Looking Back to Move Forward with PushBlack

Featuring Julian Walker, CEO, PushBlack and Yordanos Eyoel, Founder and CEO of Keseb & Board Chair, PushBlack

Julian: [00:00:34] It's one thing to do a top down change and say, okay, we are coming from a pie and stating this thing. But did you listen to the people? Do they understand what the change is, how it affects their lives? Is this a change that's actually reflecting what the needs are and what's the story around that? I think that what narrative change does, it allows for you to ask what results do people want, the masses of people, what do they currently believe? And then what's the gap between those questions, Right? What needs to be understood by the masses in order for system change that will be supported and advocated for on a longer term? [00:01:14][40.0]

Tulaine: [00:01:21] You're listening to System Catalysts. Each week you will hear personal stories of change makers who are bringing more inclusive connective system level solutions to our most persistent challenges. I'm to Lane Montgomery. Today we're going to talk about history, narrative change and how they can help us drive action. We study our past to learn from our failures and successes. Yet at schools, the history of people of color is often omitted from the curriculum. This leaves many of us without the basis to understand where we were, where we are today, and therefore where we may want to be back in 2015. Julian Walker wanted to promote civic participation because of the low turnout rates of black voters as any great system catalyst would do. He began by listening to the community. This is how he discovered the need for more black history and stories of black liberation. If people better understood their past, perhaps they would feel more inspired to vote for their future. For the past three election cycles, Push Black has run the largest voter turnout programs in the digital space. Today, they are the nation's biggest nonprofit media organization for black Americans, reaching over 9 million people. They've resonated with so many because they haven't stopped listening while following their true north of black liberation struggle. This has led them to unexpected paths, like creating their own podcast and partnering with community organizations. Through it all, they stay humble, basing their actions on what their audience asks for while continuously evaluating their impact. In today's episode, we'll learn from Push Black strategy to listen, evaluate and co-design community based solutions. In this episode, Ingersoll spoke with our guests Julian Walker and Giordano's el. [00:03:40][138.9]

English: [00:03:43] I'm really excited to have you here. And before we sort of really dive into the nitty gritty, I'm wondering, can you just sort of introduce yourself, tell me a little bit about your position and even just your background a little bit. What's your story? [00:03:55][12.7]

Julian: [00:03:57] Sure. Thanks for having me. English. Glad to be here. I am a storyteller. I am a community advocate and I get to express both of those and my role as CEO. My background is one that. Has provided me interesting set of experiences. Sort of a diverse upbringing that's shaped how I view the world and what I believe my contributions can be and should be. So in terms of. Socialization. I was in between two worlds, several worlds, actually, when it came to both race and class. So I'm from Little Rock, Arkansas. I grew up on one half of my family and working class and the working class neighborhood, and that was a poor neighborhood. In many ways, the John Barrow community of Little Rock and then other side of my family was in a community called University Park. So I was able to see different ways that folks in my community, in the black community were living and what we valued and what we were aspiring to. For example, you may go to a friend's house and one area may have no furniture. They may have roaches that scatter when we open the refrigerator and then go to the other neighborhood for the other side of my family and the houses, there may have individual pools and tennis courts, both neighborhoods or black neighborhoods. But seeing that sort of helped me see something from early age I couldn't quite put my finger. [00:05:43][106.3]

English: [00:05:43] On. [00:05:43][0.0]

Julian: [00:05:44] In other environments. I was put in a Afrocentric school when I was really young, which was helpful to me. I still have sort of snapshots and you have those snapshots of memories in your head. I still have that. And unfortunately, that school lost funding and I ended up going to a school that was predominantly white private school. So I'll go from one environment where I was reciting speeches about being a proud African-American child into another environment where I remember a schoolmate telling me that my skin was the color of poop. So having these experiences and seeing the ways that we would interact early on had me sort of developing a concept and understanding of of race in a certain way. [00:06:34][49.8]

Tulaine: [00:06:35] The media, as well as the history Julian was taught in school, also had an effect on how he viewed his racial identity. [00:06:42][6.5]

