Latest / Follow the Leighder / Running for Congress in Jacksonville | Brit Robinson, FL-4
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- Leigh/@followtheleighder: Howdy folks and welcome back to another episode of Follow the Leighder. I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and y'all know how I love to travel and meet cool people from around this beautiful, beautiful country. And I have Brit Robinson here from Florida. Brit, welcome. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Thank you for having me. ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely folks, Brit is running for Congress in Florida for those that's Jacksonville area. Jacksonville is as we were just talking about very diverse, ⁓ got diverse both like urban to rural. ⁓ whereas folks may be out here in Montana and Wyoming, it's just rural. ⁓ But there's a lot going on. Thank you so much for raising your hand to run for office. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your upbringing and why this motivates you to run for Congress. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Yeah, so I'm first off a military spouse. My husband is active duty Navy. He's a pilot and I come from a military family, all Marines ⁓ and my husband's family is also all military as well. So service to this country is something I've always appreciated and had a very deep respect for. That being said, ⁓ my parents separated when I was little. So I grew up mostly with my mom. ⁓ And in Southern California, things were good ⁓ until I think it was, was going into high school, ⁓ eighth grade-ish. I think it was a summer after eighth grade. And she got sick. ⁓ We still don't know what was wrong with her, but she didn't have health insurance because she couldn't afford it. This was before the ACA was passed. so pre-existing conditions weren't covered. ⁓ Insurance was like it is today, completely unaffordable. ⁓ And so yeah, she got sick and we tried hard for two years. ⁓ trying to make ends meet and stay together in our home. But ⁓ even though we relied on things like food stamps, I had to take public transportation. ⁓ That was something I relied on because my mom couldn't drive. So I was like an everyday occurrence was taking public transportation. That's something that means a lot to me and something I want to work on expanding. ⁓ But yeah, and we eventually lost our house and I had to move across the country to live with family and friends to graduate high school and kind of just bounce around. ⁓ And ⁓ yeah, it's that experience is something that I just, don't want other people to experience. And it's not even like my story is. ⁓ ⁓ This is the story of millions of people in this country, definitely on the planet. And unfortunately, it's like that's where we are, but. You know, that's what I was really worried about was seeing that they were gonna come for the ACA subsidies. Meant that millions of kids were probably going to go through what I went through with my mom. And no kid deserves that. Yeah, and it was just pulling at my heartstrings. And then, and then. looking at the administration and going, holy shit, like they are pushing, you know, far right Christian nationalism, like accelerationist Christianity, and that they are going to take us down to achieve whatever goals that they want. Between the politicians that are the Christian nationalists and then... the tech billionaires who have their own sense of accelerationism. And so then, you know, our country is barely holding together between the decisive, like divisiveness with this administration. And then, and then we can like barely afford to survive ⁓ is, and then we have these other. people with puppet strings on Trump trying to take power. And we're just at the center of it struggling. ⁓ The regular people are here. Where are our politicians? Where are our congressmen? And it's just mind-boggling ⁓ until you realize that, ⁓ Well, the reason why they're not fighting for us is because they don't work for us. They work for whoever has gotten them in their seat, usually, ⁓ corporate ⁓ entities or other politicians, billionaires, know, whoever funded their campaign ⁓ and whoever is getting some quid pro quo on the side. Like, that's who they're representing. It's not us. and anyway just I had to get involved. I had to do something. And this is the way that I thought I could best use my skills and my story, my life experience, to where I can connect with ⁓ a majority of Americans because of all of the different experiences I've had in life. And that's where trust is built. ⁓ talking to people, meeting people where they are, sharing experiences, and if that's something that the constituents of four feel that they can connect with me, then that's what I want to do so I can fight for them, ⁓ for all of us, because our representative sucks. ⁓ Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Thank you for, I'm so sorry to hear that you struggled, but it's compounding, right? It's the grief of your mom and her illness, and then it's the bureaucratic institutional, and that is something that we as a society should be able to control, like, and have compassionate processes towards people, because they, Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: That's when you know it's ran for profit. It's lost all heart anyway. So I'm so sorry that you went through that. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Yeah, well there's the toxic empathy that they talk about. That if you are empathetic towards anyone else, ⁓ it's a whole thing that I think it was Peter Thiel was talking about it. The idea of toxic empathy and... and how it's something that's used by like Democrats, by the left. And it's this tool of manipulation that we use to make them feel bad. ⁓ And so if someone, the way that they described it, I'm pretty sure it's Teal, but I could be, anyway. He's talking about someone being in a pit and they can't get out. And so instead of helping them to get out of the pit, that they will pull you down into it. And that's how they see empathy, like that it will be weaponized against you. So you can't be empathetic because you being caring is going to be weaponized. It's real twisted. mean, that's what unites us all. yeah, they're so disconnected from reality that... Like, it's just, these people are psychotic. These people are nuts. And... they have the ability to do whatever they want because they're some of the richest people on the planet. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, and I've been thinking about this a lot. so I have a faith background, Christian faith background. I've done a lot of work across different faiths and working with people of different faith groups for humanitarian purposes. And I was thinking about how upset globally people should be that take their faith seriously to be watching all of this. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Yeah. Mm-hmm Leigh/@followtheleighder: and have these wealthy political leaders and billionaires invoke all of our faiths, like all, well, Abrahamic faiths in this specific conflict, but we're getting played. Like, they already think they are gods. they don't have, and it's just... ⁓ Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, literally gods. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Anyway, it's a really crazy time and ⁓ one of the things that we, I was looking at your website, great branding, you see it behind her folks, the color scheme, love it, great. The... Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Thank you. Leigh/@followtheleighder: At a high level, your campaign website starts with the Safer System. And I will give you just a second to expand on it. what I love about the Safer System approach is that you define safety through access to food, health care, and education. Nowhere on that Safer System that you have listed, Safer Audiences is also an acronym. But nowhere in the system, Safer System, say weaponize the DOD with unregulated access to AI, ⁓ arm ICE and DHS, and then just give cops unlimited powers. So tell me how safe a society looks according to you. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: You Yeah, so the whole, the idea behind the Safer System is just addressing people's basic needs, right? Is that right now we have... because everyone is struggling so much. mean, most people are struggling with some form of cost. ⁓ Like if it's their healthcare ⁓ or groceries or car expenses or utilities, like everybody's facing some sort of struggle financially. And all of those are intertwined. ⁓ into stability, like your life stability. When your basic needs aren't met, when you are in, you're forced into a state of fight or flight, then you're going to, well, I won't say definitely, but there are a lot of people that prioritize themselves or their family only, and because it's out of desperation. and they're trying to protect what matters most to them. When there isn't another outlet for them to get help. They don't feel like they can turn to either their community or the government to provide adequate help to them. ⁓ A lot of people turn more... ⁓ you know insular and just protect you know what they love. ⁓ So the the whole thing about the Safer System is prioritizing the basic needs, ⁓ healthcare, food assistance, like access to healthy food. fully funding public education so that everyone is, ⁓ you know, just getting an appropriate education that, like teachers aren't having to work second and third jobs to afford classroom supplies and books. All of those things are what make a detriment to a student. ⁓ Also, like ⁓ having a kid that's hungry during school. That's something that I faced, that I dealt with when my mom was sick was like not being able to eat breakfast and then not really having food for lunch or some iteration of that. so I'm a huge believer in or supporter of free breakfast and lunch for kids. ⁓ Whatever is going on at home, we don't know. Or sometimes the kid just doesn't feel like they can ask for help. ⁓ So making sure that kids are properly fed, they can learn, be productive members of society, hopefully. ⁓ That's a big priority for me. It's an investment in our future. And then it goes into, need to, like, again, people need to be able to afford their lives. The fact that minimum wage hasn't been raised is a huge problem. I mean, I think the latest numbers, if someone wanted to afford like a two-bedroom home, at minimum wage, they'd have to work nearly 100 hours a week to afford that for their family. ⁓ So we have to basically, there just needs to be a shift away or really it's a shift towards supporting or giving a pathway to ⁓ stability and happiness for an individual instead of prioritizing corporate profits and shareholder dividends. That shouldn't be the priority. Like, why are we prioritizing billionaires over, like, our babies? That doesn't make sense. ⁓ So, yeah, we need to tax ⁓ the wealthy and really it's about addressing the wealth inequality that we have and growing by the second. ⁓ And then the last bit is free and fair elections that in order to continue to make progress, ⁓ hopefully we make it through this