(lively upbeat music) - Welcome to "Shades Of Black, Inside The Black Vote."

I'm Christopher Norris WHYY's community contributors and engagement editor.

The success of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election is largely owed to black voters.

And in his acceptance speech Mr. Biden promised to repay the debt saying, quote "You've always had my back and I'm going to have yours."

So what should black voters expect from the Biden administration and what really motivated them to show up to the polls?

In this episode, we'll explore those questions with a diverse panel of black voters.

Joining us are Kenny Cooper, WHYY's suburban reporter.

James Williams, publisher of the Uptown Standard Newspaper, Jasmine Sessoms founder of She Can Win.

And Emma Tramble, founder of My Family Votes.

Let's start with expectations.

Black voters in 2020 showed up and showed out.

And the result was Joe Biden winning the presidency.

What should black voters expect and demand from this administration?

Jasmine, let's start with you.

- Thank you, Chris.

And I'm so happy to be here.

I think that black voters should demand the full monty.

We did deliver that presidency and especially I'm not sure where everyone's from but I sit in Philadelphia, shout out to Philadelphia and the urban areas that truly delivered that election.

And we should be expecting equitable practices, equitable legislation, focus groups.

I most certainly want to see president Biden in the Delaware Valley asking black and brown people what are your needs and what are your concerns and how can we address them?

And so far so good.

I will say his administration and his transition team have been beyond communicative with black and brown communities and really taking in what we want and what we wanna hear and what are our concerns and causes, especially in the Delaware Valley because he is very partial to the Delaware Valley being from Delaware.

- Thank you for that, Jasmine just a quick follow-up was there any part of you leading up to the election where you thought that maybe black voters like 2016 was gonna sit this out?

- No, I was on the ground all across PA and there I did not, normally during the election you'll encounter I'm not voting because it doesn't matter.

Didn't hear it once.

And I touched over 3000 voters.

Definitely didn't hear it once people were fired up ready to go, standing in line and organizations on the ground really grassroots organizations were doing the work making sure that we were turning out the vote.

So now black and brown voters fired up, ready to go.

And look what happens when we all come together to vote.

- Absolutely James, there was a lot at stake in this election and black voters turned it out.

What should they be expecting from this administration?

- Well, I think one of the things we need to see is some true police reform nationwide.

Some of the things we've seen in Philadelphia over the last couple of months I guess over the last seven, eight, nine months as we've seen some real legislation passed the state level and at the local level, at the city level for police reform with the Police Reform Work Group.

But we need to see that taken on a national level.

We need to see the consent decrees come back and different other things that we need to see actually tackled far as police reform.

I think that's one of the biggest factors for a lot of people especially African-American males is police reform.

Another thing we need to see is the closing the gap of wealth, and we need to actually see the improvement over infrastructure and bringing back more jobs.

I mean, one of the things that Trump did and he held real high was that he delivered in the manufacturing sector and we don't wanna see that drop.

We wanna continue to see that progress in the camp.

So I think it's a lot at stake right here.

- I appreciate that, James.

And what you said about policing, you know, a lot of people don't know the Obama administration had worked with a lot of police departments for the consent decrees, Philadelphia and Baltimore alike Trump came in and his Attorney General said there was no need for that.

It makes me think though, James, that, you know police reform was certainly a motivation for me but I found that the conversation around policing during this election had divided black voters particularly in the context of defund the police some black voters were like going hard.

We want the police defunded.

Some black voters were like no, I want more police.

And then president like Biden at the time said, "I'm not the funding, the police."

Do you think that we can reconcile with that James in terms of an expectation?

- Yes, I think one, people did not truly understand what people meant when they said defund the police, and I only can speak from my opinion but I think a lot of people thought us of how it's happened in Camden and in other cities like that where you take away the police budget, right?

And then you actually reinstate the police budget basically taking away the budget.

Therefore you have to actually reapply your whole police department, right?

So you can renegotiate your contracts your police unions and vice versa.

So I just don't think that was communicated properly of how to go about that.

But at the end of the day, I mean true police reform is only gonna come when you renegotiate police contracts, right?

You actually have to take the sting out of the FOP and nationally in you know, what the FOP hangs over politicians heads and the amount that they donate.

I mean one was that we can take in police reform is to actually stop allowing the FOPs to donate to political campaigns, right?

That takes a big thing out of it.

