Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Getting back to our origin of we the People, tackling current issues, both political and legal, with common sense.
As we the People, we must bring common sense back to make our lives better.
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Welcome to we the People. I'm Alina Gonzalez Dockery. Today we are looking at one of the most important civic questions of our time. How technology is changing the way citizens receive information, evaluate elections, and participate in democracy.
My guest is Roger Schindel, founder and executive director of Volunteers for Democracy's Future and founder of Kurosh Compliance Solutions.
Roger has spent decades working in compliance, privacy, cybersecurity and operational risk. And today he brings that experience into a broader mission around constitutional accountability, civic trust, and responsible citizen engagement. Roger, welcome to we the People.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Thank you, Alina. Glad to be here.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Well, I have to say I'm fascinated to learn more about your organization and of you and how you were inspired to strive to start this, because I truly believe that we need to have more accountability, but also bring more education to the people on how to decipher what is factual versus false news, if you will.
But before we talk about technology and elections, Roger, what led you from healthcare compliance and cybersecurity into civic leadership and democracy focused work?
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Well, I started out my adult life in the 60s 70s, so I was involved at the time when we had civil rights, we had women's rights, voting rights, the Vietnam War, and those were all battles that were fought and I thought won.
And now we find ourselves in a situation where we have citizens being taken off the streets in unmarked cars and arrested. We've had citizens that have been shot.
Our guardrails to our democracy seem to be evaporating every day. And to be honest, I.
I just felt like I couldn't sit by and watch it happen without doing something. So that led to the founding of Volunteers for Democracy's Future.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: So when you look at the elections today, what role does technology play in how citizens receive their information or form opinions and decide whom to trust?
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Well, so one of the things that has actually changed is with social media, you don't have the safeguards that we had with broadcast media that required essentially truth in broadcasting.
You couldn't lie.
And broadcast media. But now with cable and the Internet and all the different channels we have, you can basically say whatever you want and there's no accountability for it.
So people are getting less accurate information.
And because of all the different channels, they tend to silo themselves into a channel that reinforces their beliefs. So we don't have what I would consider to be a robust debate about the issues that impact our lives. And because of of that, people have turned off.
They don't believe that what they're hearing, particularly the other side, has any validity.
And so the percentage of people that vote for years has been going down. The largest potential voting population, 40% of people who could vote, don't vote.
And so we get a government that doesn't really serve the needs of the people. And that has become more and more evident over the years, apexing with where we stand now.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Well, and I have to agree with you, I think that with the proliferation of social media, especially X formerly known as Twitter, Tick Tock and others, that you do see a lot of false information being portrayed as correct or valid. There's many times where I'll even either whether it's chat, GPT or through Google, go okay, is this accurate? And try to figure out what, what is true or not.
And I see that as, as one of the biggest, let's say red flags for voters.
And so I know that that was one of your missions is trying to decipher what is false news or what is inaccurate versus trying to educate the voters. And I agree with you, we do have very low voter turnout, especially among say Gen X on downwards.
What are the biggest digital risks voters should understand without becoming fearful or cynical about the process?
[00:05:54] Speaker B: Well, the biggest risk of not voting is you're giving up your control to someone else. You are not taking control of your life because you are not engaging in the process.
And I know it's a challenge.
And as you just said, with social media it's very difficult to understand what is accurate and what isn't accurate. And the politicians sort of embrace the ability to put out falsehoods because it supports their positions. And what's happened is we become enemies of each other.
Back in the day you used to be able to have a debate and you could agree to disagree.
Now if you disagree with someone, you're perceived as the enemy. And that is the dynamic that is being perpetrated. And so it doesn't give you a desire to participate. And that's exactly. In my mind the objective is to turn people off from participating in the electoral process because again, they're giving up their power and their control.
And that allows the politicians to push through an agenda that benefits them and not necessarily the people that voted or didn't vote for them.
[00:07:30] Speaker A: Well, and I will concur with that. One of the things I always extol on this show many times is that our elected officials do not adhere to for the government, by the government that they work for us. And a lot of that is to do with the fact that we now have these mega PACs giving so much money and funneling money into elections that it really takes away a lot of our power as an individual voter. And I am one that being first generation US citizen, I know the importance of voting.
And it is something that I always say that regardless of who you vote for, get out and vote, express yourself, because that's one of the greatest liberties that we do have in this nation.
So I'm going to have to ask, how can citizens separate legitimate questions about election systems from the misinformation that weakens trust that we are bombarded with? Especially if you're connected to any type of social media.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Yeah. So the challenge is to get out of your comfort zone.