Julian: [00:06:43] My background has led me to this work because early on I saw. How media has shaped me in my understanding of myself and the world we live in. I remember watching certain news programs and absorbing all this information that taught me to devalue blackness. It wasn't till later when I realized that this was information presented with an agenda, and that agenda was not working in my favor. When I took a black history class, for example, in high school. Mind you, that was like 12th grade and waited till the very end to take this class because I thought I knew what I needed to know about black history. I thought, of course, they would have taught me about everything I need to know in my American history class. In my world history class, I got the basic slavery civil rights movement. OBAMA That's black history, right? But it wasn't till I got in that class started reading books such as The Miseducation of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson, who is known as sort of the Godfather of Black History Month, and realizing that for centuries there's been a sort of intentional effort to have black folks understand their history in a way that is unethical and is not aligned with reality by starting with slavery, despite the fact that we've existed for thousands of years and have built civilizations for thousands of years. So once I started understanding that there's so much more to my story, that my story did not start with servitude, but of civilization building and contributing to the world in amazing ways, unmatched ways. Once I realized that something clicked in my head and I was able to say, okay, now I feel empowered to go out into the world as an agent, as a subject, instead of an object, as a subject with agency, instead of an object of oppression. I wanted others in my community to feel that same sense of empowerment. And so I began doing work in filmmaking and storytelling that was working to advance that interest. And that brought me eventually to push Black. [00:09:10][146.9]

Tulaine: [00:09:13] At push Black Julian is amplifying black history and black voices with the aim of advancing liberation. They do so through their podcast, as well as short written stories and voting messaging campaigns. [00:09:25][11.9]

Julian: [00:09:27] The idea here is to help our community understand who we are, what we can achieve in the ways that the mainstream media, I don't believe, has much interest in. So we're looking to shape and influence and reclaim our own mindsets and that of others that we care about across our community. In a world where we have been fed information and narrative and stories that have made us devalue ourselves, devalue blackness, and put a premium on the idea of whiteness and white supremacy. So pitch black does that work of affecting mental models of the community in order to create a sense of unity, a sense of alignment around goals and opportunities, and a vision of what a future could look like, where we have liberation. And by liberation, we we identify that as power to practice collective self-determination, the power to live on our own terms, to define ourselves, name ourselves, to control the institutions that we rely on. [00:10:47][80.2]

English: [00:10:48] This really beautifully said. You know, for me is so powerful. Like I literally have a tattoo that says tell them stories. Like, story is the water we swimmin, right? So from your perspective, Julian, tell me more. Tell me more about why story and narrative like, why is this such a tool for systems change? [00:11:12][23.8]

Julian: [00:11:13] For Push Black. We recognize that we've been told stories about ourselves as black people. And stories about every body else that we interact with. We've been told the stories and the narrative has been shaped to lead us to believe that we're intended to operate in a place of servitude and perpetual damnation that we are not able to create, but we are relegated to serving, that the creator doesn't even look like us. So how could we create anything? How can we do anything first instead of doing something second? Being the first black person to do these things we've been taught, we've been fed all these types of stories and narratives for centuries that have given us a perspective that we are inferior. We've internalized that. So it's important to us as pushback to. Lift up the truth and identify those missing parts of the story that have been told. To raise that up and to help our community see that there's more to it than meets the eye, that there is value in blackness and value. And what we both what we have done as a people, what we have the potential to do and what we must do now. [00:12:41][87.6]

Tulaine: [00:12:45] But Julian didn't know at first narrative change would be such a crucial component of the work. He began working on the idea that would become pitch black as part of an incubator with Accelerate change. The organization's goal is to increase civic engagement with bipoc and low income communities by using digital media. Julian teamed up with two of his old friends to find ways to solve for the black voter gap. [00:13:10][25.0]

Julian: [00:13:11] Mind you, this was. 2015, within a year of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the uprisings. [00:13:20][8.5]

Tulaine: [00:13:21] Michael Brown was an 18 year old black American who was shot and killed by a white police officer. [00:13:26][5.0]

Julian: [00:13:28] There was a sort of climate of urgency. How could we contribute and what is community need? And so we started not by saying this is what we believe is needed, but this is a type of result. Voter engagement is the type of result that could affect the system. What will it take to engage folks in a way they're not being engaged? So we started with questioning, started with asking the community reaching out. Hundreds of conversations with members of the community to try and identify what was needed here. What rose up was there's a need for black history. We didn't even start out thinking that was going to be the thing. But there was a need that both the private sector and public sector were not meeting when it came to how black folks were receiving black history. And so we started just curating content from around the Web and sending out these stories in certain ways. Email, text had friends helping us in a Facebook group sort of curate this stuff. So that was then a handful of people, a couple dozen people on the email list. [00:14:37][69.6]

Tulaine: [00:14:41] In 2017, Push Black branched off from accelerate change to become its own organization. Today they have registered around 100,000 voters and have sent 400 million voting messages. They've also distributed 1 billion. That's billion with a B messages with empowering and informative stories about black liberation. [00:15:02][21.7]

