Monisha Brown: I have the honor of talking to Britney Whaley with the Working Families Party. I also want to plug in your other entity, which is one that I think people need to know more about, particularly in this political landscape. Britney, welcome to rolling out. How are you doing today?
Britney Whaley: Thank you for having me. I’m great.
Tell us a little bit, Britney, about the work that you are doing with Working Families Party.
Our democracy belongs to the people. First, when we talk about Working Families Party, we’re talking about building independent political power for working class people, for the multiracial working class. We are looking at how our system should work. We are thinking about and centering the communities that need it most. What we do is create an electoral vehicle. People are like, “Are you a political party?” Yes, we’re a non-delusional political party that wants to build power for working class people across this country.
That means we organize people around a shared platform and ideology because we want to think about the agenda and the issues. We come together to elect champions who will, unapologetically, fight for everyday working people so we can have the ability to not just survive but thrive.
Let’s unpack that. What exactly is a working family? How is that defined?
Yes, that is broad. Here is the easy way to define it: Are you receiving a paycheck? If you are receiving that paycheck, but for some reason you miss two or three paychecks and don’t have a trust fund that you can draw from, you are my people. You are in the working class.
Thank you for breaking that down. Britney, tell us a little bit about the work that the party does in terms of legislation, because I think a lot of people don’t quite understand what the work entails. I want to make sure that you have the opportunity to explain.
That’s a great opportunity for me to talk about the statewide work. Just so that we’re clear, we are in a few dozen states across the country. When we talk about Working Families Party, we’re talking about a network of organizations that are, of course, part of the National Working Families Party. Here in the southeast, which is where I’m the Regional Director, we really focus on what that means for the south. We focus on what it means to build working families and working power in the south and the southeast. We look at the legislation and how it impacts our lives.
If you are in the southeast, there are several states where you cannot get an abortion if you are a woman or someone who is wanting to make those decisions for yourself. That’s one clear example. Where we’re talking about something that impacts your day-to-day life, like how you’re able to live and feed your family, we look at the minimum wage. In our state legislatures across the south, but in Georgia specifically, we see an attack on our families, on our communities, and that attack is in the form of withholding resources, perhaps for things that should be really considered a public good. Are we fully funding our education? Are we feeding our children when there is a gap in the summertime? We’re fighting for the ability to send our children to a school that will provide quality education.
Start looking at the nuanced ways people are being left behind. Generally, it is our people —working class people, Black and Brown people. That is what we’re talking about when we say we want to organize around an agenda that will serve working families and, quite frankly, open up our democracy to people.
Britney, you laid that out so nicely. I love talking with you. Let’s talk about “Bet on Us” and the work that you do in encouraging Black women to run for office and giving them the support to do so.
“Bet on Us” was created in 2019. What we know to be true is that Black women, in terms of our political participation, there was a framework being used that was mostly depending on us as the most loyal voting democratic bloc. The Democratic Party was counting on us to do heavy lifting. They were counting on us to do everything from registering voters to mobilizing our communities. Count on us. Count on us. Count on us. “Bet on Us” is really a shift in that framework.
What does it mean for you, Britney, to see Kamala run for president?
She’s just been a history maker. She has a pattern of breaking that ceiling.
I need to link her with Blue Ivy, because I don’t think either one of them has ever seen a ceiling.
Yes, that is the vibe that Kamala is giving me.
Britney, how do people get involved with the Working Families Party? How do they get involved with “Bet on Us?”
You can always text “Georgia” or “BetOnUs” to 30403.
To view the full interview, please visit: https://vimeo.com/1026220892?share=copy.
For more information on the Working Families Party’s “Bet on Us,” please visit: www.betonus.org.