If you lean to the right and you watch Fox News, you should spend some time watching news on the other side of the political spectrum. And if you're on the left, you should spend time watching news and commentary on the right side of the spectrum, in my mind should be gathering information outside of your silo. So you get a broad breadth of information that's being put out and then you can channel your own experience into that information and come to a conclusion on your own of what's accurate and what isn't. And there are a variety of, of fact checking services that you can use on both sides of the aisle. And I know it takes effort, I know it takes time, but democracy is something that needs to take time. There's an old saying from Benjamin Franklin, when asked after leaving Constitutional Convention, what do we have? A woman asked them that and his response was, a democracy if we can keep it.
And to keep it, we need to put time into understanding what's going on.
The level of misinformation or lack of information is abysmal.
When I was growing up in school, we all had civics classes. We don't have those anymore. People don't understand how a law occurs, what the representatives do, who are the representatives. And so we are pretty ignorant in terms of the processes that actually control our life. I had a conversation the other day, I was helping a woman who needed some air in her car and we were talking about the current economy. And her comment was, well, the government can't really do anything about the economy. Which led into a whole conversation about, well, with the tariffs being implemented that rose prices, with the war that we're engaged in that's caused prices to rise that the government does in fact control and impact things in our daily lives. And until people begin to realize that the government is impacting their life, they're not going to engage in participating.
And so what we need to do is educate people to the idea of government does impact their life and that it's important for you to engage and contribute and participate or you're giving your power up to someone who may not have your best interests in mind.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Roger that gives us an important foundation. Technology is not only changing elections mechanically, it is changing the way people understand information, trust institutions and participate as citizens. When we come back after this brief commercial, we will talk about misinformation, generative AI, and how voters can become more discerning in a fast moving digital environment. Tune right back in after this.
Welcome back to we the People. Stay connected to this show and every NOW Media TV favorite, live or on demand, anytime you like. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish on the move. Catch the podcast version at NowMedia TV. From business and news to lifestyle, culture, wellness and beyond, NOW Media TV is streaming around the clock. Ready whenever you are.
Before.
Excuse me. Before the break, Roger Shindell and I discussed how technology is reshaping the civic landscape and why trust must be built through transparency, accountability and clear communication. Now we turn to one of the most urgent challenges facing citizens and institutions, disinformation, generative AI and the need for digital responsibility.
Roger, I have to ask, you're the expert. How has generative AI changed the misinformation landscape compared with the online misinformation challenges we have seen over the past few years?
[00:13:21] Speaker B: Well, basically it's just accelerated the change.
Now, something that may have taken days to put together, generative AI can create in a matter of seconds, if not minutes, that information can be true or not.
There's very little oversight and regulation to what gets put out.
So the ability to push out misinformation is just actually accelerated. And what I find interesting is that going back into the 1940s and 50s, when science fiction was talking about robots, one author, Isaac Asimov, came up with the three laws of robotics, which synthesized down into first do no Harm, that robots and now generative AI should be controlled so that they cannot do harm to people, however we decide to define that.
So the problem is that we don't have any regulatory control over generative AI.
But stepping back for a moment, you may have heard that in the past few days there was a breach caused by ChatGPT that exposed a variety of, of private information in the numbers in the millions to the Internet in general.
But what people don't realize, and it was announced today, is it wasn't generative AI that caused the problem.
It was an individual who did not implement accurate or required security controls. So even with generative AI, so it comes down to how people act and how they want to act. And the problem is that there is an economic imperative for regenerative AI to push out content that gets more clicks and negative information gets more clicks than positive information.
That's why we have such an overwhelming amount of, of false information because the algorithms are designed to push that out to more and more people.
So it really does come down to the ability or the desire actually to regulate the truthfulness of what is put out by generative AI out into the different Internet based channels that are out there.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: Well, I have to tell you, oftentimes I'll see a video and I'll look at it and I can, after discerning it and watching it you, I can tell that it's not a valid video of an individual. But it is amazing how people are able to take the image and likeness of, I'm just going to say, let's say an actor and then have them say something that is totally off base or weird. And, and that's I think to me is where the shock for me is. Okay, how do I, and I'm just, I, I'm just an everyday person. I'm not a computer expert, I do not like break down videos. But how is myself as an everyday voter watch for when evaluating a video or an image or a headline or even a social media post that seems designed to provoke an emotional reaction. How am I supposed to discern whether if it's, you know, between factual or non factual? Because that is what I'm starting to see and my friends are mentioning it more and more as well that there's just a concern that is so realistic some of these AI generative videos.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Yeah. I'd like to step back a little bit for a moment and bring up, you know, during the last election cycle the vice president was addressing the issue of Haitians in Ohio eating cats.
