conversation?
Adrienne
Yeah, I think there are lines, right? I mean, there are those who are so deeply seeded and leaders of some of these movements. And that's the harder thing, right?
But those movements don't succeed without millions of people across the country actually being part of them, right? And so we have to look at to the entire landscape of what we've lost in our democracy, including media, freedom of the press. And so often the conversations that we're having is, it's new information.
It's a new perspective that they are not getting anywhere else. You know, another case in point, I was talking to a man who had many Trump flags in front of his house and I knocked on his door and he said, you know, how long do you think it's going to be until Trump has reinstated that we can fix all of the things that Biden has done? And I said, I have to tell you, I do not agree with your analysis. Because, you know, we can talk about listening, right? But it's not the same as agreeing. Right?
And so he said, well, you know, it's all that mail-in voting. And I said, okay, well, let me ask you a few questions. I have a lot of friends who have disabilities. And for many of them, the only way that they're able to participate is through mail-in voting.
Well, no, no, no, those people, he says.
And then I started asking about other communities.You know, we live in a farming community. What about the farmers who can't, you know, the cows don't milk themselves, or there's always a crisis, like, what if you can't get away? What if your childcare falls through? You know, what if you work out of town?
And so I kept presenting all of these different images of people, right? And for every one, he said, no, no, no, but those people.
And said, OK, OK, let me ask you this then, because that seems like a whole lot of people who would need exceptions. How would you design our system to be safe and fair and manage all of those exceptions?
And he stopped and he said, well, I guess I'd never thought of it that way.I guess we couldn't, right? And I guess we need to have mail in voting.
It's just in that kind of like, let's break it down together, instead of me coming in telling you that you're just wrong, or presenting you with a list of facts and figures that never move anyone. So I don't think anybody's off the table. I think we should try with everyone. But honestly, democracy is not a 100% proposition. It's a 51% proposition, right? But we just can't seed 25% of the country. I mean, math is math, but also it's strategy. And our movements have sacrificed strategy for expedience, and to all of our peril.
Ejeris
Oof. That's a whole word. I want to keep digging into this.
So we start with these conversations, where you're truly listening and truly hearing where folks are at. And what is the next step? What makes Randy, like, what makes Randy at like taking the flags out of the store, feels like it's a process that takes time.
So what is the kind of process of moving somebody from the first conversation to kind of a shift in their life? Because it's not, people are not like isolated, they're in communities where everyone is saying this kind of stuff to them, where they're all listening to the same thing, where they're hearing this on the radio and on the news. And so yeah, I'm trying to just walk out the stages, because it really does feel like you have the antidote. And I want to understand the stages and steps.
Adrienne
Yeah, you know, I think the thing that became very clear to me when we started this program, was that it was as much about reaching people who had not been reached out to, as it was about training people to do the outreach.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
Right? And so our National Hub really offers that. It's a training, but then it's the opportunity to practice in a safe space before you start knocking the doors. And if I could say something to organizers, it's we approach this like, how are we going to change their minds?
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
And it's extractive, and it feels extractive. People know when they're being messaged. They know when you're at it.
You know, if somebody comes to the door to sell you something, we know who those people are, right? People are not stupid. So the intent needs to be building the relationship, not changing the other person.
And we all change a bit, right? When we open up our minds to different possibilities and understand, gosh, part of why Randy believes the things that he does is because regulations have, you know, that seem very bizarre and like not meaningful have also forced out all the family farms. Just understanding why makes a big difference.
The other part is meeting someone. You know, you were talking about generations and have deeply held hate and resentment, which is absolutely true. And it becomes more difficult to hate someone when you know them, right?
When we give them a face and a heart and a mind and the invitation to really discover who we are and the complexities of that. I often say that the death knell to authoritarianism is digging into the complexities. And we spend too much time focusing on the binaries, the litmus tests, the simple solution.
If you just vote for this person, everything will be better. But again, people know when those failed promises, it impacts how they believe that systems and parties work. And because we often are too close to political power, instead of building it on the ground with real people, the closer we are to doing that work at the behest of a political party or a candidate, the less trustworthy we become.
And so it really does take a reorientation to organizing. And the program is really an opportunity for anybody who wants to get into organizing. It's also an opportunity for anybody who wants to learn how to talk to the people in their office, or to sit around the family table when Uncle Joe is saying something that defies everything about your moral being.
Ejeris
Yeah. I love it so much and it makes me really think about when I first started in political work, when I first started organizing, I was really trained. It's about asking, not telling.
But then years and years and years, it seems like there's more and more spaces where I started to feel like, oh gosh, this feels like sales, like you were saying, or this feels like church, where there is one opinion that you are supposed to deliver. And there's the us versus them and all of this. So there's a part of this, especially when you were talking about strategy, that is about what progressives are getting wrong.
