How do you get progressive change when your legislators won't even pick up the phone when you call? Reports say Krysten Sinema won't even take calls from progressive groups. Normally you can build power with a legislator. They want something you have...votes. In Sinema's case, you have to build power OVER her.
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Emma Vigeland: What do you do though when they won't even take your calls? Like I mean there was a report that came out of Arizona to bring it back about how Krysten Sinema just doesn't even take calls from organizers on the left. Immigrant rights for example. Groups in Arizona. Like how do you move the unmovable?
Hahrie Han: Yeah so I mean you know in organizing this is kind of like this idea like the difference between the sort of building power versus building power over. And so you know a lot of cases what you can do is you can build power with an elected official right. Like you have shared interests right they want votes and they won’t support you've got a constituency that you've organized. And so you can kind of trade your resources to act on each other's interests. And so they support the agenda that you're trying to advance and then you help support them with votes and other kinds of things that that they might need. And that's an example of building power with but in some situations like the one that you're describing with Sinema, it's really a situation we have to exert power over. Right, so the question is if I’m working with an elected official who won't take my calls who is who's essentially blocking me then the question is what are the sources of what are resources the sources of power that I have that can essentially try to force someone like Sinema to pay attention. You know and I think obviously in Arizona like that situation is very fluid and then with the kind of polarized politics that we have it's really hard to kind of figure out how to breakthrough. But I think one of the things that we were really struck by is that in all the organizations that we studied you know these organizations were working you know across partisan lines across kind of like business and not you know low-income communities. Like all these kinds of differences that we would normally think of as being opposites. And they built these coalitions in order to be able to negotiate for power in the ways that you're describing.
Emma: Yeah I really like that focus in your book on focusing on creating independent power centers, and I mentioned this earlier, but outside of gatekeepers like herself or even within the K Street Washington traditional lobby. Building a power center that is in Oklahoma, that is in Texas, that is in you know Montana, whatever the case may be. That is I think instrumental but it's harder and it takes a while.
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