How to Be a Purposeful Warrior to Preserve Democracy with Jocelyn Benson

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0:43To me, being a purposeful warrior means being determined to not stay silent in the face, particularly of injustices or bullies or other abuses of power or authority. Because if we don't speak out, someone will fill that void. But if we speak out, we may not achieve the end result. But as warriors, we can push for a better response and we can inspire others to speak out as well. So standing up to bullies, refusing to stay silent, recognizing that if I speak out, that's going to have an effect on someone else feeling courage. That's how we become purposeful warriors. That's also how we can take challenging moments in our life and find our warrior ethos and plow through and to create that better place, even in a turbulent time.

1:29I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast, and we have found another remarkable person for you. Her name is Jocelyn Benson, and she's in the state of Michigan. She's currently the Secretary of State of Michigan, and she's basically a really a recognized expert on election law and voting rights. She has been a steadfast defender of democracy. Oh my God, yes. And lots of awards for doing the work she's done. She is overseeing an election or elections in Michigan, which is one of the most closely watched states in America. She's a Harvard Law graduate and former dean. I think she was the youngest female dean or maybe the youngest dean period of a law school.

2:22It was Wayne State University Law School. And she's basically dedicated her career to fair access to the ballot. And if all of that wasn't good enough, now she's running for the governorship of Michigan. Yeah. So someday, wait, the election is this fall, 2026. Yeah. Yep. 16 months from now. Oh, so someday we're going to say we had the governor of Michigan on the remarkable people podcast remember her yeah all righty so thank you very much for being on our podcast and I read your book and this is kind of a weird question but I just need to verify a fact that I couldn't wrap my mind around so you said that in December of 2020 a violent mob showed up at your house to protest your enforcement of voting rights, right?

3:20Now, the book says that they showed up at 9.15. And then it further says that the Detroit Police Department showed up at 10. So when I read that, I said, how can the police department take 45 minutes to show up at the house of the Secretary of State? Like, what were they doing for 45 minutes? Were they getting donuts? sort of what's the story there yeah when to sort of walk it back at eight o 'clock that night michigan state police had called to notify me so that's how the book starts and then i talked to our attorney general data nestle right after that about a facebook post it was sort of like we rallied tonight outside her home or something like that and dana called and told me about this post the michigan state police had alerted her to it and said who's it going to be you think it's going to be you or think it's going to be me.

4:13So we've gotten narrowed down to two. Dana lives about 20 minutes away from me. So you knew this was going to be happening. And then shortly before nine o 'clock was when we started to hear the sounds and the chants. And I called her and I said, it's me. I'm the one. And I was decorating our Christmas tree at the time. I was holding my four-year-old son, I remember, and we were hanging the decorations. And you start to hear these horrible things being said outside our home. They actually live streamed it on Facebook. So there's a video of it as it unfolded. And so my first thought as a mom is just protect my kid.

4:47And so I walked him upstairs, tried to run bathwater in his bathroom so that it drowned out the noise of the growing crowd. And for a good 45 minutes, despite the fact that we live a mile away from a police station, all that stood between my home and that growing crowd was one neighborhood police officer who stood on our doorstep. and we were just trying to get through it. But in the moment, it was really obviously terrifying because of the uncertainty. Was someone gonna shoot at our house? Were they gonna storm our house? How was this gonna end? And so it was a really harrowing evening. And in the midst of it, after my husband was putting my kid to bed and we were calling 911, we were trying to get help.

5:30What also became clear to me, I started my career in Selma, Alabama and I thought about those folks who stood at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge of March of 1965 simply to defend the vote. I thought about the millions of people who had voted in 2022 in Michigan's election. And I realized these folks outside weren't protesting me. They were protesting their voices, the votes of the people of Michigan. And if my job was to defend those voices, I will do it every day of the week and proudly stand there. And so I actually ultimately, though scared, found a sense of boldness in that moment to say, not on my watch, will you take me off my post?