You know, I ran the Beth Grossman campaign in Philadelphia in 2017.

And one of our biggest backers was the FOP.

I mean, it was the hardest thing for me to sit down and negotiate with them, you know and I always got a sense of nervousness when I went to the FOP.

So later in the campaign I would send other surrogates to handle that but I understood the power that they wielded and how much they donated, right?

And a lot of politicians on both sides of the aisle take some money from the FOP.

First step in police reformer is we actually have to take that option away public unions, such as the FOP that has such a big grasp over what's going on in urban communities should not be allowed to donate and influence politicians.

- Thank you for that, James, before I go to you, Kenny Jasmine, I saw that your body language was suggesting that maybe police reform and tackling the unions or I should say tackling the unions is the first step to police reform it's not something you agree with.

I give you a chance to respond.

- It's not that I do think that the defund of the police was a very hot topic in our black community.

Some people wanted to wipe it out.

Some people are thinking that defund does equal reform.

I think we can not necessarily take away the ability though to donate for the police to donate to a campaign.

Because if you do it for one union now you have to do it for all.

And what does that look like for the building trades, for the hospitals, for (indistinct) that is what makes our political system runs.

James, where we should go is let's look at them companies that are donating to the FOP because there's quite a few and let's hold them more accountable and say what are your practices and values because it's not reflecting in your donations.

So I don't think that we can necessarily take away their ability to donate to political campaigns because we'd have to do it across the board.

And that's just not the way the political cycle works.

As you know James, because you did run campaigns.

Me, I'm a fundraiser by trade.

I'd be out of business to be honest, if unions stopped donating however we can hold those corporations responsible.

Why are you donating to the police when black and brown bodies are being brutally murdered daily by the police, we will no longer use your health insurance.

We will no longer use your cable service and we will no longer go to your grocery stores as long as you were donating to these causes.

I feel like that's truly the way that we hold them accountable.

- I appreciate that Jasmine and just to follow up as well.

Do you agree that the first step to police reform is tackling the police contracts as James implied or asserted?

- I do here in Philly, we are making steps.

Shout out to Councilwoman Kathrine Gilmore Richardson to try to reform that part.

I do think the police contracts are a huge issue and it can be step one or step 1.5 to reform.

- I appreciate that.

Kenny Cooper I wanna bring you into the conversation.

What should black voters expect or demand from the Biden administration?

- I think they should kind of demand accountability.

Partially what we've seen over the past couple of election cycles is we get these politicians elected by way I mean, black voters and oftentimes the door kind of shuts in the face.

So I just think that's what they need to demand.

They need to demand that you're going to be accountable.

You're gonna listen.

You're gonna be responsive to the moment.

And that's ultimately what this is about.

It's about legislating for the moment and not things that you're trying to think about and play mental mind games and play these political games where I'm trying to appease both sides the imaginary both sides.

You have to be responsive to the moment and the moment that we're living in I guess we're seeing like a nationwide awakening to a lot of the things that communities of color particularly black communities have been kind of raising as issues for quite some time, not just quite some time but when my grandparents were my age and they were voting or when their grandparents were their age, these are issues that we've kind of seen come up time and time again.

And until politicians are accountable to themselves and hold themselves accountable to, okay I'm gonna actually listen to my constituents as opposed to me legislating for them or on their behalf.

No, you have to listen to them and be responsive to what they actually want.

And I think that's what black voters should demand of the Biden administration is that you be accountable for us, for black voters kind of showing up in full force and powering your election.

- Quick followup, Kenny and James I'd like you to weigh in on this as well.

And then we'll go to Emma.

I hear it a lot of people talk about holding politicians accountable but outside of recalling an election, I mean you can't recall an election.

How does accountability materialize or how should of accountability materialize outside of recalling a candidate?

- Oh, sorry go ahead Kenny, I'm sorry.

- Okay and I think that's a good question.

And I think that ultimately it may be really hard to hold federal and national candidates accountable.

It may be a little bit more difficult but you can definitely hold local leaders accountable.

You can definitely go to their office.

You can definitely attend meetings.

You can definitely call their phones all those things that may be outside of the daily activity of your average voter you can definitely do.

And I think once that happens in large numbers you can definitely hold people accountable.

I was actually doing some reporting last night at a zoning board meeting.

And there were a local leaders there that only showed up because their constituents had called and called and emailed and complained.

