No, You Shut Up

by Symone D. Sanders

  They took me to holding, where they removed my jewelry. I said I was an intern in the mayor’s office and I worked closely with my city council member. I tried my best to keep my cool, but my voice was trembling. Because I knew I had not done anything, but this is how folks’ lives and futures get derailed—this is how “they” get you. This kind of thing could not only completely throw my life off track at the moment, but also sabotage my future.

  What followed was a twenty-minute ordeal where they tried to convince me that I needed to take ownership of this marijuana that wasn’t mine. I increasingly realized they were trying to pin it on me. I said it wasn’t my marijuana; I didn’t smoke. After an extensive back-and-forth, the officers gave up on getting me to capitulate to owning the pot, but not before letting me know that actually the weed they found wasn’t very good.

  I promptly retorted they should tell that to the person that sold it to them because it was not my marijuana. At this point, I’d had enough of their mind games, and I felt my confidence start to flood back into my bloodstream. I was innocent, and there was no way I was going to let them say anything to the contrary. I mean, they ignored my comments because . . . they knew just as well as I did that this was a bunch of bull.

  They took my fingerprints, a mug shot, put a bracelet on me with my picture on it. Then I was moved to a holding cell with other women, a cell that was the size of a small closet, and there were twenty or so women in there. It wasn’t a socializing kind of place; people are reeeeal quiet when they’re waiting in jail. Finally, I was told I could make a phone call. I called my dad, told him I was in jail, and I instructed him to please call Ben Gray, my city councilman, and alert Stacy Westbrook (the special assistant to the mayor who had helped me get a job), because the officers tried to get me to take ownership of marijuana that wasn’t mine.

  My dad and mom came down to the station immediately. Because I was there on account of a bench warrant, I was told I could post bail, or I could sit in jail until the next day, i.e., midnight. By the time my parents got there, it was eleven fifteen, so I just waited forty-five minutes. As I was telling Bernie this story, he was flipping out. “What?! How? Where did this happen?!”

  I was like, “Omaha, NEBRASKA!!!”

  This was my own experience, but it happens all over the country. It’s happening right now. The only difference between Sandra Bland and me is that I had access and opportunity that helped me to get out of that awful situation.

  I concluded to the senator, that was why I thought he should talk about race and justice issues being parallel to and intersectional with the issues in the economy. Because while the economic situation needs to change, nothing happens in a vacuum. No one cared what school I went to, that I worked at the mayor’s office, what my parents did when I got arrested. That day the officers pulled me over and attempted to pin marijuana on me, all they saw was a Black girl driving through the north side of town, and that’s all that mattered. It didn’t matter what kind of job Sandra Bland had, the police decided she “talked too much.” If we look at improving lives only through the lens of the economy, we’re leaving out race and the implicit bias that goes along with it, which is very real.

  Bernie had kept quiet while I had recounted this story, but his facial expressions said it all. So after I finished, I was pretty sure that Bernie and I had reconciled, but I waited for him to speak. The rest of our conversation went something like this:

  Senator: I think I like you.

  Me: I think I like you too.

  Senator: I think I want you to work here.

  Me: I think I want to work here too.

  Then Senator Sanders asked me something none of the other twenty-nine interviewers ever asked me.

  Senator: Do you have an idea of what you want to do?

  Me: Yes. I want to be your national press secretary. I want to do cable television, and I want to have a hand in the messaging strategy just like we discussed here.

  Senator: Have you ever done cable television before?

  Me: No, sir, but I think I’d be very good at it.

  Senator: [Laughs.] Someone’s going to call you. We’ll be talking to you soon.

  Now, did I think that they were going to make me national press secretary? Not necessarily, but I figured I would go big then negotiate from there if I had to.

