The RegenNarration Podcast
The RegenNarration podcast features the stories of a generation that is changing the story, enabling the regeneration of life on this planet. It’s ad-free, freely available and entirely listener-supported. You'll hear from high profile and grass-roots leaders from around Australia and the world, on how they're changing the stories we live by, and the systems we create in their mold. Along with often very personal tales of how they themselves are changing, in the places they call home. With award-winning host, Anthony James.
The RegenNarration Podcast
225. Democracy on the Rise – in the US? With Maine’s youngest ever female Senator, Chloe Maxmin
This is one of my favourite conversations, and it starts a mini-series of sorts. I’ve had many listeners ask how things feel in this US election year. So, after months speaking with all kinds of people as we travelled through half the states of this country, throughout October, as the election approaches, I’ll offer what we’ve observed, in conversation with people doing some of the more outstanding things we’ve learned about along the way.
Today, meet Chloe Maxmin. Chloe left the farm she grew up on in Maine, as many young folk do, and headed for the city. But against frequent advice, she returned. And soon after, wondering why a kind community was voting for unkind politics, at age 26, she would stand for office and become the first Democrat ever to represent Maine House District 88, and the youngest member of the 129th Maine Legislature. Two years later, she’d become the youngest female state senator in Maine's history.
Chloe achieved all this with a community movement akin to what is transforming Australian politics right now. And we see a similar thing happening nationally here right now - notwithstanding the different electoral system. All helped along by organisations like the one Chloe was trained by, a book (Dirt Road Revival) and film (Rural Runners) about her experience, and now a non-profit Chloe has co-founded that trains yet more people, called Dirtroad Organizing. In short time, 38 alumni are now running at the coming election.
This episode has chapter markers and a transcript.
Recorded 8 September 2024 at Begin Again Farm, Maine.
Title slide: Chloe just before our chat (pic: Olivia Cheng).
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Music:
Green Shoots, by The Nomadics.
Regeneration, by Amelia Barden, from Regenerating Australia.
The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests (thanks to Josie Symons).
Get tickets:
Rural Runners screenings on the US west coast next week.
Rural Runners screening in West Virginia.
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We've done three cohorts. We have we'll have over 70 alums from 29 states and we have 38 people running for office this year, just in our first year. So, and they're all such wonderful people too, just so kind and grounded and lovely and just like, so aligned with everything you and I are talking about, about wanting to represent their communities and, you know, heal the divides and use their campaign as a way to just create a different story in their community.
AJ:G'day Anthony James here for The RegenNarration - ad-free, freely available and entirely supported by listeners like you. So thanks a lot to my old mate from Baltimore, Dana Scott, and new mate Stephan for becoming generous subscribers this week. And if you're also finding value in this, please join Dana and Stephan part of a great community of supporting listeners by just heading to the website via the show notes regennarration. com forward slash support. Thanks as always. This is one of my favourite conversations on the podcast. I learned of this story from before arriving on this continent and, on arrival at Begin Again Farm in Maine, found so much more than I'd anticipated. I've had many listeners and others here in the US and abroad ask about how things feel in this election year. My answer has been that we've been experiencing some of the stuff we expected coming in much of it not great. And we've experienced a lot of the stuff we didn't expect much of it brilliant. A nd that I wanted to wait until I felt I had some kind of grip on things before venturing to podcast expressly about it. So, after months speaking with all kinds of people as we travelled through half the states of this country, throughout October, as the election approaches, I'll offer what we've observed in conversation with people doing some of the more outstanding things we've learned about along the way.
AJ:Chloe Maxmin left the farm she grew up on in Maine, as many young folk do, and headed for the city. But against frequent advice, after graduating she returned home and soon after wondering why a kind community was voting for unkind politics, at age 26 she would stand for office and become the first Democrat ever to represent Maine House district 88, and the youngest member of the 129th Maine Legislature. Two years later she'd become the youngest female state senator in Maine's history. Chloe achieved all this with a community movement akin to what's transforming Australian politics right now, and to some extent we see the same thing happening here, notwithstanding the different electoral system, all helped along by organisations like the one Chloe was trained by, a book and film produced about her experience, and now a non-profit Chloe has co-founded that trains yet more people called Dirt Road Organising. In short time, 38 alumni are now running at the coming election.
AJ:Incidentally, no one we'd spoken with across the country even knew of this story. One person only in the heart of the regenerative economies movement thought it sounded familiar. It's why I'm all the more so glad to be sharing this conversation with you today. Join us sitting amongst the serene, sun-baked grasses, out of the wind a little, next to the farmhouse. Chloe, thanks again so much for having us here.
Chloe:Oh my gosh, thank you for reaching out and coming to our home. We were very honoured.
AJ:So am I. I wonder if we might hark back to your upbringing on a farm. What was that like for you?
Chloe:Yeah, I had such a blessed childhood. My dad decided to start a venison farm when I was little, so uh, we raised deer and uh, yeah so that was new for him as well yeah, it was new for him.
Chloe:He'd spent. He's like a very outdoorsy guy, um, but yeah, he's just like I'm gonna I don't know venison's where it's at. So I grew up on a venison farm and, um, yeah, just my memories of you know building the fences with my dad and doing chores every day and, uh, I don't know, it's just a very.
AJ:It was one of my favorite parts about growing up it's pretty beautiful just to hear you talk about the father-daughter connection that must have come out of that even yeah, definitely.
Chloe:Yeah, we both loved being outside and doing farm work and taking care of the animals and cleaning up the barn.
AJ:It was, um, yeah, it was very joyful and the fact that he wanted to take that up as a profession when small farmers were getting squeezed out yeah, it was definitely.
Chloe:You know, not his full-time income. You know similar situation where it was something in addition, but cool, same story, but he really loved it yeah.
AJ:What broader work was he doing? What was the rest of his time?
Chloe:He spent a lot of time supporting entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurship and business development Is that?
AJ:right.
Chloe:Yeah, it was his jam.
AJ:And mum.
Chloe:My mum is a writer.
AJ:Really.
Chloe:She writes books about society, technology, surveillance that's what she does.
AJ:What's her name? Shoshana Zuboff. That's your mum.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:That's such a moment of a few threads I'm interested coming together in a very unexpected way.
Chloe:Oh, really Totally Wow.
AJ:What are the Age of Surveillance? Yeah, outstanding.
Chloe:Yep, that's her book, yeah.
AJ:That's amazing yeah.
Chloe:Yeah, she lives, just she lives in Nobleborough. She's very close. What do you know?
AJ:Yeah, I was speaking with Hazel Henderson out of Florida a few years ago, before she died.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:Someone I'd admired for so long, who worked with Congress folk when Carter was president. Did you ever know of her or meet her Legend? And she was the one that put me onto Age of Svalance back then.
Chloe:Oh, wow, okay.
AJ:And it's like okay, if you're saying that.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:And sure enough.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:And then I followed her work from there. That's terrific. So it's interesting to hear given you've ended up writing a book which we'll come back to yeah that you had seemingly had the farming and the writing gene. Did you always know both? That that was true, you were carrying both.
Chloe:I did the writing one not so much.
