Latest / Mama Making Podcast / Amanda Kingsley Malo | Democracy is For You: How PoliticsNow is Getting More Women to Run — and Win

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Amanda Kingsley Malo | Democracy is For You: How PoliticsNow is Getting More Women to Run — and Win · Mama Making Podcast

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Mama Making Podcast, where we share stories of moms making impact in their own lives and in the world around them.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jessica, and each week I sit down with women who are building businesses, leading communities, shaping culture, and redefining what success looks like inside of motherhood.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because motherhood does not have to stop your ambition, it can transform it.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's get into it.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone and welcome to the Mama Making Podcast.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Jessica.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new, welcome.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not new, then welcome back.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Today I am so excited to have Amanda Kingsley Mallow on the podcast.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: She is a civic educator, democracy advocate, and the founder of Politics Now, a Canadian initiative dedicated to strengthening democracy by helping more women run for office.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: With a background in teaching and political campaigns, Amanda translates complex political systems into clear practical insights that make civic life feel accessible rather than intimidating.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Through Politics Now, she has supported over 80 campaigns and helped elect 60 women across two election cycles.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Not by pushing any political agenda, but by believing that democracy works best when more people and more women see themselves a part of it.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Amanda, thank you for being on the podcast.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: I am so excited to chat.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so excited to be here and be able to chat with you.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me more about you, who you are, where you are from, whatever you're comfortable sharing.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I am a mom of two.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a wife.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm uh an eldest daughter.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: I uh am a sister.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: I, as you said, am a former teacher, and that's still an identity that uh that I hold very true to myself.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: I live and uh play and exist in Sudbury, Ontario, which is a mid-sized city in the northern part of the province, and uh have lived here almost all of my life, which is like really fun.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: And now I get to raise my kids here down the street from my mom and dad, which is like lovely.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, that's like me in a nutshell.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: I work, I work in civic education now and civic engagement programming.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's uh yeah, no, it's like just really awesome to be able to like live and breed this work that I love so much.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me more about your background.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: How did you get into civics and politics?
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: What drew you to this area?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me everything.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think that I probably come at this like from a really funny perspective.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh talked about looking down the street from my mom and dad.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, my mom and dad are probably some of the most like normal political people that I know.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And by that, what I mean is that mom and dad sit on opposite ends of the political spectrum and disagree on policy on almost absolutely everything that you can imagine.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that was very normalized growing up in my household.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: My parents, um, my mom is an educational assistant, my dad is an entrepreneur, owns a business.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And they would sit at the kitchen table when we were kids and they'd like debate policy and get us in it, the three of us.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a brother and a sister, to talk a little bit more about like, okay, so we share these common values, but we disagree on the policy that's going to make them happen.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about that.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Let's debate about that.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so I grew up in a house that it was really normal to say things like, you know, I disagree with blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, pass the potatoes and another thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, policy.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that was super normalized when I was growing up in my house.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they also, like, they're very funny.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: My one of my favorite stories to tell about them is that they used to bring the three of us to the polls when it was time to vote.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the whole way there would bicker about who it was that they were going to vote for and how like gleeful they were that they were going to cancel each other's votes out.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then they'd go in the voting booth and do that.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we'd get in the car and we'd come home and we'd watch election results the same way that I'm watching people watch the Knicks.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like that was that was just the house that I grew up in.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that that was super normal to be able to talk and debate policy and that kind of thing until I started doing that in earnest with like kids that I grew up with and they didn't have that kind of language.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or when I talked about it with other adults and I would get like very hush-hush, like, no, like polite people don't talk about politics.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, that's so weird to me.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean we don't talk about that?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: I talk about it all the time.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you don't talk about it, I talk about it, we talk about it.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: So that was kind of like the landscape in growing up that I gotten a real interest in it.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: But my parents, despite being like the kind of like normal political people that I was just describing, don't work in politics.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: They don't, like they may have volunteered for parties here and there.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: They got the loan signs, but it's all very normal, quote unquote, civic engagement, like nothing that's out of the ordinary.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know that jobs in politics existed, because what did what does that look like for me in in Northern Ontario in a mid-sized city where like that doesn't really touch my daily life?