Because you're not just talking to people, you are, as you're saying, you're retraining folks in these conversations. If you were to talk about how do organizers need to change, how do people in movements need to change, or how do all of us in progressive communities need to shift to be able to actually build what we want, what's your message to us?
Adrienne
Well, I wish we had several hours. We've allowed foundations to dictate the terms by which we organize. That's one of the big problems
And so as nonprofits had become more and more part of the industrial complex, we've lost our roots. We've lost our ability to really affect change. And the people that we're advancing, whether that be a Democratic candidate or a policy that seems wonderful, but it's not actually going to change the structural dynamics of what's wrong and causing the problem in the first place, those folks don't want real change.
They don't. And so we end up spinning our wheels, constantly fighting and being in a defensive mode to get the pieces and the scraps instead of thinking bigger. There are a lot of things that we could do in this country to get the structural reforms that people across the entire political spectrum are craving.
There's never someone I talked to about term limits or judicial reform or codes of ethics or restricting lobbying or getting money out of politics that doesn't say, yes, we want that. But where are our movements in that fight? I don't see them.
And you and I are both in movement space with all of the folks, right? And we just keep narrowing our lens about what's possible. And we are the ones who are supposed to hold the possibility, right?
And I always say, like, if you can't dream it, you can't build it. But we've lost the dream. We've lost the dream because we're more focused on outputs and what's measurable and what can prove we're right. And in the midst of that, we have allowed ourselves, our movements, our nonprofits to become corporate machines in much the way that we said that we were here to fight them.
Ejeris
Yeah. And it's like we go to people with the point we need to prove as opposed to building the relationships and building the communities. Some of it, I think, really is around people somewhere deep down not truly believing in change.
There's like something way deep down in there where they've just given up on the possibility of large scale change despite what their words are. So I'm curious because it is daunting, right? You're talking to people and in their spiritual communities, in their families, at their jobs, the news, all of these places, they're getting the opposite of what you're saying.
How are you contending with the structural aspects and the structural forces that are really trying to create an increase in fascism and authoritarianism?
Adrienne
Yeah, it's worth really digging into the sense of loss and hopelessness. I also think there's a profound sense of grief that's rarely talked about in progressive spaces, because so many of us felt like we were working towards something that was going to build on something else, that was going to build on something else, right? And all with bending the arc of moral and social justice.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
And the further away that gets, and it certainly seems far right now, with all of the things that we've been experiencing, that becomes deeply seeded in our orientation to the work, and it's really a problem. It's really a problem.
You know, we can't lose the dream, and I understand a lot of people are feeling fatigued, right? A lot of people are looking at generations of democracy that have never served them, and it's hard to believe that it ever could. But democracy should be an ever evolving idea, and it's one that requires our participation.
So I just think we need to be very real about the forces that we're up against, right? These are folks who want us to be divided, to see each other as enemy, to fight with each other, to make things as simplistic as possible. And they want us to feel hopeless.
And that's where I think the seduction of Burn It All Down on the left and the seduction of a character like Trump, who comes in and says, I'm going to break it all up, becomes more and more appealing to people because they feel like they have less and less agency over their own lives. But that agency is never going to be, no one person, no one org is ever going to do this, right? We have to find connections with each other to build not just power, but possibility.
And if we're not doing that work, then we're doing the work of authoritarianism.
Ejeris
It also sounds like there's a piece of this that is about repair and repairing people's ability to believe, repairing people's ability to hope. And it's its own form of healing process, whether or not the term may resonate for you and your folks. I would love to talk about the kind of emotional aspects of this work, both for the people who are going and asking questions, but also for the people who you're doing outreach to.
So in this place where people are on this precipice of hopelessness, because what you said, break it all up, burn it all down, kind of same feeling. Like, I can't change this. I can't change this. The system is rigged against me. Therefore, I need these people to fight for me against those people.
Yeah, like I would love to hear her more about, do you see your work as healing and what does that look like?
Adrienne
Yeah. I mean, I often talk about how yes, is it rewarding for people? People report always like feeling transformed by this. It's allowing them to negotiate conflict and difference in their own communities. And this is strategy. This is political strategy, right?
So I do think that there is a growing fatigue in the progressive movement, which is very disturbing to me. It brings me back to the privilege. Right? That we enjoy in this country and not everybody the same. You know, me as a white woman, of course. Right?
But how much more do we have to lose before we realize that it's lost? This is not the time to be tired. This is the time to lean in, and by leaning in, it's actually more energizing than just sitting back and feeling hopeless and helpless. Right? So there's that part of it.