And he was fact checked on that because it wasn't happening. And his comment, which I think embraces the overall. What you're trying to say is he said, well sometimes you have to stretch the truth to get your point across.
And that's what you need to look at when you're looking at videos or what someone is saying.
You need to step back and Ask yourself what is their moral compass.
Whether it's generative AI creating a false video or it's someone making a comment like the Vice President did. You need to think about who is pushing the information out and what do they believe and what are their motivations.
And that's really the only way to you can begin to discern what's true and what's not. And once you begin to question whether something is true or not, one of the beauties of the Internet is there is infinite number of places you can go to begin to fact check what's out there. And one of the things I do, and I know it's a bit counterintuitive, but I'll use a generative AI model to fact check with to get a first blush as to what's true or what's not. Which gives me a starting point to dig in and really begin to ascertain what's true or not. Problem is most people don't have the inclination or the time to go through that exercise of ferreting out the truth which then brings it all back to the need for regulation so that we can have confidence in our systems and the individuals that are pushing content out anymore. We don't have confidence in any of these systems anymore. And that's really the problem that we're struggling against is how are we going to rebuild that confidence in a environment that is full of technology that's uncontrolled.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Well and I think that is going to be the, that's the new, I guess frontier if you will, for regulation and the debate against whether it's a violation of First Amendment rights versus who is going to be the regulatory. And I think a lot of this can be, you can date it back to the 1980s when Ronald Reagan removed or during his administration, I shouldn't say the actual president himself removed a lot of the, the, the restrictions on news channels being, or news ne networks that had news becoming profitable and then under the Obama administration it removed, it lessened even more of the ability that news news channels and the cable outlets and such can be propagandized because it used to have those, those barriers that have been removed and been chipped away.
I for one am always decrying to my family go beyond cnn, msnbc, Fox News and see a little bit of everything.
But I like, I, I, I, I prefer them just disengaging for a while as well just because of the amount of propaganda on all the news sources. And for that and then because of you have X, you have TikTok you have Snapchat. I mean, even now I think I can Instagram or Facebook without seeing ads or reels that I'm not even clicking on.
How can I as a citizen verify information without becoming an expert in technology? I mean, what are reliable sources that you can go onto the Internet and check sources?
[00:21:31] Speaker B: Well, before I delve into that, I want to come back to one of your other comments regarding the First Amendment.
And you're an attorney. I'm not. I don't recall which Supreme Court justice said it, but make the comment. The First Amendment doesn't give you the right to yell fire in a theater.
And so people talk First Amendment, but under that guise, the First Amendment doesn't give you the right to lie, to not tell the truth.
So there is a limit on what you can say.
The challenge again with the technology and how do you ascertain what's true is you need to consciously go outside of your comfort silos.
Again, you need to look at a variety of sources that you may not think you're going to agree with to get both sides of the argument and then ascertain for yourself what is true, what isn't true.
Another good example, recently the administration began to reclassify combat deaths as non combat deaths.
Deaths that weren't in live combat by, by military individuals.
You need to think about does that make sense or not? What's the purpose? What's the motivation? Why would the administration want to minimize the number of combat related deaths that it reports?
So you need to spend some time digging deeper into the motivation about why someone is saying what they're saying, wherever that is coming from. I mean, I would say that there are a number of places you can go to fact check. For example, PBS has a great fact checking site. But you run into the problem of PBS has lost its ability to be seen as a, a relevant site.
There's no confidence in what's being said. There was a time when I was growing up when cbs, Walter Cronkite was the most trusted individual in the country.
Now nobody trusts what CBS says.
And so in the long run we need to figure out a way to get back trust in all the different channels we had that were pushing information out to us.
And that's what we suffer from right now, technology or not, is a lack of confidence in the guardrails that used to be there that we could rely on to give us accurate information.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Well, and I grant back in the Walter Cronkite days and I remember him as a little girl and he, you know, I think that was more of a factual based reporting and not it's in many of the, and I'm not saying all but much of the and I'll say like cable news networks or something. It's like almost opinion based.
So I think that's where the dis, where we have to discern from as well.
This part of the conversation reminds us that digital responsibility is now part of civic responsibility.
And the challenge is not only whether information is available, but whether citizens have the tools, habits and leadership to evaluate it wisely.