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: I just, I never really considered it.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went into teaching, uh, which is, I think, one of the most important civic engagement things that we can possibly do is help prepare good citizens for the future.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: And after I'd gotten married and after I'd got my permanency, I just uh was like looking for a hobby and was scrolling on Facebook one night and saw that there was a political party that was looking to do some campaign training and they were talking about it as like a community organizer.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, I love like the advertising really worked on me.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh, I do want to be a community change maker.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: I do want to talk to my neighbors, I do really care about what's happening and I do believe in these values and causes.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna try out.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: It was a fellowship.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I'm gonna throw my hat in the ring.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I was the only person north of Barrie to get in the program, which was very exciting for me because I like I took like one political science program or class when I was in university, and I actually didn't enjoy it.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, this sucks.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like the way that we talk about this sucks.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to do this.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: This, like, this is it, it just felt so like out of touch with how I know to talk about the daily issues that we're having in our lives.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it was so great to be able to like enter that domain in a really practical, like tangible way where they taught more about like this is how you're gonna go knock on a door, and this is how we're going to get people involved, and this is how you're gonna convince people to vote.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the more that I did it, the more that I was like, oh no, actually, like I love this.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I got into um a campaign that was just starting off on the ground.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was, it was 2014, so it was leading up to the 2015 federal election.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I was their first volunteer.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so as I gathered more volunteers to come and help knock on more doors, I became the most senior volunteer.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: And before I knew it, I was like part of the actual like campaign team that was making decisions about how like what we were going to do, which was hilarious because I'd never even volunteered before, really.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like I couldn't believe that anybody was asking my opinion about anything.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then they got elected, which was really cool.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I decided to stay in teaching because it turns out that while I really love the, like, you know, like the talking about the debating and whatever, it's it's people at its core in politics that I actually really love.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's connecting with my neighbors, it's having conversations about how we get to make the community that we all love a little bit better.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And like then taking that and actually going and doing it.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so the act of governing is not the same as the act of campaigning.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I really missed my hobby.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know what to do with it anymore.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: If they were all out governing and I couldn't get to do those things that I loved.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it was someone that had told me, well, what if you just take those, like all of those skills that you've acquired and start giving them to people who need them?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of the like impetus for politics now that I was like, oh, you're right.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: If I take all of these skills of campaigning and I give them to, you know, a sword of people who don't have access to that kind of training, because this was very special.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like the party invested in me.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: They invested in the education of campaigning in a way that not a whole lot of people got the chance to do.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And when you think about municipal politics, which is kind of where politics now sits, it's that like I joke that it feels like the Wild West of politics because there's no party that's associated with you.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: So you quite literally like you're in it for your neighbors.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's the most tangible way that politics exists.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, you know that when you make a decision at a council table, you have to answer to your neighbors.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: You continue to live amongst them.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can run into somebody at the grocery store or when you're putting out your garbage, that they're like, hey, you made this decision and it sucks.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the most like immediate reaction that you can have to anything that I think that too often politicians that are in like the provincial or federal legislature don't really have to come across in a really tangible way, like municipal politics, but it also means that they don't have the big like partisan backing.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: So they don't have the teams that exist that I was creating to help go and knock on doors to help convince people to vote and then like, you know, like make the vote turnout happen, which is really important to getting votes at a at an election boot.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember thinking to myself, like, if if people that are like really smart and really engaged and could do really wonderful things for my community just knew how to do this thing that I can do, we could help elect like five really cool people, 10 really cool people, 20 really cool people.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it just kind of like multiplied that way, where at the end of it, through two municipal election cycles here in Ontario, it was 60 women, which is just such a wonderful gift.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's so incredible.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the things that I love about, I mean, there's many things, but the work that you're doing is making politics and civic leadership accessible.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think just going back to your story of how you were raised, and it was like, oh, we always talked about this.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think similarly grew up in a family that would talk about it and I would go with my parents to the polls and they would debate on things here and there.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: And but there was this larger culture of like, oh, we don't talk about politics.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think that that in a in and of itself creates a barrier to accessibility.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not until we're like in our own community, there's something happening that we don't like, we want to change it, that someone will go ahead and make that leap.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, I feel like unless you're in a political family, a political family dynasty, I feel like a lot of people don't see it as being something that's like for them or attainable for them to do.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me more about the accessibility piece in politics now and and how you kind of came to that.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think what's really interesting about what you just said is is exactly that, that like it's it's a lack of accessibility.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that when I used to, you know, talk to my students about this back when I still taught was when there's a lack of accessibility, let's like, you know, roll it back and kind of swim upstream and ask ourselves, who does that benefit?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because it doesn't benefit me.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't benefit you, but it does benefit the people who are in power and the people who know more and the people who have always had these doors that were open to them or rooms that were accessible to them in a way that like I didn't even know was possible.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that there are too many people who like to keep that access to themselves, like anything.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And what ends up happening is that when we, you know, blow open the accessibility and we just make it like just a little bit more understandable, then we actually end up discovering that it's quite easy to participate.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like civic engagement is not as complicated as I think too many people would have us believe, right?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of the times when we're told, like, oh, we don't talk about politics or we don't talk about, you know, religion or we talk don't it's because those conversations are hard.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: It can be hard if you don't have the correct language to understand that when you're talking about politics, you can disagree on policy and it doesn't have to have anything to do with your values.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: But because we we aren't kind of taught that skill of the hard conversation, of course, when we start trying to have them, they blow up.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: It feels very personal because you're putting your beliefs on a platter and you're saying, like, I really believe in this, right?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think too often we tell ourselves that the policy and the belief and the value have to be intricately linked.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: We can understand each other and ourselves a lot better if we're like, oh, like you have this value.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like I like my parents.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: My parents share values.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Of course they do.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: They raised three of us, they did a great job.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: We're all really great humans.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And they that comes from the commonality and their values.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: What they disagree on in the politics side is how to enact the policy that is going to help that value prosper.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that's okay to disagree on.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think that when we talk about politics in a, there's always an analogy that I like to use that I think is like about accessibility, is that too often we think about politics as like uh, you know, direct transfer.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm getting on the bus at my address, and it's going to bring me to the exact destination that I think I need to go to.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: But it's actually more like public transportation.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I have to walk to the end of the block to get to my bus stop.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe when I get on the bus, I might have to transfer buses.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: To me, that's like changing political parties.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: Eventually, though, it gets me closest to the value that I hold dearly in the policies that I think enact it best.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that might take a little time.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: The road might look a little bit convoluted, but it doesn't mean I have to agree with the party that I'm voting for a hundred percent of the time.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: I never have.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: I would challenge somebody who does.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: It like to me would be such a wild thing to be like, I agree with this person a hundred percent of the time.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, ugh, I don't.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: It also means that it gives us more of a an opportunity to like change our mind and change parties or, you know, like provincially I'm voting this way, federally, I'm gonna vote this way.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: And what I love about municipal politics and that kind of how like how it comes together with politics now is that you don't have to do that at all in municipal politics, in most municipal politics and most municipalities, that you get to vote for a person and you get to talk to them specifically about how they're gonna translate those values that we share in our community into something tangible like policy.