  So, please, folks, always have an answer to the question “What do you want?”: Out of your life. Or for dinner. You don’t want to be hemming and hawing as the waitress gets agitated. You don’t want to be sitting there figuring out your order when opportunity comes knocking. So set the bar high. The point is, I could have gone to work at Deloitte twenty-six interviews prior and been making a lot of money, but I didn’t want that—I needed to stay on the path. I moved to DC because I wanted to work in politics—so if I wasn’t working in politics, then what was the point? Always be ready with an answer to that question so when someone asks it, and that someone is the right person to give you the opportunity, you look prepared.

  My meeting with Bernie was on a Thursday; that Sunday he was on Meet the Press. On Monday, I watched clips and saw he’d used the messaging I’d suggested: that economics and race are parallel issues that have to be addressed simultaneously! I was ecstatic. I called my mom to tell her and she was like, “That’s great! Do you have a job?” Um. Good question, Madre!

  The next day, Jeff Weaver called me back. He started talking about a phone and a laptop. Then I asked, “Jeff, what’s my title?” and he said, as if it was obvious: “National press secretary.” Ask for what you want, folks.

  If we’re always thinking about our lives and personal and professional goals through the lens of what has been normal up until that point, we maintain the status quo. If we think about our engagement with issues and the ways to effect change based on what has been done before, we are maintaining the status quo. We need to think about what’s POSSIBLE, not normal. The idea of normal is just what we’re used to. We shouldn’t think about change or how we want to live our lives based off the idea of “being normal” or conforming to what has always been.

  So, after getting off the phone with Jeff and being on a total high, I started to come down a bit. I was up on the issues, in general. I’ve always been a high-information voter, and I had been involved in issue-based advocacy for quite some time. But I wasn’t sure exactly what I was getting myself into at that stage, at that level. Believe it or not, I am naturally a very risk-averse person—that’s why I talk so much about taking risks. I need daily pep talks, from myself to myself. I have a lot of number one fears, including getting run over by a train in my car. (I used to work for the railroad—one of my 1,001 internships was at Union Pacific! They are based in Omaha—remember I told you the UP execs would be at church with the rest of us?) My most relevant fear in this instance is making the wrong decision, one that will lead me down a path I’m not supposed to be on, missing out on what I’m really meant to be doing. That career FOMO makes me hesitate. It’s not the FOMO we feel when we think everyone is at some amazing party that we weren’t invited to. It’s the feeling that there was some other door open to me at one point that I chose not to walk through, one that would have led me down a different and perhaps better path. I work to overcome that particular type of FOMO so that when opportunities come, I can be confident enough to take them. Making decisions is a luxury, I remind myself. And I’m so lucky to have so many doors to choose from.

  So, thinking about all of this, after a hot second of being so excited about taking a job with Bernie, all of a sudden I had a bit of a crash. I left Bernie’s office after my first job interview and called a couple of people I considered mentors. In fact, some people I started calling and talking to, people I’d worked for or with in the past, said that there was a risk I was ruining my career, that I’d never get another job. People I really respect were telling me this! They said that I’d be branded a LEFTIST and it would be the worst thing ever! I remember thinking, Wow, maybe I’m making the
wrong decision. A few of them were like, “AH! This could be the worst idea. Just wait. We can get you a job somewhere else, just wait.” I had been on thirty freaking interviews. Wait for who? For what?

  One of the people I called to talk things through was Shawna Francis Watley—a family friend from Omaha who lives in DC now and works for Holland & Knight, a major international law firm. Our families are super close; she’s like an auntie to me. I told her about the job, and I said I’d told Bernie I wanted to take it, but that all of a sudden, I was having doubts. She asked, “Is anybody else offering you a national press secretary position?” I was like, “No one’s offering me anything!” Now, Shawna was Team Hillary. “He ain’t gonna make it past February, Symone! But I think it’ll be a really great experience. No one will be able to take it from you. If you like him and you’re comfortable with the conversation you had with him, do it!” When opportunity knocks, just remember: Do all the people giving you advice have experience in what you’re about to do? Had anyone I talked to ever been a national press secretary? No! Is it normal for them? No! Does that mean it’s wrong for you or for me to do it? No!