AJ:But like much, but like, yeah, the farming outdoorsy one for sure. That's always been my, my happy place. And I'm curious, then, when you were, as I understand it, when you were in high school, you started your organizing part of your life, you might say yeah even then as an early teen yeah how did you get to the position like what in your upbringing got you capable and interested in doing that.
Chloe:I think my um, you know, I think I a kind of core theme to everything, is like I just really love Maine and I really love my community and you know what, in your early teens if you're lucky because so many people have these realizations when much younger than I was but just starting to see the ways that you're like your home is threatened and the forces of the world impact your community and the place that you feel safe, and so that that started happening for me like right, I was, as I was going into high school and watching the different forces in Maine. You know around development mostly, and you know taking away our, our wilderness and our special places for the sake of growth and just kind of getting into those dynamics and understanding the threat of climate change more so, um, yeah, all that happened in high school and so did did some organizing is very basic, basic advocacy stuff, um, but I guess we all got to start somewhere that's right, but how did that go then?
AJ:Did what you were advocating for come to be in any way?
Chloe:Yeah, we did. We did like a lot of small projects around the school, like recycling all the batteries and cartridges that were used in our high school. Or we like got these doohickeys that would shut the vending machines down at nighttime so that we weren't using so much energy.
AJ:Just like small little things like that, oh, so important though. Because if you're not looking at that, you're not looking at your place and you're not looking at your responsibility, and the small things lead to the big things. Yeah, so yeah, I believe in that?
Chloe:Oh no, yeah, very basic. Our greatest success was we put solar panels on the school. We got like I think it was like four solar panels or something like that with a grant that we got, and they're still there. You can still drive by the school and see the panels.
AJ:So that's cool, it's terrific, it is little monuments to a shift, yes, a paradigm shift, really.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:A generational shift at least.
Chloe:Maybe I don't know if it had that much importance, but it was cool. As a young person, you know organizing and then seeing it have an impact. Yeah, yeah.
AJ:And wondering then, as someone who then, I gather, was getting attention, being a figurehead of sorts media awards, how that was for you.
Chloe:Super uncomfortable.
AJ:Yeah.
Chloe:I really hate it. I mean, I think I have like a part of my personality that's like you know my civic duty, you know identity, and then I have like my true self identity and I guess they've always been a little bit separate but yeah, which is a huge blessing and privilege, and I think there's lots of ways in which I've had the privilege in my life to have the time to do organizing work as a young person, not getting paid to do that work, which so many young folks don't have the privilege to do these days. And the color of my skin also draws people to me in ways that are inequitable. So you know, realizing all of that as I look back on it as well.
AJ:Yeah, I so relate to that part of it, to the feeling uncomfortable Probably many of us do Yet feeling more strongly what you could and needed to do. So you left the farm there and I gather for college is that right? Yeah, and that was to Harvard, no less, yeah. So how did that feel?
Chloe:yeah, huge culture shift for me, you know, um, I had lived, um it was like my first time really living in a city and just navigating all of that was a lot and just yeah, and then, yeah, being around so many people, it's like also really intense for me. But, um, those again huge, huge honor and privilege to go to, to go to Harvard, you know, and um trying to just learn as much as I can and and the people there, incredible, like everyone you you just brush arms with um you know they're brilliant, so just learning, learning so much and meeting amazing folks so it wasn't long before you started organizing there as well
Chloe:my first year there I did just like scope in the scene, and then my second year I um, yeah, the the summer between my first and second year of college there was this big proposal to develop a pipeline through Maine.
Chloe:It would go through a large chunk of New England and the details are old and the project's defunct so it doesn't really matter so much. But I came back to Maine that summer to work with the groups that were fighting against that. And it was the same summer that Bill McKibben wrote this big article in Rolling Stone that kind of alluded to fossil fuel divestment as a new tactic for the climate movement. And there was a you know there's so many colleges in Boston and there was a really well-organized group of students that were organizing in that area. So we all came together and kind of piloted this divestment movement and it all worked out so well for all of us. You know I got so many young people involved. We were building movements and momentum on our campus to talk about climate change and climate justice, and so I was part of that early group that started the fossil fuel divestment campaign at Harvard back in 2012.
AJ:We're talking, then tens of thousands of young people getting involved.
Chloe:Yes, yeah, it was a big moment. It was a huge moment for young people and the climate movement. And even now, so many of the folks that I organized with on divestment back in the day, you know they're all still doing this work. You know the folks who started Sunrise Movement came out of the div divestment movement. So many of my friends have run for office or working for big you know big civic groups. It's. It's kind of cool to see how it inspired so many young folks into this line of work.
AJ:That's very cool. Yeah, and it also succeeded in harvard divesting, I believe it did took um harvard divest in 2021, I think.
Chloe:So it took a long time, but they got there eventually.
AJ:And we're talking upwards of $50 billion.
Chloe:Yes, a huge fund, it's a massive amount of money. Yes.
AJ:And speaking of Rolling Stone, didn't they call you a green hero after that?
Chloe:They did. It was so awful.
AJ:In all seriousness. Yeah, I expected you would say that. Tell me why it felt awful.
Chloe:I don't know. I just don't feel like I deserve recognition for just doing what I'm called to do.
AJ:I don't know.
Chloe:I wouldn't do anything any differently with or without it, and it just feels glorified. It feels like a glorification of just don't know my work in my life is that because it was you individually that was named?
Chloe:yeah, I think that I think that was a big part of it. You know I'm looking back. I feel so uncomfortable about that. You know, and I had, you know I coming from like a very rural conservative community and then going into such a liberal urban bastion it was. You know, they're just ideas and ways of looking at the world and, yeah, just like the diversity of the world, that doesn't, that didn't exist where I grew up and it took me longer than I, than I'm like proud to say, to kind of really understand all of the ways that equity plays out in our work, especially in organizing work.
Chloe:So definitely have some feelings looking back on little Chloe, but you know, it is what it is.
AJ:It's interesting then, with the parents you have, I'm not imagining a sheltered life in that way Yet still, you felt like I guess it's in a young person's journey really and you're going from such a marked contextual change in place. But yeah, you still feel like you had a path to tread there.
Chloe:Definitely. Yeah. I mean, yeah, my parents were brilliant and kind, compassionate people, you know, and they've totally shaped who I am. But also, you know, we traveled a little bit but I've lived in a town of 1600 people for most of my life, you know, and now I just live a little farther north. So, yeah, it really like and I think that it's a huge privilege to be able to go to a college like Harvard or just leave Maine and go to a college in the city in general, but it's so important for world shaping and understanding the dynamics that are kind of pressing down on us in this moment in time.
AJ:Speaking of which, then, I gather this was turning over in your mind at the time, because it was straight after graduating that you came back to the farm um, yeah, I came home the day I graduated, wow, yeah yep. What was your thinking at that time? What were you going to do?
Chloe:fuck. The city was my primary, my primary thing. I'm like I am done with this, uh. But I came home and I was like I'm just gonna figure it out. You know, I didn't really. I was doing like a bunch of part-time work and piecing it together and then, yeah, did the whole working at bars and restaurants, that whole thing for a long time, so you had no idea of what you were going to end up doing.
Chloe:No, I mean I knew I was interested, you know, in general in climate and politics, but it was hard for it to take shape in Maine. Um, I worked on a bunch of campaigns yeah, just the the 20s smorgasbord of, of cobbling a living together, and then eventually I was like I think I'm gonna run for office.
