Rebranding the Donkey

Transcript

0:00 Welcome to Radio Abundance, a podcast by YIMBY Democrats for America. It's time to build again, folks. Fascism never made America great, but when progressives build, that's where you'll find American greatness. Tonight's guest is Paulina Mongubord. Paulina serves as digital content and creative director for the Democratic National Committee, where she has helped revolutionize the Democrats' social media strategy. After Paulina, we'll be sharing a new segment, a special news bulletin update from NYC, with our new New York City Abundance correspondents, Catherine Vaughn and Ryder Kessler from Abundance, New York. That's coming up right now on Radio Abundance. You're listening to Radio Abundance, a podcast by YIMBY Democrats for America. Now let's get to the show.

0:48 Please welcome your host for the evening, YIMBY Democrats for America Executive Director Steve Boyle. And to kick things off, here's Steve. I'm Donald J. Trump, and I hate these guys. Hello, Radio Abundance. I am your host, Steve Boyle, Executive Director of YIMBY Democrats for America. We've had a lot of amazing conversations on this podcast with elected officials and authors. We've covered the policies and politics of abundance and progressivism and the Democratic Party and the nation and fascism. We've talked about how Democrats can win, how we can defeat Donald Trump. And along the way, in addition to talking about all the important policy matters, we also discuss messaging. It's something we care a lot about. It's something I care a lot about. My background is as a storyteller, a theater maker, director, writer, and experience designer. So I don't just care about the stories we tell and the images we use and the experiences we give people. I believe that those are what changes minds and hearts. In addition to the data you present, in addition to the words you choose, how you make people feel, the images you put in their mind, the aesthetics you plant, the way they feel when they experience you, when they hear you, when they think about you and your policies and your ideas and your movement and your party and your brand. That obviously shapes electoral politics. We know that. That's obvious. But it's especially important in the world of abundance because abundance is something that doesn't exist yet. In America, that builds is something most of us have never experienced in our lifetime. So how can we ask people to say yes to abundance and yes to building more homes, more green energy, public transportation, public spaces, if they don't know what that looks like? And just as importantly, if they don't know what it feels like. I have something I call the immersive theory of change. You know, in San Francisco, we have a fabulous performance artist and immersive experience creator who also, as it turns out, happens to be a Yimby. Her name is Danielle Baskin. She's known for her reality hacking stunts. So for example, in San Francisco, there's a huge conference and festival organized by Salesforce called Dream Forest. It's very corporate.

2:54 It's deeply themed and entertaining. And they spend a lot of money creating aesthetics and in particular, what Danielle called a fake national park. So what do you do at a national park? You go camping. So Danielle went to Dream Forest and she took her tent and she went camping. She found a waterfall in the main expo area and camped out there. And it was nearly an hour before anybody seemed to notice that it wasn't supposed to be there. She also managed to successfully list her campsite at Dream Forest on Airbnb, although the crackdown came a little too soon for any clients there. She created a Tinder account for a drone, just a drone. When it got matches and dates, she hooked it up with a microphone and a speaker and a baby monitor. And she sent that drone on dates. So no person showed up to meet you. It was just you, a stranger from the internet, sitting down to drinks with your new quadcopter drone, Paramore. She also threw not Art Basel, but BART Basel, a guerrilla art experience, not in Miami or Basel, Switzerland, but on BART, the San Francisco Bay Area's rapid transit system.

3:53 A few hundred people turned out in formal wear, because this was an artistic gala after all, to ride the train and take public transport. That day among guerrilla art exhibitions and presentations. But my favorite prank of hers, and the reason I bring this all up, is that, you know, if you've ever been to Japan, you may have noticed there's 7-Elevens everywhere and they sell wonderful, delicious Japanese snacks and food, specifically onigiri, which is like little meals of, it could be fish wrapped in rice and seaweed and a ball and a triangle. It's very trendy. You know, if you're a Japanophile, you love it. And of course, quite a lot of Yimbis are Japanophiles. So shout out to Tokyo. And so one day, Danielle procured some onigiri and she slapped a label on it with 7-Elevens logo and a portrait of then San Francisco mayor, London Breed, and some texts touting a new official collaboration between 7-Eleven and the city of San Francisco to bring Japanese onigiri to local 7-Elevens. She put those onigiri in one 7-Eleven, took a picture and tweeted it. And guess what? It's a great idea. So it went viral immediately. This new development exploded on Twitter. Tons of people praised it, sharing that they'd always wanted 7-Eleven to bring this to America, praising the city of San Francisco for their ingenuity and creativity and this fabulous idea for bringing this culture and fun treat to the city. Folks who'd never heard of the concept learned about it for the first time, and they praised it too. And then, of course, it hit the press. Articles started coming out and folks started flocking to 7-Elevens to buy the onigiri.

5:27 There was, of course, just one problem. When they got to the counter, the teams at 7-Eleven working the till didn't know how to ring it up. And of course, when reached for comment, both 7-Eleven and London Breed in the city of San Francisco said, what the hell are you talking about? But guess what? This stunt, this prank, which maybe lasted a few hours, this was enough to create a viral sensation and prove that this was a great idea, that people wanted it, that people had already been craving it, that people who'd never heard of the concept before would, in fact, love it and did. So now, today, in reality, in the real world, 7-Eleven has started to adopt this approach. It's actually brought onigiri to a few stores in the United States as a test, and there's been articles written in papers like the Wall Street Journal about 7-Eleven's shifting strategy to bring in more ideas from the Japanese and international markets. This all comes from Danielle. She planted a seed, and she made it real, if only for a moment, because, of course, for the hour or so that Danielle's onigiris were in this single solo 7-Eleven in San Francisco. It was real. So you got to the counter and tried to buy it. There was no difference between Danielle's immersive theater fictional stunt and 7-Eleven's actually stalking their stores with onigiri. The onigiri was real. The 7-Eleven was real. The photos were real. The label was real. It was all, for a moment in time, real. And here's the thing. If you can make something real, if only for an hour, if only for a minute, then by definition, it's no longer impossible. You can give people a taste, a demo, a tease, and you can wet their appetites and show that it's not scary and show that people want it. You can help them to want it. And of course, this reminds me of congestion pricing in New York. There was tons of opposition to congestion pricing when it first came out, including by some of its biggest current proponents. Governor Kathy Hochul, who now touts the success of the congestion charge and is defending it from Donald Trump, famously delayed the charge and reduced the pricing. There were lots of political reasons to do this because, of course, politicians are downwind of voters. They need to serve their constituency, both as a moral duty and in their own self-interest to continue to win votes and to continue to be able to do the work they want to do and that we need to do. So there's lots of political calculations. But how do you change the politics? Well, you show success and you make it real. Congestion pricing, of course, is here now in New York. It's real and it's a huge success. Faster commutes, less traffic, less pollution and noise, better quality of life, more people using public transportation. And many of the voters and citizens most vocally opposed to congestion pricing originally have changed their tune and are big fans now now that they realize, hey, it's easy enough to take the subway. It's cheaper or especially, hey, if I am going to come into the city and I do need to drive, then man, it is way better and totally worth it to pay the charge because there's less cars on the street. My commute goes so much faster.