  In your career and in your life, look for guiding lights: people who open up a new path toward what normal can be. For me, one of those people has always Donna Brazile. I admired Donna from afar long before I met her. I used to watch her on TV, and she was so inspiring: the first Black woman to run a presidential campaign, someone who spent thirteen years as a commentator on CNN—she’s just amazing. I met her early on during my time with Bernie’s campaign, on the trail in 2016. I had only recently started doing TV, and we were in New Hampshire. We had set up a remote CNN location; I was back there getting my makeup done, and in walked Donna Brazile. I was like, Oh. My. GOD. I was trying to subtly ask the makeup artist to hurry up so I could go say hi. My hero had just walked in! I tried to calm my fangirl self down, and then I got ready to say hello. She was on the phone, so she waved. Okay. So I went off and did my television hit, but I was still thinking about Donna, so afterward I went back to the staging area and she was still there. I went over to her, introduced myself. She said, “Oh, Symone. I know who you are.” Oh my God, DB knows who I am! I tried not to shriek. As calmly as I could, I asked her, “Can I sit with you until it’s time for your hit?” She said, “Sure.” And then she started asking me all kinds of questions: how the campaign was going, how folks were treating me, my opinions on politics. Then she introduced me to everyone there—including Hilary Rosen, whom I affectionately like to refer to as one of my fairy godmothers. They were talking to me about TV and politics, and I felt like I just fell out of some other dimension into a childhood fantasy. Donna said, “Take my number. If you need anything, you let me know.”

  Of course, in this business, you always end up needing something. And I felt fortunate to have someone with the experience like Donna to bounce ideas off of, to ask her opinion, to help me figure out my way. I remember calling her later in 2016 to complain. I guess I expected a pat on the back or a word of sympathy or whatever, but I’ll never forget what she said. “Symone, if you can’t handle a little sexism and ageism at this level, perhaps this isn’t the job for you.” Isn’t the job for me? I worked hard to get here! This level? I’m not done, I thought. But I kept quiet, thank God. And I sat with her statement and thought about it for a while before I figured out what she was saying. Basically: ageism, sexism, racism—none of these things are going to go away tomorrow. You have to call things out when you see them; we have to work to combat these “isms,” but . . . we also have to work through them. The world isn’t going to change overnight. We have to move through it in the way it is now, doing the best we can while also agitating for change.

  While you are trying to challenge the idea of normal, you have to wake up every day, toughen up, and get the job done. Her tough-love statement still echoes in my head whenever someone ruffles me. And I also reflect on our first meeting frequently. Sometimes you meet your sheroes, people you have looked up to, and it’s underwhelming or disappointing. That was not my experience with Donna Brazile at all. I remember how I felt when she was just so open and inviting and warm and willing to talk to me. I try to be that way with people I meet on the trail, especially young folks. I might be exhausted or starving or stressed out, but I take the pictures, answer the questions, shake people’s hands. I talk to every single person who wants to talk with me. Because my interaction with Donna literally changed my life and made me believe that a new idea of “normal” truly was possible for me, and I want to be the Donna to all the young Symones out there too.

  Why are people so attached to the idea of normal, anyway? I suppose because it represents being comfortable. It gives us a sense of security. If we’re always living our lives in terms of what’s possible rather than what’s comfortable, it’s unsettling—there’s no blueprint. People are scared of change. Normalcy is comforting, gives us a baseline for what to aspire to and what to yearn for, as long as it’s something we recognize. It would be normal for me to go to school, graduate, find a job, find a partner, get married, settle into a career, probably have kids. For a lot of people, it’s not normal to live off the grid on a homestead farm, or for a Black girl to act as a spokesperson for a candidate for president. But normal is just context. Someone else’s normal is different from yours.

  Fast-forward: all those people who told me not to take the job were wrong.