6:05And then 45 minutes later, police showed up. They quickly dispersed as soon as law enforcement arrived. And I thought that would be the end of it. I just didn't ever want to talk about it again. But then media picked up on it. And it was Facebook. It was live streamed on Facebook. So we had to talk about it. And I put out a statement the next day and all the rest. And it became a defining part of the fight. But did somebody explain why it took 45 minutes? That's what I'm trying to figure out. No. I mean, there was a lot of speculation as to why. Busyness, you know, dragging feet. I mean, there was a lot of speculation.

6:39But all I could control is what we did next. We've hired security. And this was not the first or last time when something like this has happened, by the way. We have had bomb threats. We have had swatting multiple times. And so from that incident actually emerged a greater understanding on behalf of local and state law enforcement and private security to collectively organize and be better. We've been oftentimes in close contact with state and local law enforcement since, but that was also the moment that these types of threats became an unfortunate new norm, escalating in what we saw happen in Minnesota, of course, just a few weeks ago when I was on that list, right?

7:16That killer had in his car. You were on that Minnesota guy's list. Yeah, yeah. So I got a call that morning telling me that, the morning that it happened. I didn't even know. I just was told that there were two people who were killed in Minnesota and I was on this list. And so, yeah, my point is that night in December of 2020 was an inflection point, but it was not the first or last time we have had to deal with threats to my life or my family's life as a result of these lies and misinformation about our elections. Like, you know, we're just I'm just doing my job. I'm just trying to make sure everyone can vote.

7:50And that is an unfortunate reality that we're in right now. Jocelyn, let me just be clear. You are a lot braver than I am. Man, wow. It's a muscle. Bravery is a muscle that we all can build in large and small moments. That's what the book's about, right? I start by saying, for me, I was 20, and I was investigating white supremacists undercover, and I was scared, right? Every moment we choose courage over fear is a moment where we build that bravery muscle. As soon as this recording ends, I'm going to join CrossFit for that. So now I'm beginning to see a pattern here because earlier in your career, you worked as an undercover freelance journalist investigating the Ku Klux Klan for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

8:44Jocelyn, like, tell me about that experience. And at the end of that explanation, would you just give us your theory about what drives people to form such hate group? What's going on? My whole master's thesis on what takes someone into that space. And so I will say doing the work was really formative for me. It really formed a foundation of my sense of what it takes to stand up to injustice and to hate. And it means you have to be willing to put your life on the line and be courageous. That's what everyone who've come before us have done. You have to be willing to also tell the story that bravery can just be in shining a light on the injustice itself.

9:28And for the moment for me, that was a pivotal moment was when I was in Red Roof Inn in Spartanburg, South Carolina, having just spent the day with this guy who had been claiming to be the next Hitler and trying to track all of his doings and his members and everything he was saying. And I remember getting to my room and thinking, what happens if he finds out and comes to kill me and being really scared and just trying to like sit with that emotion. And I thought, well, I have a choice. I could run away. I could hide or I could get up and get to work. And I chose the latter. And in that became this sort of initial moment of me knowing that in order to actually affect the change we want and fight injustice, we have to be, or some among us have to be willing to look straight in the eye of that hate and injustice and say, not today, and fight back and shine a light on it and tell the story.

10:24And ultimately my story, my article exposed this guy and it led to the demise of his organization. And it was the right thing to do, but it was hard. There are times large and small when we are all going to be in a moment at a precipice where we can be silent or succumb to fear, or we can choose to not allow the fear to drive us in our action, but instead courage and bravery. And so my entire book is, you know, it started as a book to talk about what it was like standing up to Trump in 2020, but it evolved into this call to action for all of us to choose courage over fear in moments like this, when our country and who we are is under attack in a very unique way from within.

11:03This is the moment when we all can be warriors for who we are ourselves, our communities, our loved ones, and that's our way through.

11:21So at any point, Jocelyn, did your mother or father call you up and say, you know, honey, We sent you to Harvard Law School. Couldn't you just go work on Wall Street and make two million a year? Yeah, they were like, where did we go wrong? What have we done wrong? Yeah. And also what I remember most is my parents just wanted me to like not leave home. They wanted me to build a home nearby, right? That's what we want. We want our loved ones to be healthy and happy and safe and nearby. And so it was, I think, just as hard that I wasn't like buying a house next door to my parents and living there.