After the break, we will focus on how communities can rebuild trust in institutions and strengthen civic confidence without turning every issue into a partisan battle. Tune right back in.
Welcome back to we the People.
Roger Shindell and I have been discussing technology, elections, misinformation and the changing responsibilities of citizenship in this digital era.
Now we're going to focus on one of the hardest but most necessary questions. How do we rebuild trust in the institutions that we are supposed to depend on for news, but also for those that govern?
Roger, when people say they have lost trust in institutions, what do you think they are really reacting to?
[00:26:18] Speaker B: Well, I believe they've lost trust because they don't see institutions as affecting their lives in a positive way.
To rebuild it, I think you need to go local instead of national.
If you are involved in politics at the local level, who your county supervisors are, who your mayor is, who's on the school board, those are areas where you can reach out and actually touch people and have conversations.
At the state level, you have state senators, state representatives. At the national level, you have congressional representatives. All these are people you can actually go out and touch. So for example, you can go to your state representatives or your congressman, congresswoman's office. They all have a local office in each town within their judicial or their congressional district and you can reach out to them one on one, touch them, talk to them and begin to build a relationship.
That is the first step to building trust.
So my recommendation and one of the things we try and do at Volunteers for Democracy's Future is to get people to engage at the local level as a way to begin that first step of building trust.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: I know for one of the even in my former town where I grew up, I was very blessed to get to know our elected officials. Whether I agreed with them or not is a different story, but they were there. And also one of the most important things is like when my, say, my mother was having issues with her Medicare, we were able to go to our local congressional members office, tell them the issue and honestly, and it was then Adam Putnam, he did an incredible job. His staff got the situation corrected on behalf of my mother. And I think that's one of the things that we miss is that having that personal touch, the ability to speak to an aide or even your local, your city councilman, your county councilman can really bring a lot of benefit to you and at least so that you be able to be a pro part of the process.
I guess that will bring we going into this naturally is what can the institutions do differently to communicate accountability in a way that we the people can understand and verify them?
[00:28:59] Speaker B: Well, again, it comes down to what their moral compass is. I think we've lost a lot of trust because we don't believe that our elected officials are looking out for our best interest. They're looking out for their own self interest.
And so again, you need to reach out physically to each of your representatives, whether it be local, state or federal, and query them on where they're really coming from, what they believe in.
And that's one of the things again that we do at our organization is try and hold elected officials accountable for the actions they take. There's an old adage which is don't listen to what I say, watch what I do.
And so you really need to look at what your representatives at each level are actually doing and determine in your mind whether they're acting in your best interest or not. Don't listen to what they say, watch what they do. And that information is available.
You can see how every representative, state, federal, local, votes on an issue that's important to you and then you can call them on it. While many elected officials have stopped doing town halls and whatnot, we can begin to demand that they come before the people and answer questions so we can evaluate what we believe their moral compass is. Are they looking out for our best interest as opposed to their own self interest?
[00:30:44] Speaker A: Well, and I again I agree with you and I'm so glad you're speaking this. It's nice to hear someone else stating this. It is so important because that's one of the things that I truly believe has been lost.
And I'm not going to say in the immediate administrations, I would say probably over the last 20 years, if not a little longer, that there has been a disconnect where our politicians are no longer adhering or being coming back and being responsible to the individual citizens. And it's either because of their own interests. Some of them, once they win an election, they're immediately back into re election mode. Or it's because the lobbyists or the lobby monies that come in.
And one of the things that are interesting is look at the voter rolls, especially for the elected officials that never bring a bill about or they just don't vote whatsoever. That to me brings up questions. Okay, why are you not showing up for your job that you were elected to do?
I think that's one of the most important things that I've been trying to relate through this show is we are the people of the United States of America. They work for us. And we need to hold our politicians, our governor, our, the governance of our country accountable to what is in our best interest. And, and one of the things, and I believe I saw on your website is that you believe in that we should be promoting more bipartisanship in that it shouldn't just be a one side wins all type of situation because we're all very different.
And based on that, how does your experience in the compliance, privacy, cybersecurity industry shape the way you think about institutional trust?
[00:32:38] Speaker B: Well, my industry is, it emulates politics in that what people care about are their pocketbook issues.
They believe in privacy, they believe in security when they have an issue, but are reticent to invest in it when they don't have an issue.
And one of the problems we have is that when it comes to legislation regarding privacy and security, these are legislative activities, they generate regulations, and the regulatory environment is very slow moving.