8:24 Emergency vehicles can travel much faster. Service workers can travel much faster. It is better for everyone. But of course, we only know that and we only learned that once it became real. Sometimes, as Nancy Pelosi famously said of Obamacare, you have to pass the bill to see what's in it. But how can you do that before you pass the bill? How can you get and win and earn the support and votes so that you can pass the bill? Well, I'm going to argue it's experience design. You know, people say if you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And my hammer is events and experiences and aesthetics. And I think, you know what? Let's hammer away. So it's been a big theme so far for Yimby Democrats for America. The Yimby movement, the abundance movement has so much data in our favor. All the data. In fact, our policies are widely praised by experts of all stripes, experts on economics, on housing, energy, transit, affordability and homelessness. The data is with us. The history is with us. We can point to successful recent examples in Austin, in Minneapolis, in Tokyo. All the evidence is in our favor. And yet I suspect that everyone who is going to be swayed by data is probably already convinced. So this is very purposeful for us, our theming. We intentionally call back to the FDR era, the pinnacle, I think, of American liberal greatness, where government built the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge. FDR, of course, passed the New Deal, lifted so many people up, built our social safety net, and built a world where private citizens were empowered to build too, to flourish, to thrive.

9:56 And they rewarded us by creating icons like the Empire State Building in 13 months, just 13 months at the height of the Great Depression. So imagine that, this icon of America and the center of so much tourism today, rising to 102 stories from a neighborhood of buildings that were only in the mid-teens. So you talk about ruining the neighborhood character. The Empire State Building was about eight times larger than any of the tallest buildings in its neighborhood at the time, 30 percent taller than the tallest building in America at the time, and fully 70 percent taller than the tallest building in America just two years earlier. And of course, abundance policies, Progressive Abundance policies, are a callback to FDR in more ways than one. You know, the policies we're advocating are returned to the FDR era. It was easier to build in his time, both for citizens and developers and markets and also for governments. The NIMBY rules and the vitocracy that we are rebelling against came after FDR. It really took off, we usually say, around the 70s. It was an undoing of the FDR era, a repeal of FDR. We want to bring that back, bring back FDR, bring back progressive greatness for government and for everyone, and this time for the 21st century. And of course, there's one more element of the FDR era we hearken back to, not only the New Deal and the big public works projects and expanding social safety net and big government construction projects, not only private citizens building and thriving and ascending, but also let's remember this peak of historic Progressive Abundance. This was also the era when we curb stomped the Nazis and defeated fascism and authoritarianism all around the globe in the name of freedom, liberty, safety, economic vitality, and of course, human rights and democracy. That is American greatness. That is progressive American greatness.

11:47 That is Progressive Abundance. Build America, defeat fascism. And speaking of defeating fascism, and speaking of democracy and Democrats and messaging and stories and aesthetics, I certainly noticed, and maybe you did too, back in March, around the 11th, when the Democrats' Twitter account tweeted a picture of Donald Trump with his new Tesla in front of the White House with three words, ugly ass truck. You can imagine the positive response. The interns are cooking, people said. I like this spicy tweet. And this coincided with the Democrats and the DNC rolling out a new social media logo, a white donkey on a dark blue background. And that donkey heralded a new age for Democrats on social media, a new era of communication, one that was more authentic, more snarky, more vicious, more rude, more unsparing, shorter, curder, more youthful, more lively. It's been sassy. It's been effective. And the party's taken some risks. At the end of May, a Daily Beast article came out claiming that Stephen Miller's wife had quit the White House and been poached, wooed away, and maybe more, by Elon Musk, which is fabulous in general, because I'll tell you who we hate here is Stephen Miller. So we are down with any humiliation of him, and the Democrats' social media account got him good posting, get this, a picture, just a lone picture alongside a tag of Stephen Miller's handle and a period, a picture showing what can only be described and what is instantly recognized by those in the know as a cuck chair. We're not going to talk about what that means. Slightly more obvious, though, is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's drinking problem. And a little while later, Pete had written a tweet to the Democrats saying, your agenda is illegals, trans and DEI, all of which are no longer allowed at DOD. So the Democrats clapped back with, again, just a photo, and the words, Pete's POV, next to a picture of an iPhone screen blurred out as if Pete was looking at it in a deep state of drunkenness, which, let's be honest, he probably was. So you might think, who led this change? Who pioneered a bold and controversial revolution at the DNC, upending years and years of accumulated political wisdom and best practices, safe, tried, true, conservative, cautious best practices, and who replaced it with this firestorm of snark? And for that matter, how? How the hell did they sell this idea? How did this get approved? And how do they continue to put out rapid responses within minutes, searing, potent, lively, memorable, unforgettable, youthful, viral content on all platforms? Well, the answer is our guest tonight, Paulina Mangubat. In early spring, she hosted a week-long strategy retreat with the full DNC social team. There, they rebuilt not just their content priorities, but their mindset and their approach to approvals. And hey, approaches to approvals and processes so that bigger and better things can happen much faster? Yeah, I think we do care about that in the EMB and abundance movement. I think we do. It is a major theme of radio abundance along with messaging. So we are ecstatic to have a digital content and creative director for the DNC, Paulina Mangubat, on tonight. And stay tuned after that interview for a new special segment. You know, over the next few weeks, we're going to introduce correspondence for radio abundance in various cities and states and subject matters, areas of discipline and focuses on abundance in politics to make sure that you as a national audience with whatever background you have, wherever you're from, with whatever context and expertise, that you get the full story all the time, every week across the country and in every area that you are up to speed on what's going down. And tonight, we're going to begin in New York City. We will tell you in a short segment what's happening in New York City right now in the worlds of abundance and Yimbyism. And of course, there's a rather big mayoral campaign underway at the moment. The primary for the New York City mayoral election is on June 24th, which is soon. New York City, of course, is a Democratic town. So in a sense, the big election is not the one in the fall. It's it's right here and now in the Democratic primary. That might not totally hold true. Andrew Cuomo might run on another party lines or on Mondani might run on another party line. A former Democrat and current Turkish MAGA something Eric Adams is running on another party line. You will hear all about that from our new New York City correspondents, Catherine Vaughn and Ryder Kessler, our friends from Abundance, New York. Check them out and make sure to check out their new voter guide at nyc2025.com. That's it for the intro. Let's get to the interview with Paulina Paulina, welcome to Radio Abundance. Thank you for having me. We are talking today and I'm super excited about it, in part because a few months ago, folks started to notice something online. The official accounts for the Democrats had changed their logo to a white donkey on a blue background and suddenly the the tweets and posts were bangers as well. And I think you had a little something to do with that. So I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about about what changed, how that happened and and your role in that. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for noticing the shift. Yeah, it's been a really formative couple of months for the DNC and our social program. I'd say that we first started laying the groundwork for the change in January when we launched our set of rapid response accounts, fact post, which primarily runs our sort of like clipping and oppo operation, but that we kind of further developed and finalized sort of the snarkier tone and direction that we were going to take our main accounts in around March, which is when we switched the profile photo back to the donkey.

