Latest / Follow the Leighder / Economic Trauma and Women's Leadership | Annie Logue, CFA

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Economic Trauma and Women's Leadership | Annie Logue, CFA · Follow the Leighder

• Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, howdy folks and welcome back to another episode of Follow the Leighder. I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and joining us from Chicago is Annie Logue. Annie, welcome. Annie Logue: Hi, thank you so much, Lee. I'm really happy to be here. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I'm so excited. It's a real privilege and a treat, folks. ⁓ So Annie Logue has her background is finance. She's a CFA. She's financial analyst. She's also a business writer. She's written for Business Insider and other major financial publications. And like I said, she's in Chicago. She also does quite a bit of storytelling. She's done business storytelling, political advocacy storytelling. Annie Logue: Is it? Leigh/@followtheleighder: But really she likes helping folks make sense of big concepts and jargon and all the stuff that makes it hard to understand these very critical aspects of life. ⁓ But she's really good about that and explaining the why, why it matters, getting past all the vocabulary. So ⁓ that has been a real gift also to her Chicago community as she has held the title of president. for both Junior League and the League of Women Voters. So as I say, ⁓ thank you. Thank you, thank you. Annie Logue: I was not junior league president, just League of Women Voters. I don't want to like claim more than. Leigh/@followtheleighder: No, no, but that's sorry. My apologies. I heard her speak at a junior league conference about this. So she was one of the main speakers and that was a very well attended conference. It was very healing for me. I'm just being in a room full of strong, educated, you know, involved women, particularly in November of 2024, I think was the date. So that was a Annie Logue: That's okay. Yes. Yes. Leigh/@followtheleighder: That was a treat. So Annie, can you tell us, are you a native to Chicago? What's your story with Chicago and how did you go into finance? Annie Logue: Well, I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, which is a city on the Pennsylvania border. It's between Cleveland and Pittsburgh. And when I was a kid, it had an enormous steel industry. It was second only to Pittsburgh in terms of steel output. And when I was in seventh grade, the steel mill started closing and you had just total economic devastation. And it's actually something I've been researching and working on a little bit right now ⁓ with, you know, because we're coming up on the 50th anniversary of when the mills closed, started closing in 1977. And what I saw was just how these effects rippled through the entire economy, how they affected people and how hard it has been to overcome. I mean, Youngstown is a fraction of the population it was when I was a kid. It is a high crime, high poverty city now, because it's really hard to overcome that kind of economic devastation. there's also, it creates trauma that has really lasted. ⁓ One of my friends from high school said that she doesn't think things will turn around. until everybody who is alive when the mills closed is gone. She's like, we just needs to get out of their system. And I think she has a point, you know. ⁓ But that was something I really, like, I really wanted to understand that better. I wanted to understand all of this effect of, you know, money and economies and how they affected people's lives and Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm. Yeah, that's true. Annie Logue: I went to college at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and that's what brought me to Chicago area. ⁓ And then I studied econ as an undergrad at Northwestern, and then I studied finance at University of Chicago. My husband is from the Chicago area. He was born in the same town as the Pope. So very exciting, lot of excited Southsiders to have a Pope from Chicago. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Annie Logue: but, you know, so I'm very much a midwesterner, very much like a Great Lakes person. and I, you know, worked traditional investment banking career. ⁓ and the firm that I worked for was sold while I was on maternity leave, which was kind of disruptive, shall we say. And I was trying to decide like, okay, now what do I want to do with myself? Leigh/@followtheleighder: Hmm. Yeah. Annie Logue: I couldn't really go back. I wasn't really in the greatest place to be looking for a job. And I thought that what I had always liked about investment banking, I liked writing reports, I liked doing research, I liked giving client presentations. And so since then, I have been doing that in some form or another. ⁓ You know, I've been self-employed for a long time now. And what I found is that there's just a lot of really interesting work out there. You just have to kind of find it. ⁓ But it's there. And I also found that having control of my own time made it a lot easier to be a community volunteer and that that was a way that I could meet people, learn things, and I hope make a bit of a difference in the world around me. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, there is. Yeah. ⁓ and you certainly have. really appreciate your ⁓ talk about the mills closing in Youngstown. So I'm in Great Falls, Montana and big mining. In fact, the mining out here done a lot of damage to the soil. There's like whole parts of Montana that are beautiful or you could build and develop really nice properties on, but you can't because the soil ⁓ from from some of the mining and ⁓ that economic trauma is real in that. Annie Logue: Yeah! Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And you might have some creative ideas, you might have some energy towards a project, and then you got people like, ⁓ no, this is, and then it's a fear of a lot of different, it's a fear of risk. And I understand, like when you've known devastation, ⁓ but at the same time, it does make it harder for newness. So. ⁓ Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. ⁓ yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: or just whatever that looks like, whatever the change may be. And then Northwestern University in Evanston is just, I walked around that campus last March or so, beautiful. ⁓ And it felt very quiet. And I imagine that you... Annie Logue: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: It was just like a peaceful place to study. Not to say that it's not city and urban and all that, but just the layout might have been a really nice place. Annie Logue: No. It's, yeah, being right on Lake Michigan like that is just beautiful. ⁓ One of the things I found there, know, it skews affluent. student, know, it's Evanston is an affluent suburb ⁓ and the student body tends to skew affluent and. ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, right. Annie Logue: You know, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised because you're talking about people who are 18, 19, 20, but I was really surprised by how little people understood about a lot of the world. That, people who you get in situations where you have people who've traveled a lot to Europe, but not to other places in the U S or who have never. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Really? Right. Uh-huh. Annie Logue: worked with certain kind of people or met certain kinds of people. mean, you know, my high school was fairly well racially integrated. I went to a Catholic high school. And one thing you find in a lot of urban areas is that, ⁓ and this is a gross generalization, but the generalization is that the city schools are all, the student body is almost all black, the suburban schools, the student body is almost all white. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Annie Logue: And so in a lot of places, the Catholic schools are the most racially integrated, which is awesome, right? ⁓ But you know, I was like, people who've never been around people who aren't like them. It's just like, ⁓ and again, that was a while ago. And again, we're talking about people who are young, but Northwestern was a very interesting place. I think, ⁓ I mean, like you said, the campus is beautiful. You're right on the lake. ⁓ And that does make it kind of conducive for thinking and learning. But I found myself, like sometimes I felt like I'd be in classes where I would be like the voice of the working class, not because I was from a working class background so much, but because I knew people who were. You know, like when people would say generalizations, I was like, wait, this is like. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Annie Logue: my friend's father you're talking, you these are people like my friend's father's that you're talking about, you know, and it was just very interesting. It was an interesting place to go to school. ⁓ I made great friends. I got a great education. So, but yeah, it's beautiful. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. Well, and that's a good point is, ⁓ like you said, the wealth, the privilege, you know, they're quote, well traveled. And this is not just a Northwestern. This is like I've noticed this also in my spaces, like you have people that have done some of the very awesome Pinterest things and. ⁓ Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. Hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: but it was also either like westernized or like, know, touristy that it was an adventure. wasn't, and so it's been very interesting over the years to talk about how you travel. How so it's not just the trend, and these of course are called questions of privilege and access and like who, you know, and so I wanna be careful there, but ⁓ is that ⁓ when you, Annie Logue: They are. No, they are. Leigh/@followtheleighder: We'll do a deeper dive into Junior League and League of Women Voters in a second, but talk about your involvement at Northwestern. Were you involved with women's activism or how did you get, like you said, you value your volunteering because of your job. Has it always been a part of you? Annie Logue: Is it? Is it? ⁓ You know, in college, I don't think I was as active as maybe I could have been. I think I was trying to figure out like what I wanted to do. And a lot of students were very much looking at things from the perspective of what would be good on their resumes as opposed to what would really make a difference. ⁓ And I worked for one of my professors, which was really great. ⁓ Robert Gordon, is ⁓ a major figure in economics. And it's really interesting because a lot of his work has been on whether or not the United States is going to continue to grow. ⁓ So in some ways, that was the biggest experience I had. It wasn't so much volunteering, but it was sitting in his office. And a lot of what I did was making copies and file ⁓ know, reports, but ⁓ it was also really interesting just like to hear him talk and to be part of the kind of work he's done. ⁓ was, Northwestern has a big dance marathon every year and I raised money and danced one year for, I don't even remember. over 40 it was about 40 hours. kind of thing you can do when you're young. So I did that. We raised money for, I think it was Easter Seals that year. It is still one of the largest student run charities in the country. That's been going on for however many years. So I was involved in that. I was a member of a sorority that was mostly social. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Yeah. Annie Logue: Yeah, and I was active in my dorm government. So I did actually do that. This is a while ago. I'm trying to remember all these things I did. ⁓ I mostly feel like I was either in class at the library or at Professor Gordon's office. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Okay. Yeah, no, it's all good. Well, I was just like trying to paint this picture because I... Wow. And your comment, how you felt that you were standing up for the working class in an affluent environment, in a financial economics. You're not in the social work or maybe any other school wing department where you might have a lot of allies or people that share a perspective. I've noticed that even in my own research, I've been reading a number of just different books in general, the last few books I've read were books written by ⁓ UCAL Berkeley, sorry, Berkeley, or a few other books of like urban people, urban scholars, academics going and doing two-year research stints in another environment so they can better understand. And those books are very powerful and very glad. But I've been thinking, I want to see the flip, I want to see the small town folks talking about, well actually, and sharing their lens. Because I was like, this is cool. But I also feel like lot is missing. Annie Logue: Like I always thought it might be interesting. You know, it's fairly traditional for people to do some a year abroad or semester abroad in college, but maybe do like a semester in a whole nother part of the country. You know, like wouldn't that be interesting? Like for example, Montana, there are five states. I have been to 45 US states. Montana is one I still haven't been to. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right? Right. It really was. Yeah, right. Annie Logue: I've heard it's beautiful. I've never been. And it's big. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ yeah, no, it's awesome. We love it. But absolutely. mean, that's kind of like you probably could fill that with like teach for America or something like that. Just go be a teacher somewhere. But you're absolutely right. is, United States is not monolithic. Wildly different temperaments. And even I think it would be important to learn not just like culturally. Annie Logue: Bye. Leigh/@followtheleighder: But politically, to see that what it means to be a blue or red or Republican or Democrat changes where you are. There's a difference. There can be a difference between a rural Democrat and maybe a Seattle Democrat. Annie Logue: Right, right. And I really don't like that red and blue formulation because I think it makes the divides that we already have worse. To just sort of dismiss an entire state as it's red or it's blue. And it's like, well, there's a lot of things going on. So maybe, yeah. You're right. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right, like... Right. Well, like here, I'm saying that I've experienced, know, I moved up here from Texas. Texas is red, right? But Montana is red. But yet they have codified, they have both ⁓ abortion under women's medical right to privacy and they have physician assisted suicide. And I was like, those are very progressive. ⁓ They're also going after dark money, like they're doing a transparent ballot. I don't know if you've heard that, but going after dark money. Yeah, in politics on a state level. like, it's it's, but it's, I'm, and again, it's a different type of and a lot of it, you talked about Catholicism influencing a lot of it's because of, it's like a Catholic libertarian. It's not an evangelical Christian. It's a, they're Annie Logue: That sounds... cool. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And you could even say, know, so it's, it's just one, you know. So really appreciate your nuance there. Thank you for bringing that into the conversation. So then after graduation, I know that you talked about going into financial analyst and finding what you called weird work. ⁓ And you started to make time for volunteering. Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: How did you find Junior League and League of Women voters? And what are they for those who may not know? Annie Logue: Well, the Junior League is a progressive year organization founded in 1901. And it is a women's organization that focuses on training women to be leaders in their communities. And that what that has meant has changed a lot over the years. When it was founded, it was strictly for debutants. Now it's much broader. And that is great because that increases the kind of influence that people can have in the community. ⁓ When the group founded in Chicago, they worked closely. One of their advisors was Jane Adams, who was responsible for ⁓ the Settlement House movement, but also very much making volunteerism more professional. She founded the field of social work because the idea was that before people can just jump in and help others, they actually have to do research and see what people need and what they're, you know, they're often, their needs are not necessarily what you think they are. And also they may, when you look at a given community group, they may be doing things that you don't know about. And so you want to build on the strengths in the community. not undermine things that they're already doing. And that approach has really informed the work that the Junior League does, that it's in almost 300 different communities around the world, but in every community, it's trying to find out what this particular community needs and how women can meet those needs and then how women can develop the skills they need. to meet those needs. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I'm so good. Well, I like how you. yeah. Annie Logue: Oh, and then the League of Women Voters. You asked me about that. That was founded in 1920 as a condition of women's suffrage. There was a concern that women, one of the arguments against giving women the vote was that they would just vote the way their husbands or fathers told them to. And so it was the suffragists decided that there should be an organization that would help Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Annie Logue: women learn how to vote, basically. Learn how to research issues, learn how to research candidates. ⁓ And that is essentially what the League does. It is all about voter service. It is helping people register to vote, help them understanding how to vote, why voting is important, helping them learn about candidates, learn about issues in their community. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And I didn't know that that was how it emerged. ⁓ Was as an outcome of the suffrages movement. It makes sense. ⁓ And League of Women Voters is, I mean, it's everywhere. ⁓ I know that it's here in Montana and we have a few chapters of Junior League too. ⁓ How did you get involved with Junior League? Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. Yeah. ⁓ Junior League, was all sort of when my job kind of blew up. ⁓ And I hadn't had a lot of time to volunteer before then because I had just been working so many hours. And I was like, I don't know what to do with myself. And somebody that I knew from work, but who had had a different job, and she was active in the Junior League and she was like, you need to join this. then you will figure out, like you will find your people, you will figure out what to do. And she was right. Yeah, and you really learn ⁓ how to manage people, how to run a project. Things that you would think you would learn in an office setting, but you really don't. There's not usually that kind of formal emphasis on those things. It's just kind of assumed. You get promoted to a certain level, you have to manage staff. If you don't know how to do it, ⁓ well. Leigh/@followtheleighder: All right. All right. Annie Logue: You know, people will quit. If enough people quit, you get fired. You know, it's that kind of like there's a lot of in the American workplace, there's a lot of just throwing people into the fire, especially at smaller organizations. And, you know, in an organization like the Junior League, it's like you can learn like, well, if you're a committee chair, this is how you structure things. If you have people on your committee who aren't participating, here are some things you can try. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, that's. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah. Annie Logue: It's really great. Leigh/@followtheleighder: It really is. And like you said, those skills are transferable. Then you do get to go to the office and you get to be a little bit more, you know, you have your your ish together at the meeting because you have a template, you have a formula. And it's I've noticed just I appreciate folks who were involved. Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: with something like League of Women Butters, Junior League, ⁓ Elks Lodge, Rotary, because they're used to formal meetings, project collaboration that is a lot more in depth. Like you said, there is a lot of responsibility that somehow the invisible hand of corporations just move along, but you don't get that. If you want something done in your community, it comes from us. Annie Logue: I mean, those those traditional organizations seem very old fashioned, but that doesn't mean they're not relevant. You know, because you're still like every community has projects that need to be done. There are tons of people who want to learn how to do things. And so you're in this really great situation where you can learn from the people you work with. And it's not punitive. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Can you? Annie Logue: Like again, like in the workplace, you can threaten to fire people. You can actually fire people. If you're volunteering, you have to be able to get work out of people and you can't threaten to fire. Right? And you learn more that way. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: No and you yeah You do. You have to find the fun, the engagement, the heart, the social community aspect. And that is what's special is you're really finding what drives people because at the workplace, it's money. Like you clock in, like you're going to show up that day, whether you're motivated to do the work or not, because, you know, for a number of reasons. ⁓ with something like volunteering and someone in a leadership position, Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ You have to keep the volunteers. have to not burn them out. ⁓ Keep the mission and purpose alive. ⁓ Managing personalities. Can you talk about a project that you did with Junior League? Annie Logue: ⁓ The biggest one that I was a part of, this was several years ago, but I was the admissions chair the year that we did away with the sponsorship requirements. Again, when the Junior League was founded, it was an organization of debutants and there was a lot of emphasis on people being from the right background. many communities for many years getting into the Junior League was difficult. In Chicago for many years, you didn't apply to be in the Junior League. Someone you knew would recommend you, you would be voted on and approved or disapproved. And only if you had been approved as a member would someone tell you that you were now invited to join. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, yeah, that's, right, that's. Annie Logue: ⁓ that doesn't work. It worked at maybe at one point in time, but it doesn't work with, you know, modern women who don't necessarily want to be part of that. ⁓ also in people are so mobile, it's really difficult to say to somebody that while you're in this community, you don't know anybody, therefore you're, you're not worthy of being part of us because people move all the time. You know, they get. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. ⁓ yeah. Annie Logue: transferred, you know, you were in the military, you don't have a lot of say where you go, you know. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ and to your point, being a member of Junior League, if you move to the city where there's a chapter, you can plug into that. It's with your point of being mobile. Annie Logue: Yes, you can plug into it. a lot of the new members we have in Chicago are people who are new to the city. They don't know anybody. They want to get involved. They want to learn about the city. They want to become part of it. They want to make friends. These are great things. So when we redid the sponsorship requirement, over the years in Chicago, it had become lesser. Like first there was the process where someone proposed you and you were voted on and then you were told that you were eligible to join. ⁓ Then we allowed people to join if they had three sponsors, then it went down to one sponsor. And finally we were like, this makes no sense, right? It created, even if we tried to make it easy for people to find sponsors, You're still creating a barrier that isn't necessary. The barrier is particularly affecting groups of people who felt that they had never been welcome, particularly Black women, Jewish women. It also was making it difficult for people who are new to Chicago. It was alienating some people who had been in Chicago, a lot of professional women who are kind of like, I'm a partner of my law firm and I have to go through this? know, okay, fine, I'll go somewhere else and volunteer, you know. So there was some of that. It was like, this just isn't serving anybody, you know? And we had community organizations that were kind of like, we don't want to work with you because of this whole sponsorship thing. And so we're like, why? Why do it? But it was controversial because there were a lot of members who Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. ever. Annie Logue: came in under the old regime and thought it was important or that it was something that they personally valued or that they liked staying involved with the league so that they could continue to introduce new people. Like they viewed that as a big part of the value that they added to the league. You know, if you're somebody, if you like went out and tried to recruit all of your friends and your... friends, friends to join the league. And suddenly it's like, well, you don't need to, we don't need that anymore. You know, there were people who felt like, so it was a bit, it was a bit of a cultural change. But the president at the time and I pushed it through, you know, worked really hard. We did a lot of benchmarking with other leagues around the country. We talked to, Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Annie Logue: I don't even know how many people in the league to try to get their sense of support. And then everything's been fine. And I think we're ⁓ in a great place right now. So that's very exciting. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, big. that and I understand that like you said the old regime pushing back against the changes feeling like a loss of status, loss of exclusivity, loss of like I said status but there's like an edge to this identity too and and and and that's that's a lot to navigate and I'm interested in Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah! Leigh/@followtheleighder: Because I'm with you and like, you know, you've got a successful law firm partner coming in and she's like, I've got to, what is this, like a college sorority? I got to go through, like, what is, you know, like, I'm just trying to, you know, and it's also was a big change. Not just that Junior League and year chapter went through, but just volunteer institutions changed a lot in the last 20 some odd 30 years. Annie Logue: Yeah! Right. Leigh/@followtheleighder: not just with the women's rights movement and developments there, ⁓ but a lot of women simply don't have all the time that they used to have. And we've noticed that here is like just a massive dip out of time, not out of desire. ⁓ have you seen on either in the Junior League or the League of Women Voters, how have you all been navigating ⁓ Annie Logue: No, no, no. Leigh/@followtheleighder: the economy of time. Annie Logue: ⁓ It's tough, because again, a lot of these organizations were built on the labor of stay at home moms. And there are fewer stay at home parents than there used to be. And also in many communities, people who are choosing to be stay at home parents, want to focus on their children, their house, their children's school, they're choosing to be stay at home parents because they don't want to have outside obligations. ⁓ And so it's different, right? It's a different population. But at the same time, I think what we're seeing really since the pandemic is that people are realizing they need to have connection. And I think there's been a revival in a lot of these organizations At least in Chicago, there's been a big revival ⁓ in a lot of churches, in a lot of neighborhood organizations, community organizations, because that's just it. People are realizing we need each other. The pandemic was easier if you had people you could connect to, if you could have like, in our neighborhood, people were trading puzzles and books and things, but. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ yeah. Annie Logue: If you could, if you were, if you, you know, we have a block club, there are people who organize our block party and who, who maintain the email list and that work that they did helped make it easier for everyone because there was already a connection that we could build on. And I think that that's something we're really starting that people are appreciating more and more, right? We're not. Politicians are not going to save us. oligarchs, billionaires are not going to save us. We've got to do it ourselves. And I think that that's really driving a lot of engagement in recent years. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. And you pointed out earlier that the Pope is from Chicago. You've got a lot of noise coming out of Chicago this past year politically. Can you talk about how League of Women Voters plays a role in ⁓ advancing political activism for women? Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. He is. Yes, political activism for women, political activism for everyone. ⁓ And I think that that's something that the name, it's a great name. People know the brand, but it's for everyone, not just for women. That's kind of like, how do you get, how do you change a brand that has that kind of incredible recognition? ⁓ What we're really seeing is a few different things. ⁓ The first is the realization, know, a lot of people are like, ⁓ my vote doesn't matter. My vote, it's all sewn up. It's all, you know, whatever, the billionaires, whatever. But if your vote didn't matter, people wouldn't try to suppress it. And the mere fact that people are trying to suppress the vote is increasing the perceived value, which I think is really, really important. It's just like, wait a minute, right? If people wanna make it harder to vote by mail, why would they do that? Well, one reason they do it is because they know that that's how people vote. And if you look at the data, like consistently, Rich people vote. Billionaires have some of the highest voting participation rate. If it didn't matter, they wouldn't do it. ⁓ And I think the other thing that's been very interesting was the election of Zoran Mondani in New York City, because that is clearly an election where the wealthiest, you New York has some of the wealthiest people in the world live there. They were really opposed to it. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. ⁓ yeah. Annie Logue: They raised incredible amounts of money, incredible amounts of campaigning. They, ⁓ you know, supported a candidate that they thought would be in opposition, but it shows that they could not stop what the average New Yorker wanted, right? The average New Yorker is the person who went to the polls and voted. And no matter how you feel about the outcome of that election, Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm. Annie Logue: It's pretty clear that what mattered was people going to the polls and voting. It wasn't the amount of money that was raised. It wasn't about the amount of noise that people raised in the media or spend on advertising. was just getting people to line up, to go down to their whatever public school or coffee shop or church hall and place that vote. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Mm-hmm. we saw that ⁓ obstacle to voting down in Texas with Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico last month in the 11th hour, how the state of Texas interfered with folks able to vote in Dallas area. I think it was Dallas. But yeah, I think it was. Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And again, it's like, obviously that vote's valuable or they wouldn't have taken the time and effort to try to stop it. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Annie Logue: That's all there is. Leigh/@followtheleighder: and or ⁓ the amount of money being poured into online creators, podcasters, influencers, because again, if those audiences didn't matter, if those votes didn't matter, they wouldn't spend the money. Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. Fuh-uh, fuh-uh, fuh-uh. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ And that's why it has just been such an eye-opener of how much you can... ⁓ I don't know, just change the message, dominate the message, and how democracy ⁓ is actually quite fragile. You have to be very vigilant. Annie Logue: It's very fragile. Yeah. And that's, you know, I'll say like, I think a lot of organizations thought that when Barack Obama was elected in 2008, particularly here in Chicago, because we love Barack Obama, but yeah, right. We love Pope Leo. We love Barack Obama. But you know, in 2008, there was the sense like, well, it's all solved. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, y'all are on a streak. You got Obama and the Pope. Like, okay. Annie Logue: democracy is solved, the will of the people has prevailed and we've got somebody who's got super like, it's done, yay, we're done. And then you realize that it's not, that it's like, this is every single election, there will be people who will try to influence the vote, there will be people who will try to stop the vote. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. We did it. Yeah. No. Annie Logue: And every single election, you've got a new slate of candidates. You've got a new bunch of issues. So even somebody who maybe you liked when they were on the school board 15 years ago, you might not want to be the mayor this year, you know? And so it's like every time you've got to go through and think like, well, who are these people? What are the issues? Who should I vote for? And it doesn't take, it takes a little bit of time. It doesn't take as much time as you might think. The League of Women Voters has a really great tool called ⁓ vote411.org. It's website that has information all over the country. And so you can go in and research the candidates. A lot of public television stations do ⁓ different kind of candidate forums or they'll put, they'll allow candidates to record video messages. Then you can go into the station's website and see them. ⁓ You know, we have lost a lot of local newspapers, but there are still local newspapers. ⁓ And so some of them do endorsements. Some of them don't do endorsements, but they do interviews. They do profiles. so you can sometimes just the fact that a candidate refuses to participate ⁓ in a newspaper's profile gives you some information about them or gives you a, know, helps you understand a little better maybe where they're coming from or not. But ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. Annie Logue: Yeah, and I think you know we know there's a ton of noise we know that everybody's everybody's running negative ads against everybody else. ⁓ So don't pay attention to the ads. And go one step beyond it's a little bit of work but it's not that much work it's maybe a half an hour of your time. And these are people who have. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ that noise, yeah. Yeah, that's nasty. Yeah. Annie Logue: A lot of control like your local city council people are determining things like where there's going to be streetlights. Are there going to be, you know, a bad intersections? Are they going to put a turn arrow or not? You know, these are things that start to have direct effects on your health and safety. And, and so you should care. You know, is it somebody who pays attention to this or are they running for city council on Leigh/@followtheleighder: All right. Mm-hmm. Annie Logue: some kind of national policy. It's like, wait, wait, you know, we want to know like, what are you going to do about like this blighted district? What are you going to do about traffic control? What are you going to do about attracting new businesses? What are you going to do about the park system? These are things that affect your daily life. And so... Leigh/@followtheleighder: And to your point, we have one of our local parks, there are no ⁓ like ramps to get onto the sidewalk. There's a sidewalk around the park, but to get onto the sidewalk, it's just all curb all the way around. It's a problem. ⁓ yeah. Annie Logue: Ew! Okay. That is a problem for people with strollers, people with wagons, people in wheelchairs. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And it's been a thing. It's been going on for about two years where people are like, OK, well, and here's the other side of it. We really only have about three to four really good summer months that you can count on. so things like that are a big fuss for four months, and then we forget about it. that's why it also, when I say this has been going on for years, you're like, then why didn't you do it? I was like, we were like, ⁓ yeah, the curbs. Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. ⁓ Yeah. Okay. The curves! Leigh/@followtheleighder: We got to get the ramps and then the winter hits and we're like, ⁓ yeah, we haven't been outside. I'm not pushing a stroller in the snow, but you know what I mean? but it is, were, because you know, it's obviously an issue for ADA, for mother. I mean, there's a whole host. I mean, it could get us in trouble federally if you know, the right administration wanted to come out for us. And, ⁓ but again, it's kind of like. Annie Logue: You Right, right, right. Yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah, Right. Leigh/@followtheleighder: You go through the hoops of bureaucracy ⁓ and all of that, those are our people. They live here too. That is also their park. ⁓ That's their neighbor. And so just continuing to show up and like you said earlier, it does also show time because you're in community. Annie Logue: Right. Right. Right. Leigh/@followtheleighder: those very stark divisions because of national conversations that have polarized us. You can't really do that in a lot of these community involvement meetings because you have to get other things done. And that has been really growing and maturing for me to maintain volunteer leadership positions, navigate the last 10 years of the society. Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. No. Right. Leigh/@followtheleighder: definitely have had some points of tension with other women or other folks, but then also having to be like, okay, but if I want to get that fundraiser done, or if I want it like, we have to find a way through somehow. really, again, ⁓ different skills that you are forced and pushed into. Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: because it's not the work environment. The work environment, you're not supposed to talk about politics. I mean, ideally. like those conversations aren't even coming up, but now you are in close proximity with other women and their lives and their views and how policy. I feel like I went on a whole little tangent there talking about that. Annie Logue: No. No. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. Right. But no, but that is like, can you find common ground? Can you find a way to work together on certain issues? ⁓ I know, and I know I told the story when I gave that presentation in Chicago that you heard, but when I was president of the League of Women Voters, and one of the things that I'm enormously proud of is we got a major's road in Chicago named for Ida B. Wells. who was a suffragist, who was a civil rights activist. She was born into slavery. She went to college, she became a school teacher, and this was in the South. But she started writing for Northern newspapers about lynchings. And one of the big things that she did to back up her stories was she used government records ⁓ to verify and to back up her reporting. She was one of the first journalists to rely heavily on government records as a form of reporting. So she's very well known in the journalist world. And she was also telling people what was happening in the South, how people were being killed often for no reason. And she eventually moved to Chicago. It wasn't safe for her to stay in the South. And in Chicago, she got involved in ⁓ a lot of issues, but one of the things was the suffrage. A lot of Black people were opposed to women's suffrage for several reasons. Some of the early suffragists were out and out racist. They were white women who were outraged that Black men could vote and they couldn't. ⁓ A lot of Black people felt that we should get the right for men to vote protected before we started expanding the vote for women. The Black men were given the right to vote by the Constitution in the Civil War, but that was widely ignored all over the country. And what Ida B. Wells said was that if Black women voted, that would increase the power of the overall Black vote, and it would make it easier for Black candidates to be elected. And she was one of the founders of the league. ⁓ And she was right about that, actually, because shortly thereafter, then she worked on the campaign to get the first Black alderman elected in Chicago, Oscar De Priest. But so for our centennial, we're like, we should name a road for Ida B. Wells. She's incredible to the history of civil rights, incredible to the history of suffrage, incredible to the history of Chicago. So we're like, this is a no brainer. Yay, this is done. And we found out, first of all, there's a lot of opposition from strange quarters. One is that there already was a well street and there were people who were like, we're going to get, everybody will get confused. ⁓ We had members who like went to all the businesses that were actually on the street that would be affected to ask them their view. ⁓ And they were all very excited. ⁓ One was a blues club that was like, yes, we would love this. ⁓ We had to go to City Hall. had to deal with, ⁓ you know, we were helping to provide political support for the two aldermen whose ward the street was in. So we had to organize lists of community groups that would want to, you know, have their names on the petition. ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, right. Annie Logue: And then when we finally got it approved, it turned out that the street they decided on was actually a state highway, not a city highway. So we had to go to Springfield. And so this is something that you think is going to be super easy. Like, hey, we should have a street name for Ida B. Wells. But it's finally happened. And it's really cool. Like you're coming in on 90 interstate Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ Yeah. Annie Logue: 9 to 90 and you see the signs for Ida B Wells, you see Ida B Wells on the buses, you know, the morning traffic reporters are talking about traffic on the Ida B. It's really Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ it is. it's a special thing, and it's a cool, visible effort that you made. And that's something to be proud of, but like you said, a lot of red tape. ⁓ Annie Logue: A lot of red tape, a lot of volunteers who worked on that. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, yeah, a lot of people, lot of hands. Well, tell me as we're getting closer to the end now, there's been a lot of talk out of this administration, ⁓ you know, some the SAVE Act, ⁓ lots of different interviews and clips of folks saying some pretty concerning things about women that they revoke the 19th. How is your chapter, your community, and your network of women responding to these headlines? Annie Logue: I some of it's just every day. It's like, what are we going to hear? And are they serious? Or are they just trying to deflect from other things in the news? How much of this is serious and how much of this is so that we won't concentrate on other things that are happening? ⁓ I think that ⁓ repealing the 19th Amendment would be extraordinarily difficult. But that again, just because you have the constitutional right doesn't mean you have the actual right. And that was what we saw with voting rights for men, for black men, right? I mean, it wasn't until the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 that black people could rely on being allowed to vote. So I think it gets into this whole issue of you have to be eternally vigilant. ⁓ And I think the point that I would say to people is if your vote didn't matter, people wouldn't try to make it more difficult to vote. And the mere fact that they're making it difficult shows that ⁓ your vote matters. And you should use it. And you should not allow someone to take something of value from you. You wouldn't allow somebody to come to your house and just like take your car. or take your house keys and evict you, you wouldn't allow, you would be very upset if somebody stole your wallet. Don't let somebody take your vote. It clearly has value. It clearly has meaning and it can clearly make a difference. And that's what I tell people. I mean, you get into some of the finer things like the tight, know, voter impersonation fraud is extraordinarily rare. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Annie Logue: It's really difficult to pull off. Like, you know, why would you go down to your neighborhood precinct and pretend to be somebody else? Right? What are you going to do when your neighbor comes in and goes, Lee, how are you? I haven't seen you in ages. And you're like, no, no, no, no. I'm voting as Jane Smith today. You know. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Yeah Right, right. Yeah, or you try to fake it. it's like, yeah, I live in a town of 80,000 people. They'd be like, Lee, know, like the person checking my ID would be like, I know you. What do you do? It's hard to pull. Annie Logue: Right, right. And I mean, even I live in a city, you know, a metropolitan area of three million, but even still like down at our voting precinct, it's just people from my neighborhood. So they know me. So I can't pretend to be somebody I'm not. Somebody will know. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah. All right. It's, no one. ⁓ One of the things you talk about is ⁓ how precious it is. And I think about that out here in Montana and part of the women's rights history out here ⁓ is that these, lot of women followed their men out here. You know, they went West as part of the go West propaganda and those men, because it was dangerous out here, ⁓ either died or ⁓ were dangerous to their women. with alcoholism and the long winters. so between the men's death and his danger, it really forced, and there was very little people, so no tax base. So if you were to be like, no, women can't have property, you'd be like, okay, well, what are we going to do with all these women then? whose men have died or, you know, they had to take their children and run in the middle of the night. They didn't have the tax base for welfare. And so that forced them to say, okay, so women should have the right to property pretty early on. Annie Logue: Right? Right? Yeah, yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: But then you gotta afford the property, right? Now you gotta go to work. And then it's like, but then you need education for the labor. So very quickly, now you're talking about education, labor, property, education for her, education for now she's a mom, you got roads, you got safety. And then on top of all of that, whether it's your property tax, your income tax, or where you're being taxed. Annie Logue: Great, great. Right. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: that is taxation. ⁓ Without representation, we have missed the point of American demand. Taxation and representation go hand in hand. ⁓ So it's like you already pay for that right through your taxes. You're paying to have an opinion, both via your taxes. I know that's... Annie Logue: You're a- Right, right. You pay for that right, both like your taxes, ⁓ if you or your family members serve in the military, in the kind of work that you and people are doing in your community every day. This is a costly right, but it is an important right. Anything that's important is costly. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, absolutely. Annie Logue: So value it. Yeah! Leigh/@followtheleighder: That was so powerful. mean, that hour went by like real quick. Thank you so much for your time. Annie Logue: Yeah, it's so fun. It's always fun to talk with you. Leigh/@followtheleighder: back at you. Well, for those who want to learn more, how can they follow or get a hold or just where can they go to learn more about you Annie? Annie Logue: I have a website, www.annilove.com. I have a sub stack called The Whatever Years. ⁓ And so those are probably, and I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on, so those are probably the best ways to find me if you need to find me. ⁓ My books are, I'm the author of ⁓ several books on investing in Wiley's For Dummies series, and they're available at larger bookstores throughout this country. And ⁓ some of them have been translated. So if you are in Brazil or Germany or Holland, you can find them there. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Now that's a claim to fame. Very cool. Annie Logue: It is, it's exciting. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Annie, thank you so much for being here. Before I wrap up the call, do you have anything else to say to the audience? Annie Logue: You're welcome. Just, ⁓ well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. This has been really wonderful. It's been wonderful to find out what you're working on, because this is really cool. ⁓ And my big reminder to people is get involved in your community, find out who your neighbors are, work on things that are important to you and your neighbors, and vote. And tell your friends. When your friends say voting doesn't matter, remind them. Remind them that if your vote didn't matter, people wouldn't try to take it away. There's a lot of work you can do just talking to your friends. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Thank you, Annie, for being here. And folks, I hope that y'all learned something today and that y'all got motivated to either get involved with Junior League or League of Women Voters, or just see that democracy is important and that caring about your vote and what's going on around your neighborhood, your state. Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I know the national news is very overwhelming right now, but you do have power in your backyard. And don't forget that power. Don't forget that power that you have to say in the voting box about national issues either, but ⁓ do not sleep on all the things that really do shape how you and your romantic partner and your family members, how you navigate your habitat because it's all local decisions, man. Annie Logue: Yes Leigh/@followtheleighder: And in fact, just a good example of this is that our local school district just switched ⁓ tomato providers or marinara providers for our pizza and our cheese sticks and whatever else you put marinara with so that they could go with more local Montana produce tomatoes. And it was just simple and it saved them money. Annie Logue: Hmm. ⁓ ⁓ that's cool. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: It's easier on, you know, environmental exhaust and gas and all that. And now we can do field trips to show kids, hey, this is where your food comes from. And like, just little ways like that. doesn't, ⁓ you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Just look at what's around you and build with those allies into a coalition. So. Annie Logue: Mm-hmm. That is super cool! Leigh/@followtheleighder: You're embodying that Annie. I absolutely adore you. I have so much respect for you. Keep doing what you're doing. And for my audience, don't forget to comment and let me know what you thought of this conversation. Please go follow up with Annie's writing. I said, she's published in all sorts of major publications, so you're bound to learn something and somewhere in all the different writing. You're going to, so, but yeah, folks. Annie Logue: Thank you. Hehehehehe Leigh/@followtheleighder: Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe. ⁓ this has been another episode of Follow the Leighder. I'm your host, Leigh Larson. And until next time, see ya. ⁓ Annie Logue: Thank you, bye.