AJ:See how that goes firstly, before we go there, what was it about the city that made you keen to leave it? Not just come back to what you loved, but leave that. What are we doing in cities?
Chloe:that's I think it's just the like. Here I go, the grocery store. You know it's like.
Chloe:You see everyone, you know you know, it's like almost all social anxiety because, like going out in public is such a thing which is so sweet. You know it's so easy to complain about it, but it's a, it's lovely and um. But you know, I just remember in Boston, like no one's smiling, no one's waving, it's just like you feel so isolated, even though you're surrounded by people, and that, to me, is so much worse than being alone in the woods, so it just felt very isolating and that, to me, is so much worse than being alone in the woods. So it just felt very isolating. And I definitely also sensed that judgment of rural folks, like that slight condescension around folks who choose not to live in the city. You know I was graduating, everyone was, like you know, trying to get me to stay in a big city and like I had some mentors just tell me straight up that it was such a huge mistake to move back to Maine and I was wasting so much opportunity.
Chloe:That also pissed me off. So I just you know um, yeah, it was like my dad would always say like you can do whatever you want from from here, you know it can, it can be done. You just got figure it out. So I just pieced together a living for a lot of years and figure it out.
AJ:She's good advice received there. My old mentor really key old mentor relished the city in his experience.
AJ:It was Melbourne in that case, and I appreciated the way he relished it, which was he used to call it benign anonymity. Yeah, so sure you're anonymous, yeah, but I guess, yeah, it's the antithesis, in a good way, for him of what you said about some of the claustrophobia maybe, when you can't go anywhere without having to get up for some social engagement. Yeah, and that you know in his experience he had chronic illness so he was only alive because he could access the hospitals all the time, and hospitals plural. He had to sort of manage his health across hospitals and people would help him on the street if he came into trouble. So he found human nature in that way, still turned up when needed in cities, which is a. He taught me a lot in that way. That's amazing, yes, but, yeah, good advice you received from your dad and didn't that turn out to be true with what you ended up doing? Yeah, but when and why did you think? Yeah, I'm running for office.
Chloe:You know, it's something that had percolated in my head for a little bit. You know, working on other campaigns, watching other people do it, watching some of my peers run it like never occurred to me that young people could run for office. It was like super foreign idea. But another person that I did divestment work with, her name's Greta Neubauer. She's now the minority leader in the Wisconsin legislature. She was elected in 2018 or something I don't know. When I heard she was elected, I was like no way, that's so cool and and I think 2016 was a pivotal moment as well in watching my hometown, my hometown house district and my hometown Senate district voted for Trump and it's not the. I felt like confusing, you know, because I associate Trump with like violence and not a lot of kindness, and I consider my community to be quite kind, you know, and just like a really wonderful place to be. So just wanted to dig into those dynamics a little bit more and understand what was happening.
AJ:Yeah, that's huge.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:So what have you found was behind that apparent contradiction?
Chloe:You know, I have talked to so many conservative folks in my community and I, you know, now I drive Bill around and I hear him talk with folks and I feel like the themes are have been consistently the same over the years of people just feeling really left behind and, um manipulated by politics. That you know, politicians say something and then they never follow through on it or they do the exact opposite. Um, just all this distrust, and folks are desperate for some form of authenticity and real representation, and it was so interesting hearing people, especially in 2018, people who had voted for Bernie and then went and voted for Trump. You know, mostly out of the sense of, like, these two candidates displayed some level of authenticity that they didn't see in other places, and it was really more of a reaction of wanting to feel heard and represented, and so that makes sense to me.
Chloe:Everyone wants that, yeah, and I think I never learned about the state legislature and the difference between a state rep and a US rep and how all of it worked until I actually ran for office. So I think it's easy, with the lack of civic education in America, to um, just it's hard to grasp all the different layers and how they work and the consequences of um of some of our votes couldn't agree more, and the fact that we can go through 17 or 18 or 19 years of education and not know that it's unbelievable.
Chloe:It's unbelievable, yeah, it's yeah, and I'm like I'm ashamed of myself. How little I knew before. I started doing this work, but again we all start somewhere.
AJ:Well, blessed that we do, yeah, yeah, and then we can see it come on too in others, as you've described. Oh, hearing you talk about, you know, switching from Sanders to Trump, for example, it's a good example of you, asked me when we just first met out front of perhaps some of my key observations as we crossed the country and this was one of them that well, I might just say quickly, the biggest one was perhaps what you said.
AJ:We have met, met kind communities everywhere, of all stripes and colours, which has flown in the face entirely of that depiction of polarisation and anger and aggression and violence that we would see in some of that. Well, I've just sort of called it TV politics and the other main thread we've seen is the complexity and nuance in this election year. It's been far from clear-cut and far from trump bad, democrat, good, and that's been evidenced in all the different people we've spoken with and met. That they will have. They'll not only be kind that's a baseline but they will have varying views that I really subscribe to, yeah, and then feel like Trump's the one with integrity in this election.
AJ:Yeah, and others will feel like I mean. I've heard Trump voters on the New York Times podcast on the run-up say they wish there were better options. They don't really want to vote. These were rural voters too, for Trump, but what choice did they have anymore? Because they've been abandoned by the Democrats for so long, can't trust it. I've heard so many cross threads and nuances in that that. It's been occasionally. We think we've got a hold on some of that complexity and then another layer comes in, unexpected and we think, wow, it just goes to what you've experienced, though, that it's far from clear-cut, yeah, and that there's an essence of humanity and community underneath what can end up feeling like a total debacle on top, so to speak, with the presidential election context and, yeah, the nightly news. So what were the steps that you took as you started to campaign? Like? How did the campaign take shape and how did you decide how you were going to go about it? That would be able to speak to everybody.
Chloe:Yeah, I mean I was very lucky that I worked on campaigns before, so I had some like basic level of campaigning and I'd been through a emerge, which is a candidate training program for women, and then my best friend canyon was my campaign manager so he moved up. He's from north carolina and he moved up to to nobleborough to manage the campaign, so we uh, you met at Harvard, is that what you mean?
Chloe:yeah, we're, yeah, we've been friends for 13 years now, so, yeah, long time, uh. So, yeah, he moved up and he had also done a lot of campaign work, you know. So I think we came to it with like a basic level of like okay, this is what campaigning looks like, um, and at first we had to win a primary, so it's just a lot of knocking on democratic doors, which was fairly simple.
AJ:But once we won, you chose to be in the democratic party.
Chloe:I did yes, I ran as a democrat and there was already a democrat filed to run when I decided to to do it. So, um, so we had a primary at first. Then, after the primary, uh, you know, our, my house district, our house districts in Maine are very small, they're about 9,000 people, and so after and our, this district, district 88 was had a 16 point Republican advantage. It hadn't been won by a Democrat since it had been redistricted. So there are a lot of dynamics, a lot of dynamics at play. But we knew that, you know, the key to understanding this district and building a movement was to go talk to all of the Republicans and independents.