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: What I love about just the concept of it and how it relates to politics now is that it ends up meaning that the impact is just so vast.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I ran, I would be one person on a ballot.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: I would get to like have really wonderful effects on the ward that I live in.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe one day I'm like, you know, that's a great impact for me.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's like not the one that I want right now, but maybe one day it is.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: What I think is cooler is that if I train 60 women to do it and 60 women win, then like there are other little girls that get to see, oh, like that's a job that I can do.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: I get to make that kind of really cool, massive change, tangible change.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, my mom, my grandma, my auntie, like those are real people to you when you're a child.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're real people to you when you're like us.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the impacts that you can have are just so vast and more far-reaching than even just the ward of the community that you live in.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And like that is so incredibly special.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that perfectly segues into my next question of you're somewhat focused on getting more women in politics and civil or civic leadership.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: What impacts do you see across the board, whether it's in their community or globally, that women are starting to get more involved in politics?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think that for a long time, when I was kind of coming into age into this work, there was like this separation of like women's issues and issues.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it, I mean, I'm sure that you know as well as I do that just women's issues are people's issues.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're just human issues, right?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And when we think about the diversity of opinion around a table, especially for people with varied experiences, that makes such a massive difference in, you know, helping shift things in your community.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, like an example that I can think of, I had spoken to one uh counselor who had gotten involved because there were no traffic lights where her kids were crossing the street to go to school.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a big problem.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: And every time that she was talking to somebody about it, it just kind of got getting shooed off.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so she decided to run for counsel for a traffic light.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: She was like, if that means I spend four years on this council and that's the only thing that I get done, like, yay for me.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was not a traffic light.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: The compromise ended up being a school guard crossing person, which like still huge, huge effect on the safety of the kids that were going to her school.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: But it was also not just that, because then she was able to, like, then when she was at the table, she was like, okay, but another thing that I want to talk to you about is, you know, the infrastructure that we have for parks, it's not very good.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that was because she was directly touched by the fact that she was going to parks with her children, municipal parks with her kids.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: That ended up inspiring like a young man who had children as well, like a young father who was like, okay, well, a problem that I'm having is actually like there's a lack of accessibility with baby changing tables when I go to the bathroom.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: And like, can't isn't that something that we can do within our municipalities?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: And they were like, you're right.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't just about just having women.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's that the second that that new perspective came up, other people were like, oh, yeah, that's right.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I have this unique perspective as a young father, or I have this unique perspective as a business person, or I have this unique perspective, you know, whatever that is, we bring those experiences to the table.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: And if it's just one monolith and one experience, you keep getting the same result over and over.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: But the second that someone with a new experience comes in, they can inspire others to kind of come at things creatively in a way that they might not have before.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: And those are really tangible impacts.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: In a practical sense, how are you getting more women involved in political campaigns and running for office?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Women have so much on their plates all the time, whether they're a mom or a sister or a friend, our plates are constantly full.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: How are you practically meeting women where they are and getting them involved in civic leadership?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny that you say that because I've like, I feel like I've kind of like done this accidentally in my own journey into motherhood.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I started politics now, I was 29.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have kids yet.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: I had just recently gotten married.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like, only knew what I knew in my own experience, right?
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had had some mentors that had told me like the best way to do this is campaign school.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: You bring people together for a weekend or a day and make it as accessible as you can, pay for child care, get some food in there, like make sure that like you're feeding people that their kids are cared for, and you'll, you know, women will come.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: And they did.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: My very first campaign school, I had uh, I think it was 25 women that showed up.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: The next one that I had was 40.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was amazing.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: Though not all of those women ran, but a lot of them have since either run or joined campaigns and been equipped in different ways or told their friends, like I went to this really great training.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And because I'm a teacher, I like I know how to put on a pretty bomb training.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've like, it's just part of like the work that I do, right?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like I want to make sure that everything is like tangible, accessible, and like meaty.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: So like you leave this training and you're gonna be able to do X, Y, Z.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I know how to deliver on that thing.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was a really great way to do it.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: When I didn't, I was like very pregnant.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: All the pictures that you can like see on Facebook, I'm like, I'm pregnant with my daughter.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's like she's on the journey with me, and I'm like, I gotta get this done.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like, election's not until October, but she's born in April.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm not gonna have time for anything anymore.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, when you don't have kids yet and you just kind of like picture this as like a thing that, like, oh yeah, like things are gonna change a little bit, and you just do not have a concept of wow, they're gonna change.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: So then I do the two campaign schools, they go great.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: I have my daughter, I'm on Matt Leave.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, actually, I really miss this work.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure there's something I can do.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so I decide to take the campaign school and do it virtual.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: And what it means is that it's now not just Sudbury, North Bay, Northeastern Ontario people that can join polices that I can drive to.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's now open to anybody in Ontario.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so more people kind of start joining in that sense.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was a great success.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: It would like connected me with the 11 women that ended up going on to win their elections.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was just like lovely.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: That was in 2018.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: The pandemic happened.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: During the pandemic, I also had my second baby.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I don't even have time.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even want to think about in person.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: I can't do that.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta do this like while I'm like nursing, while I'm like up at 2 a.m.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what, like, how how would I run for office?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I keep talking about how we need young moms in politics.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: I can't even get it together to do this workbook.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I can't do any of this training.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're not showing up.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: No wonder they're not showing up.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't have time to do any of this.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd thought about instead, like, what if I do a workbook?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: What if I write out a very like step-by-step take the training that I've been doing, the work is done, and just translate it into a workbook that they can fill out.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then that way they can do that at 2 a.m.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: when their baby wakes them up, or they can do that at like 3 p.m.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: when they're napping, or whatever that looks like for them, or they can listen to it and access the training that way.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that blew up like a new portion of what.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: What training looks like and how to be more accessible and how to get more people involved.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then from there, I thought to myself, like I started getting questions.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'd started posting about it online.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: I had some friends that I don't know if, like you were saying that you're like, you know, you've got this experience too.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if maybe the same thing.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: I often get told that I'm like the most political person that people know, which is very funny to me.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's just because I talk about politics, like it's not a secret.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I get friends that'll be like, Amanda, I don't know what to vote for.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or Amanda, I just saw this thing in the news.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what is that?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'd started posting during the election, like, just like, here's what a minority government is, here's what this is, here's what that is.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like just breaking down the terminology.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: And posted those during provincial federal elections, posted those during municipal, and like they get a little bit of traction.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I would immediately like be like, stop looking at me, like shut down my account, and then just like go away and ghost it.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I was my sister, we've gone to this as girlhood.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: We went to the Taylor Swift concert, Ares came to Toronto, and I was explaining to her some sort of civic concept.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, You should do a podcast.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Oh God, no, no, I don't want to do that.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, Well, what happened to your videos?