Julian: [00:15:04] So the impact that we've had is running the largest voter turnout programs in the digital space over the past three election cycles. And we measure that by the number of votes that are program turned out that have been verified through our work and our analysis with the Analysts Institute. That's how we've currently been measuring our ability to engage people with media, build trust and move them to take action. Additionally, I get on the phone with Push Black users myself every other week and hearing how. The community is engaged and grateful and folks are telling me stories like, Man, I wish I would have had this as a kid. I probably would have done things differently or seen different things that made different choices because I would have seen the world differently. That's even more meaningful to me in some ways, because it shows that not only are people engaged, we don't want to just entertain people, but we're having folks think deeply about themselves and their place in the world. [00:16:17][73.0]

Tulaine: [00:16:18] This level of impact hasn't come easily. [00:16:20][2.2]

English: [00:16:21] This is an organization that was founded by young black men. [00:16:24][2.6]

Tulaine: [00:16:26] That is Giordano's EO push Blacks board chair. [00:16:29][2.8]

English: [00:16:30] And we know all of the barriers and challenges that come with that, particularly when you are trying to raise funds and build a media organization, right, in a highly saturated and complex ecosystem. They have to be really intentional about not only gathering results for themselves, but also to have credibility and build the database that they need to resource the work. And so when you look at, you know, the early days of pushback, not only how the work manifested, but also how pushback communicated its work, it appeared not that it was it appeared as though it's a get out the vote program. Right. Because that was the place where there was a huge opportunity to demonstrate impact and where the organization was able to really generate resources and create a demonstration point for this kind of how storytelling leads to civic action. Right. And this kind of media trust building approach is actually really effective in building political agency. And for people exercising that in ways that they believe make sense. So early on, within five years of their existence, they had to tease. [00:17:47][77.3]

Tulaine: [00:17:49] Our seats Are random controlled trials considered the gold standard for evidence research. [00:17:54][5.1]

English: [00:17:55] Which are very, very difficult to attain that showed efficacy of the model and how not only effective from an impact perspective, but also cost effective the pushback model. And so that really provided pushback, the feel that it needed to continue to experiment and also broaden into other areas and not really, you know, expansively, fully embracing this opportunity, being a megaphone for the black liberation movement. And so I think there's something really instructive there, particularly for systems change efforts that are led by under-resourced, underrepresented leaders. Just kind of the evidence base that often people have to build because of the barriers and the kind of systemic inequities that already exist, like push like to not go out and say, you know, we are the megaphone, we are this media company, that they gradually prove that. And part of that was out of necessity because it is hard to measure. Systems change work for sure, but it's also because of who's leading the organization and the additional burden that leaders of color has to provide in order to show the efficacy of their approaches. [00:19:03][68.7]

Tulaine: [00:19:07] As the CEO of Kesten, You're Giordano's knows this firsthand. She founded the organization to build an ecosystem for collaboration across pro-democracy forces around the world. [00:19:18][11.4]

Yordanos: [00:19:20] And that is very much consistent with pushbacks, even though that's not the explicit mission of the organization. It is about building a world that is more inclusive, that advances specifically black liberation. And while the work of pushback to date has been domestic, you never really think expansively about what's happening outside of the United States and thinking about the black diaspora as a whole. [00:19:45][25.0]

Tulaine: [00:19:48] For this reason, Julian recently became one of the 12 democracy entrepreneurs supported by Carson's fellowship program. [00:19:54][6.6]

Yordanos: [00:19:56] I wake up every day really excited about to do the work that I do with Kuszczak and with Kasab. That said, I think it really merges all of my interests together, but also pushes me to think about an area that I'm less familiar with, which is media. I think this is one of the reasons that pushback has been successful and and impactful is because there's never an assumption that Pushback knows the answer, right? It is always testing, asking questions and engaging with the subscriber community, the influencers, the community organizations to understand what what do they care about, what issues matter to them. Right. Yes, we are from the community, but we're not going to assume that we understand everything that community members need. And so we will start with them first. So there is this commitment to lean experimentation. And so once an idea has been tested, then it's rigorously evaluated internally and then productized into things that, you know, have shown to be successful and impactful in terms of messaging and outreach and on the back end as well. There's a lot of testing and learning and reflecting that happens. And what that enables them to do ultimately is build trust. Right. So the reason the pushback has been successful is because it has built trust with millions of people. You know, now with reaching 9 million people across the country. And that is not a really easy thing to do. But I think the starting place for that trust building process is a spirit of humility. [00:21:26][90.2]

Tulaine: [00:21:29] This strategy of listening to the community and pivoting is what culminated in the launch of their podcast Black History. [00:21:36][7.1]