Chloe:So, after primary day, I didn't talk to a single Democrat again and we just talked to people, you know, every day. It was so heartbreaking that every day we were talked to people, you know, and every day it was so heartbreaking that every day we were talking to people who had never been contacted by a Democratic campaign or a Democratic canvasser and their entire voting history. But we were having, just like, the most incredible and heartfelt conversations with folks and finding a lot of common ground, even if it's not 100 percent common ground, and finding a lot of common ground. Even if it's not 100% common ground, that's all right. You're just looking for some form of common ground to build a relationship on.
Chloe:And that just kept happening over and over again and we were like, wow, there's something really powerful happening here. And I think folks were just so genuinely grateful that someone running for office took the time to stop by and chat for 15 or 20 minutes. So, yeah, we just we built it all from there and put a lot of thought and intention into how to do campaigning in a more grounded and, um, human way. It's like just kind of tweaks on what we know made it feel so much different had you thought about running as an independent?
Chloe:I did. But I think, um, I don't know, I think the democratic party has like a massive responsibility in this day and age and and I'm not, I'm not ready to give up on it, you know, I think it has to. I think the democratic party has no choice but to become more responsive to those that it hasn't represented well, which includes rural folks, but also includes young people, people of color, really anyone who's been kind of marginalized by, by mainstream politics you mentioned the emerge program that you went through I want to come back to that for a second.
AJ:Yeah, because this is what we've also noticed a whole bunch of things like this for women, for rank choice voting, a whole bunch of stuff coming up that is grassroots and seemingly having quite the impact, and you're a case in point, but it sounds like, along with a whole bunch of others, this is true yeah what was the nature of that and how did you connect with it?
Chloe:emerge. I. I connected with emerge because one of my friends from high school uh, worked with emerge, so I'd seen her posting about it and then I went through Emerge in 2016. So I started before Trump was elected and ended just right after, which was like a whole year and a bit before I decided to run. But you know, it's just there's an incredible network of women who are running, and Emerge Maine is like really incredible. There's so many women in the Maine legislature who have gone through. And Emerge Maine is like really incredible that there's so many women in the Maine legislature who have gone through the Emerge program. So it's um, yeah, it's just been hugely impactful in the state. So you just kind of learn the basics of like how to door knock, how to calculate your win number, what does field strategy look like? Just I don't know a more structured way to understand what a campaign looks like, which is super helpful knowledge.
AJ:And then, as the campaigning evolved, did you start to get a sense of hang on. We could win at some stage.
Chloe:I don't think so. I didn't think we were going to win. I mean, it's just such a steep yeah, it's just a steep hill to climb very conservative district, and yeah, we had no idea. So you were just making a contest such a such a steep yeah, it's just a steep hill to climb very conservative district. And yeah, we had, we had no idea.
AJ:Um, so you were just making a contest?
Chloe:yeah, it was, you know, for us yes, it was 100 about the journey, which I think it has to be when you're running in more conservative districts. That it's not necessarily about winning, it's about building relationships, building volunteer bases, bases and um, just creating like a story that is more hopeful than than, like I don't know, some of the dichotomies that that we see in many rural places. So that was our goal and um, but we did win, thank god, because it was also a lot of work. It was like, yeah, that's right. Yeah, real tough, yeah.
AJ:And then, in that term, you had two years in the House of Reps. Is that what you call it? Yes, and then you chose to stand for the Senate.
Chloe:Yes, why we were asked. We were kind of like recruited by the Senate folks to run for the Senate seat and the Senate seat is about 35,000 people, so it's more comparable to other districts in the states, um in the country. So it felt like an exciting opportunity to represent more people and also to kind of bring our style of human organizing just to like more of my community. So um and I still represented three out of the four towns in my original district, so um wasn't going too far, but yeah, felt like, you know, felt like a moment to say yes to something, to something big and uh, yeah. But what we didn't know when we say, when we said yes, was that covid was about to hit. So you know, we had these big beautiful visions of doing just tons of door knocking, community canvassing. There's in the senate district there's, uh, turfs that are more walkable, you know. So we thought about having like walkable turfs or biking turfs, you know, and just like really being more creative with it. But obviously none of that happened.
AJ:What a pity.
Chloe:So Bill's a real bummer. Yeah, yet you won we did win Again, yeah, which was against a minority house leader or Senate leader?
AJ:Yeah, at the time incumbent, two-term incumbent, republican. Did that surprise you equally? Or you sort of knew you were onto something by now.
Chloe:No, super shocked, Super, super shocked. There was, yeah, there was so many moments on election night in 2020 when we thought we were going to lose. I mean, out of almost my numbers are a little rusty, but it's almost 30,000 votes and we won by 800, so it's like 51 to 49, yeah it's very close, you know that's quite a good turnout, then, for the US, as I understand it, which runs more 50 percent yeah, maine has extremely high voter turnout.
AJ:Is that right?
Chloe:Yeah, it's one of the huge benefits. In Maine we have publicly financed campaigns and we have very high voter turnout, so those are two huge advantages that we have for kind of taking on trickier districts where you can. You don't have to worry about all the fundraising and you know that people are going to turn up to vote.
AJ:That's so interesting.
Chloe:It's like part of our culture.
AJ:One of the things we are looking at in Australia now is more publicly funded campaigning.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:Because? Well, for obvious reasons really. Because, where otherwise big money comes from and dominates the agenda Exactly and in ways that aren't transparent or democratic.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:So this is something we're trying to get instituted, for all its complexity, too right, because the major parties are arguably having a look at how they can do private funding limitations in a way that keeps the independence I was telling you about at bay yeah the turn that actually consolidates their power a little more. So it's to be done carefully. But, yeah, interesting hearing that's an important part of your experience here. Yeah, so you were in the Senate for a couple of years, yes, and then you decided not to run, it's true. Why is that?
Chloe:There were so many, so many factors about why I decided not to run. I, you know I'd spent all like half of my 20s doing this work and I was really burned out. You know, it was kind of the deepest truth. It was really difficult to run both races, um, especially in 2020 with COVID. I, like Canyon, and I did it all ourselves. I mean, we had, we had so many volunteers, we had hundreds of volunteers. But, like the door knocking and the the like, the graphic design, everything like the heavy, we took on some heavier lifts than we had anticipated. Um, and then serving is also very difficult. You know, it's like it's, it's, it's not yeah, it's not for the faint of heart, it's. There's a lot, a lot pressing on you and I was, um, I was exhausted. Also, you do not make a living wage serving. So, you know, just working, I felt like, no, not, not in some states you do, but not in maine.
Chloe:um, when I was elected, the first year we made, I think, fourteen thousand dollars and the second year is nine thousand dollars oh, wow so it was just four years of um campaigning non-stop and then we're like working, you go to the legislature but then you're working before you're working, after you're working on the weekends and um, it was yeah, it was just a lot to.
Chloe:It was a lot to keep up um, but I also felt like that serving is it's so important to have good people in office, so so important and I'm not negating that at all. I spend my life trying to get people elected, um, but kind of, in the end, it's about how you vote. The forces that act upon a legislator before they vote are numerous and that there are so many good people organizing to influence the vote in the right way that I think that's kind of more of the that. My takeaway was that's kind of more of the secret and that's more of where my heart lies is with the organizing, and that you know we can elect good folks, but they need an infrastructure around them to help them understand what they're doing, because no legislator knows everything about every issue that you vote on. So it's so important to have well-organized movements behind any legislator to help them kind of understand the dynamics.