And so privacy and security concerns and technology that allow for privacy security to be breached moves much faster than the regulatory process.
You have hundreds of thousands of people in countries that are bad actors working day in and day out a job trying to penetrate our systems and our regulations can't keep up with them. And then you add to that the fact that the regulatory bodies that are supposed to help protect us, like CISA at the federal level, are all being torn apart. We're not investing in regulatory requirements. And I can go through things that would scare the heck out of you. One specific example is a few years ago, a researcher, just because he wanted to know, found a way to hack into his own insulin pump.
And we haven't seen a situation where someone has held a hospital hostage by saying, we can get into your insulin pumps and essentially over pump insulin into all your patients.
But why can that occur? It occurs because the regulations at the FDA require that if you make a change to a device that you've developed, even as simple as changing the legacy of the chips that you use, you have to go through FDA reauthorization again, so the industry can't move quickly enough to address challenges that are everyday.
Malicious actors are working very hard at trying to break into our systems.
So again, it comes back to the people who represent us at the state, federal and local level have the wherewithal to address issues in a timely manner.
They become very frozen in how they do things and how you get bills passed and even having the knowledge to address issues.
Look what happened with Dr. Fauci yesterday. I mean, we live in a country that now doesn't believe in science anymore.
We used to be the preeminent country regarding science and now we don't believe in it. And how can you address these critical issues when you don't believe in the foundations around these issues?
[00:36:23] Speaker A: I think those are very good points.
And yes, I, I mean, it is.
I think that is probably one of the distressing things, especially since 2020 to now, which is wild to think it was six years ago, that we do have such a high degree of mistrust.
More so than I would say even prior to, say, 2020, it has increased.
Roger, I have to thank you so much for being on the show because I love the message that you have and bring your knowledge and your expertise to the forefront and providing a realistic message that trust is not rebuilt by slogans, but it's rebuilt through consistent behavior, accountability, transparency, and citizens who are willing to stay engaged. We're going to take a quick commercial break and when we come back, we will be talking about citizen leadership in the digital age and what viewers can do in their own communities.
Tune right back in.
Welcome back to we the People. Stay connected to this show and every NOW Media TV favorite, live or on demand, anytime you like. Download the free Now Media TV app on Roku or iOS and unlock non stop bilingual programming in English and Spanish on the move. Catch the podcast version at www.nowmedia.tv. from business and news to lifestyle, culture, wellness and beyond, now Media TV is streaming around the clock. Ready whenever you are.
Before the break, we talked about rebuilding trust in the institutions through transparency, accountability and civic education.
Now we close with a practical question for every viewer. What does responsible citizen leadership look like in a digital era?
Roger, I would love to hear from you. What, in your opinion, does citizen leadership mean today?
[00:38:37] Speaker B: Well, to me, citizen leadership means holding your representatives accountable to their oath of office.
At the federal level, that means each representative or senator needs to protect the Constitution from enemies, domestic or foreign.
That doesn't seem to be happening.
And unless we can push on those representatives, senators, we're not going to get out of the situation that we're currently in.
My organization, Volunteers for Democracy's Future, have two programs. First one during election cycles is called Project 67 and the idea is to elect at least 67 senators who believe in restoring and upholding the Constitution.
I don't believe we have that now. And it's a bipartisan issue. It's not one side of the spectrum.
Post election cycle we have another project called the Accountability Project, which is to continue to review all elected officials, see how they're voting, what they're saying and whether that is imbibed in protecting the Constitution and when it's not, calling them out, getting a hold of them, getting people as citizens to contact them and express our concern about what they're doing outside the Constitution.
So again, citizens need to get engaged, particularly that 40% that currently is not engaged in our political process.
And while we focus on the federal level, again, as I said earlier, focusing on the local level and then the state level is a good place to begin because you have access to these people. You can go out and touch them, you can have conversations with them, you can go to their offices. You know them because they're part of the community and that's where it starts. And in the long run, if we rebuild our confidence in our local representatives, that'll then flow over to the state and ultimately to the federal level.
So again, it's citizens getting involved with the issues that matter to them at the local level.
[00:41:23] Speaker A: Well, and I think that's mainly that is very important because it's not just a first step. But you see, if you look at many times, the local elections are always off year elections, whereas they're not tied to a presidential race or a gubernatorial race. And even with the midterms, we see that where there's a down, there's a significant downside to voter turnout and whether it's primaries and such.