17:48 You know, we want to meet the moment at the end of February. We posted this very long graphic that got a lot of blowback on the Internet. And so we took that as an opportunity to come together as a team. I hosted a week long retreat for us to refocus the accounts and we came out of it with a much better and faster approvals process and a renewed focus on just being snarkier, more clever and really focusing focusing on using platform specific approaches to, you know, be effective and meet the moment. So, you know, I mean, I think there's two components to it, right? One is the content you're putting out there. And then the other is is the process you use to put that content out there. And both of those things are things that we care about both for ourselves and for the abundance movement. It's an outcomes driven movement. And it's also a movement that says, hey, we can't have processes that bog us down forever and make it so that we can't be effective. How do we have the processes that are fast and that get us where we want to go?

18:42 So I want to ask about both of those. But let's start with content. I'm sure you wrote down some best practices that will kind of guide you. So what's what's the what's the shift? What's the kind of rubric by which you judge right now what to put out, what to create and whether what you've created is good? I think we've just seen that the Trump administration is constantly doing things that they got tariffs that they don't have tariffs. You know, Elon and Trump are breaking up and all of a sudden they're back together again. And so we have essentially turned both sides of the house, our, you know, rapid response operation and even just the DNC's house social brands like at the Democrats into rapid response operations like all on their own. And so we have essentially stopped drafting content, you know, days in advance saying to ourselves like, hey, this is going to happen.

19:30 Let's pre-draft it. Everything kind of happens day of. I think it's really important for everything that we're posting to feel current to the moment. And what we found is that that moment is kind of tightening and tightening and tightening further. And people have higher expectations of like something happens and we want to immediately have a counter with it. So, you know, that mindset has kind of resulted in some of what I think are our greatest hits, things like tweeting out ugly ass truck in reaction to having some cyber trucks parked in front of the White House or, you know, calling out Pete Hegseth for, we thought, potentially drunkenly tweeting us in reaction to us calling him out or, I don't know, posting a cuck chair in response to a news item about Stephen Miller. It is it is hard to plan in advance in the Trump era and especially Trump 2.0. You almost have to do more like scenario mapping like you would in a war environment, right? Play the war games and and figure out the different areas this could go in because, you know, we had this to where the first five episodes of Radio Abundance were all double features and they were I mean, they're at least two hours.

20:36 One of them got to three. It's ridiculous for a podcast. But the reason we did it is because we banked all these interviews and had no idea what the shelf life could be, because if if Trump wakes up one morning and decides to nuke China, it'll be weird that we didn't ask that congressman about nuking China. And so we had to pack them together and get them out there because things can change at any moment. And it's unpredictable. And so with that in mind, I'm curious about the process. What was the old process and what is the new process? I think that the old process will be pretty familiar to a lot of folks who've worked in social, not just in politics, but for any big brand where, you know, there is some kind of document where you're inputting the content. There is a large approvals chain of people who are, you know, they also have their own busy schedules, but they've received this document via email. And then whenever they have time to their reviewing and adding their comments, and it kind of puts everyone in this very risk averse posture where they're like, I'm an approver. I need to really like overthink this and think through every single possible outcome that, you know, posting this piece of content could have. And that just makes the content worse.

21:42 It like defangs it, it waters it down. And most crucially, I think it makes it feel out of time because it takes a really, really long time to kind of shepherd a piece of content through the approvals process. And in the past, you know, a lot of our social team's day was spent bumping our approvers and being like, hey, we need so-and-so to look at this thing. Hey, are we good? Hey, are we good? Which, you know, is not really good for anyone. Now we have actually emulated a process that was first pioneered by the Kamala HQ team last cycle. A lot of our team are alumni of the Kamala HQ team. I helped out a little bit, but not a ton with Kamala stuff. And they created an approvals process that was like five minute approvals in a group chat where they would just send things up. And if no one said anything, they would just go. We have a slightly wider approval window for the Democrats accounts. We have 15 minutes, but that still leaps and bounds better than, you know, suffering on an email chain. And I think it's resulted in a lot stronger of a content output.

22:42 So one part of this is changing the process to be better, but there's also the process of changing the process. And this is obviously something that we're obsessed with, right? In the Yimbian abundance movement, we're both seeking better processes for building and creating, whether that's private citizens or governments building and creating. And in order to do that, we have to convince people to change the process and go on the process of changing processes. This is no easy feat. And, and, you know, you're one of the two major political parties in America at a major moment in American history, having to convince folks to change how business is done. So what was the process of changing the process? How was this idea of not doing business as usual introduced? And how did you get buy-in? How did you negotiate what the new process would be? How was this born and midwifed?

23:28 I mean, we were lucky in the sense that, you know, we had, we had a proof point, you know, everyone sort of knows the success story of Kamala HQ and everything that that team accomplished, I think could not have been done without the approvals process that they created. And so in a time where everyone was kind of clamoring for a bit of a more aggressive approach to social from the Democrats and from the DNC, I think we were able to point to the success of Kamala HQ and say like, hey, this is the approvals process that worked for them. And it empowered them to, you know, break records online, you know, hit insane follower counts, you know, they're beloved in the eyes of many kind of after, after what happened in November. So there was that. And then a lot of it was just like scenario planning stakeholder conversations where, you know, we had to really familiarize the team with like, well, how far can we push it? Like, what kind of content are we actually going to be sending up? And, you know, for every single crazy, you know, cuck chair post that we do, there is there are 20 other posts that are mostly just clips of Democrats, like important information about elections coming up things that, you know, I want the team to be able to produce very, very easily. Like I wanted to come second nature to them. I want clear communication to be just sort of our bread and butter. And so once we kind of got past that hurdle and that recognition that like, we're not going to do anything super crazy unless it's like the right place, the right time, we're not punching for punching sake, we're punching for reach and effectiveness. Pretty much all of our approvers were like, hell yeah, let's do it. And it kind of makes their jobs easier too.