AJ:Yes, and this is where I was so enthused to hear about your story, because it so maps on to that experience in australia independent in that case, with preferential voting system and the like yeah that it was communities re-engaging and then selecting who they wanted to run. Yeah, so it was people that, as often as not, would say no thanks. First, because of everything, you say yeah, and that's why I also think it's hats off not only to you, but it's hats off to everyone in there definitely even if I've got frustrations with some of them yes like it's hats off right down to, you know, local council level in our country 100
AJ:because someone, I want someone to be there, I want a democratic representative system, and so, yeah, hats off to you and I. I also want a really engaged, participatory one too. So that's where what's happening at home is speaking to me and your experience is speaking to me, and it it has ended up at home certainly along the lines you described too. Where it's a community, then that to some extent shoulders the burden, together, yes, and the responsibility yeah for the outcomes together yeah actually when you're in office, definitely so before we leave that period.
AJ:then, yeah, how do you reflect on your observations of those of that time in terms of I guess I'm thinking your sense of outcomes? You've spoken to a pivotal one when we were talking together with Bill, of course, any others and also in the power dynamics, perhaps, anything that you were heartened by, mortified by?
Chloe:Yeah, I mean I, you know, I think the campaigns themselves, I I look back on them as just like immense community efforts of love. You know, I think the campaigns themselves, I look back on them as just like immense community efforts of love. You know, having so many people come together. You know, and our campaigns weren't really about me, they were about our vision for the community and that was so explicit in our work and that felt really cool.
Chloe:Also, just knowing that we were, that so many folks had run in these districts before I did, and there's just like so much history in these districts about how we get to where we are. And so I look back on that with like a lot of gratitude for for my community. And you know, I think I'm really proud of some of the policy that I sponsored and got passed, you know, and it's pretty cool that that I can say that. You know, and there's things that in the state that are happening because of um, because I put my name on something, but even still, it was the movements behind those bills that got them passed and not just like the fact that I sponsored it. So those movements were so life-changing to me and kind of watching people organize around these, these policies, and I I was like more of a conduit for for their work um a representative?
AJ:yeah, I was a.
Chloe:I was a representative of the movements, and so I think that was like the best thing was just being like I don't know about this policy issue, but there's a whole movement here that's ready to fight for it, so I can, like learn from you and fight with you for this so the green New Deal thing was the case in point.
AJ:That was a piece of legislation that went through on your sponsorship, yeah, yes, that was in my first term.
Chloe:I think the one I was most proud of was I worked with the recovery community here to pass a stronger Good Samaritan law in Maine. So we have the strongest Good Samaritan law in the country. And Good Samaritan law protects people when they call 9-1-1 at the scene of an overdose. So if there's drugs or paraphernalia at the scene, folks don't have to worry because they are protected and can just get help for the person who's overdosing. What was the situation?
AJ:before. What would happen, what was the risk happening?
Chloe:That there were some protections, but but overall there were very few protections. So some of like some of the early data we had was that, um, in some cases, like 90 of people were not calling 9-1-1 when there's an overdose because they were afraid that they'd get arrested. And there were so many stories in the news of people who did call 9-1-1 and then they got arrested what for being a dealer or a user themselves?
AJ:yeah, exactly, just caught up in it, far out they're just caught up in it, yeah, um and so in rural, in rural communities across the country.
Chloe:The opioid epidemic is so brutal and heartbreaking and it's the same here in maine. We had overdose death, overdose deaths just climbing every year and, um, it was just like a really, really scary. It is really scary. So I sponsored a bill for the recovery community and we defied so many odds to get it passed. We had almost no support from the democrats. The governor like wanted to veto the bill, but you know, we like negotiated and organized and we got it to the finish line and now it's main law. So that was cool.
AJ:That was cool is that to say that you convinced democrats? Or? Or just enough, republicans, or?
Chloe:um, some democrats stuck with us but it was, yeah, talking with a lot of my republican colleagues, you know, um, and just yeah, pointing out and they, you know, I think sometimes republicans represent the more rural districts, you know, so it's like in their communities and uh, yeah, you know oh, chloe see, this is some of what I observed.
AJ:Our seat was one of the ones that elected an independent yeah, and similarly like incumbent conservative party equivalent. Yeah, for decades and decades. But an independent got up and what I observed firsthand then was watching a would-be politician ask people what was important to them Not selling themselves.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:Asking what was important to you, seeking to represent it, and as I say the words, I still catch myself that that should be a standout feature of politics, but there it is Now. It's not but the power that had across the political spectrum.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:And that then we ended up with. Just about everybody involved hadn't been involved in political campaigning before, much less than enacting legislation or being behind the possibility of legislation that's constructive in those sorts of ways. Yeah, so I've seen what you're talking about myself, yeah, in that way being able to speak across that spectrum and get support that in some ways might defy surface expectation definitely.
Chloe:yeah, I mean, I was like when I started canvassing, I was given, you know, a clipboard and you know you go rate people on a scale of one to five and it was so impersonal. And when we started canvassing for our campaigns, it became immediately clear that that style would not work. If you're talking with someone who not only is of a different party than you are but holds very different worldviews than you do, you can't look at your clipboard when you're trying to, like you know, look in their eyes. Like you know, look at, look in their eyes, um, and I think there's a, you know, we call it deep canvassing. Now is kind of the term that has become popularized for a style of canvassing that is more relational.
Chloe:But but Kanan and I had never heard of that when we were campaigning. You know we had only been taught like this clipboard way. So for us, we call it um, we call it dirt road canvassing, which was kind of like this instinct that we had, that we had to just spend time talking with folks. And it was never hey, I'm Chloe, I'm running for office, here's my platform. Will you vote for me? It was always hey, I'm Chloe, I'm running for office. I was just stopping by to see what's on your mind and that was the only, that was the only way that we did it.
AJ:and, um, just like you're saying, it's like, oh, you want to hear what, what I have to think and what my experience is, and you know, unfortunately, we always say that like the bad news is that the bar is super low, but the good news is that it's really not that hard to walk over it and just create little glimmers of hope for people it's so interesting because the the woman who's become known as the godmother of this movement in australia was that first independent farmer woman in a rural area. It became an urban movement after that in terms of the women that were elected that last election, but it's happening in the rural areas too and I dare say some of that will come in to parliament next year, the next election.
AJ:But she said in a podcast to me and it might not have been exclusively, but she's like it's so bad it's been made for us. That became the australian version of what you just described, yes and yes, to think that you saw the same thing almost of um. Well, let's just say gratitude and surprise at people being interested a would-be rep being interested.
AJ:Yeah, before we leave this period behind, then I'm curious on the particular lens to your experience in office of being, yes, the youngest female senator ever in Maine and a changer with a new force and a new way. Yeah, how?
Chloe:did you find it in there through those lenses? It was, um, it was a lot. Yeah, it was a lot. Uh, you know, I was so lucky, I had so many mentors around me, people who knew the system, and the people you know helped me kind of navigate it.