And I, I agree because like, and I think this is one of the benefits when you are engaged with the in the process and such. When there are organizations hosting meet the candidates forums, go to them. I love going to them. I actually drag my fiance to those because he didn't realize how, I guess you would say geeky I am about the process. But I want to get to know the people who are running for my elected officials or state representatives because those are the most direct connections to me and my community.
And speaking of that, how can everyday citizens contribute to the healthier civic dialogue, especially online or in their local community communities?
[00:42:38] Speaker B: Well, one thing I'D like to add to what I said previously is if you want to have trust in our elections and in the people we're electing, go volunteer to be an election worker.
When the elections come around, citizens need to stand up, raise their hand and go down and volunteer to work on the election. And I will guarantee if you go do that, you'll begin to have confidence in how the elections are run.
Because the election workers I know, and I know a number because of the work I do on privacy and security. We work with a lot of counties in Iowa. For example, I talk to the auditors who run the elections in Iowa and they are trying to do the best job they can.
They don't see fraud in the elections. They believe in what they're doing.
They need to have people come out and join them to run the elections. And that is one thing that you can do.
Every year local elections are held and if you participate at that level, you are going to see how reputable and protected our elections actually are. And I think that would be an area where we can rebuild confidence very quickly and address this issue of, of not having free and fair elections. There could be nothing further from the truth. And if you work on election, you're going to see that.
[00:44:09] Speaker A: Well, and that's, that's true. Just being a volunteer, being able to be at the polling sites as well as oversights is a great way.
And I believe that, and I used to be one that I enjoyed almost like what would be called the grassroots efforts. It's like getting involved with the community, getting to know your, your candidates and such, so you're better informed of the issues as well.
But I do believe that for election integrity, one of the best ways is to volunteer. And they're always looking for volunteers.
It is an amazing privilege to be able to volunteer for, for on election day, at least I find it.
And for our viewers who feel concerned but do not know where to begin, what is one constructive first step they can take this week, especially as many of us are looking at the primaries are coming up, things of that nature. What is just one constructive first step that you would suggest to our viewership?
[00:45:18] Speaker B: Well, to self aggrandize what we do, you know, one thing they can do is go out and look at our website, which is vthenumber4df.com Volunteers for DemocracyFuture. And you can see places where you can volunteer, you can participate in what we're doing, you can donate, get ideas of what you can do and where you can do it and how you can do it. And the other thing I would do is again, where you have primaries coming up and the general election coming up in less than 100 days, call either Republican or Democratic Party in your state and volunteer to work the elections. That's something that you can proactively and value add do right now, today, to help keep our elections safe and sound and feel like you're contributing.
It's more than just going out and protesting. It's more than just giving money to a candidate.
You're actually working in the process, which is how our elections are designed to occur.
That's the one thing. Actually, two things I would recommend. Go volunteer to be an election worker and take a look at what we're doing at Volunteers for Democracy His Future.
[00:46:43] Speaker A: And speaking of your organization, I know that you're the founder and.
But are there any other, like, clubs or committees that people can join of your organization elsewhere in the United States?
[00:47:00] Speaker B: Well, we're national in scope, so we, you know, are building offices in every state.
We're focused right now on the midterm elections.
We are unique in what we do, I believe, because we're bipartisan.
We focus right now explicitly on getting the super majority we need in the Senate to pass legislation to repair what's going on.
But if not us, there are lots of organizations out there that you can participate with. Just go out and Google organizations that are involved in state politics in your own state, if that's what you like to do. I mean, there's always been the League of Women's Voters.
I mean, historically, they have done nothing beyond trying to keep voting safe and secure. I know they have a bad rap right now, but the ACLU is an organization that historically has protected the First Amendment, and I believe they continue to do a good job on that in spite of the slander that has been perpetuated on them.
And there are local chapters for that in every state. So the Internet is a beautiful thing in the sense that you can research something like how do I participate? Where can I participate?
Using a search engine or even an AI engine to give you ideas as to where to start.
And I would, I would implore everybody who's watching this to go out and do something to help protect our democracy.
[00:49:01] Speaker A: Roger, thank you for joining us on we the People and for helping us look at technology, trust, elections, and civic leadership through a constructive and balanced lens. This conversation reminds us that democracy is not only shaped by institutions and it is shaped by the choices citizens make every day. What we read, what we share, how we verify, and how we participate to our viewers. The digital era demands more from all of us. It asks us to slow down before reacting, seek reliable information, respect complexity, and stay involved in ways that strengthen our communities. I'm Alina Gonzalez Dakri. Thank you for watching we, the People.
