The 2020 election is looming ever closer—and in this special episode of Popaganda, host Carmen Rios talks to some of the rabble-rousers leading the fight for a feminist agenda on Capitol Hill and political journalist Prachi Gupta about The Squad’s persistent leadership on the issues that matter to the movement, and what it will take to continue empowering women in politics to shake up the system.
A’shanti Gholar from EMERGE America and Erin Vilardi of VoteRunLead talk to Carmen about why gender matters in policy-making—and what changed in 2018 that will shape the long-standing movement for parity in politics. Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, opens up about the untold story she’s determined to scream from the halls of power: one about the power, and urgency, of women of color leadership in politics. Jennifer Mandelblatt, founder of PLATFORM, talks about how women can own their political power—off the ballot and beyond election day. And Gupta, political reporter for Cosmopolitan and author of AOC: Fighter, Phenom, Changemaker, dissects the inspirational and viral power of The Squad, and reflects on the reverberations they’re already having on the scene.
Carmen knows the power of women in politics: she’s been covering the subject for the last decade. But in this episode, she digs even deeper and challenges listeners to imagine what an entirely new political system would look like. That system, she argues, has enough seats at the table for all of us, and makes space to tackle every issue we care about. Determined to figure out what it would take to build it, she susses out next steps and urges everyone to take action. (It goes without saying, of course, that she also assumes that next November, you’ll turn out.)
SHOUT-OUTS
Let’s start with the basics: We’re assuming you wanna know more about all of these trailblazers.
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Do not pass go until you have registered to vote.
- If you’re interested in running for office, register today to be part of EMERGE and VoteRunLead. If you want to help fight for fierce women of color, join the She the People community. And stay active all day, every day, no matter when polls are open, by getting involved with Platform.
- Click here to buy Prachi’s book about AOC. You can also find her political pieces from 2016 and 2018 at Cosmo.
- The Center for American Women and Politics is the perfect one-stop shop for anyone interested in data and analysis on women running for office at every level. Click here to check out their 2018 numbers specifically, made pretty with Politico.
- Carmen has been covering gender and politics for the last decade for various publications. If you’re interested in learning more about women in politics, you might want to get lost in her Rebel Girls column for Autostraddle; if you’re interested in reading reports from the 2016 and 2018 elections, comb her archives with Ms. (Carmen also previously interviewed Erin Vilardi for Ms. on Facebook Live. Click here to watch the full conversation.)
- Also, Carmen once had an entire political podcast dedicated to this shit. Click here to listen to old episodes of THE BOSSY SHOW, the political talk show she co-hosted with Jill Gutowitz. (You may remember Jill as the Spice Girls Stan from Carmen’s very first episode of this podcast!)
Photo via Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images
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Carmen Rios is the host of Bitch’s Popaganda podcast. She’s also the Managing Digital Editor at Ms. magazine and co-host of Trigger Happy, a weekly webseries about women’s issues on Binge Network. She has been described as “petulant and idiotic,” “intimidating to some,” “vapid and uninteresting” and “brazenly misandrist.”
