No, You Shut Up

by Symone D. Sanders

  I like to think I was doing my part to speak truth to power while I was on CNN. While speaking that truth though, one thing became very clear to me: media consumption should be a class taught on every single college campus in America. Contrary to what you read on Twitter, America has not turned off the television. So, it’s important from two sides: one, because now we’re in this crazy world of manufactured news and many people aren’t discerning enough about the things they read, hear, and see. We have outsourced our critical thinking where the news is concerned to the internet. Secondly, given the ESPN style of cable news, many people don’t know the difference between a commentator, correspondent, and reporter. I am not a reporter and I do not have a journalism degree. I was paid to appear on television to give commentary from a particular perspective. I like to think of political commentators as subject matter specialists in politics for cable news (some better than others). If a young person thinks they want to get involved in the news media, they need to know that they have to put in real work and develop an expertise, whether it’s in a subject area or a discipline. They need to know who’s doing the work behind the scenes, making the proverbial trains run on time. I would love to have a sort of boot camp, a series of gatherings, where young women, especially women of color, who are interested in news and politics take classes to really crystalize what their goals are and how they will achieve them. Because being a commentator is not all about sitting pretty on TV. And to get past all the nos you’re going to hear from people, you have to be prepared and know your stuff.

  Nowadays, on the Biden campaign, I’ve learned yet again that it’s important to be prepared—no, overprepared. I’m going to do the homework because that’s who I am. I stay up late and I get up mad early and I’m constantly reading: online, in the news, on social media. I’m looking over research, and frankly, I could be doing more. You know everybody says, “You’ve got as many hours a day as Beyoncé.” I could always be doing more, but I try to prepare for all contingencies; I study up on whatever they could possibly throw at me. When I was working for CNN, I got comfortable with the idea that I would show up, and someone would tell me these are the topics, and I could prepare myself to discuss those things. I was a little rusty when I was just getting started on campaign work again. (Recall my earlier story about getting caught flat-footed when someone asked me whether the crime bill Biden supported in the 1990s resulted in mass incarceration . . . I wasn’t prepared for the conversation. I looked a mess and I looked crazy.) In fact, this challenge is exactly why I felt like I needed to go on the campaign trail again. I started feeling complacent, where I didn’t feel like I was contributing as much as I could. I needed to push myself—and also I wanted to get out there and help save the damn republic.

  As I got my feet under me at CNN, I chatted a lot with Roland Martin, Hilary Rosen, and Donna Brazile to get a sense of what I should be doing. They’d all been on TV for a long time, and I valued their advice. I’d literally follow Roland around—I had just started at CNN and he’d tell me when he would be done with a meeting, so I’d go and find him and I’d hold his briefcase and ask him TV questions. But I knew that eventually I wanted to be more than just a commentator, which led me back to campaign work. In the meantime, being on the shows was a hugely valuable experience that I am sure I would sign up for again. However, I don’t want anybody to be an “aspiring commentator,” and let me tell you why. I was never an aspiring commentator. It was an add-on, a bonus, and a pretty dope one. But when people literally come up to me and say, “How do I become a CNN commentator?” it’s more than a little irritating. I want people to aspire to be experts in their field, so they then have the ability to commentate. That’s what they should be aspiring to.

  When people ask, “How can I be a commentator?” I ask them, “What are you interested in?” “Well, I want to do political commentating,” I often hear. Well, what do you do in politics that you are an expert in? As for me, I am an expert communicator. Which I came to be after a lot of hard work as an advocate for juvenile justice, and then as a campaign spokesperson. I’m not an expert commentator; there’s more to me than that. There are some people in politics, that’s their game, just being a commentator—mmkay. Look, if you’re going to be a speaker, you have to be speaking on behalf of something; you have to have a reason for people to trust your interpretation of things or care about your opinion. You need to build a case for yourself as a public persona.

  As I mentioned before the group of women who call themselves the Colored Girls: Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, Minyon Moore. These women climbed, fought, worked their tails off to get to incredible positions of power in politics, and they set the foundation for people like me. There’s no doubt in my mind that I could not and would not be where I am today if it weren’t for them. For the most part, they were working and continue to work as operatives and advisors and such behind the scenes. Except for Donna, who is a commentator, people for the most part literally didn’t and don’t know these Black women existed. They had to do the work behind the scenes so that young upstarts like me can be out front. Some people might think that there weren’t lots of Black women involved in politics at a national level and then—boom—we have a Black woman running to be the Democratic nominee, Black women campaign managers, a Black girl serving as an advisor for Joe Biden. Black women are suddenly popping out in a way that we never have before.