midterm cycle. And, but going forward, we need to make sure we continue to have ⁓ good representatives that are fighting for us, for like the regular, you know, person in America. and that we have to address our campaign finance laws. ⁓ need to, know, basically so billionaires can't buy our elections and politicians. ⁓ And it's like getting, it's getting big money out of politics. ⁓ You know, it's, people want their representative to... understand their struggles and fight for them. And there, I think we're in this time, this unique time right now, where we have class consciousness like we haven't had before, where people are learning just how much. influence corporations and the ultra wealthy have on our politicians and then thus legislation then our daily lives. ⁓ Which is awesome. I mean that's it's great that that people are learning about this system and getting involved and I think that's that's what like That is what has led to hundreds of thousands of progressives running for state, local, federal office across the country, is people being fed up with the system and wanting to fight back and just make their community's lives easier, more enjoyable. ⁓ It's, yeah, just prioritizing the people. It should be simple. you think. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, yeah, you would think that would be a no-brainer, but for some, that's deeply controversial. Taxes, terrible. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Talk to me about ⁓ disability rights on here. ⁓ What does that look like? I know that Florida is quite a reputation for having a lot of both elderly or also there is disability and immobility. Can you talk about ⁓ what that looks like in your campaign? Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, we, I'm disabled myself. And so, and honestly, that was something that I found out or like learned that I am disabled, like with the title disabled ⁓ through COVID is learning more about the definition of disability and that it's less of a definition, more of a framework, in that do you have to alter your activities to be able to accomplish a task because of something with your body loosely. and or do you need help, assistance, some sort of modification to be able to live your life. ⁓ And so learning that, ⁓ well, I've actually been disabled like the majority of my life ⁓ is that was a big revelation. ⁓ Learning to advocate for myself ⁓ in like professional ⁓ spaces, work and such. That was a ⁓ big learning curve emotionally too. And in learning more about just how much room there is for improvement for disability rights. ⁓ Spaces aren't made for... those people with disabilities, ⁓ either in the physical spaces, ⁓ but also in terms of how do we incorporate disabled people into our daily lives. ⁓ I think this country has, well, it has a long history of hiding or... Well, I think hiding is probably a good term. Like hiding disability ⁓ or being ashamed of disability. And there's nothing to be ashamed about if you have a disability. There's nothing wrong with that. ⁓ But... in this country, you know, people don't want to hear about it, see someone who's disabled or accommodate their needs. And so their needs, we need to make a cultural shift also with being more accepting of people's diversity and whatever, you know, whatever accommodations they need to be able to live their lives. ⁓ It's yeah, that's a huge. ⁓ It's a huge like issue for me is watching my friends, especially here in Florida. you know, like not be able to hold a job or not be hired like because of their disability because we don't have enough protections in the workplace. ⁓ Yeah, it's, we have to make sure that. Leigh/@followtheleighder: look after each other. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Like it's just bringing back the DEI. I'm like, ⁓ I don't know. It gets me like heated. ⁓ I can't even comprehend why you would want, you would be so like. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ yeah. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: why they cruelly target people who are just trying to live their life. Ugh. Yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And pray, yeah, it's so dehumanizing. And that's what that leads me, that you take on big money. I know we've talked a little bit about corporate money in politics, but you also talk about tax loopholes, stock trading, and capping credit card interest rates. ⁓ Talk to me a little bit about how these issues are affecting constituents. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Mm. Yeah, so it's, we, so okay, one is we have a huge community of military here, ⁓ active duty and veteran. It's one of the largest in the country. ⁓ We have two bases in Jacksonville. This district just has one and then five has the other one. Military are, we get a benefit ⁓ like with the VA, we get a benefit with being able to afford houses and not having to put forward like a down payment to be able to afford our houses. That's something that we deal with here is people not being able to afford their housing. the whole shift like sorry I don't think I gave you my first point of this is that there's a huge issue with corporate entities or investors with large realty portfolios that are buying up all of our housing. There aren't pathways here, like across most of the country. There aren't pathways for people to ⁓ build equity or, ⁓ I mean, afford housing, one, but build equity in ⁓ real estate or whatever. But the corporate investors that we have or these... ⁓ individual investors that have large portfolios, they come in and