25:00 Well, Paulina, you win the award for the first mention of the word cuck and a cuck chair on radio abundance, but you're in, you're in good company. I wear it somewhat as a badge of honor in the fall when we came out as a Yimby's for Harris. So we started with a giant fundraiser, had 70 Yimby speakers, governors, senators, Congress people, you know, pundits, writers, authors, policy wonks, and a standup comedian, a trans comedian from the South. She's wonderful. Her name is Stacy Kaye. And Stacy did a little standup set for us and, and dropped the word And I thought, wow, we are almost definitely the first and only affinity for Harris group to, uh, to say the word And I didn't expect it. And I'm already sorry to have said it twice, but, uh, you know, we got to break through some boundaries here because there's worse stuff going on than words right now.

25:52 Um, with, uh, I mean, I, I, uh, let's see, what did I want to ask? I've been distracted now by, by those words. Um, sorry. Kamala, speaking of for Harris, speaking of Kamala Harris, speaking of Kamala HQ and the social media campaign. I mean, to me, I don't know how you feel. It is when I, I, I, similar to the memory holding of COVID, the memory holding that we find in, in history of the pandemic around, uh, around world war one and, and how there's just nothing written about it. And you go, how was that just admitted from history? And then we get to COVID and you're like, I see how nobody wants to talk about that. That's how I feel about the 2024 presidential campaign. It is eerie to me. I get a little emotional now flashing back to it because of what happened next. And it's, it's weird because like for me, Kamala social media campaign was unbelievable. And if she'd won, then I think we'd all be touting it as the newest and greatest and biggest achievement. And because she didn't win, uh, everything kind of gets stained with that. But I, you know, I have my own theories of how the election turned out and that's not for our conversation today, but I did think the social media, I kind of think it, it rock. Um, and any criticism of it is probably better suited for other aspects. I'm curious kind of for your postmortem of that effort, what you thought rocked and went super well about that social media campaign. You've mentioned some of what you've learned and taken with you since, and then anything, you know, with, with all the benefit of hindsight, it's not a critique of the campaign.

27:12 It's not a critique of Kamala Harris. It's not a critique of you or anybody else. It happened fast and it was amazing, but there's always things to learn. I'm curious what you take from it that you think was amazing and where you go, ah, here's, here's how we can improve and build upon that in the future. Totally. Well, I think that there are amazing things that we can take out of it. One is that at least in my experience, I had not really seen a digital operation that was as well staffed as that presidential. And I think that, you know, regardless of the outcome, it is really, really good to see the amount of effort that went to growing that team. It allowed the teams like the Kamala HQ team essentially had strategists that specialized in individual platforms and were really, really, really familiar with the kind of cultural mores and trends that were specific to both platforms. Like it looks completely different from Instagram to TikTok and like all credit or credit is due to Parker Butler and that amazing team that ran that. There were similar things that were happening on the Kamala Harris side of the house, which I supported a bit more. And then the other thing that I think, you know, should be worth noting is the fact that a lot of the social work was driven by success on TikTok. And I don't know, people have short memories, but it felt like it's not that long ago that people were really nervous about using TikTok as a tool for elected officials to communicate with their voters. People were like, oh, I'm not sure. It's kind of seems like, you know, not a real place or like kind of like a silly place for silly trends and things like that. And it felt really good to see TikTok prioritize just the same as any other social platform.

28:48 So I mean, it always goes like that. Right. I'm I'm a little older than you. Not an old man yet, but a bit older, I think. And, you know, in 2006, Facebook was a silly place for silly people. And in 2008, Barack Obama used it to win the presidency. So so these things happen. Paulina, let's take a step back for a second. Who are you? Who am I?

29:13 Okay, well, I'm a Virgo.

29:16 Next question. All right. Yeah, no, I'm a Virgo. I grew up in Arizona. I was born in Louisiana, though. I came to the DNC a little over a year ago. So I've really not been here very long. It feels like every single quarter has thrown a new challenge my way. When I started, Joe Biden was still the presidential nominee. And, you know, within a half year of my starting, you know, we were in the thick of a GOTV cycle with a completely different presidential candidate. So that's just it's all been transition before coming to the to the DNC. I've had experiences working in politics in a number of ways. So I spent two years at Google working on the political ads team, helping Democratic campaigns and orgs use YouTube effectively. I spent two years working for Mayor Michelle Wu in Boston, who is just the best. And we did a lot of really, really cool and innovative things for her digital program when she ran for mayor the first time around. So that is an experience that I hold very near and dear to my heart. I just love that team so much. And then before that, you know, I was at the DTrip in 2018. I was at a firm called Authentic working on digital fundraising for democratic and progressive causes. So basically, essentially, a new gig every single cycle, as many books who work in the political space.

30:26 And I'm lucky, I think, to have worked both on the fundraising side and on the content side. So I have kind of an interesting perspective on how to how to get the most out of your efforts on the internet. You know, you do not win the award for the first mention of astrology on Radio London. I think that goes, no, you win. I mean, it is a welcome conversation. You just don't you get the silver because the winner of that race, if I recall correctly, I believe was an Arizona legislator, a Phoenix City Council member, Ana Hernandez. And if I recall correctly, she was an Aries. But we can fact check that. Paulina, I am I'm curious who your inspirations and references are. I'm sure you don't want to give away the whole playbook. But who do you think? Sure, in politics, and then also in the worlds of pop culture, any communication, whether it's in the messaging, the style, the vibes, I mean, and I'm sure it differs by social media platform. But who do you pull from? Or at the very least, who do you think is doing a great job?

31:22 Yeah. Right now at the DNC, we're pulling from a lot of nonpolitical references. My goal for the account is to be able to compete with the biggest accounts on the platform. Like, I don't want to be competing against other political accounts. I think that that's setting the bar too low. I think that we should be, you know, on Twitter, we should be competing with like, the pop craves of the world, you know, like, I want all of our accounts to be a destination. And so obviously, on Twitter, we're modeling off of one, we want to have like the constant coverage and always on approach of something like a pop crave, a pop bass, an ASIN, all of those folks, we want to have the kind of knowledge, knowledge base and ability to, you know, speak informatively, but also like be really, really clever and quick on our feet. Like a Derek guy on Instagram, we want everything that we post to be like really eminently shareable. And so we're looking at accounts like Complex and Saint Hoax and these kind of pop culture general interest accounts that really focus on these sort of almost random seeming carousels that really encourage people to keep swiping, keep their thumb on their phone and post stuff to stories. And then on TikTok, I think like for me, we are really just trying to get kind of weird. And so a lot of the references that we pull on TikTok are like, kind of bizarro, brain rotty sounds and things like that. I find that, you know, we never want to get in on a trend too late. And I'm always scared that because we're the official side account, if we hop on a trend, it's like we ruin it because it's like, oh no, the Democrats have weighed in. It's over now, guys, pack it up. So I'm always trying to find something that's kind of like unexpected, something that people wouldn't necessarily assume that we would jump on. So yeah, those are a lot of chaotic examples, but that's kind of how we've been thinking about it.