  I want to be clear: we have always been here. But in reality, there are lots of Black women in national politics who are making the trains run, who are responsible for executing, who are the reason policies are getting passed and statements are going out and money is being put in places where it really matters and can help communities. But sometimes they aren’t visible. We aren’t often the press secretaries, the campaign managers, the chief spokespeople, the operatives that the press corps loves to focus on. I think the media and the larger political apparatus have awoken to the power and prowess of Black women. But we are still fighting to be seen in politics, just like the next woman of color in another field that was long closed to us. I am still fighting for the ability to show up every day and not have someone in the press label me, not have the press or even the people, voters, folks, place a burden on my shoulder that I’m not responsible for, or ask me to deliver on something I can’t execute.

  I’ve worked really hard my entire career to be the communications person, or the commentator, or the political person, that is also Black. Not the Black commentator, not the Black press person, not the Black political person. Because, yes, I can talk to you, I can keep you woke, we can talk about criminal justice reform, I can tell you why Black lives matter, I can pontificate on those issues, I can be helpful when it comes to crime and justice. I can also talk to you about trade and the economy. Let’s talk about NAFTA or trade relations with China or what we should do to engage Iran. I work really hard not to put limits on myself. By not putting limits on myself, I refuse to allow the world to put limits on me. You shouldn’t either.

  Chapter 8

  The Moment Is Now

  Eventually, you will find yourself in a place where YOU can say no, because you have more experience and more choices and, yes, more power. When you’ve prepared your best, when you’re out there doing the hard work that revolutionary change requires, acting as an accomplice on behalf of others, when you’ve tested your own limits, and picked yourself up after a couple of hard knocks and learned from them, it’s time to jump. Be ruthless in demanding what you want, and what you know you’re worth. Be unafraid, and take a leap toward where you want to end up.

  At the beginning of 2019, I was preparing to begin my fellowship at the Center for the Political Future at USC, consulting, and still appearing every now and then on cable news. One afternoon, I was on CNN and the topic that day was the road to 2020 and the election. As I sat on the panel, it hit me: I really wanted to be on the campaign trail. I knew it would be hard and often unglamorous; I knew that people were goin
g to put me through the wringer no matter which candidate’s team I ended up on, and of course afterward. Now, if I am being honest, I didn’t realize it’d be as hard as it turned out to be. Whew. But I knew I didn’t want to spend this entire election season pontificating on a panel about the work other people were doing. I wanted to do the work. I wanted to be a part of taking down Donald Trump, a part of moving this country forward. There’s not going to be another election cycle like this for a long time. No matter what happens, this one is going down in the history books. This was my moment to help make a difference.

  In the spring of 2019, I spoke with many candidates pursuing the Democratic nomination for president. And let me remind you that in 2019 there were scores of people out there who were angling to try to be the nominee: twenty-six at one point. The weirder part was that at this point in my career, I knew many of them personally. A little different from my first rodeo in presidential politics! I’d gotten to know Kirsten Gillibrand really well over the previous few years after I interviewed her for a Crooked Media podcast. I had also developed a good relationship with Cory Booker, another genuine friendship. I’m not close with Senator Kamala Harris, but her sister, Maya, is like a big sister to me. I often have asked Maya for not just career advice but life advice too, so you could imagine the day our conversation went from me asking her thoughts on this guy who I was dating, and then the conversation switched to “Do you want to be on our team?”

  Elizabeth Warren was another person I spoke with. When I was invited to be a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics in Spring of 2018, Elizabeth Warren called to congratulate me, as she does for all of the fellows. (She used to teach at Harvard and is often involved with the IOP.) That phone call was actually hilarious: I was waiting on a member of Congress who was calling me back after we got cut off abruptly. The phone rang, and it said “Unknown.” I figured it was this person, and I answered the phone saying, “Hey . . . so . . .” and started talking, and suddenly this voice interrupted me like, “Ah, Symone?” And I was like, “Wait, who is this? Senator Warren?” OOPS.

  So how did I finally end up Team Biden, you ask? As the conversations with others progressed, I realized that first and foremost, I wanted to make sure I had a relationship, a rapport, access, autonomy, a voice in creating the candidate’s strategy, and, above all else, I wanted to have fun. I didn’t want to go somewhere I would be miserable or just be a mouthpiece; I didn’t want to come onto a campaign and just be a spokesperson. I wanted to do strategy work because I wanted to add to my skill set, and I also wanted to challenge myself with something more, with contributing to the ideas and the message of the campaign in a deeper way.

  Of course, everyone knows who Vice President Biden is, but honestly, I did not think that working on the Biden campaign was an option for me. One, because I didn’t know Vice President Biden. I wasn’t a part of his very big and historic orbit of trusted people. Two, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to do the kind of strategy work I most wanted to do since he has such a plethora of people to choose from, people who are close to him and have been for a long time. And three, I thought, I’m sure they’ve got a hundred people waiting in line to speak to them. And I’ve got too much going on to wait in line to speak to somebody. (Remember my earlier advice about not waiting in line?)

