Voters Not Politicians | Katie Fahey
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The bright and bubbly Katie Fahey of Grand Rapids, Michigan wanted to do something that captured the energy of the 2016 election that people from across the aisle could actually unite over. Sound impossible? Not to Katie. What started as a Facebook post about taking on gerrymandering in her home state led to hundreds of thousands of Michiganders joining her in the fight. It sounds a like a movie: strangers meeting at warehouses in the middle of the night to make clipboards; three feuding sisters -- an Independent, a Democrat, and a Republican -- reconnecting over the cause; veterinarians doing research in the middle of the night; and thousands of people signing petitions at highway rest stops on Thanksgiving day. Listen to Katie share about how the heck she made it all happen.
“All the things that are built up in our heads — that you have to look a certain way, or have so much money, or have the connections — were kind of dismissed because we were able to break through a lot of that. Maybe not even break through, but just said ‘screw it, we’re going to try anyways.’”
Episode Notes:
A Grassroots Call to Ban Gerrymandering, The Atlantic, Sept. 2018
Making a Difference in 2018, The New York Times, Dec. 2018