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I stopped making them.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's no election.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, Well, people need to know about these things before they happen.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you just gave me a big speech about how something happened in policy and I'm upset.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the easiest thing would have been to go and try and encounter it before it passed.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: But no one has this language, so why don't you do that?
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd promised her, I was like, I'll make, I'll make a couple of videos and I'll only do it as long as it's fun.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then I highly recommend like your siblings being like your biggest fans and your biggest bullies because she texted me for like weeks.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: She was like, I don't see your your video out.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't, you didn't make that video.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't do anything.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Where is it?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, uh, if you send it to me, I'll repackage it for you because she works in marketing.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: So finally I just put it up and I was like, fine, you happy?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, Well, no, because you promised me you would make more.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, do it.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: She was like, do it for three months.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: Do one a week for three months.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: And if it's still fun, then keep doing it.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been making these videos now for like a year and a half.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very fun.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it turns out that when you give people, like, it's not that we don't want to talk about these things, actually.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that we don't care.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that like it, it's simply that we've never been given the language and we weren't properly taught how to have these conversations and what these things are.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that in this era of like the world, we're coming to the realization that without that understanding, without that basic knowledge, it's harder to put things into action.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that action can look different.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be politics.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Civic engagement is as simple as like showing up and being involved in your kids' school.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know, joining community conversations.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to like, you know, just making sure that when you read the news, you know what's up.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: And without that base knowledge, we can't do any of those things.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been like really fun to watch all of that kind of convalesce together into this really interesting ecosystem of like, oh, I thought it was running for office and it still is, right?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was like, but actually it's a step before that.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's that you can't even get to this like magical, I want to do something phase until you have enough information to be able to feel confident enough that now armed with this information, I can do something.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I like accidentally stumbled into the first step.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the the ripple or trickle down effect of we don't talk about politics makes it like you said, it's like a secret.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's a secret as to what politics is, what it looks like.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we are confronted with the opportunity to get into politics or get interested in civic leadership, it's like, oh, I'm not a political person, simply because of that ripple effect of we don't talk about politics.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we've come to a very unique time in the world where I l I live in the States and I feel like we're at a point where you don't really have a choice whether you're a political person or not, because it's it's the way that our politics are operating here in the states right now is affecting decisions and choices by our government and by our political officials are affecting our everyday, especially as women.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think I was at I have a group text with two of my cousins, and we're like, remember the days when like we didn't have to be informed on what was happening and and deal with the overwhelm of of what's going on.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to now because overwhelm.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I I love what you're saying.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, about making it accessible very on a very minute level down to just the terminology, knowing gathering the knowledge of terminology and what things mean.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think your sister made a great point that people need to know prior to when they really need to know during elections.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I know it's something I'm guilty of of like, all right, elections next week, let me research all my candidates.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't have time to do that.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have time to look at their past voting history or their records or if they're all of their issues and if they align with me and I have to resort to like a one-page summary of what their issues are and what their stances are.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think getting ahead of it can be so much more beneficial.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, there could be things that are passing or going on that you're like, wait, I have a really strong opinion on this, and I didn't even know it was going on.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: How else do you suggest people or moms and women specifically can get ahead of that overwhelm of like so much information and also continue to be informed, continue to be in the know of what's going on without getting like so bogged down by the overwhelm?
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: That overwhelm is like so significant, isn't it?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, like I live and breathe for this kind of stuff and these kind of conversations.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: And even I in this time, I'm like, okay, like I need stricter boundaries.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: I will say one of the things that you said that like really stuck with me is like the the remember when we didn't have to.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and I think that one of the things that's shifted for me in the last particularly 10 years, is an understanding that I don't think politics looks the way that I always thought it looked, particularly around motherhood.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: I used to think that politics was over there and that motherhood was separate to that.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: But it actually turns out that one of the most political actions that I can do is raise good humans.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: It and that that kind of like took me a long time to get to, uh, longer than it probably should have.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: But when I think about the values that I'm living my life and my motherhood in and that I'm trying to help bring my kids along with, so much of that is political.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: The other piece is that like politics, one of my favorite expressions is when people are like, oh, I don't do politics.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, politics is gonna do you.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like it just is because it's everything and it's everywhere in a way that we don't acknowledge enough.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's the air that we breathe, it's the public transportation that you take or don't take, or don't have accessible to you, or do have accessible to you.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's the education of your kids, it's the level of education that your kids can attain.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: All of it is tied to like the money that you make, the wage that we make, the taxes you pay.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we know that to be political.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: But when we think about the other tangible parts of our lives, that we don't always think about the politics involved in that, particularly when we think about like the air you breathe.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like pollution is a policy choice.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: Where pollution goes is a policy choice, where your garbage goes, how many bags of garbage you can put out?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Are you the kind of community that recycles?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: Do you guys have green boxes?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: Are you like, do you compose?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like all of that, while it doesn't feel like a political choice, is actually very political.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: And when I stopped looking at politics as over there and thinking about the way that it actually integrates in my life more, while I think that can feel very overwhelming, because once you see it, you can't unsee it, it actually also feels very freeing because it means that I'm actually participating in civic engagement in every choice that I make.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I can infuse my values into these choices in a really interesting and authentic way.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: That also I'm I'm the kind of gal who likes to feel like I'm doing something.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I'm doing something every day now, like between the difference of like, am I gonna put it in the garbage or am I gonna put it in the compost?