Ejeris
There's two things I want to get to before we close. So what happens next with Randy?
Adrienne
Well, I mean, here's the thing. There are a million Randy's out there.
Ejeris
Yeah.
Adrienne
Randy, we have developed a relationship. We're actually producing a documentary, and Randy's going to be one of the featured characters in that documentary because it's so important that people see themselves.
Now, we've been talking a lot about movements and nonprofits, but I don't want to underestimate the tons, the millions of ways that people are showing up. They are organizing themselves.
Minneapolis was an incredible example of the ingenuity and what people can do when their loved ones and their neighbors are at risk. You know, how we find each other and we find our strength in each other. And so we have to stop looking outside of ourselves for the thing that is going to fix it all. That resides within each and every one of us and our collective ability to organize. Organize, organize, organize our communities, our state, our government.
We have tremendous power. They would not be spending so much time trying to suppress us. If they weren't afraid of the power that we had, we shouldn't be afraid of that power either, and we shouldn't let them take more.
In every day that we decide to just avert our eyes to what's happening because it seems too hard, in every conversation that we don't have, we are making a decision. And that those decisions culminate and they produce the perfect condition for authoritarianism to continue to rise. We all bear some responsibility, but, you know, in my mind, that's an honor that we are in this point, at this point, where none of us would be here, except for all of the incredible people, black and brown, white, all of our people who helped to pave the way for us to be here, to hold the things that have been gained, and to fight for something better for another generation.
It's our civic duty, but I think it's deeper than that. It's like our moral calling for having inherited all that we've inherited.
Ejeris
I mean, I think this conversation is transforming me, and I know it's transforming people who are listening. So I'm very curious, you know, one of these desires is can a podcast become a learning community and a community for a site of change. So for the listeners who are out there, who are like, okay, I want to do what Adrienne's doing. I'm in.
How do they support your work? How do they also like do this in their own communities and own families? Like, what are our marching orders?
Adrienne
Yeah. Well, so the first thing you could support our organization, United Vision for Idaho, all these nonprofits are going to need a lot of support, especially right now. We're in a real crisis moment. So that's really important, and that support can look like monetary support. It can look like $5 a month.
It can also look like showing up and volunteering and getting engaged. And you can join the United Vision project and sign up for one of our trainings. It's no cost and we will help you develop the skills to do this kind of work in your own community.
That's the point of the program is how can we, coming from a state like Idaho, share the warnings and the lessons and the organizing that's been having to happen here for a very long time with others who want to make a difference in their own community and their own lives. And those are all things that people can do. And stay alert.
Understand that we need to be more discerning about the information that we're getting. Ask questions. Be endlessly curious. Right? Don't just take this as the answer. Right? Because that's part of the problem.
We are complex people and we have a lot of ideas and we also have the ability to come up with incredible solutions, together. But that's not going to happen from outside of ourselves.
And every action is an action. Every inaction is an action.
Ejeris
Adrienne, this has been a powerful lesson in, one, how do we not give up on people? How do we not give up on ourselves? But also, the incredible power that we have, even when people are feeling despair and hopelessness, like the amount of power that is able to be built every day that you all have been building in Idaho and around the country.
So I just want to say thank you again for joining us. We're so happy to have gotten to have this conversation with you on The Fascism Barometer.
Adrienne
Thank you for having me and thank you for this work. These conversations matter, and it's just an honor and a delight to have been with you today.
Ejeris
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 with you. In this episode, Adrienne mentioned this line that I need to say again.
She mentioned that people that she's talking to are fearful about changes in their communities and that they are worried that systems are not for them. And it really struck me because this is the concern of so many people I know, whether it's around gentrification or feeling like the system is rigged. But what is really important to highlight here is that often Adrienne and I are speaking to really different people.
So it's important to remember that it's useful for people in power to use fascism as a way to divide communities that have shared goals, even though they may have different identities. It made me think a little bit about the Rainbow Coalition that was formed by the Black Panther Party in Chicago in the 1960s, which united Black communities and Latino communities and white rural communities and a whole host of other communities together to build power. We're going to place some information on this, just to highlight that solidarity is our way out of this.
Communities building and sticking together and rejecting the pull of fascism. We'll also place some resources on how you can support the work of the United Vision Project and some other resources to support your learning and your activism. We appreciate you joining us and we're working hard on 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 so many more amazing episodes coming up. And when you share the show with a friend, you've got it. You fight fascism.
Our producer is Phil Surkis. Our theme is by McLeet Hadiro.
This podcast is a project of Ejerie Labs. And I'm your movement meteorologist, Ejeris Dixon. See you next time on The Fascism Barometer.