Chloe:But um, that's, that's big in itself it is, yeah, huge privilege and there are so many people who serve and are incredible like, bill is just one of them. But just this idea that all politicians are awful is not true, because there's so many wonderful people, um, at the same time, having that really um like intimate inside view into how the democratic party operates was really depressing and just very tough to kind of grapple with, where, just like the yeah, the fear, the fear around, yeah, people gonna like us, are people gonna support us? Like you know, how do we kind of keep our power? There was so much fear around the power that so so much of the time I felt like our the goodness of the work got lost and that was really scary. That was really scary to see up close and part of the reason why I decided not to run again, because it was very toxic and also not what I.
Chloe:I feel like the democratic party can be better. But it's about electing lots of different people, you know, not just one person in each, in each state legislature, but lots of people and all the bodies of government who are committed to representing everybody and understanding that representation for some is going to look representation different than representation for others, and you know how do we balance everyone's different needs and experiences and identities and, um, like that nuance that we're talking about. You know that's what people are looking for. So it was tough. It was tough to see, to see all of that yeah, it's instructive though, isn't it?
Chloe:yeah, when what gets lost, when that becomes your focus yes, and I think you hear the stories of, like, you know the games that you know the political games, and Maine is very pedantic compared to other states, you know, but it exists here too, and that was also. It was like, wow, this is yeah, this is no joke. This is no joke and um, the people who we elect, especially in citizen legislatures like we have in Maine, are just doing like such important, thankless work and we gotta honor them here.
AJ:So did the book Dirt Road Organizing no sorry, dirt Road Revival. Yes the book. Yes, I should read out the subtitle how to rebuild rural politics and why our future depends on it. With Canyon, did that happen once you left office?
Chloe:we started writing it while I was still, while I was still in office. Yeah, you know, when we, from the moment we started campaigning, we were, we were just super overwhelmed by the experience and we, you know, we'd take like videos or photos. We did a lot of voice memos. We had like a Google doc. It was just like we were learning so much that we were just naturally documenting it or commenting on it. And so throughout two campaigns and then four years of serving, we had just we felt like we learned so much and it was kind of we felt really alone in the work too, like we weren't really. I mean, now I realize there's this vibrant network of rural folks doing this work, but I was not connected into that world, you know, and we thought, ok, we learned a lot, like we did some cool things and you know well, maybe we'll just turn this into a book and use it as an organizing tool and see what happens. So we wrote Dirt Road Revival, kind of based on all of our years of voice memos, mostly.
AJ:Really Wow, that's cool.
Chloe:The book just became like a bit of a feels, like a. Yeah, a lot of people read the book. We were like that's wild. You know, people know of the book. People are like, oh my gosh, someone recommended your book to me and that's very, very cool for us and it was so deeply unexpected. We never expect success. We just kind of plod along doing what we think is the next right move. Yeah, the book just tells our stories and tries to lay out a more positive roadmap for how we can kind of dig into rural organizing work.
AJ:So at what stage did you think about literally setting up Dirt Road Organizing as a training body of sorts?
Chloe:Yeah, I mean, after the book came out, we were hearing from people across the country, you know, who are reading it, who are resonating with it, who are experiencing the exact same dynamics in their community. We just kind of realized that this was. You know, even though every rural community is unique, that the way that people describe their experience organizing or running for office in rural spaces is almost verbatim. So it just seems if there was space for an organization that just focused on training and supporting rural folks who are organizing staffing campaigns or running for office. So, um, as far as I know, we're the only national training program for rural candidates and, uh, we work with lots of state partners to you know, when we have overlap on the folks that we're working with and we've just finished our, we're in our first election year. So we finished our first year of programming and supporting our folks as they head towards November.
AJ:Yeah, so how many cohorts have been through? It's a four month program, right?
Chloe:It's a four month program. Oh my gosh, you did your research. Yeah, it's a fourmonth program, um, we've done three cohorts. We have um. We'll have over 70 alums from 29 states and we have 38 people running for office this year, just in our first year. So, and they're all such wonderful people too, just so kind and grounded and lovely and just like so aligned with everything you and I are talking about, about wanting to represent their communities and, you know, heal the divides and use their campaign as a way to just create a different story in their community.
AJ:Demographically. How did they turn up? How do age backgrounds? Do you notice particular threads?
Chloe:Not really. We got, yeah, it's quite a diverse group of folks. So, um, yeah, we got younger folks and older folks, people of different skin colors. It's gender too gender identity, yeah, really, um yeah, gender identity and sex. So it's very, yeah, we're very proud of it.
AJ:What do you know? Yeah, and did you say how many states? 29 states 29 states, so more than half states already in such a short time. Are they all running as Democrats?
Chloe:They're not all running as Democrats. No, we have some independents. I forget the exact number. We're a nonpartisan organization, so we don't accept folks based on the party that they're running on. We ask folks to agree to abide by our values of dirt road organizing, which really center around rural resilience, racial equity and social justice.
AJ:Yeah, and so some are standing as Democrats, some as independents. Republican.
Chloe:We don't have any Republicans this cycle. But you know, again it's just about, we're very values based, so it's not to say it can't be. Yes, we don't even like look up what party people are from. We're just we're just really focused on the values yeah, it's interesting.
AJ:It's just another part of the dynamic that's interesting to me, because we don't have to. It's all independent in Australia there's no, I mean, some people are interested in reforming the parties, and that's great indeed. It's been said that if the parties come on with this thing, awesome, everybody wins um but if they don't, then it looks like more independence.
AJ:It is that that's in an australian context, with the different voting system and so forth right but here I mean, I know, like we said, more people are working to change the voting system too, but it's a point of interest to me to see which parties might be opening up or receiving a critical mass of people that are going to change it in these ways, yes, and almost save them from themselves yes, I don't know if it's that far, but yeah, in australia.
Chloe:It feels like that yes, yeah, and in the um I forget the exact statistic, but in the us, you know, most young folks and veterans enroll as independents when they go to vote. So I think there is a large disaffection from our two main political parties, and for good reason. But again, I think it's like the system we're stuck with, you know, and so it's about how we need all theories of change. You know the folks who are trying to create stronger third parties and we need the folks who are trying to reform the existing um strong party institution.
AJ:So, um, it's just, my lane is the reforming institutions, yeah, yeah, and so I'm curious then, over the four months, what's the gist of what you work through? You meet up occasion, but it's mostly online, as I understand, and how does it play out and how have people changed, like, what have you observed so far?
Chloe:Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the biggest things that we hear from our candidates is that and everyone who kind of joins our program is just the isolation that they feel doing organizing and campaign work in rural communities. They feel very alone. There's not a lot of organizing infrastructure. You know, oftentimes folks are in districts that are very rural or very red and they don't receive. You know there's limited resources in the world so they just don't receive some of those limited resources because of their context, and so a primary goal of our cohort program is to create community. So our curriculum is very much based around connecting, bringing everyone together, creating a sense of connection and real community, and our candidates come together in person at the end of their four months to really increase their bonding.
AJ:Is that the one time you meet in person?