  Think about whose definition of normal we’ve been living in for most of history. Straight, white men have been defining the terms according to their comfort, without concern for inclusion of anyone else. But by subscribing to not only their idea of normalcy, but the idea of normalcy as good, we’re basically saying patriarchy and white supremacy are okay! We allow other people and the system at large to continue having power over us if we seek too much corroboration and validation from them, if we look to other people for approval of decisions.

  Another thing we need to do: Stop asking for permission. From anyone. Because the surprising thing is that sometimes it’s the people close to you, the ones who you trust the most, who can really hold you back or kill your dreams. They may even think they are helping you when they tell you to be realistic, or reevaluate your capacity. Sometimes they are stuck in a previous understanding of you: they may have known you since age twelve or twenty, and they are stuck remembering a version of you that no longer exists. Or they simply think they have license to tell you how you should live your life, or imagine your future.

  But to them, and to you, I say this. Every single time the needle has moved in American politics, the people who did the pushing were those considered outside the “norm.” We would still be attending segregated schools if young people of color didn’t get engaged and involved and push back against what was considered “normal.” Women still wouldn’t have the right to vote if people like suffragettes Alice Paul and Lucy Burns hadn’t endured police beatings and jail time to make it so. We would not have marriage equality. We would not be having a national conversation about racism and its correlation to police brutality. Folks would not be working so hard to fix our criminal justice system.

  If you actually want to do something in this world, you have to get engaged and involved. You have to stand up and speak out. For some people, that’s running for office. For some people, that’s being an outside agitator, like BLM leaders, for instance. For other people, it’s being an attorney that represents people who need legal aid but can’t afford it, or acting from the inside to write change-making policy. Whatever it is, one cannot afford to sit on the sidelines when one wants the game to change.

  It wasn’t “normal” for Bernie Sanders to hire me, a young Black woman, as his national press secretary when he campaigned for president. It wasn’t “normal” in 2016 for candidates to willingly discuss universal health care, gun safety, immigration, abortion, and a whole host of other topics that we now consider absolutely fair game in questioning the credibility and fitness of our next president.
Because we the people of the Democratic base have redefined what we want to think of as normal.

  Democrats are more liberal than they were fifteen or even five years ago. It’s not just that all of the candidates out there running for the Democratic nomination are more liberal; it’s the constituents themselves. We are changing the very definition of normal: 46 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters now identify themselves as liberal—that figure was 28 percent ten years ago. Compared to twenty-five years ago, when 32 percent of Democrats said that immigrants strengthen our country, now 84 percent do. In the past ten years, the percentage of Democrats who say that the government needs to do more to fight racism grew from 57 to 81 (Pew Research Center, US Politics and Policy Study 2018). We are redefining the boundary lines of our political parties. We are redefining what it means to be “normal.”

  Chapter 4

  Calling All Radical Revolutionaries (And the Rest of Us Too)

  For us to better understand who “we” are, claim the power that we can, and redefine the meaning of normal, we need people who are willing to push the boundaries, be out in front of the crowd on the issues, put their lives on the line for the causes they believe in. It’s these radical revolutionaries that lead the way in making a better life for the rest of us—we the people demanding change from outside the apparatus, and those with access pushing for change from within.

  There are many different types of people playing the role of radical revolutionary; I see them in three broad categories: activist, academic, and practitioner. Like I said before, I’m not an activist; I just play one on TV. Of course I’m being a little facetious, but I’m also being honest. I know people who risk everything in support of a movement, who put their safety and well-being and career aspirations aside because they believe in a cause. As a political operative, I think of myself as a “practitioner” type of radical revolutionary. We need people out there pushing for change, and we also need people who can broker the exchange of ideas between the activists and the people currently in power. We need people radically committed to social justice, and practitioners who can put on a suit and stand in front of a jury and a judge and argue the finer points of the law effectively. We need voters, especially young people, willing to engage in the issues and rally others behind the candidates that promise revolutionary change—and then who are willing to hold these people accountable once they take office.