11:54after college as it was for me to be putting myself in harm's way in this very significant way. But that's always been who I was. And part of my path has been that, trying to stand up to even people who love you and who you love and say, this is who I am and this is what I'm here to do. And that's what being a warrior sometimes requires of us. I can honestly say, Jocelyn, if I lived in Michigan, I would vote for you for governor. And we're only 20 minutes into this interview. And, you know. you amazingly this is a moment where that's the courage that we need governors in this right governors are the only ones when when stephen colbert was fired and i was so scared about what that meant for so many other truth tellers around our country and i thought you know what he can't fire governors governors can be those voices yeah and others can as well right we all can be those voices for for truth for justice in this moment but yeah running for governor means not just improving the economic well-being and prosperity of our residents and having a vision on how to do that, but also to stand up to the bullies and the billionaires who are trying to rip away who we are and increase income inequality and injustice and all the things that actually don't make us great.

13:07So your book has this concept of a purposeful warrior. So how about you start by explaining the concept of a purposeful warrior? The purposeful warrior is someone who is determined to be the hero of their own story, determined to not allow anyone else to have the power to define who we are, and finding, even in challenging and uncertain moments, the ability to respond in a way that furthers our vision for a better world. It's about seeing challenge as an opportunity for growth and to find strength and build resilience and get better. But more than anything, it's about being determined to not give up in furtherance of what we believe in, whether it's just a better chance for our kids to do better than we did, whether it's fighting to make sure our parents have access to health care, whether it's standing up to a bully in a toxic workplace.

14:00Wherever we find ourselves, there are always ways that we can be warriors on behalf of ourselves, those we love and the communities we call home. So it's about fighting, but fighting with a purpose and achieving an impact through that fight in a meaningful way. And the whole book is sort of a how-to guide through stories of my own life or advice and inspiration I've gleaned from others on what we all can do to be those purpose-driven warriors in our lives for those we love in the communities we call home. Would you say that Katie Fahey is a purposeful warrior? Yeah. I mean, gosh, look what she did with one Facebook post, right?

14:35Tell us her story. Yeah. So Katie Fahey, after the 2016 election, posted on Facebook, I'm really upset. I'm really upset at government corruption. And I remember the details of what she said, but from a Facebook post expressing her anger, she found purpose in that rage and used that rage to develop a statewide organization called Voters, Not Politicians, that then collected signatures to eliminate gerrymandering in our state. And now today, because of that Facebook post, because she reacted, Katie Fahey reacted to that 2016 election, feeling that her voice wasn't heard and that politics was corrupt.

15:16She reacted not by saying, I'm done, I'm giving up, I'm running away. She reacted by moving forward, digging in, being the hero of that moment that we all needed, and creating a grassroots organization of other warriors all across the state that collected signatures on both sides of the aisle to put citizens in charge of drawing our districts and expand access to the vote in our state. And every cycle, in many cycles since, particularly in 2022, the same organization then pushed for greater expansion of voting policies and enshrined reproductive freedom in our constitution, all from one Facebook post, all from one person saying, I've had enough and I want to do something about it.

15:55So that to me is a great lesson of whenever we find ourselves in moments where we feel hopeless and like things are happening to us that are out of control. We always have the power to do something in response and to decide how we will respond and what we will do to further our hopes for a better world. That is maybe the first positive story we heard about a Facebook post in the history of the Remarkable People podcast. There was also one positive tweet. Olivia Juliana came on our show and talked about that tweet and her battle with Matt Gates. And she raised like two and a half million dollars or something.

16:33So I have to say that that is a really fascinating and powerful story. But if we could back up, because many of us hear about gerrymandering and I understand the concept, but just pretend you're writing a book called Gerrymandering for Dummies. Exactly how do you gerrymander? Are you like sitting in this smoke-filled room and you've got a map and you say, okay, all the black people live here, all the brown people live here, all the white people live here. Let's cut these lines so that, you know, like, how does it actually work? It's about grouping people into districts and they'll all get together in one district.