Chloe:Yes, that's the one time they meet in person. You meet in person. Yes, that's the one time they meet in person, um, but also in addition to our community building, they also have access to unlimited one-on-ones with our staff so they can kind of really get into the nitty-gritty of their work and their brainstorming and what they're trying to do and any challenges they're facing. And they also have weekly training from rural experts across the country on different hard skills. So like, what does rural GOTV look like? Or rural field planning, what does self-care look like while you're running? What's rural messaging look like? So they get kind of the traditional campaign skills, but from that rural perspective which is missing in a lot of spaces because it's just its own thing, it needs its own space.
AJ:I'm really curious in how much practice people need from when they come in on the listening piece, because this isn't necessarily easy if you, if your body's triggering yeah, when your guts trigger definitely like I even experienced sometimes.
AJ:So I say I even like I've practiced it for a bunch of years now, like a lot, and most of the time I can be genuinely, even emotioned, and genuinely able to express my care and interest in people. Sometimes I still feel the guts churn at some things. I hear, yeah, and you, just you don't want that to rule Right. So I mean, you're noted, but you still want to be present. You want to be beyond your own precious little you know.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:So, given that it's not the culture we're in like, this is a change of culture.
Chloe:Yes.
AJ:One that's being welcomed by people, which says something.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:But how much work do people find they need to do when you meet them at the gate? On that crucial piece.
Chloe:Yeah, I mean, I think people find our program because they're looking to do it in a little bit of a different way or having or just looking for different forms of support to do it their rural way. So you know there's yeah, I just I really want to note, like, make it so clear that they're amazing state based organizations that do rural work. But you know what? We just kind of focus on that national cohesion and kind of bringing folks together across the states to see that they're not alone and that there's someone on the other side of the country experiencing the same thing that they are. But it's so folks come in with, just, I think, that challenge of like. But it's so folks come in with, just I think, that challenge of like, how do I do this type of canvassing? And it's everyone's.
Chloe:Political issues these days are so personal and like a really deep way, and so it's. It is very triggering oftentimes to have conversations with voters. So you know, how do we do that work and why is it? Why is it important to do that work? You know, why are we even talking about it before we even talk about how to do it? And we got some feedback from one of our cohort members the other day who said you know she's approaching canvassing in such a different way now and she smiles more and she cares more, just trying to infuse that humanity in it a little bit. And it's part of our eligibility criteria for our training program as well that folks have to be committed to canvassing and making space for everybody in their campaign, not just the folks that agree with them. So I think we kind of attract people who are ready to do the work.
AJ:Yeah, yeah, no doubt Is there, I don't know, do you even role play it? I'm curious is there a point of workshopping that listening piece?
Chloe:a point of workshopping that listening piece.
Chloe:Yeah, we, yeah, we do a lot of trainings where we, um, where we do role plays, and it's so. It's always so interesting to me because people are really nervous to do the role plays, you know, but we have like scripts for them, you know. So, you know, but we have one person inhabit the role of the voter and then the other person is the canvasser, and I'm always so shocked at how well people inhabit the role of the voter, like it almost feels like I'm listening to an actual conversation with a Republican or independent voter and it's like this idea that we're not that far apart, like you got in the mind space, like you're under, like there's logic and like everything you're saying make is making sense. It's just from a really different perspective. So I always, I always remark on that, like how easy it is for us to understand the other side when we try. But then the canvasser as well, almost universally they report back.
Chloe:you know, I had a really hard time not reacting or I had a really hard time just listening and not thinking about the next thing that I was going to say. So. So those are the two themes that come out of it which I think are are really important. You know, to like it's like I would. I always talk about this form of canvassing as, like democracy therapy. You are there to listen to people, to hear their stories and to represent that to whatever organization you're going back to.
AJ:I love that. Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, it's very interesting. You said something along the lines of not as divided as we thought we were, because this is the other big thread that we've observed across the country and in some ways I'm like is this my own diluted little, small sample size type thing? But to hear again on the New York Times podcast on the run-up? Yeah, who, we should say, featured one of your alumni, sarah Kieske, in Wisconsin. Yeah, who's running, which was a terrific program too, but in another program yeah on the Braver Angels Convention.
AJ:this was interesting, which was also in Wisconsin, so much seems to happen in Wisconsin.
Chloe:Yeah, wisconsin, there's a lot going on in Wisconsin.
AJ:A lot going on in Wisconsin yeah. They spent three days at this convention, which is deliberately set up to help bridge divides and enable people to talk, even amongst families who vote Republican and Democrat and Independent, whatever. So there were all tribes and colors represented, politically speaking, and at the end of it the host says so. After three days of speaking with people of all different stripes here, we've been hearing a lot of the same stuff from everybody.
Chloe:Yeah, of the same stuff from everybody, yeah.
AJ:So his concluding words were something like so are we as divided as we're told?
Chloe:we are yeah.
AJ:Or are we not being heard? That just landed in the car as we were traveling.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:Because we looked at each other and going that's our experience. Maybe we're not just getting a diluted, small sample size.
Chloe:Yeah, definitely.
AJ:And that's some of yours too.
Chloe:Yeah, I mean, I think I think that's so true. I don't think we're as far apart as we think we are, but I think that the forces that tell us that we are divided just get stronger and stronger. So it requires more and more work to peel back the layers. You know, I felt it during my time in the legislature between the campaigns, and I see it continuing now that, like we were talking about, the polarization on the surface does seem to be more extreme. You know it's harder for someone, you know you knock on a Republican door, and it's harder for someone to say, yes, I'm going to talk to a Democrat, but if you can have that conversation, I think it is true that we have more in common than we think.
Chloe:I think the right has successfully wielded some, some key issues that have created really stark divides and and really put people's lives in danger and created a tremendous amount of violence around, around trans issues and abortion, for example, and I think that those have. I don't know, I learned so much listening to Bill's conversations now to kind of still keep my ear to the ground, because he knocks on a lot of Republican doors. It's just so interesting how those lightning rod issues are so effective. Those are issues where there are extreme dichotomies and people are voting along those lines and so immigration too.
Chloe:This is where we related, yeah immigration as well 100, you know, and so bill and I talk a lot, you know. If people have focused on those issues, how do you be like? You know I hear you. This is where I stand, but also here are the other things that I'm working on. That impact like actually impact our community in a day-to-day way, like your property taxes? Is your food tainted with PFAS? Are our schools well funded? Can teachers move here to teach our children? Do we have adequate medical care in our community? Are our, our EMTs being paid enough?
Chloe:um, the answer to most of those questions is no you know, and so it's like how do we kind of do the yes and when we see that happening?
AJ:It's interesting to hear that there's a bit of there is a bit of proactive at times, holding up to the light the common ground. Yes, because it's either taken for granted or not recognized enough, right, yeah, so that's interesting, definitely.
Chloe:Yeah, taken for granted or not recognized enough, right, yeah, so that's interesting, definitely, yeah, I think as well. We are really trained that the, this idea of common ground means that, oh, we appear to be different but actually we agree on everything together. But it's maybe that's the theme of our conversation. It's much more nuanced than that. Like you might disagree on 90 of issues with someone, but you find that 10 where you overlap and you're like this is cool, this is meaningful, that we overlap here, and then you can build. It's just like how you make a friend. You don't make a friend by being like I don't like the same tv shows as you. It's like okay, we went to the same high school.