Julian: [00:21:38] Black History Year is also a response to what our community was demanding of us. So our core product has been is about 200 words black history stories that we send out daily and listening to our community on an ongoing basis. They were telling us that they want more depth and some of the concepts are the stories that we were putting out there. There's only so much you can do in about 200 words, especially with some of the nuanced history. And so we decided to invest in podcasting in 2020 and saw that it would be a natural offshoot of what we already do. And we were able to come up with a concept that allows us to take those short stories and find subject matter experts that are either scholars, activists, artists, organizers, you name it, someone who can give a certain type of context and add to the story in meaningful ways and have a conversation about. [00:22:52][73.9]

Speaker 4: [00:22:53] Finally, in 1609, the Spanish admitted defeat and offered Yanga his own independent town in exchange for peace. Yanga settlement became what some scholars believe to be the very first town founded by free black people in all of the Americas. [00:23:10][17.5]

Julian: [00:23:12] Gaspar Yanga starts The resistance, keeps a European colonial power at bay and then negotiates an independent region. I don't know about you, but I didn't learn about Gaspar Yanga in school. I love it because I'm able to explore my curiosity about history. And the stories are amazing. We love all the stories and the way we approach storytelling in the short form. The added conversation really contextualized it for folks and allows us the opportunity to make connections to the present in ways that sometimes we aren't able to as strongly as we would like to in the shorter story. So being able to go from this, the history this was happening today and then this, what the future looks like in conversation with folks has been amazing for me. [00:24:01][49.5]

Tulaine: [00:24:05] When Black History Year was first released, it charted as number one in Apple podcast history charts. To this day, the podcast is listened to by tens of thousands of people each week. For Julian, reaching people always starts with gaining an understanding of their needs. [00:24:21][15.9]

Julian: [00:24:22] It's one thing to do a top down change and say, okay, we are coming from a pie and changing this thing. But did you listen to the people? Do they understand what the change is, how it affects their lives? Is this a change that's actually reflecting what the needs are and what's the story around that? I think that what narrative change does allows you to ask what results do people want? The masses of people, what do they currently believe? And then what's the gap between those questions, Right? What needs to be understood by the masses in order for a behavior change towards a system, change that will be supported and advocated for on a longer term than however long it takes for whatever majority party can get something passed through. So I see our work as that more sustainable effort to ensure masses of people are aligned on and have a shared understanding of the conditions and necessity for something and are able to advocate for it and articulate it in ways that are relevant to their lives and can advance the work forward to then make space for folks who are in power and have that decision making authority to work authentically on behalf of the people. Now that both sides have a stronger understanding of what's possible. [00:25:53][90.8]

Tulaine: [00:26:52] By educating people about black history. Push Black is filling a gap in our education system. [00:26:58][5.3]

Yordanos: [00:26:59] One of the critical things that pushback has brought to the media landscape is that it is actually possible to incorporate history from an educational perspective, but also to connect it back to what's happening since the present moment and really tying that to actions that people can take. Right? There's such a gap in the education system around recognizing and fully acknowledging black history. And so to me, pushback really fills that gap by elevating not only the stories but also the facts that are now found in the history books that people never learned about through their schooling system in America. And again, in terms of trust building, they're not then saying, okay, as a result of this, go take action. Right. Like, we are simply providing you an educational, a learning experience, an opportunity to do that in community with others. And then over time, that translates into civic action. So it's not this transactional thing. It's like we give this to you and we ask that you do X. Immediately after a ride. It's the gradual build that takes place over time through that educational journey that then really elicits the move towards action. And I think that's also a brilliant balance that they have found, because often we do, you know, one for one, but for our push, it's really about that journey. And because they stay with people over the course of that learning journey, they're able to produce much more effective call to action when they do do that. And you know, in regards to voting or in regards to signing petitions, whatever may be awesome, that's super exciting. So kind of last thing in thinking about kind of this conversation, thinking about the work of Push Black, and for those who are thinking, Man, there's a problem I really want to tackle, you know, where and how do you think they should start? That's such a great question. I would say I think what is true about pushback is that you'll start with the community. So there may be an issue that I deeply, really care about. You know, for me that happens to be in democracy, right. Particularly building blocks of democracy. But I think it's really important to be rooted in the constituency that you're serving. Whatever your solution is to whatever problem you're defining or you want to address, making sure that you really take the time to understand what what the needs of your constituencies are and really also bring them in around the solutions. Right? Because I think this is not only true for a system change efforts, but really for, I think for direct impact work as well. You know, start with the people. [00:29:44][165.2]

Tulaine: [00:29:45] Looking towards the future. Push Black is expanding their efforts to other issues affecting the black community. [00:29:51][5.3]

