In a politically polarized nation, public trust in government is on the decline. How do we know if we can trust parties and politicians? How can we hold our elected officials accountable? Host Lisa Hollenbach sits down with her colleague, brightbeam’s National Director of Activism Zakiya Sankara-Jabar, to talk about how to #VoteLocal when it all seems so corrupt.
Sankara-Jabar’s life of organizing began when she graduated from high school in 1999 as the 2000 presidential campaign was ramping up. “Nobody could tell me anything” bad about Al Gore then, she said.
But as her career took her into Ohio’s political organizing circles, Sankara-Jabar said she quickly learned that even those on “her side” left potential supporters cold more often than not.
So she has long worked to get candidates for local offices to focus on actually connecting with the communities they seek to serve.
She’s built some best practices for voters like you to help you separate the legitimate candidates who want to build your communities from the ones who simply want to bolster their resumes before leapfrogging to higher political ambitions.