33:04 Chaotic examples for a chaotic time. Well, we threw out some curse words earlier, so I'm going to go back to that subject. Paulina, right now, I would like to discuss asses. Pause for tension and confusion. One particular ass, a jackass. In fact, the Democratic donkey logo. We began by saying that really marked the ship. That was kind of an announcement of a new brand and a new era. It has proven correct and been exciting. I always, I mean, I think about, look, I got an artist background, design background. I care a lot about aesthetics. I think about that stupid donkey a lot for a few reasons. One, I mean, it's not a, I mean, it's not a dignified logo and exciting. Like, why aren't we an eagle? But also in the weird political shifts, you know, we talk about this all the time. We're in an era where you have people who call themselves conservatives trying to tear down the world order. You have an era where, if you don't mind me saying, people call themselves progressives who do not want to create the future and are scared of it. You have, I always say I have no idea and probably never will what a neoliberal is supposed to mean. A liberal can be a far left Democrat or, you know, Adam Smith devotee. So these words are crazy. And the donkey is part of this because the Republican Party, party of Lincoln. Nope.

34:22 And that donkey comes from Andrew Jackson. And folks, folks called him a jackass because of Jackson and because he was a jackass. And he adopted it as his logo. And it has been the logo of the Democratic Party ever since. Paulina, tell me about the donkey. I think at the end of the day, we're going for immediate brand recognition on the Internet, especially since we're trying to target the most people who might not always be like the highest information voters. And our previous profile photo was it is still a logo that the DNC uses. It's that kind of like D with the circle around it. I think that if you showed that to someone off the street and you ask them, what does that logo represent? They might not immediately say the Democratic Party. They might, you know, be like, well, it's clearly something that starts with a D, but I'm not sure. Whereas if you're just scrolling on your feet and you see a donkey, whatever your the history or like sort of your awareness of of kind of like the heritage of the donkey mascot within the Democratic Party, you know who the account is and and that it's, you know, the Democratic Party. And so that's just the thing that I think it makes it feel clearer to our target audience, like who we are and sort of the spirit that we're trying to emulate. Like we want to be recognizable. We want them to notice what we're doing. We don't want to just sort of blend in with kind of a more like businessy kind of more, I guess, quote unquote, traditionally professional, you know, profile photo. So that's kind of why we did it.

35:46 You know, I find this to be an eye opening point, I think. Right. I so I really like the D triple C's current logo. I don't know if you know it. It's like several. How would you describe it? It's like it's sort of several waves of a D. Yeah, I think it's supposed to represent like the shape of like how Congress sits like on its side. I never got that. I just thought it was cool squiggles. I really liked it. But you're right. If you showed that to someone, they'd be like, I don't know, seems like a fun app. But the donkey, that's a donkey. You can't argue with that. Paulina, it's very early. I mean, you made the shift in March. It's June now. So it's been what I mean, has it even been has even been a full three months? Don't make me do math.

36:30 Right. It's been like, yeah, it's been a couple of months. You know, sometimes a musical artist has so many hits, they got to put up greatest hits a little early. So I'm wondering what are the early. Now that's what I call banger tweets. Do you get that reference? Am I too old? No, no, no. I know. Now that's what I call music. All right. Yeah. Pull around. Okay. What are your greatest hits? Well, challenge the framing there, because I feel like our greatest hits actually have not necessarily been on Twitter, although I know that a lot of political folks kind of live live and breathe on Twitter. I think that, you know, last week during the whole Trump and Elon shakeup, we did it was just a phenomenal week of posting. We did a Fleetwood Mac Silver Springs edit on TikTok that like I think is sitting at 12 million views. Obviously, we did a lot of really fun Epstein kind of callback content on Instagram and on Twitter that did really well. You know, we actually posted a photo of Trump with Epstein like a month ago, like a month before Elon started talking about it. So it was fun to kind of call back to that initial tweet. So that was great. I think that we did a really good job around when when Joni Ernst was like, we're all going to die or we all are going to die. We did a lot of really great content across platforms there. Obviously, a lot of people like to bring up the cuck chair or the Pete Hegseth like drunken call out, which I think were really great moments. But yeah, I don't know.

37:52 I think as fun as some of those like big tweet, like watershed tweet moments have been, I just hate the idea of just fixating on Twitter. I think, you know, TikTok is our fastest growing platform right now. We've added over half a million followers since January, and it's been a huge engine of growth for the team. So, you know, credit to where credit is due for the team for not, you know, expanding a little bit beyond that Twitter audience. Yeah, well, I'm curious for any favorite TikToks. And I'm especially excited to ask because when people try to describe TikToks, you don't immediately get the reference. They sound insane. So this should be really fun. I'd love a couple of examples of the best TikToks. Oh, God. Okay. Yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean. I feel like I'm going to sound very, very crazy. This is a trap, but it's going to be 100% a trap. Okay, are you familiar with the Zendaya hat? I know who Zendaya is. You know who Zendaya is? Okay. So a couple of years ago, she wore to a public function this like, very, very large hat. And I think back in May, people started making these sort of like creepypasta, creepy edits of the hat being like, what's underneath the hat, like kind of like these like, rotted edits of it. And then she showed up at the Met Gala wearing like not a not as large a hat, but still wearing a hat and it kind of renewed the trend. And so we did this hat talk edit of Republicans wearing hideous hats. So you know, Kristi Noem and her hat.

39:19 There's a photo of Trump wearing a cowboy hat. I think there was like Mark Wayne Wallens wearing hat and it was edited in the style of Zendaya hat talk. And the people who got it, like it really resonated with them. I think it's like at half a mil views right now. People were like, wow, it all makes sense because it's a conspiracy thing. So that's sort of what I mean when I say that we're focusing on sort of some more off kilter stuff on on TikTok. And yeah, I hope that I sounded really crazy when I explained that. That was really fun. I think I understood what you mean, though I cannot picture the Zendaya hat. So I have some Googling to do. But yeah, you will be shocked at how large it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I come from the theater. I have seen some big hats, but that was a lot of fun for me. And I can we do another one. Do you have another one?