17:14and then out of that district, they'll elect a state representative or a member of Congress. And if you think about all the communities and all the different ways you can draw lines around communities to keep some people in that district and some people without, gerrymandering is drawing those districts in a way that will try to predetermine the results of the election in favor for your party. And so it often is done by party leaders in maybe not a smoke-filled room anymore, but at least a windowless room with no transparency. And they emerge with a map with no indication as to how that map was drawn or why or what interests were in play.

17:52And that map then determines where you vote, what room you're in when you vote, right? Like, are you in this room or that room? Think about it. If you had a hundred people and they're all people who are Democrats in one room, then you're going to vote for a Democrat. But if you're split, maybe 40 are in one room and 30 or another and another third year and another, you're going to be outvoted by the Republicans who are in those other rooms. And so gerrymandering is about drawing the lines in such a way that it predetermines and helps one party over the other, even if that's not a fair outcome for how just sort of fairly drawn maps, considering other things like, well, everyone wants to be in this room, you guys head there.

18:30And that's how we'll define it. Or everyone is in a college town. So maybe you guys should all be in the same district, all should be in the same room, since you have this one unique interest that you want to vote on together. So instead of using that data-driven, good government approach to grouping people in districts, it's about using party politics to group people in districts in a way that can give a party an advantage in the writ large legislature and maintain control over the legislature, even if the voting allegiances, the party allegiance of voters are not represented effectively in that legislature.

19:02So as an example, in Michigan, under gerrymandering, you had, let's say, 100 districts, 70 of which had a majority of Republicans in them and 30 of which had a majority of Democrats in them. That meant in any election, 70 Republicans and 30 Democrats would be elected out of those districts. But with fair maps, you have almost a 50-50 split where 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats are elected out of those districts and also their competitive districts. So it's not tilted one way or the other, but it enables people from both parties to make their case to the voters and voters to have enough opportunity through building coalitions or crossing party lines to elect the person they want as opposed to the party that person has to adhere to.

19:43So is the goal in fair voting to have an equal number of districts that are predominant one party or the other or to have each district 50-50? I think the goal is to have people, voters, draw these districts from the communities themselves, not the politicians who have an inherent conflict of interest in how they're going to draw these districts. So that's really the heart of it. There are so many factors beyond party affiliation that you can bring into a district. Maybe we want to keep a county together. Maybe we want to have two districts in the city of Detroit as opposed to just one. So there's lots of different factors that can come.

20:26Competitiveness, as you mentioned, can be another factor. So the question is really who's drawing the lines and what's their focus. And the idea of citizen-drawn districts means that voters from the communities themselves are saying, you know what, I think we should be in this district, you should be in that, because we care about the college in our district and you guys care about the farmland in yours, as opposed to just saying, okay, all the Democrats here and all the Republicans here so we can determine who gets elected out of each. Maybe you guys have tried this, but it would be a very interesting experiment to put in as many demographic and income and whatever data you have and just tell chat GPT, okay, draw the districts and see what that would be interesting.

21:09Yeah. And we could go in that direction, right? The citizens could say, I want to do that. That's how we're going to do it. That's how we're going to draw the districts. And so this idea that there are many different ways that you can draw fair maps and ways in which, and it'll be interesting to see how AI affects all of that in the future. And if politicians allow AI or chat GPT or other services to do that, because again, the critical factor in this process is who is drawing and who's making this decision. And I don't know if politicians would be as amenable to turning it over to chat GPT as citizens might, but it'll be interesting to see how that technology evolves in the years ahead.

21:45If I had to guess right now, Jocelyn, I would say I would probably prefer ChatGPT drawing up the district lines than people. Yeah, I think fairness is just the bottom line. And maybe ChatGPT, you enter different factors in. Fair maps, competitive districts, and all that. We redraw maps. We convene the Citizen Commission every 10 years. So it will be interesting to see how that commission perhaps chooses to draw maps and what technology they use in 2030. Okay. This is my last question about gerrymandering. The state of Texas is talking about gerrymandering, right? And then you see these news stories that Gavin Newsom says, listen, if Texas does it, I'm going to do this in California.