And this was the zoning board meeting that lasted until 11:00 PM, but they showed up and they stayed for the whole time, because guess what?

Their constituents showed them, we're gonna hold you accountable.

We elected you to this office.

Now we want you to show up and be an opposition to this thing that we're all kind of uniting against.

So I think those are the ways that you can hold candidates accountable.

And that may be a little bit difficult to happen at the national level with national candidates but you can definitely use some of those same practices.

- Thank you for that.

That's a very informative answer.

James, did you want to weigh in and then we'll go to Emma.

- I mean, I completely agree with Kenny.

When I worked in city council as a staffer and I attended zoning meetings but the Councilman David Oh at the time he really felt it was important to that because he had an open dialogue with his constituents.

You know, we received a lot of complaints and we acted on the complaints, you know.

When the voters speak and when they bring it straight to the elected officials office, right?

That's when you get changed, right.

When you actually bring it to their office, you know, you can do what you wanna do on social media and you can do what you wanna do in the streets.

And that's great, but nothing actually moved us more you know, when it came to the soda tax, for example then when constituents actually came to our office disrupted our day and actually gave their position that really made us change our position.

And I used to tell a lot of people you can march in the streets all day, but if you're not bringing it into city hall, if you're not bringing that to the state capitol and go to your legislators and go into their district offices by numbers, right.

People by numbers and communicating that well then you know, the chances of you actually getting that message across is not as great as you actually engaging with these elected officials directly.

- I appreciate that.

Emma Tramble welcome to the conversation.

I wanna give you a chance to respond to everything that you've heard but then also answer the question.

What should black voters be expecting and demanding from the Biden administration?

- I had to take a lot of mental note 'cause there's been a lot of issues that-- (Norris laughs) One of the things that, I get to talk to voters all over the country, particularly because I did issues advocacy and voter engagement work.

And so I worked in Pennsylvania and Michigan and those were my primary states and then work with organizers in Arizona.

That was one of the more when the other battleground States.

I wanna kind of follow up on what Jasmine said about voters and whether they had any hesitancy about voting.

That was a huge issue up until right before like around end of September, October there was a shift and there was a lot of rhetoric coming from Washington about what would happen to protesters if the current administration at the time won and people protested.

And there was a line that then president Trump said, "We will put them down."

And that started resonating with a lot of particularly black men, younger black men.

And when the police in, I believe it was Portland they were starting to pick up people.

Well they don't even know which law enforcement agency that was picking people up and just kind of cutting them off and to be undisclosed areas and they didn't have badges.

That kind of turned some people who were actually probably not gonna vote and it got their attention.

I saw them more among younger people.

There were a lot of older people who are not that excited about voting, providing and many opportunities to vote for him in the past and they chose not to.

There are bills, you know he had a long track record and people talk real on the surface level around bills without really knowing the depth.

But one of the big issues I have with how black voters are approached is we have to do post election ask while other groups are doing pre election ask.

You know, the Biden ministration shouldn't eat gum around doing that listening to after they won, right?

It should have been like hey, black people we're gonna address your issues and this is how gonna do it.

And he did start to do that yeah, I think someone put a bug in his ear.

Like people were really thinking about not voting better come up with a black agenda.

(laughs) You know and so when he started to talk a little more about systemic racism, very clear, I would hear from voters and I troll on people's social media all the time.

I'm connected to a lot of activists and a lot of people who are just passive voters and they were starting to say oh, okay.

So he gets it to something at least he's talking about it.

I can go with this plus we're trying to dodge you know, what might happen to our civil right.

So this is the safe bet right now.

And that's kind of the way I looked at that.

Now there are a lot of issues.

One of the big one when I see a long queue for voting that makes me nervous.

That is a red flag voter suppression.

I've worked in Georgia since 2018.

That place will break your heart if you were in a voting line.

And one of the things that we have to do is put some teeth back into at least the Voting Rights Act or it has be reformed off again.

Because we know in Harrisburg as they say that we'll be busy and they're working on ways to suppress our vote right now.

- That's a great transition, Emma to my next question, Jasmine, I'd like to start with you on that.

A clear and present danger as Emma implied is voter suppression and should a new Voting Rights Act be among our expectations and demands from this administration?

And if so what should be written in this document?

- Chris that's a big question (Norris laughs) for a Friday afternoon.

Absolutely, Emma is absolutely right.

Voter suppression is something very real.

It can be subtle or in your face.