  So I didn’t know Biden before, and I didn’t know many people in his world. But when they called me, of course I was more than happy to speak with his team. You always take the call, ladies and gentlemen!

  The first time I met Vice President Biden, our meeting was only supposed to be thirty to forty minutes. I ended up staying two hours. We had a really enthralling conversation, and just connected. I liked him. I really liked him. I liked his wife, Dr. Biden, very much too. Every time he spoke about his vision for the campaign, it resonated with me. After many more conversations with more than a few people, I decided this was where I wanted to be: on a campaign where I could help shape the strategy, really help build the system, and work for a person I genuinely admire and respect. At the end of the day, I decided this was the place I needed to be, where I could be the most effective and where I could really be helpful and where I could grow personally and professionally.

  But it was definitely a leap. If I had gone to work for Senator Warren or Senator Booker or Senator Gillibrand, I would have had the foundation of a solid relationship with my principal already set. It would have been comfortable for me. I wanted to make myself a little uncomfortable—to stretch and push myself. The next thing that happened certainly was uncomfortable—it got leaked that I joined the Biden campaign. We were a few days out from when we were going to announce, and reporters were calling me, “We hear that you’re on the Biden campaign.” I wasn’t answering; they were leaving messages or sending text messages. They were emailing. I was like, What is this? Who did this? At this point there were only about five people who knew I’d made up my mind. I still had to get in touch with all the other people I’d been talking to and let them know about my decision; I wanted to keep my relationships intact. And so I was on a plane coming back from LA, because I was in the midst of a fellowship at the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future with Bob Shrum (who advised Edward Kennedy, Joe Biden, John Glenn, and Barbara Mikulski during Senate campaigns, and John Kerry and Al Gore when they ran for president). As I was boarding a flight the Biden comms team told me they had to get out in front of it, so the story was dropping tomorrow. Uh-oh. Okay. I’ve got to do my notification calls and emails.

  Piece of Advice

  When You Find You’re the One Who’s Got to Tell Someone No, Do It with Class

  Being told time and again, “Be nice, stay in line, know your place, wait your turn, don’t make a scene,” and all that other bullshit can make certain habits of mind take root even when you are actively working against conforming to those pressures. Women especially are expected to acquiesce to the needs and desires of others, so much so that we sometimes sacrifice what’s best for ourselves. Even if we don’t cave to the pressure to do this, there’s often still a feeling of guilt that’s left rattling around in our heads. This can sometimes turn into or manifest as a need-to-please complex. I know because I’ve got the people-pleaser complex to a degree myself. To combat it we have to learn to trust our instincts, and also to treat people well, with the long-term in mind, even when it’s challenging in the moment.

  I knew it would be a difficult moment when I had to tell people I considered friends that I’d decided to support someone else. I don’t like to disappoint people, so these notification calls were hard for me. And some people I didn’t get a chance to call because I waited too long, and the timeline for the announcement got moved up, and I had to get on a plane. And so some folks I had to just text, and some people I emailed, and some people I called. I’m not saying I handled it all perfectly. It was especially hard because these are people that I like, love, and respect, and who have poured their time and efforts into mentoring me. And you know, it’s no small thing for somebody to mount a run for president and ask you to be on their team. I didn’t want to let anybody down. I never wanted anybody to think that I was doing something against them. But at the end of the day, I had to make a decision for myself. And maybe some people were pissed off or hurt or upset, but I’ve come to the point where I’m okay with somebody being mad at me if I know I’m doing the right thing for me, and it’s what I really want to do. So I made my notification calls and went to bed, and I woke up the next day and, boom, the story was out there.

  So that’s the short story of how I landed on the Biden campaign. And now that I’m here, I’ve been doing my part in working to restore the soul of our nation, rebuild the backbone of America, and unite the country. Whatever issue one could think of has become a headline in this election—abortion rights, health care, reforming the justice system, improving education for everyone, tackling income inequality, infrastructure, Trump’s disastrous foreign policy. But it’s not just that it’s my job
to stay out in front of these issues, it is also that I care deeply about them. I also am very devoted to getting young people engaged in the political process. We need to find a way to speak on the issues that engages as many factions of the Democratic Party as we can, and that’s no easy task. We need everyone on board to get Trump out of the White House: millennials, Blue Dogs, boomers, lifetime residents of Hillaryland, rural residents, Dreamers, Hollywood stars, white women, Asian, brown, and Black men, old people—everyone. The Democratic apparatus can and must communicate across the Democratic Party factions more effectively. We need to move forward as a more collective whole. I don’t believe in ideological purity; I don’t believe in ostracizing and excluding people. We have all got to work together if we’re going to get shit done. This is a historical, pivotal moment in our nation’s history, and we have to come together and act NOW.