22:32Does that make sense? Like, is that two wrongs making a right? Or like, why would gerrymandering California to counteract Texas? I'm not sure I follow that reasoning. Can you just give me the insights into that? I cannot give you the insights into Gavin Newsom's decision making, but I can't offer my own take, which is just you got to give citizens the job, period. Anytime you have politicians drawing the districts, this is the type of stuff that happens on both sides. and it's gross and it's icky and it's antithetical to what democracy is supposed to be. So I think the answer should be, let's just give citizens the job.

23:11In Michigan, that's actually worked quite well to create competitive districts. In other states as well, there's lots of successful models on this. In my view, and I can say this on behalf of our state that does it quite well, we've eliminated gerrymandering as a result to push for a movement in that direction. You know, the other thing I'll say is there's lots of other examples of how if the voters are engaged and being really thoughtful and critical consumers of information, a lot of times an election will still not turn out the way those drawing maps expect it to. Typically it does, but there are plenty of examples of times in which one party drew maps to give a party an advantage and then they do so poorly in an election because they have no message that they still lose anyway.

23:56So there's always that piece too. My dogma is the power of the people will always be greater than the people in power. And I've seen that happen even in gerrymandered areas. But of course, the goal is to have citizens drawing those districts and fair maps across the board. Okay. Enough about gerrymandering. Let's get back to ferocious warriors. So let's say I love the concept, how do I become a ferocious warrior? I think every day we have opportunities to choose who we're going to be, right? And a lot of this book is about that. There's lots of different ways that you can, in ways big and small, choose to be a warrior in different moments of your life.

24:34And it begins with recognizing that there are plenty of things always in our life, challenging uncertain movements outside of our control, but we always have the power to determine how we will respond and what we will do in response to things that happen to us that are outside of our control. And that's where that decision to become a warrior lies. When you start to see challenges, not as defeats, but as opportunities for growth and building strength and building resiliency, that is one way to take a uncertain moment or a challenging time or something out of our control and use it to grow your power, your strength, your resiliency.

25:14In addition to that, there are moments where we see injustice or we experience an injustice and we're met with a choice. Do we stay silent or do we speak out? Speaking out is oftentimes the courageous thing. Staying silent is oftentimes succumbing to fear and perhaps the safest option, safer option. But to me, being a purposeful warrior means being determined to not stay silent in the face, particularly of injustices or bullies or other abuses of power or authority. Because if we don't speak out, someone will fill that void and it will be further out of our control. But if we speak out, we may not achieve the end result, but as warriors, we can push for a better response than we otherwise would have.

25:54And we can inspire others to speak out as well. So standing up to bullies, refusing to stay silent, recognizing that everything we do is connected so that if I speak out, that's gonna have an effect on someone else feeling courage. That's how we become purposeful warriors. And then in addition to that, when we're angry, finding purpose in that rage. doing something about it as opposed to just stewing in it indefinitely. That's also how we can take challenging moments in our life and find our warrior ethos and plow through and to create that better place, even in a turbulent time. You are one of the few people qualified to answer this question, but it seems to me that in the made-for-TV movie, the underdog stands up to the bully and the bully backs down.

26:39But you have actually done that. So I want to know, what happens when you stand up? Do they run away or do they just keep coming at you? I love that. It's one of my favorite questions I've gotten talking about this book because that's exactly what we need to be thinking about. You cannot predicate your decision to stand up to a bully based solely on the hope that you achieve the end result you desire. Because bullies punch back. Others perhaps come to defense of that bully. Sometimes bullies lose elections, but then win them four years later. And so all you can control is what you do and the power that you build from that and the power you help others build from that.

27:18That doesn't necessarily mean if you're calling out, and I tell this story, someone who's harassing you in the workplace, that you call that out and they lose their job. That doesn't always mean that because sometimes others are not going to do the right thing. And so in my view, the decision to stand up to a bully or to take on even the most powerful person in the United States is a decision you make because it's the right thing to do. And then you work to make sure it is as impactful as it can be, either directly or indirectly. But you can't predicate your decision to speak out based on what you hope will happen as a result.