Sometimes you don't even know what it's called, right?

Slowing down the USPS system that was voter suppression.

Most people just think, oh well something's happening with the post office.

No, what happened was we were voting by mail.

And so then they tried to put a barrier in place so that we couldn't.

Much like Emma I troll Philadelphia on election day COVID safe though.

But I did go out and I looked at the lines and I went to some poll watchers and I wanted to know why is this wait two hours?

Why are you only having one voting machine working?

But the average voter who is not informed like this panel can't even identify it as voter suppression so much like Emma said we have to start with that education.

Not just six months before the election it needs to be part of and I say this because my daughter goes to a school where they are constantly teaching about voting, on her little book bag right before the election, she had an, "I Voted" sticker.

I said, well where'd you get it?

She said well, "Mom, there's an election coming up."

I was so impressed that it is now part of their curriculum that voting isn't even a thought.

I mean she always went with me and her father but it's not even a thought for that class.

And that needs to be commonplace in every school where we are educating our children, our adults, especially our millennials that are Gen Z years about voting and what is voter suppression?

What does it mean that your vote will count?

So yes, absolutely.

That Voting Rights Act needs to be revamped and revised.

And the first thing I would do is make voting rights and voting education mandated in schools.

I got to tell you, I've seen it in action with my six year old daughter who came home with a little certificate saying, "I watched the inauguration virtually."

I couldn't even believe it.

And she was like well, "Mom, I voted for them.

"So yeah, of course they won."

And it's not even a thought because it is ingrained in her from first grade.

That is something that every child needs to experience.

So by the time they are of voting age it's not even a thought that needs to be incorporated in curriculum very early on.

- Thank you for that.

- And there needs to be real serious crimes for voter suppression.

There needs to be real serious consequences for this.

Whether you can identify it or not.

Once we know what it is there needs to be real serious consequences for that because your vote is your right.

And we all need to be voting like our life depends on it because as we can see from 2016 to 2020 our lives actually depended on it.

- So it was a big question, Jasmine and you knocked it right off the park.

(laughs) No, please.

Just the soap box are welcome here.

James I wanted to bring you into that conversation too.

You know, what do you think about a new Voting Rights Act and should civic education in schools as Jasmine talked about, should that be a priority or a luxury?

- Well, so let me start it this way.

And I'm gonna answer this in two parts.

During the 2016 election I took my goddaughter to work the polls with me.

She was a big Hillary Clinton's fan, right?

She was maybe about four.

I still have a picture of her sitting in front of a Hillary Clinton sign at a polling place in the 22nd ward of Philadelphia Grace Epiphany Baptist Church, right?

Because to me I grew up, my first election I ever worked with my dad.

My dad was a UAW union rep.

He was the shop steward for the UAW.

My first election I worked, I was eight years old, right?

So that's something that just been brought up in me, you know like that was just something that's brought up to me.

So I'm also a high school track coach, right?

And all of my kids, what we do is we discuss politics.

We discuss elections, right?

'Cause the school's not doing net where we're at, right.

So it's my job to bring that education to them, you know?

And maybe we need more programs, right?

So we have our non-violence programs in the communities let's start actively working on 'cause we're not getting that in the Philadelphia school district in some cases, let's start working on voter programs, right?

And programs to help develop more young people to understand the process of voting and why they vote and the importance of voting.

Now I can tell you this as being a former Republican operative, right?

The goal of the GOP is to suppress.

That's what we did, right.

Now you can do that by slowing down the mail or you can do that by IP targeting.

You can do that by social media, right?

There's so many ways that are suppression tools that we utilized in the GOP, you know I was fortunate enough to have that training, right from them that they said, hey here's the guy who was raised as a Democrat.

And he's over here with us.

So let's educate him 'cause he can really break into voter rich districts.

I live in the 50th ward, right?

He can be really an asset in the 50th ward for us.

Over time I realized that I can't sell what y'all want me to sell, right.

I can't sell what you want me to sell.

So I became a RINO very quick, but the importance of that is, and I say this, right-- - And for our audience, James RINO, Republican In Name Only.

- Republican In Name Only which I'm a centrist.

I was never really a Republican, I was never a Democrat.

I was never an Ideologue, right?

Like my whole thing was always down in the middle.

You know, my voting history shows I voted for Green Party of candidates.

When I was a Republican world leader most of the time I voted for Democrat elected officials.

Right, it didn't matter to me.