40:05 I have another one. Um, there is an audio that is in Japanese of a like, it's very high pitched. And it essentially, um, it, it started as people doing edits of, um, you know, famous characters or their, their favorite singers or whomever, uh, characters from TV. Um, they would edit it to this audio and audio is essentially in Japanese would say like, Hey, introduce yourself. What's your favorite flavor of ice cream? And then, you know, people would just kind of edit it to the beat with a lot of really glittery filters and like a lot of pink kind of things. Um, then people started taking that original audio and editing in different sounds of the people that they were editing into these edits. Right. So that continued on. And then someone took that sound and paired it with, uh, train noises, just like, like, like horns honking, like shrieking. And we took that edit and we did a fat JD Vance TikTok edit with it. And, and, um, the thing that's so great about it is, um, I actually, uh, this is going to sound very silly, but I talked to notice and they did, uh, an article about our social program. And in the lead image, they used a screenshot of that JD from that TikTok edit. And I was like, wow, this is the proudest moment of my life. Um, like super, super silly TikTok edit. But, um, again, it makes, I promise it makes sense to the people that we were trying to reach with it.

41:29 I'm, I'm glad, uh, JD Vance could bring you to the proudest moment of your life. That was really fun. We should do a weekly segment where you explain TikToks. Um, hey, lightning round, fat JD Vance at our meme, their meme, or everybody's meme? Um, uh, depends on application. Yeah, it is like everybody's meme. They tried to reclaim it. I still think that at the end of the day, he's quite a pathetic person and that, you know, when deployed correctly, it is our meme. Yeah. The, the, the, that JD Vance meme, uh, is not nearly as damaging to his self-image as his official portrait, where he looks like he's, uh, kind of withering and dying from evil a bit on, on the, the first 10% of, of his way from, uh, from Senator Palpatine to Emperor Palpatine is the transitional thing there. Yeah. Um, you know, we have a big audience for this. We have, uh, we, there are folks in, in Congress who listen. There are certainly comms directors, staffers, folks who, who run and, uh, promote, uh, major political organizations, folks, uh, you know, who may be working in the marketing departments of companies or just, you know, creating their own cool stuff. Uh, what, what can people learn from you?

42:43 There's probably a lot more that I could learn from them. Um, but I mean, I think like everything that I said about the approvals process, um, stands, I will say that there's a difference between doing social for a big organization versus, you know, for an individual person or for a principal. And so, um, I don't want anyone to take sort of anything that I've said today and say like, Oh, we should only be posting memes or we should only be doing, you know, such and such posts at the end of the day. I think people are craving authenticity. And so part of the reason why I think actually that people have been responding to our renewed approaches on social is because we're kind of like dropping the pretense that we're not just people who like run these social accounts. And we are reacting to the news as, you know, any other sort of young online sort of group of people would react to news of the Trump admin. And we're trying to communicate our agenda in the same way that, you know, we would communicate with our friends or like, you know, we would send a joke to our friends along those same lines. And that's authentic to who we are as the DNC social team. Right. I would not recommend necessarily doing that if I, you know, was doing it for, you know, an elected member of Congress or something like that, if that's not how I communicate to them and like experience them as a person.

43:55 And so, you know, one, don't overthink the approvals process. If, if two, the content really feels reflective of the people who the account represents. So for us, that's, you know, Democrats. And, you know, for, for others, it might be a different group of people. Now, I can say this, maybe you can't say this, but I can say this to me, you are spearheading the voice and imagery and brand and identity of the one hope in the world to defeat fascism in America and change the course of world history. That's pretty exciting. And also in praising you, you'll see folks online be like, ooh, the interns are cooking, which, you know, maybe the interns ran the accounts in 2007. It's a little different story now. I wonder how do you react to that? I think it's a compliment. You know, I think it's, it's always a good sign. People don't really mean that ever in a derogatory way. They don't actually mean like, we think that you have the mind of a child. Although I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. I think that young people are really, really good at using social media. They're really, really funny. They set so much of the cultural agenda. They set so many trends. And so we're honestly like, at least for me, it's one of my primary KPIs is if people are responding to it being like the intern cooked here. Because, you know, I've not been an intern for a while, but it's nice to, to feel young. So I don't mind it at all. I, I don't know. I guess that there's like meta commentary around whether people respect, you know, social media workers and people who kind of put together those things and whether assuming that they're interns debases the profession in any way, but I am not inclined to think that it's that deep. So, yeah. You know, you've just sent a kind of, kind of ripples of fear through me as I tried to do the mental math to figure out whether the 2028 or 2032 elections will be fought over Skibbity Toilet, or at least over, uh, whatever the air of that is for people who grew up formed by it. So, uh, so we will see what the humor of the youth brings us in the years to come. The thing with Skibbity Toilet actually is like, obviously, yes, brain rot. It's silly.

46:03 I think that, um, and I'm not super well read on Skibbity lore. There's a darkness to that story. It's, it's like about like warring factions of which the Skibbities are on one side. So there's food for thought. Um, all right. You know, this started as a joke, but now I'm, uh, now I'm, uh, seeing the references and imagining the 2028 campaign and, uh, also dreading the fact that I've already told you everything that I know about Skibbity Toilet and apparently have to start doing a lot more research into what the hell that is. Uh, as we start to come to our finale, I'm curious, uh, we've covered a lot of ground here, but what haven't I asked you that I should have? Um, no, it's a good question. Um, one is, I guess this is not a question. This is just me.

46:49 Like, I just want to say, this is also just a platform to speak. The talking stick is in your hands. You are on the rostra. Um, I have been asked a lot of questions about the DMC social team and, you know, I'm just one person of, of several who work on the accounts and I think it's really important for the whole team to be recognized. And so, you know, I don't ever want it to feel like, you know, it takes one person to change the course of how an organization as big and important as the DNC communicates. I want people to invest in their digital teams. I want people to invest in talent, invest in young people, but also take digital seriously so that people who work in this profession, like really see a future for themselves in politics and stay and stick around and, and lead. So I don't know. I think as there's, there's obviously the very fun and funny side of working on the internet that I cherish and value very, very much, but it takes a lot of work and a lot of dedication. Arlie, who's our director of rapid response is like just constantly tracking the news and everything that the Trump admin is doing. And people like that, I think, you know, it's, it's, it's a sacrifice. It's a lot of work and it takes a lot of skill. So, um, I'm just grateful to work with the folks that I do. Well, it's a, it's a beautiful and crucial point, right? This is a, this is a team sport. And, and even when we have efficient, fast, effective processes that enable us to, uh, express ourselves and, uh, and, and, you know, sort of take ownership and take charge, it's still a team sport and it's, it's everybody taking charge and making things happen. So with that in mind, let's end with this fun thing. Um, and I'm gonna, gonna put you on the spot here, Paulina picture yourself at the Oscars. There is a new category, best social media video or account, uh, of a political party. You have won the Oscar. Your whole team has you all gather on stage and you are chosen to give the speech. I will, uh, in the edit, throw in that, uh, that Oscar music to, Oh, wow. Yeah, no, I can't. I would do it live, but I would be easier to do it in the edit. So, uh, um, uh, uh, you know, we need a, a good Oscar speech. We need you to, to thank the team. This is, uh, yours and, and off the cuff, which will make it more authentic because they're all drunk when they do it anyways. So, uh, Paulina, congratulations on your Oscar. Who do you want to thank?