AJ:Like we can talk about that yeah, we've had some experiences like this. I told you we met a woman wearing a t-shirt with a gun on it saying may the force be with you yeah hazard a guess at which way she was voting yeah but they were doing light plane restoration. Hello, if you're listening. Yeah, we remember you guys. Well, light plane restoration, a small town in the midwest, yeah, and they invited us in and our boy was playing with their girl.
AJ:It was wonderful yeah and again, it's our experiences welcoming and and a spirit of humanity and generosity.
Chloe:Yeah.
AJ:It's just a nice way to connect with and I'm saying this as someone who couldn't do this right myself as a younger guy.
AJ:It's a nicer way to connect with people than what I used to be able to do. I used to travel a lot, but in a way that avoided people wherever I could, and this was this podcast experience was an experiment, was that shift? I'm going to go out and learn about my country, and now this one, through the people, and could not have imagined the gifts in that, notwithstanding differences. But let there not be animosity.
Chloe:Yes.
AJ:And then wow the gifts that can come. I mean, if people's generosity this is what we found anyway if people's generosity is unencumbered, at least to the point and I know there have been experiments in this too at least to the point where then your relationship and your trust is built, and then you can handle either this or either that, or you're inclined right to go there seeing that play out. It's been amazing to observe that in this country.
AJ:I wonder too, like when you say those forces that would divide get stronger. We saw in that last australian election the murdoch media that you have over here too, of course, went the total muckrake stone throw thing that they do on those independents and didn't work. It gave us the impression that when you connect with people at real level in the ways we're talking about, that, the abstract, power is weakened. Is that some of what you are imagining might be true here too.
Chloe:I hope so, and I think there's definitely cases where that's true. I think I think of it more as like it's more of a balance. You know, I don't know necessarily if it's weakened, but I think there's another, there's something else to kind of bounce off of it or compare it to. Um, you know, I think, especially in rural areas, like, the power of Fox News is so intense, so intense, and I don't feel like anything can counteract that, except for a face-to-face conversation. But it might be that face-to-face conversation is, you know, someone's going to vote for their, for a down ballot, like progressive state legislator, but they might also vote for Trump. So I think the it's about creating more stories and different narratives.
Chloe:Um, I remember one time in one of my races I can't remember which one, I think it was in 2020, but you know, I'd always see Fox news playing in the background in people's houses. And there was one day I was canvassing and everyone was talking to me about, like, what's happening in Seattle, what's Seattle? I was like, what is? I don't know what happened. What's happening in Seattle? So, you know, I go on my, I go on New York Times and Washington Post and like my normal media outlets, and there's nothing about Seattle. And then I went on to Fox News, which I always read, just to get the full thing. You know, I go on to Fox News and it's like all about the protests in Seattle and it's just one of those days where I was like wow, you know, just like I didn't even know, there was like a whole, a whole conversation happening. You know, in people's homes that I didn't even have access to that day because I hadn't read Fox News that morning.
AJ:So, um, I'd always really stuck with me as an anecdotal example of how powerful some of these media forces are yeah, so true, and it does make me think about the other media forces, like I've seen some independent media coming up in the us yeah, and in australia yeah, humble podcast here too, of course, part of that, but also co-op media, and often with journos who've just been discarded by collapsing mainstream or even public radio and other media outlets, that they're getting together and finding their own way at grassroots level and it's it seems to be coming on pretty strongly. Yeah, it makes me wonder if there's a commensurate media that arises out of this grassroots way of being and organizing yeah, I hope so dirt road media yeah I also love like.
Chloe:We're in knox county right now. But in lincoln county, where I grew up, there's a lincoln county news every week and, uh, you know, it's just like an amazing local paper. You know, everyone reads it. It's an amazing form of communication. It's like a very vibrant, locally owned yeah, it's awesome. Everyone gets it delivered to their house. So, you know, for us while we're campaigning, it's an amazing way to kind of communicate our values. Do letters to the editor, um, and also such a good counterbalance to some of the very politically divisive media that we have, because it's it's a homegrown newspaper, like it's. There's nothing too political going on. I've seen this around the country too.
AJ:Yeah, livingston enterprise was a was probably my first real glimpse, at one directly. That's still going well. Yeah it's amazing and doing it well.
Chloe:It's so yeah, and trusted.
AJ:It's trusted and looked to yeah.
Chloe:Some people will be like. You know the Lincoln County News is boring, but I don't think that's true at all. It's just like a living document of what's happening in our community and it really unites people. Not all rural communities have that, but I think it's in so many rural spaces. It's a unique quality that our local newspaper still has some meaning.
AJ:So how do you feel about this coming election right now?
Chloe:as we said, I'm excited for all the Dirt Road candidates, so that's very exciting for us just knowing that they're all out there running and doing the hard work. And that's kind of where I have my focus. Know, it's just supporting them and helping them. I, my theory of change, really revolves around supporting down ballot folks and having that grassroots organizing trickle up to the higher races rather than the other way around. So, um, yeah, that's kind of where my where my head is at that's brilliant, chloe.
AJ:Geez, it's been so good talking to you. I feel like we could go on with so many of the nuances in this, but it's just been brilliant speaking with you. Thanks a lot for spending the time.
Chloe:Oh my gosh, Thank you so much.
AJ:Take us out with a sense of. Do you even venture to imagine? I mean, I'll tell you the woman that godmother of the independence movement in Australia. She said imagine if in 10 years we could transform australian politics. And that was prior to that election which went a long way towards it do you? Venture to look 10 years and imagine.
Chloe:I mean I, I think I, you know my vision is that rural politics is really vibrant and filled with vibrant and diverse discussion and vibrant and diverse candidates that were starting to turn the tide in rural communities that have gone so far to the right in such a short amount of time and starting to to bring that back into a more representative place, and then the effects of that are going to be more representative state legislators, legislatures and a more representative congress. So to me all, all roads to a just an equitable future run through rural america. So, um, it'd be nice, the dream dream. That won't happen because this is a multi-decade, multi-cycle, uh challenge. But you know it's just having dirt road candidates, like changing the stories all over the country full stop yes thanks, chloe thank you so much AJ: that was Chloe Maxmin, co-founder of Dirtr oad Organizing.
AJ:As usual you'll see links in the show notes and a few photos on the website, with more for subscribing members on Patreon. That's with great thanks for making this episode possible. If you'd like to join us, I'd love it. Just head to the website or the show notes and follow the prompts. Thanks, too, for sharing the podcast wherever you can. Next up,
AJ:Chloe's partner Bill joins us for a walk and talk around the farm while we learn about his amazing story as an independent representative. And FYI, the film Rural Runners is on one last national tour in these couple of weeks in partnership with Patagonia. It'll also feature panel conversations with Chloe, Canyon and some of the local candidates that have come through the Dirtr oad program. You'll find screening dates in the show notes too, and if you're within shot of the West Virginia screening on the 13th of October, we'll see you there. Oh, and another surprise for Chloe. Just after leaving Chloe and Bill's place, we stopped about five miles up the road at the famed Beth's Farm Market. I pulled out the copy of Dirt Road Revival that Chloe had gifted me, and the guy in the car next to me winds down his window and says that's a great book. I've got it at home too. The music you're hearing is Regeneration by Amelia Barden and, at the top, Green Shoots by the Nomadics. My name's Anthony James. Thanks for listening.