buy up all of our houses. And that's one of the ways that they avoid tax, ⁓ being taxed, like their yearly taxes is through real estate. ⁓ It's also through art. It's through like, boats, large boats, planes, like all of those things that get written off, they can write off as just a tax deduction. It's like the luxury deduction that they're able to take. All of those things are things that we can't take as regular people. So when, and my experience with military is, Like the only reason we were able to buy our house is because of a program like what the VA has where we don't have to put down our down payment and the majority of people in the country don't have like their other system or other loan ⁓ options, but it's just not the same. And ⁓ yeah, it's we just have to re-prioritize the working class. like the system that we have right now is, I don't like saying like the system is broken because the system isn't broken. The system is working exactly as designed. It's not designed for us. It's designed for these other people to build their... ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: We do. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: stock portfolio or real estate portfolio, build their wealth and then hoard it, not get taxed on it. But even just, and they specifically make it so that we can't join them. We don't get to have any sort of way to do a fraction of what they do. ⁓ It's a way to keep the... Leigh/@followtheleighder: Right. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: the working class below and them above. I, know, more and more people as we were seeing ⁓ people getting fed up with billionaires and saying like tax the rich or eat the rich or tax the billionaires. All of that is I think a great way to show the class consciousness ⁓ and and just like the education of what the system is and how we can improve it. Leigh/@followtheleighder: ⁓ Talk to me about what health care, I know we've touched on it, we weave this into everything, but the connection with how recovery and substance abuse, ⁓ mental health, kind of talk about what that looks like in Jacksonville and your community. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, we have a decent size ⁓ homeless population here that struggle with mental health and substance abuse. ⁓ and yet can't get services or, ⁓ mean, the majority of Americans also can't get their healthcare. ⁓ This is... We, healthcare is a human right. Like that's what I believe. I don't believe that we should ever have to pay for health insurance actually. ⁓ I don't want anyone to ever have to worry about if they're going to be able to go to a doctor. And when all of these issues are intertwined of you have, maybe you have, whatever, you have an illness, you can't go to the doctor, you can't work, then maybe you lose your house, now you're on the street, you know, but you're still in pain, you still have an issue, you still can't get healthcare, you turn to something to make it better, and now you're addicted to something, and then maybe you get picked up and... now maybe you have ⁓ a record for something. All of these issues stem from healthcare, not having access to healthcare and housing. Those are both, I think that they're very much intertwined. ⁓ This, just not, like it's not talked about enough how. It's not just harmful, like it's catastrophic, the damage that is done when someone is struggling. ⁓ with with health care or anything like that. ⁓ and if they lose everything, it doesn't just impact that one person. It can wipe out an entire family. And I mean, that's something we see with veterans all the time, right? Is them struggling with the VA, ⁓ not having proper access to mental health care. They might call and are told, well, there's a six month wait or however long. And so when people are in crisis and don't have some somewhere to turn to, that's a problem. ⁓ We have to expand. our medical system. We have to expand, like that's going to go into providers, right? It's like we're already behind the quantity of providers that we need to provide health care for the people that have health care right now. So when we open that up and have millions more people who need to have providers, we're in a shortage. Even like we're exacerbating an already struggling system. So a huge thing that I'm pushing for is making like subsidize, looking at subsidizing ⁓ medical degrees and training. ⁓ You know, it could be in specific fields, but we're just so short-handed within the medical system. And that's what we hear, right? Is that we hear it from every level. ⁓ Nurses, techs, doctors, know, we hear it, pharmacists, we hear it at every level that everyone, there aren't enough hands to go around and... when there aren't enough people to provide and they're already stretched thin, then that turns into, you know, like we're not getting the care that we need, you know, as thoroughly and effectively as it should be. yeah, it's... ⁓ Yeah, we deal with it a lot here. Veterans, we have one of the largest veteran populations in the country and that's something that we hear from the veteran community all the time is the VA also doesn't cover enough or a wide enough range of mental health services, ⁓ like alternative treatments and... Yeah, it's I'm I'm trying to go around and and listen as much as I can. That's a huge part of how I'm approaching my campaign is like I don't have all the answers, right? Like none of us do. And so I rely on. people who have been doing the work in these communities for a very long time, maybe decades, maybe their entire life. And