Julian: [00:29:52] Initially, I think we were seen primarily as a voter turnout organization, and now we're more broadly identifying as a media company who produces civic engagement results towards black liberation. So, yes, continuing with the voter turnout work, but I'm of the belief that everybody should be a member of a community organization and civically, all black folks, to be a member of a community organization that is focused on the liberation of black people. And so the question we ask is how can push black youth the trust that we've created to then connect our audience, our communities with the results they want to see in more ways? So say there are grassroots organizations doing work in communities and there are all over the country. How can push black form strong partnerships with black led grassroots organizations and allow folks a chance to be exposed, their audience chance to be exposed to their work and connect those to. For us initially, that's going to look like focusing on the criminal justice issue area that we've identified that folks care about. Right now, our priority is going to be policing alternatives and being able to identify a set of actions and align partners and local communities that we can connect our nationwide audience members to in order to take actions that get results. And now pushback is not the organization that's going to dictate and say this is push black exec policy and platform and this is what everybody needs to do. What we're good at is connecting people to the actions and to the results and leaving it up to the communities to say, okay, this is something I think is important. The same way we listen, the folks told us black history was important to them. We're going to be listening as they look at what issues are going on in your community that we can connect you to. What organizations are doing that work? That's the role that we play. [00:32:08][135.6]

Tulaine: [00:32:12] And now our Rapid Fire segment. [00:32:14][1.9]

English: [00:32:18] What's one word to describe your journey as a system catalyst? [00:32:21][3.1]

Julian: [00:32:23] Humbling. [00:32:23][0.0]

English: [00:32:25] What has been one of the most gratifying moments along this journey. [00:32:29][3.7]

Julian: [00:32:30] I grew up witnessing my grandfather, who was an entrepreneur in the community. He was a civil rights attorney and then later a state legislator that would go with my grandfather to the grocery store or where else in the community. And folks would come up to him and thank him for the work that he's done and shake his hand. And witnessing that as a kid stood out to me. And so being able to walk into spaces of strangers and tell people that I work for pushback and they have a response, that is one of gratitude, folks in my community, one of gratitude, and them expressing how much, you know, the organization has shaped how they view the world. [00:33:16][45.5]

English: [00:33:17] That's beautiful. What is it about your organization or the work that you all are doing? What is it that keeps you up at night? [00:33:24][6.8]

Julian: [00:33:26] Making sure that we are. Focused on. Serving the community first and foremost. In this space, it's easy to get attracted to external opportunities in order to, you know, make sure the organization continues on, making sure that all the decisions that I'm making are aligned with what we've identified are the needs. [00:33:54][28.3]

English: [00:33:55] For the listeners out there, for people who are aspiring to be in a similar role that you're in. Being a system catalyst, being part of an organization or starting an organization that is trying so hard for the systems level change. Where do you think they should start? What advice do you have for them? [00:34:15][19.6]

Julian: [00:34:17] Start with proximity. Start with what is close to you, which are close to what You can actually see yourself getting up every day and doing as if your life depended on it. I've had other jobs where I wake up every day and I'm like, I, Yeah, go this thing again. Right. And time goes by very slow. I've got to the point where I don't consider this a job. This is part of my life's work. There's purpose attached to this. So being able to identify, purpose and do it in a way where you time has flown by with something like that. 2015 was eight years ago. But it doesn't seem like that because there is so much that I'm excited about doing on a daily basis in service of the community. So tapping into whatever that is that's close to you and connecting with those that offer something that you may not have, but towards the same end. So I believe Push Black success, for example, is because of the team that we built, specifically the the team overall and at the very beginning, having a set of skills that were all sort of moving in the same direction. And that's part of the culture that we built out now to making sure that there's a core there in terms of the belief that people come into it with and what they're able to contribute as a staff. So finding your people who are able to feel as passionate as you are towards that, that work, I think those are the elements that I would I would recommend. [00:36:07][110.8]

Tulaine: [00:36:16] If you want to learn more about push Black head on over to push Blackboard, you can also visit our web site System catalyst dot com where you will find resources related to this week's episode. That's it for today's show. Please don't forget to subscribe to system catalysts so you don't miss out on our new episodes. Also, do us a huge favor by reading our podcast and leaving us a review. Thank you so much for joining us and we'll catch you all in the next episode. Before we go, we'd like to thank our producers at Human Group Media. We'd also like to thank our incredible network of partners who are supporting our mission. Echoing Green Arc Foundation, Population Services International, Virgin Unite. Charlize Theron, Africa Outreach Project. Boldly Go Philanthropy, Synagogues, The Philanthropy Workshop, Nexus and New Profit. If you are interested in becoming a system catalyst and would like to learn more about our partners, please visit System Catalyst Icon. [00:36:16][0.0]