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's a silly thing, but that like those are small differences that I feel like are tangible in my community.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: So there's that.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's also on the other like side of it, the inundation and the overwhelm that you were talking about, which I am, like I said, not immune to.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had to put pretty strict boundaries about how I consume the news.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I do it with my kids around because I also know that that means that they're gonna be informed and we can talk about it.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like part of our morning routine that when like they get to the kitchen table, they start doing whatever, they're like, you know, eating breakfast, and I turn on our local radio news.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like out here where I live, it's the CBC, and like that's our Canadian broadcaster.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so, like, they've got the news on in the morning, and that's like it's like NPR.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: I, you know, put that on.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's 10 minutes.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: That is the only news that I consume in the morning.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: The only news.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm not like putting on the TV and letting the headlines roll.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like I very intentionally am listening to the news first thing in the morning to like figure out what I missed the night before.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: It does the headlines like in a very net neutral way, and I feel sufficiently informed for the job that I work in in civic engagement to be like, okay, like I know what's going on enough to have a good understanding.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then I do not touch anything news related until my lunch break.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: If I do, I listen to podcasts, but very intentionally.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like if this, like if I am not in a headspace to listen to that, I'm not doing it.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'll listen to music blissfully and like just forget about it instead.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then I do the same thing in reverse for dinner.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so then at dinner, CBC comes back on.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's the 10 minutes, like that I know that they're doing like the evening news.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm putting the kids can hear it, like it just exists out in the ether.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm listening to it, I consume it, gives me all the updates for the day.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that's it, man.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like that is what I know that I can handle.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: When there are bigger stories, I'll go digging.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'll look, I'm like someone who likes to look at multiple sources.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll look at not just like, you know, what are broadcasters saying, but I'll also look to like see like, how is this landing in the United States?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: How's this landing in Europe?
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: What does this look like from different angles?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Be able to make my own, but I will only do that for like one or two news stories because I at one point was doing that for everything.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: And it was so much.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're not meant to live this way with this inundation of information all the time.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're, it's just not, we're not meant to live this way.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that we have to be more intentional about what those boundaries are that we set.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: I wouldn't recommend to say, like, oh, we should just like be blissfully unaware and ignorant.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's like, I think that's like the complete opposite spectrum.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Although I can fully understand sometimes being like, I gotta shut it off and I can't think about it for a while, for sure.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that there's like a happy medium between like, I need to be plugged in and connected and whatever all the time.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: I turned off all of my news notifications on my phone.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Don't get those anymore either.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like those like breaking news.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: Nope, don't want to know.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: It'll tell me at five o'clock tonight.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like it can wait.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing that's not so important.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: If there's an emergency, the municipality will let me know.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like an alert will go off, like something will happen and it'll be okay.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: So there's nothing that can't wait until one of those points for like deeper thinking and conversation and just like some understanding of what's happening.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that advice of kind of protecting your own boundaries and creating boundaries that make sense for you so that you can one stay informed and know what's going on, but also like protect your peace a little bit.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely guilty of getting on TikTok and be like, what's going on now?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a little bit part of it in that like you're getting inundated with information for a reason because you can't hone in on one important topic when there's so many different things going on.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so as moms, I think that there's so much going on in our life and so much going on in our world.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we have this natural desire to help.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we're, I know myself and and my cousins and my friends have a hard time with everything that's going on in our world.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: Where can I make the most impact with my very minute amount of time?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: How can I have the space in this season to run for a political office or help run a campaign?
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: What are some suggestions that you have for moms and women who are in the thick of it, in the middle of their motherhood journey or building a business or doing their nine to five?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: What is your suggestion for women who want to get more involved but have a limited uh bandwidth that they're able to offer?