49:06 Okay. Well, just to set, I know that this is, um, this is all imaginary, but just to really set the stage. I'm in like a really amazing dress and I walk very elegantly and in a very professional, um, and aura filled manner onto the stage. Just to really, yeah. And you know, um, uh, all right, I'm going to, I'm going to drag this on a little longer. Can you, uh, just, uh, just while away our finite hours before the grave by telling us a second about your imaginary dress, I want to paint the scene. It's maybe designed by like a really cool up and coming designer that we don't know yet. It's like the DNC is making a statement by supporting a cool up and coming designer. I think that it's gonna, it's gonna be like an off the shoulder situation and I would hope that my shoes were comfortable. My posture is immaculate as I make my way to the microphone. And then I'll just say, you know, thank you very much to everyone who gave us feedback in February about that long graphic that we posted. I'm so sorry. We took that feedback very, very seriously. Um, and I, and I don't mean that in like any type of way. I mean that in like, uh, I am glad that we have been able to take that opportunity to really redo how we approach our, our social content. And it would not have been possible without people like Shelby Cole, who is our amazing chief mobilization officer here at the DNC, um, or Tim Hogan, who's our ward room director or chair Kim Martin, who is obviously the DNC chair. Obviously so much of leadership at the DNC has guided us to this moment, but also, you know, all of the folks who are in the weeds every single day producing the content. So, you know, Arlie and Alicia, Patricia and Gabby and Zach and Christian, and all of those folks, Akima, everyone who's just in it, dealing with the difficulties of working in this moment and responding to this administration, you know, it's not easy work.

51:07 Obviously it's a challenging environment. And so I'm just proud of what we've done. And I am really, really hoping that we can keep up the momentum to build a DNC digital apparatus that helps us win in the midterms, because this is all about winning elections and can set the standard for how committees should approach digital. It all goes towards strengthening the party and making people's lives better. So, yeah, I don't know. That's it. And then they're probably playing me off because I've talked too long and then I kind of run off stage. I was, uh, I was very good. I'd hum the music, but, uh, A, I don't know it. And B, uh, but you know, who's not tone deaf? Uh, the Democrats new social media team and Paulina Mongabot. Paulina, thank you so much for joining us on Radio Abundance today.

52:01 Thank you. Now it's time for Radio Abundance News Bulletin from New York City. Please welcome Radio Abundance's new New York City correspondents, Catherine Horn and Ryder Kessler from Abundance, New York.

52:28 Hey, Radio Abundance, I'm Ryder Kessler and I'm Catherine Vaughn. And we are the executive directors of Abundance New York, a political community here in the city for folks who want more housing and really more of everything we need to thrive. We're here to tell you a little about what is up on the East Coast. New York City update, chapter one, the mayoral race. Let's talk mayoral first. Yeah. So the mayoral primary is coming up on the 24th. Our incumbent mayor, Eric Adams, decided to opt out of this one. He's going to just run in the general after his indictments led to a plummeting of his popularity. So we have basically what seems like a two person race within a crowded nine person field. The former governor, Andrew Cuomo, who was governor for over a decade before resigning in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations, is leading in the polls mostly. But very close on his heels is assembly members or on Mondani, a 33 year old democratic socialist who actually is leading in the first poll that shows that just in the last couple of days. It's a ranked choice election, which means that a lot of voters are ranking other folks first. But only Mondani and Cuomo seem to have what it takes to go all the way.

53:37 From a housing perspective, neither of them is a great EMB or abundance champion. Cuomo oversaw a decade where there really wasn't much housing growth. His base of support is largely low density neighborhoods in the outer boroughs. He seems reluctant to up zone, though he has a headline plan to build 500,000 units, which, according to some reporting, was written with the help of ChatGPT. On the other hand, Zoran Mamdani has really focused on freezing the rent for rent stabilized tenants. Insofar as he's committed to building more, he's really focused on building more rent stabilized housing, which is extremely expensive. He wants to spend 70 billion dollars to build 200,000 units. And it just seems like that plan actually is not tenable. It requires money that's not constitutionally available. It's a bit in the weeds, but neither really is kind of the EMB choice for mayor.

54:30 Yeah, it's really a shame that neither of the front runners is an ideal EMB candidate. And of course, we've put our thumb on the scale. We've endorsed Zellner Meyrie and Brad Lander as our top two candidates when it comes to, you know, proponents of the abundance agenda. And we, of course, did an event with EMB Dems for America for Zellner Meyrie. And although neither of them are front runners, we really think they've shifted the Overton window in this race in terms of how all of the candidates talk about housing. Zellner put out a plan for one million homes. You know, the majority of them market rate and Brad Lander followed suit with a plan for 500,000 homes. And we saw candidate after candidate really put out much more ambitious numbers than we've heard in recent history. In the most recent mayoral debate, we saw Adrian Adams, the current speaker of the city council, talk about her role in getting city of yes past the finish line. That's the recent zoning text amendment that will result in about 80,000 new homes over the next 15 years.

55:20 We saw Zoran Mamdani in the New York Times recent interview acknowledged that he changed his mind on the role of market rate housing in solving the affordability crisis. And in this debate, he talked about needing Tokyo style housing. It's really striking to see a member of the DSA adopt such EMB framing. And we really think that, you know, the whole discourse around housing has changed. You know, we're seeing experts recognize that Zellner has the best housing plan and that Brad Lander is kind of the best overall candidate. We saw a panel of experts that the New York Times put together in lieu, I should say, of actually making an endorsement themselves. But we saw this panel of experts acknowledge, you know, that that Brad Lander kind of has all that it takes. He has both the vision and the kind of experience as the city comptroller to lead. You know, they acknowledged the ambition behind Zellner's housing plan. You know, the real question is whether that'll move the race. And of course, you know, this isn't over in June necessarily. Usually the June Democratic primaries are kind of where the action is. And November feels more like a formality. But, you know, this year we could see a five way race in November. Cuomo has already registered to be on an independent party line in the fall. And the WFP, the Working Families Party, is likely to put a candidate on ballot if Cuomo wins the primary. So we could see. And there's, of course, there's no ranked choice voting in November. So we could see a candidate run away with the mayoralty with, you know, 30% of the vote.