My goal was to be an operative, right.

You know, and I've worked for Democrats while I was out also a Republican world leader behind this thing is now that I'm no longer in the party and in the structure, I can say that I did that, right?

But I will tell you this, a big part of what we did was to suppress.

BLEXIT, for example is nothing but a suppression apparatus don't think it's anything besides what it really is.

It's a voter suppression apparatus.

The goal of that is to get as many black Republicans out on the ground to red pill as many black voters as possible.

That is the agenda of BLEXIT.

They might discuss it in community relations.

They might disguise it in what we're giving back to the community.

might disguise it as a book bag giveaway or a barbecue or taking kids to games or whatever.

'Cause they do a lot of stuff on the ground but at the end of the day is nothing but a recruitment tool and a suppression tool.

- Let me let me stop please Emma.

- Okay so there's one thing about when you're looking at, you know what happens externally to the government around voters but when your own state legislature working against and this is what we really have to look at, right?

As we got closer to the election the state legislature was basically trying to move in and strip away things like, you know, like oh, well, okay.

A governor we're negotiating.

So if you want to start counting ballots before election day, and hey let's make these changes to the law.

And like they went to make changes to the laws as people were active in voting.

And that's one of the things that the Voting Rights Act it was basically like it was really focused on several states.

And it basically said is the closer you get to elections, it's frozen, that's it, you can't make changes.

And when that guy wrote back and said, (indistinct) call it the part of the section five or whatever, got rolled back.

What we saw was not only in the southern state where they had them on lock down we started to seeing the same poison pill.

That for me, it was like a poison gas started to like go over the nation, same tactic.

Like I'm a strategist and I work on with Democrats side.

We can read you, but we try to convince our voters that you know, we actually know what we're doing.

(Norris laughs) We need more strategists who look like the people you're trying to talk to.

So you know, black voters are very savvy but the thing is they have to know, okay this is a trusted source.

I had to take my phone off the hook before the election because there was enough people in the public were like sharing my number.

And I do minor voter education program but I have work to do.

It's because we don't have trusted sources where we can go you know what, don't listen to... You can still mail your ballot in September 30, right.

It's okay, just don't mail it 15 days before the election-- Go ahead.

- Before we went out at the time I wanna bring Kenny into this conversation too.

Let me just also mention that Jasmine is giving me life with all her movements but she's agreeing with everybody, (laughs) but Kenny (laughs).

Kenny I wanna give you a chance to respond to everything that you've heard from Jasmine, Emma and James.

And also I'd like to hear from you, what do you think the consequences should be for voter suppression?

- Well to answer the, kind of like the first part of that question in terms of what needs to be done to kind of fix voter suppression.

I mean, I think the answer was already mentioned by Emma, which was a kind of restructuring and kind of rebuilding up that civil rights Voters Rights Act.

And I think what needs to happen is that they need to kind of push through the John Lewis kind of named act back to the Senate.

I mean, they passed the bill I believe in 2019 the house did, of course it died in the Senate but now with control I mean, they have the ability to kind of re-imagine kind of civil rights and Voting Rights Act back into American life.

I mean, some of the things that were in the bill were like same day voter registration, online voter registration.

There was even some support I believe for DC Statehood.

There were a lot of things mentioned talking about voter registration purges and whatnot.

So I think all those things kind of need to happen at the same time.

And once that happens I think that you can kind of get actual oversight to the voting process.

Like Emma was also talking about whereas sometimes it's individual States and they kind of put in these poison pills that she was saying that kind of disrupt voting and like going back to what Jasmine was saying that a lot of the stuff that happens to some voters that aren't keyed in it doesn't look like voter suppression.

It may just look like paperwork.

It may just look like oh, it's just a long day.

It may just look like, oh, I came to the polls at the wrong time.

When in all actuality, those are forms of voter suppression.

- Kenny Cooper, James Williams, Emma Tramble and Jasmine Sessoms thank you so much for participating in this conversation.

It's a talk to big for one night.

So stay tuned for part two.

Thank you for watching "Shades Of Black, "Inside The Black Vote."

Part two of this conversation will air next week same time, same channel.

If you have thoughts and commentary about the topics we talked about today we'd love to hear from you, email us at talkback@whyy.org.

Until next time for WHYY, I'm Christopher Norris, goodbye.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program is a part of your democracy an initiative funded by the Sutherland Family Foundation.