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the most important things that we can think about when we think about civic engagement is what is the unique gift that I can bring to the table and how can I use that to the best effect?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I get asked, like, Amanda, are you gonna run for office one day?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, maybe, maybe in 10 years, that's the best use of my gift.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: But right now, the best gift that I have is the like ability that I have to communicate clearly, to like make my fun little civic videos, to help teach people a little bit more about Canadian democracy, to help demystify the process, to help in that sense of making politics, civic engagement, living in this world just more accessible in general.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I know to be true about the gifts that I hold in this season of life.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I am able in that to like really put on like what I need to do when it's time to do it.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then knowing that in my own values, that family and like being a good partner and being a good daughter are the most important part of the pinnacle of the journey of my life for me, that when those take precedence, then like everything else has to fall to the wayside, and that's okay.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because I also think that part of civic engagement is an understanding that we pick up the work when we can and we put it down when we're not able to carry it.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: And the social deal that we have with each other in this work is that when I put it down, someone else will pick it up.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't always happen in perfect ways, but if we're all giving that gift, I have to trust that someone else has very similar gifts.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not unique in this sense.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: And when I put it down, maybe it's a good season for them to pick it up.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: And sure, it's going to look different.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's what that season of life calls for for them.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what the world needs, or that's what the community needs at that moment.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's like that for all of the things that we can think of.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so if, like, you know, that's a business, like I think about one of my one of my best friends who owns a printing business.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like part of the work that she can do is around donating those services for lawn signs and for printing material for campaigns for people it is that she believes in.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: It one of my very favorite ways to volunteer on campaigns that I think is like really underutilized, particularly for parents, is if you know someone that you really believe in that's running for office, particularly for mothers, part of that is knocking on doors and making phone calls and going to events.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it might mean that like dinner is like and making dinner is not within their capacity for that campaign itself.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Chip in a couple of them.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Be like, I'll make a couple of dinners for your family, or I'll babysit the kids for a night when you're going out and you're door knocking.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: That makes such a huge difference in the contribution.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not monetary.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: It might not even take any extra of your time.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you might be already going to the park with like with your kids and be like to one of your neighbors that's running.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_01: You can be like, Well, I'll take your kids for the night.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'm gonna go do this.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: You go do what you gotta do, man.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: And all of that is just community, right?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: The stronger that our communities are and the more that we're able to help each other out and the different ways that we can contribute those gifts.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: There are big ways.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_01: There's like, I mean, the traditional ways that we always talk about with, you know, money and donations and volunteering and running campaigns, like those are all really important.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot of background stuff that's happening that we don't always think about that have to do with like the design of a flyer or like who's taking care of these kids, who's making sure that you're fed and fueled, who's bringing your teen coffee when it's election day.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like, can you spare an hour to make sure that people can get to the polls?
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: All of those make a really big difference and they're not as time-consuming as we might think.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I would remind people, and I think that mothers know this most of all, that we can't do anything that we do in a vacuum.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: We need community to be successful mothers.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: And we can be more successful mothers if one of us does the ultimate thing of running for office and brings that voice to the table so that we can make sure that that kind of accessibility and thought is put into what municipal councils look like, what state legislatures look like, what the province looks like, whatever that is, wherever you live.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: That particular viewpoint is really important, but they don't get there without us.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so, how is it that we can contribute even in small ways?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: It all goes towards making it happen.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: I used to work in nonprofit.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things we always talked about with people that were in our nonprofit as volunteers or beneficiaries of the nonprofit were the the gifts are time, talent, and treasure.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the things that you can offer.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe right now it is your time.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can go do door knocking or be present at an event.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're filled to the br your calendar's full and all you can do is pass on some funds to to that special project or that person running for office.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: Or it is making signs for an event, or it's like you said, making dinner or doing something else uh with your guests.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: Talking to people.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like talking to your family members.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like, hey, like I'm gonna be voting for this person.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you why, like I think that like your values align with their values and kind of really helping connect those dots.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's what door knocking is.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like at the end of the day, I think one of the things that is most important about politics that too often gets forgotten in the wayside is that politics is about people and it's about relationships.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's we're just building relationships and community in this.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so if there is someone that you know that can do something really wonderful and you have even one conversation and you change the mind of one person, that's huge.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because I don't know about how it works exactly where you live.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: I know, like, depending on the state and the county, things work a little bit different.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: But like where I live, we just had like a federal election last year and it had to go to court because of one vote difference.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: One vote.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like when people are like, oh, is it really gonna matter?
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine all the people who didn't show up to the polls that might have been able to influence that one vote that ended up siding the election?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like, just absolutely crazy, right?
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that in itself is huge.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I the point that you just made of like every vote counts.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter if you come from like my community is primarily Republican and I'm voting Republican, which is fine, but like there's many different candidates.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that vote that you're putting through is going to make every difference.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think having people value, again, it goes back to that.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: We don't talk about politics.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, I'm not a political person, whatever it might be.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: Your vote matters and you're like, if you're not in a space where you can go above your capacity to participate in civic leadership, the very least you could do is put your vote, research your candidates and put your vote out there for the person that you feel is most aligned with what you see happening in your community.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're not the same political party.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they're not someone you would go have drinks with, but they are putting forward a goal that you can get behind.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I would even say, like, I don't need to be friends with my politicians.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like at this point in my life, I've met many of them.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be buddies with them.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: I want that, I want to know that they're just gonna like show up and vote with integrity.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe I disagree.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said at the beginning, like, I have very rarely agreed 100% with any candidate that I've ever voted for because that's an unrealistic expectation to put on any flawed human being, of which we all are.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: But one of my favorite things to tell like people when they tell me that they don't vote because they're not political people is that even in not voting, you're making a political choice.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: In the absence of showing up, you're actually saying a lot.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because what you're saying is that you don't want to contribute to that moment.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: And in the absence of votes, someone's still getting in.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's no threshold where it says we need this many votes for someone to get elected.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: You need a majority.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: And whether that's like 30 people show up to vote or 3,000 people vote in your county, the majority is going to decide either way.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, in the absence of like the decision where you're like, no, actually, like I'm not political.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know enough and I'm not going to do it, you're still making a choice, but you're now letting other people have a bigger influence on that choice.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: And to me, I'm like, even if I didn't know that much about candidates, I could do enough, even small minute research that would get me to the point where I'm like, you know what?
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is good enough.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because I also think the other thing about politics is that we put like an unrealistic expectation on people that are running, that they need to answer to so many things.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: But that can't be an environment where one person represents an electorate.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: They just can't.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: They need to represent themselves and they need to represent the electorate, people who voted for them and people who didn't.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why it's so important to me to like get good people in office.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: And good people does not have to be attached to parties.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: Where I live, we have multiple parties, right?