they very intimately know what the issues at hand are, where the kinks in the system are. What do we need? How do we need to change things? A lot of times those people, like they even know the legislation and the policy and they just need someone to help get it like in front of eyes. ⁓ But maybe they just don't have a representative that's willing to listen. And that's where I'm trying to, that's like my approach to my campaign ⁓ is being as accessible as possible, making sure that anybody who wants to be involved in the campaign ⁓ or just has thoughts ⁓ that, you know, or just wants to talk to me or talk at me, bitch at me, whatever they want to do, you know, that I'm here to listen and learn and. That's, think we've gotten, I don't know if we ever really truly had representatives that exclusively represented us, like the people, but that's what it's supposed to theoretically be, right? It's like, you're supposed to just be the representative of your district. You take, listen to them and then you take what they want and need and you go back to Washington and you figure out ways to deliver. and that's not how it is right now. And that's what I'm trying to change. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, I've got one more question for you before we go into the wrap up. with Florida being one of the highest levels of immigration in the country, talk about your stances on immigration ICE DHS. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Yeah, so my stance for ICE is not just that we need to abolish ICE, but we need thorough investigations and we need to convict anybody that has been responsible for harm, terrorizing our communities, ⁓ innocent people across this country. Same thing goes with the administration. I believe that we need to impeach. We need to remove, convict. Like we need to do all of the things. And that's not just Trump. Like that's the entire administration. ⁓ The harm that has been done to our country, to our system of government is going to take decades to come back from. And we are I think one of the biggest ⁓ things that we need to accomplish is making sure that this can't happen again. That we can't have a tyrant in the White House ⁓ who is pushing this far-right Christian nationalist agenda with a paramilitary group, ⁓ ICE. just where he can weaponize it and do whatever he wants to terrorize the American people. Then same thing if we look at DHS, or sorry, the DOD is we're seeing basically the same thing where our tax dollars is going to fund something that the American people don't want and conflicts that they don't want. it's really, it's been a rough two weeks. ⁓ for a lot of people, but ⁓ especially anybody that's affiliated with military. so seeing that, you know, my friends and family could be sent to fight in a war that was completely unnecessary has been heavy along, you know, a lot of people have been feeling that way, but. Yeah, it's we have to pull funding from Israel. ⁓ That's I don't think I really don't think that any Democratic candidate should be or is a viable candidate ⁓ if they are not for abolishing and convicting ICE and this administration and removing funding from Israel. That should be the bare minimum. like this isn't the fact that Israel is committing a genocide and we just continue to fund that ⁓ is atrocious. yeah, we need to definitely stop funding Israel and... just stop harming people around the world. It's really upsetting. ⁓ But yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, it's so dehumanizing. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Yeah, yeah, that's goal is to make it so that all of us are just, you know, I mean, we're just pawns in their game, their twisted game, but it's... It's all of it is just they don't want us to like care about each other and take care of each other. ⁓ That's not their priority. And so they can't possibly imagine that that would be the American people's priority. Leigh/@followtheleighder: I am so thankful for you coming on the show, sharing your heart, sharing what drives you to stick up for Florida for running for Congress. How can people who feel moved by your campaign and by your race, how can they donate, volunteer, or otherwise learn more about you? Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Yeah. So you can go to my website. It's right here. Brit4 number four congress.com. ⁓ And I have everything on my website. ⁓ If you can donate, that would be fantastic. That's donating is the best way to help a progressive grassroots campaign and get us, get the ball rolling ⁓ and give us a little boost that we need. But you can also sign up to volunteer. You can follow along on any social media platforms, whatever is your favorite. And yeah, and just spread the word that there are people that are trying to fight to make a change across the country. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Brett Robinson, thank you so much for taking the time to come and hang out with me from Jacksonville, Florida. That is just, you're just so kind and I wish you nothing but good luck and success on your campaign and keep fighting the good fight. Thank you, Brett. Folks, what did you think? I want to hear about it. Let me know in the comments. Brit Robinson, FL-4 Candidate: Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Have you guys checked out BritForCongress.com yet and thought about her campaign? Make sure you go do that. Otherwise, like, follow, share, subscribe, you know the drill. This has been another episode of Follow the Leighder. I'm your host, Leigh Larson, until next time, see ⁓