56:43 Yeah, it is really an interesting cycle. And the mayoral has been complicated. We run down our thoughts in our voter guide, which folks can find at m2025.com, where we actually recommend when it comes down to it, ranking Zoran over Cuomo. So a lot to think about there. But the mayor is really just the top of the ticket. And there's a lot going on lower on the ballot. So Catherine, what else is on the ballot in June? New York City update chapter two down ballot. Yeah, so we're focused on the comptroller race. First, it's it's the second most important role in the city after the mayor is the city's CFO. And we're supporting Mark Levine, who has been the Manhattan borough president. He's been a real champion for building more. He's been a vocal YIMBY official. And it would be really amazing to see him, you know, continue to climb the ladder. He had previously been a council member and to, you know, represent citywide office and to have such a YIMBY perspective in the in the second most important role. And then we're also looking at borough presidents. You know, there are several. Each borough has its own president. It's largely a ceremonial role, although BP play a significant role in land use decisions and in community board appointments.

57:55 And community boards also play a role in land use and are often boards of kind of empowered, older, wealthier, whiter New Yorkers that don't really want to see new housing built. And so they're often a veto point when we're trying to to build more. And so Mark Levine is the current Manhattan borough president. He's obviously running for comptroller. And we have a great BP candidate for Manhattan in Keith Powers, who really has this record of standing up to NIMBYs as he's been on the city council, you know, really across the board, both in terms of, you know, housing decisions, but also in coastal resiliency efforts, you know, some transit related work. So he's been a really awesome kind of EMB candidate. And we're excited to see him potentially step up and be the next Manhattan borough president. Let's tap. What else is on the ballot writer? Yes. And so then there is the city council. And so the 51 member council is basically the legislature for New York City. The mayor has a ton of power in setting the agenda and the direction, but really, the council has to weigh in on all of these questions past the budget and pass, as Catherine mentioned, the zoning changes that legalize more housing in the city. The council does that whether it is a citywide plan like the city of Yes for Housing Opportunity that legalized 80,000 new homes, which is really big for New York, but also still a fraction of what we need to address the housing shortage. The city council also has to vote on neighborhood rezonings or just even individual projects that require rezoning. And so it really matters who those 51 council members are. This cycle, it's a lot of incumbents running for reelection. There are about 10 open seats. And then there are some races where incumbents are being challenged. And there are a few that we think are really important for EMBism and abundance generally. So in the first council district, which is lower Manhattan, we have probably the most NIMBY council member in Chris Marte, maybe not the most NIMBY, but certainly the most relative to where he should be given that he represents a dense lower Manhattan neighborhood.

59:46 He was the only council member in Manhattan to vote against that rezoning to legalize 80,000 new homes. He's also opposed stuff like congestion pricing. He wants to reopen streets to cars that have been pedestrianized. He hates our outdoor dining program that allows folks to, you know, enjoy going to a restaurant outside. So Jess Coleman is a candidate running against him who's gotten a lot of traction, who would basically just represent a total sea change and bring a pro-housing energy to that lower Manhattan representation. A little bit north of that on the east side is council district four, where Keith Powers, who Catherine talked about, is being termed out of the council running for borough president instead. That's a really wide open race with a lot of different candidates with different perspectives. One, Ben Wetzler has represented New Yorkers as a district leader, which is kind of an elected position even lower on the ballot than council. And he's a housing expert with a lot of great YUMBI ideas. So we're excited about Ben's possibility to replace Keith in the council. In the Bronx, Purina Sanchez is a excellent younger member of the council who chairs the housing committee. And she was very important in getting City of Yes over the finish line while also pairing it with a lot of investments in tenant protections and affordable housing development. So she kind of shows that, you know, we can have great YUMBs who are also thinking about the demand and subsidy side of things.

1:01:04 In Brooklyn, Shahana Hanif is facing a really tough reelection challenge against someone kind of running from her right. And this really goes to show that, you know, YUMBI politics in New York are not at one point on the left-right spectrum. You know, Shahana Hanif is one of the co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus. In that role, she got a local rezoning, a very controversial one called Arrow Linnan passed. She supported City of Yes. And then her colleague in the Progressive Council, Chris Martin, who I talked about, is a huge YUMBI. So it really shows that the kind of these issues are not found in a in a simple left to right frame. So Shahana has been great on this stuff, and we hope she wins reelection. So that's just a few of the council races that we're thinking about, and which will determine whether New York is EMB or whether we are stuck in the status quo going forward.

1:01:56 New York City update chapter three policy. All right. So we have been super focused on the elections, but obviously many of the electeds we talked about are, you know, currently in session making policy. What's what's going on with that now? Yeah. So I think, you know, there aren't huge legislative victories to celebrate these days. The City of Yes for Housing Opportunity passed quite a while ago now, and that was a big win. But now it's about what comes next. I think the big thing that is coming next is a potential update to the city charter. So the city charter is basically the constitution of New York City, and it gets amended through this process where a commission comes up with ideas and then puts them on a citywide ballot. So there's a charter revision commission that is underway right now and is really focused on a few things. But one of them is housing affordability and expediting the creation of new housing. There's a very complicated process called ULERP, the Uniform Land Use Review process that currently governs these rezonings, which has a lot of veto points, a lot of public feedback, and really draws things out and makes it hard to get to yes. So it's very possible that on the November ballot we'll have some questions to speed up housing development. And that would be really great. In the meantime, we kind of see progress at the project or neighborhood level.

1:03:12 There was a good neighborhood rezoning that was approved recently, the Atlantic Avenue Mixed Use Plan, AIMUP, where two council members who, as I gestured towards earlier, kind of are on the progressive side, Chios and Crystal Hudson. But they, you know, have got this rezoning done to create thousands of new homes. And they made a really great video about how the housing shortage only serves landlord interests. And it shows that, you know, we really can have great progressive framing around the need for more housing. So that's some of the good news. What else is happening? What's the bad? Yeah. I mean, the bad news. So the legislative session at the state level is coming to a close. Most policy in the New York state legislature actually passes in the budget, which was held up. And, you know, unfortunately meant that there's a small window now since the budget has been wrapping up to try to push for additional policy. The budget didn't have a lot on housing. You know, Kathy Hochul took a big swing a couple of years ago to try to pass, you know, a much more comprehensive housing compact. It failed. I think she's on her toes right now. And so I don't think we have much to expect on housing from her. Housing advocates in the legislature are pushing the Faith-Based Affordable Housing Act, which would allow places of worship to build housing on their land. And so that is currently being discussed and we'll keep you posted.

1:04:25 This has been a Radio Abundance News Bulletin from our Radio Abundance New York City correspondents from Abundance New York, Katherine Vaughn and Ryder Kessler.

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1:05:50 Transcription by CastingWords Thank you.