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: And like we've got like three, four major parties that are able to go into debates and that you can make a pretty good choice about how that's going to kind of shake out in our electoral system because it's not a two-party system.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that's lovely in that sense.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I have very often been at a provincial level where I've been like, oh, this party and this actually, not even the party, this candidate feels like a better fit for my values than the party or the candidate federally that I might have voted for even three months ago in that election.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not weird to me.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: What I think is weird is when we treat political parties like sports teams.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's weird to me.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that it's good for any of us to tie our identities to a particular party.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I understand partisanship.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, man, like when I first started in politics, I was in the partisan machine.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I absolutely fully understand like seeing the Kool-Aid, knowing how good the Kool-Aid can taste when you're in community and you're doing this together and you feel like you're going towards a goal.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like it gives such wonderful purpose.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely see the draw.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I also was in a position where a little bit after that, I had to disassociate from partisanship politics.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'd gotten a federal appointment.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: It meant that I was no longer allowed to like publicly do partisan activities.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I couldn't prescribe to one specific political party because as a civil servant of sorts, like like in a civil role, they needed like people needed to see that I was a neutral party.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I was actually really worried because I was like, oh my gosh, but like this, this party, this partisanship, this thing that I've done, it's I've now considered it part of my identity.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's who I am.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it's only when I was able to untangle that and be like, no, actually, it's the values that I hold dear.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's what attracted me to the party in the first place.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the values that I hold dear are not held by an entity, they're held by myself.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what's most important in the guiding spectrum of where it is that I want to go and how it is that I want to vote.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that for when we're thinking even about like the small choices around civic engagement, even the shedding of partisanship can feel so freeing.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because then it actually like it also takes away a lot of the pressure that like, well, but if my family votes this way and I vote differently, like we're gonna fight a lot.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: Or if I I've always voted this way and my friends all vote this way, or my partner votes this way.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_01: But there's if we all just kind of like stopped looking at this like a sports team, we'd be able to see that actually like it's very normal in many, many places to switch parties and allegiances and to like vote differently in different circumstances.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that I actually think that it makes us better political participants.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think I think we're getting closer to that.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_00: I definitely see it like within my own group and my own community of choosing not based on your party, but based on your values and beliefs and what you think is right and just in your mind.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think a great example of that is in a in a local election here.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was um, I can't remember if it was a congressional or uh a Senate race, but there was a in our specific district, it was stacked with people who had a ton of political experience.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: There was someone who is uh who worked under our current governor, like tons of experience on on the docket.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a guy on the on the list who was from the local town.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_00: He was a veteran, he's a small business owner, he's like a 20, like late 20s something, early 30s.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, I'm running.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's not looking how I want it to look.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is something that I need to do.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: So started running and was meeting people.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was truly meeting his constituents where they were, and that he was hosting events at breweries on the weekend that were family friendly, or he would have right, like novel.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, and it just made so much sense.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, where am I hanging out?
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: Where are my people hanging out?
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_00: What are they doing?
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, he would do like the libraries and he would sometimes do them at schools and colleges, but to me, that was like truly someone meeting his people where they were.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's a great I frankly don't even remember what his political party was, but he wound up being in the top three of that race.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was just amazing to see.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I just feel like that's gonna continue to move the needle and like that's gonna be just a regular for us, where it's like your neighbor, your everyday person is is on the news that night because they are in that that mayoral race or they're in the the congressional race here in the states for us.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I like to see that it's moving in that direction.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're seeing more and more of that, like exactly what you said of people meeting where they're at.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that when we think of like um the like, you know, the the golden age of that kind of campaigning, that's exactly what people were doing.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it got like out of practice.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: It uh campaigning like it lost its grassroots focus.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: And too many times that did we see, you know, people get into power and then let us down.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where all of these kind of misconceptions and possibilities come from.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I hope exactly like you're saying, that the lesson is learned from some of these people that want to go into politics, that they remember that at the core of this, you want to go in and you should want to go in anyway, because of the people.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like you're serving, it is a service job.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: You're serving people.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you need to like people to do that, which like feels novel.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you need to want to meet them where they're at and have conversations and develop relationships.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because without those relationships and without having those conversations, you as a politician cannot effectively do your job.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: We've removed too much of that middle part of what it meant to be in community and in looking at this job as just one of the service jobs within it.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that is kind of like a like demagogue status of making like like elevating politicians and elevating people in power above the general electorate.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that's like to me so silly.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because what, how is it and and what is it that we can do if there's that kind of removal?
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's how you end up believing that they're not there to serve you, that they're not like there to be in conversation community with you, and that too much of this gets lost.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think particularly when we think about like the model that it is that we're like helping develop for our kids and trying to help them be more active citizens.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: What a wonderful opportunity it is to bring them to places like family-friendly breweries so that you can meet and have conversations with people that are representing you.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like my kids at this point have hilariously met so many politicians, which makes like me and my partner laugh a lot because like he's from a blue-collar family, and so am I.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we had never met a politician until I started kind of existing in this space.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_01: And now that I've helped elect so many, like my kids know those women.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: Some of those women have gone on to run provincially or federally.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: They've like through them, we've gotten to know other politicians like from around the country in the work that I do, because I all like I work in nonprofit in my daily life, like, same thing.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: And just the simple act of them watching politicians be real people.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: That my daughter now imagines a world in which, like, if she wanted to, she could.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: We had watched this debate for our provincial election, because of course I would put it on and they were like, they were like drawing, they weren't really paying attention.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: My kids are eight and five.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: This was last year.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: So they were like my my daughter was seven, she was in grade one.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of it, I didn't even think she was listening.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: And at the end of it, when my husband and I were talking about, you know, what we liked about this, and oh, I, you know, this came up and whatever.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: She was like, you know, mommy, when I grow up, I'm gonna be the big boss.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, tell me more about this.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you mean you're gonna be the big boss?
