{"id":11978,"date":"2024-11-12T12:09:20","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T18:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowermissouri.org\/?p=11978"},"modified":"2024-11-17T20:37:32","modified_gmt":"2024-11-18T02:37:32","slug":"beyond-the-ballot-box-an-advocates-path-through-2025-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowermissouri.org\/es\/beyond-the-ballot-box-an-advocates-path-through-2025-and-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Ballot Box: An Advocate’s Path through 2025 and Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s Weekly Perspective is a copy of a speech that I delivered earlier today at our Anti-Poverty Advocates Summit, Empower Missouri\u2019s 123rd annual conference in Missouri. It has been lightly edited and is much longer than our typical blog posts. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One week ago, Americans elected former President Donald Trump to a second term in office. Some of President Trump\u2019s proposed policies, as well as policy changes outlined in the now infamous Project 2025 plan, could have enormous short-term and long-term ramifications for poor and working class families in America. It will be important for advocates to go into next year with clear eyes, level heads, and a strong plan to both a) fight back against policies that could massively increase hunger, homelessness, and poverty and b) build a stronger coalition of working class Americans fighting for populist economic policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a self-proclaimed politico, I spent a lot of time studying this election over the last several months, watching for trends and reading commentary from a broad spectrum of political analysts around the country. While there is likely a myriad of reasons that over 75 million Americans cast a vote for President Trump, there are three that I think worthy of highlighting because of their implications moving forward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. A desire for change.<\/strong> Voters went into this election feeling extremely unhappy. According to exit polling conducted by NBC News<\/a>, nearly three-quarters of voters across the country said they felt negatively about the way things are going in the U.S., including 29% who actually described themselves as angry about the direction of the country. What\u2019s propelling this anger? One key factor was certainly that nearly half of all voters said that they were worse-off financially than they were four years ago. This leads us directly to\u2026<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. The economy.<\/strong> While the job market is booming and the stock market is thriving, consumers aren\u2019t happy. High prices are lingering on everything from groceries to childcare to housing, and families around the country are feeling more cash-strapped than they used to. There are still many voters who see President Trump as a business tycoon who is better positioned to \u201cfix\u201d the economy than his opponent, Vice President Harris. During the campaign, President Trump promised many economic reforms that were appealing to voters, including exempting social security benefits, overtime wages, and tips from taxation. <\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Fear.<\/strong> President Trump\u2019s campaign was one that was dominated by one primary theme: fear. One particularly noticeable tactic was stoking fears of immigrants among his base, making dangerous, xenophobic remarks about migrants \u201cpoisoning the blood of our country\u201d and painting them as dangerous criminals who are an immediate threat to the American public, despite ample evidence that immigrants to the United States commit far fewer crimes than native-born citizens.<\/a> However, immigrants weren\u2019t the only \u201cboogiemen\u201d in Trump\u2019s campaign. The President-Elect also spewed general fear about the future of our country under a Kamala Harris presidency, predicting that America would be \u201cruined.\u201d He frequently made baseless claims that the U.S. is on the brink of a global war that only he can prevent, regularly tossing around terms like \u201cWorld War III\u201d and \u201cnuclear holocaust.\u201d He further postulated that Israel would be \u201ceradicated\u201d if he didn\u2019t win. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Fear is a powerful beast. A 2009 article in Psychology Today<\/em> posited that \u201cfear is a primal instinct that served us as cave dwellers and still serves us today. It keeps us alive, because if we survive a bad experience, we never forget how to avoid it in the future.\u201d Therefore, fear is an incredibly important feeling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Unfortunately, fear can also be exploited. It\u2019s exploited every day by marketers to sell everything from life insurance policies to cars to hand sanitizer. It\u2019s also exploited by politicians. A meta-analysis<\/a> of political messaging studies published in 2015 by the American Psychological Association concluded that fear-based messages are nearly twice as effective as non-fear-based messages. There are few emotions that make us more uncomfortable than fear, invoking our fight-or-flight instinct. The same article notes that \u201cour first reaction is often to flee back to our comfort zone. If we don\u2019t know the way back, we are likely to follow whoever shows us a path.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    President Trump\u2019s campaign was enormously successful in stoking fear, and then convincing the fearful that he had the only pathway to save them. He made people fearful of immigrants, and then convinced them that he would keep them safe by executing a mass deportation. He made people fearful of global conflict, and then convinced voters that he would protect them. He made workers fear that their industries are dying under Democratic control, and then convinced them that he\u2019s the only one who can save their jobs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    It is important to understand the climate that has led us to this current moment, so that we can successfully operate in this environment moving forward. Nearly 60% of registered voters in Missouri, representing almost a third of our population, voted for President Trump last week. These are our neighbors, our family members, our friends, and many others who we share community with. There may be Trump voters reading this today, and I\u2019m genuinely so glad that you\u2019re here with us! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    However, I know that many of you did not vote for this outcome. I know that some of you may be feeling scared; I\u2019m not here to tell you not to be scared. I know that some of you may be feeling sad; I\u2019m not here to tell you not to be sad. I know that some of you may be feeling angry; I\u2019m not here to tell you not to be angry. I am, however, here to ask you to take any negative emotions that you might be feeling and, when you\u2019re ready, channel them into something positive for the future. So, let\u2019s go back to those three factors that drove President Trump\u2019s election, and let\u2019s consider how we can help leverage those factors to protect our institutions and drive positive change. But, I\u2019m going to cheat, just a little, and combine the first two factors into one that we can address together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The first factor was a desire for change. The second factor was the economy. We know that many people\u2019s desire for change was rooted in this idea that the economy is not working for them. According to an in-depth quantitative study<\/a> conducted by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, many Americans believe that greed is driving our economy. Academy staff published an op-ed on the study results in The New York Times<\/em>; one quote reads, \u201cThey believe the rich and powerful have designed the economy to benefit themselves and have left others with too little or with nothing at all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I would tend to agree with this sentiment, and how could you not? In 2020, Forbes<\/em> published its 34th annual billionaire survey<\/a>, and as of March 2020, the United States had 614 billionaires who owned a combined wealth of $2.947 trillion. A short four years and one global pandemic later, in March 2024, the country had 737 billionaires with a combined wealth of $5.529 trillion, an 87.6 percent increase. Billionaires aren\u2019t the only ones doing great; the CEO-to-work pay gap has widened tremendously in recent years. According to data tracked by the Economic Policy Institute<\/a> on the nation’s 350 largest companies, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 20-to-1 in 1965. That figure jumped to 59-to-1 in 1989 and an eye-popping 399-to-1 in 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The COVID-19 pandemic introduced a level of economic uncertainty that many families have still not recovered from. Millions of families struggled to afford housing and food, and for those who did have savings or another financial safety net, those resources may have been entirely wiped out. These are important factors in understanding the economic insecurities that families are facing today. Here are a few data points that demonstrate current difficulties: <\/p>\n\n\n\n