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because when I grew up, I we had quite literally like had one female prime minister.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_01: She served for a very limited amount of time.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: She wasn't even elected.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: So like the underlying current has always been like, you can like politics, but you can never be a politician.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: And like I grew up with that internalized.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that that's something that like my uh American friends have talked about a lot as well.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's something that we share in common.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: And for her, watching women be normalized into these positions, like, so she like came up with this entire campaign where she was like, Mommy, they were talking a lot about houses.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's important, like they were talking about it in like, you know, like the housing crisis.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: She's seven, but she was like, Mommy, it's so important that people have houses.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: So if I was the big boss, I would make it so that everybody has a house.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, interesting.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what does that look like?
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_01: Is it apartments?
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is it this?
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is it and she was like, no, everyone needs a house with a yard.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: A yard is very important.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, You get so many votes, girl.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_01: But it was just, yeah, yeah.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_01: But it was just about her already she was starting to think about what the world looks like outside of the world that we live in, inside of the outside of the four walls of our house.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_01: And like, what is it that we can do to make other people's lives better?
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that at its core, is that not what we're trying to do?
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_01: We're just all of us in whatever party that we believe in, in whatever capacity that we work in civic engagement, or don't.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_01: Even if you've never done any civically engaged thing in your life, don't you just want the world to be better for your neighbors, for your kids, for your family?
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the, I think the best thing that we can show our kids is what that looks like in action, so that when they get to be our age, my daughter doesn't need to be in a politics to talk about why this is important and why we need to do more of it, like it's novel, because like her and her friends will just be doing it.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_01: Like we'll have demystified the process, we'll have made those conversations more accessible, that those rooms are no longer in closed doors, like they're fully open, they're airy, anybody can walk in and out.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what a world that could be.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it was only in my motherhood that I was able to see how intricately linked that was.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: That it didn't have to be like politics over there and my kids over here.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: Those two are one and the same.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the work that we do is one and the same.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I it's interesting.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like I've never been more political than I have been as a mom.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_00: I I was like, I went to a social justice college and was like at protest constantly and and knowing the issues and listening to what's happening.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_00: But like it, it it affected me then, but it affects me so much differently now.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_00: And that like I have a son, he's three.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: I want him to grow up in a world where it's like not even a second thought that women are in political office and that like it's for everybody and women deserve to be there, which sounds crazy, but yeah, it's it's I've never been more political than I am as a mom.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so excited to see the work that you're doing and and continue to watch it grow in in your space in Canada.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh it's been a really wonderful journey.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it's one that in my own, like through motherhood has helped me be a better mom, honestly.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_01: I and I I think that that goes back to the contribution of the individual gifts, is that every day my kids get to see me like be really passionate about what it is that I'm doing, that I feel like I am contributing towards making not just our community better, but just like the world better at large.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that they get to see that little tangible actions make a really big difference because I think too often that that's the thing that keeps us away.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: My favorite story about this, oh my goodness, I don't even know if I should tell this.
• 57:59
  SPEAKER_01: She doesn't listen to podcasts.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_01: So my daughter, she's she's eight now.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: She recently uh at school had like this this thing that had happened, and uh she wanted to do some art, like they were like doing a market, and she didn't think that the way that they were like getting their payment was fair.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: And as she was telling me about like just how outraged she was that her art wasn't getting like its fair compensation for like when it was being sold at the the the recess market, she was telling me about how she'd like gathered some of her friends and that they had like pulled their stuff from the market.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, wait, did my eight-year-old just form a union?
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that's amazing.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: I've never, I was like, I've never in my life ever talked about like that concept.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: But but in the modeling of fairness and like community and gathering and all of those things, like she was like, she saw something was unfair.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_01: She knew what steps she had to take to gather people together to combat the unfairness.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then they went to the person that they felt was being unfair to them and they negotiated a fairer deal for them at eight in grade two in the 15 minutes that they're outside in the middle of winter in Canada.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it was so funny that I was like, oh, this is how it starts, like just in the existence of being around and watching it happen, that you are now scaffolding the skills that are actually going to make you a really great human being.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know that I ever really taught, like, this is how you're gonna form a union.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what does that come up?
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_01: But she seemed to know.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_01: She seemed to know extinctively, like, this is wrong.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to gather my people to fix this.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then, and we're stronger when we fix it together.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what is that if not civic engagement?
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the perfect way to wrap things up.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: I could talk to you about this stuff forever, but let people know if you have anything coming up, where they can find you, social media website, anything you'd like to plug.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_01: So if you are in Ontario, I have free campaign schools that are happening in August because our municipal elections are coming up in Ontario.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: You can find that at www.polynow.org.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_01: So that's P-O-L-I-N-O-W.org.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: You can find us on Facebook and Instagram.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's also polynow org.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: On the website, resources are free, accessible, and they are easy to use and they are adaptable for wherever it is that you live.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: So please feel free to like download and whatever in abundance and share with your friends and continue to make it more accessible to everyone that you know that's ever wanted to run for office.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you're like a good person who wants to do good things, feel free to contact me.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_01: You can find me on Instagram.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's at Kingsley Mallow.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my last name, K-I-N-G-S-L-U-I-M-A-L-O.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I am happy to help in whatever capacity that I possibly can.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: This was so much fun to chat with you, and I'm so grateful you were able to be on.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for inviting me.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_01: This was super fun.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_00: If this conversation resonated with you, I'd love for you to follow the podcast wherever you listen and share it with another mom building something meaningful.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you want deeper behind the scenes reflections that I don't share anywhere else, join my email list at the Mama Making Podcast.com.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being here, and I'll see you next time.