Reid My Mind

TR:
When I was younger, well actually, throughout my life, I enjoyed watching my mother at work.
I don’t mean at her job. I’m talking about doing the things she did in the community and elsewhere.
I talked about my mother on the podcast after she became an ancestor. Mom was very involved in her church and in the local community. Often planning and managing all sorts of church functions.
I remember when she was a part of the team, raising funds to move the church into its own building. At the time, this church was in a room in the local community center. I was like “why isn’t she raising money for us to get a house?”
That was just me being silly. I liked living in an apartment and my community was a great place to grow up.
I would often stop by the event or maybe a planning session just to sit somewhere in the back and observe. The way people approached her with questions. The way she’d delegate assignments or respond to a problem and get it resolved. Even though my Spanish was never up to par, I could tell, she was respected. When she was speaking, she looked so cool and in control. La Donia! Mom was a boss!
My mother was a natural leader. Even in the family, aunts, uncles and cousins would come to her for advice and help. She was the one familiar with the system because she needed to help various family members navigate. Some of y’all know exactly what I mean.
In another life, my mother could have been a Justice Sotomayor or Ketanji Brown Jackson. She could have been the leader of some national nonprofit or community organization. But in her lifetime, she was definitely still a leader.
Leadership presents differently on the surface, but underneath there are shared characteristics. Personally, I think we all have some of these traits. Perhaps just lying dormant, waiting to be activated.

— Triumphant music begins

Today, I’m here to speak directly to you. Yes you. Come in close, I need to share a bit of information you need to hear. You may not believe this, but it is absolutely true… you are a leader!
I’m Thomas Reid. This is Reid My Mind Radio!

— Reid My Mind Radio Intro

TR:
This Power to the People series has been leading up to this conversation. That is, disabled people in leadership or governance.
Notice y’all, I didn’t say government. While that’s definitely a part of this conversation, so often the things that really impact our lives are local. I’m talking about your city, town or borough. Sometimes hyper local as in your home owner’s association or your Co-op board.
That’s important, so I’ll continue to remind you of this point.
Now, meet my first guest in this conversation.

Neal:
My name is Neil Carter, the principal and founder of New View consulting. I am the president and co-founder of disability victory, the president and founder of the black consultant group. I am a black man in a blue shirt, sitting in a black office chair in a predominantly white room with a picture of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X looking over my shoulder.
I’ve been in the electoral space for almost 30 years.
I know I don’t look like it, but that’s because my ancestors are working overtime and I have a fantastic skincare routine.

TR:
Talk that! You know how we do!

TR in conversation with Neal:
So, tell me a little bit about your relationship to disability.

Neal:
I’ve had a disability my entire life, physical disability. And as such, I think about not just accessibility for my own needs, but I also think about accessibility in the lens of other disabled people.
Every second of the day, most disabled people, will tell you we are constantly thinking about accessibility. We are thinking about, how can we adapt in this inaccessible world? How can we maneuver in this inaccessible space?
I’ve just been trying to thrive and not necessarily allowing for stigmas or self-doubt to disrupt my lived experience as a disabled person.

TR in conversation with Neal:
I think that’s something that we deal with, but I don’t hear people really claim it often. It’s a real thing, so thank you for that.

TR:
Just a few minutes into the conversation and Neal is already Displaying what I think are some characteristics of a good leader.
Confidence, honesty.
Do you all remember honesty? Yeah, I’m being snarky!

Neal:
My background actually wasn’t in politics. My background was actually in theater. I actually wanted to be on stage as a career.
Shakespeare, musical theater, stage plays, opera, all of that.
But I realized that that part of the stage wasn’t for me. I actually shifted to being more preferred behind the scenes.

TR:
Neal got involved in politics when his father set him up to work with a friend who just so happened to be running for re-election.
Neal:
That Congressman is no longer in office, but he is still a political and business mentor of mine. I decided to kind of shift gears after I got involved in that campaign.
There’s the old quote all politics is theater. In a way, I didn’t necessarily totally shift from theater.

— Transition – movie clapper board

TR:
Neal along with his co-founder Sarah Blaovec recognized a need to train disabled progressives to run for office, staff campaigns, and organize for change.
In 2023 they began Disability Victory. But the origin actually goes back to 2019 when Sara approached Neal about providing training to members of a national non-profit, her employer at that time.
Neal:
It Wasn’t Necessarily About How to Run for Office, Yet. It Was About How to Get More Politically Active.
Again, This Is 2019, So I Had Maybe a Decade and Some Change Being in the Political Consulting Industry. I Had a Rolodex of a Good Amount of Political Consultants That Had Training Capacity. And I Really Wanted to Make Sure That the Political Consultants That Didn’t Usually Have an Audience of Disabled People That Were Interested in Getting Involved Electorally. I Wanted to Make Sure That Those Consultants Could Talk to and Train Up Those Folks.

TR:
The Virtual Trainings Were Held Each Year, 2019 Through 2023, Skipping 2020.
The Work Was Well Received and Gaining Recognition, So When Sarah Transitioned Out of The Nonprofit, The Idea Was Born.
Neal:
And We Just Decided, Why Don’t We Just Start a Nonprofit Around Training Disabled Progressives to Run for Office at A National Level,
Not In a Particular Region of The Country, But Nationally.

TR:
Disabled progressives. You can probably guess that disabled Republicans might have something to say about that.
Neal:
And Our Response Is, You’re in Our Comment Section, In Our Emails, Telling Us About Your Side of The Aisles, Issues with Disabled People, And You Aren’t Creating an Organization for Republican Disabled Folks to Run for Office. You Are Stopping Your Own Progress and Also Your Party Is Stopping Your Own Progress Because Republicans, In Large Part, Don’t Believe That Disabled People, For Multitudes of Reasons, Should Exist So Your Party Is Stopping Your Own Progress.
I Also Need to Say That we Are in the Business of Training and Electing Disabled Progressives. We Are Not Affiliated with Any of The Democratic Party Ecosystem, Any of the Democratic Sister Committees or Any Other Democratic Entity.

TR:
We say Republican, but today, it’s really MAGA. And we know what they’re about.
Neal:
By The Grace Of the Ancestors, We Were Able to Still Exist Despite Trump
He Said at The Onset of His Second Term, Progressive Nonprofits Are the Enemy of My Presidency, And I Will Do Whatever I Can to Stop Them from Existing.

— News coverage: noting the current administration cancelling grants to nonprofits aiding people the administration considers DEI.

TR:
We know he doesn’t hesitate to go after anyone he considers an enemy – that is anyone who doesn’t bow down to him.
I’m talking about Chump, aka Agent Orange, Diaper Don, I just refuse to say his name…
words have power Afterall.
Neal:
I know that in 2026, and beyond, disability, victory is a nonprofit that needs to exist.
Disability victory will exist, and disability victory will continue to do the important work of training disabled progressives, to run for office at every level of government.
We’re not going to allow for any administration to stop that progress, to stop our growth.
TR in conversation with Neal:
So, let’s talk a little bit about the importance. Why is it important for disabled people to run for office?
Neal:
I think it’s easier to say, well, disabled people need to run for office because we need more disabled representation. I think it’s bigger than that. Representation is important.
We need more disabled people in office. Yes, take a step further. We need disabled people in office, because disabled people should be in office.

TR:
Again, that office could be government, school board, home owners association.
While some may try to get you to believe that there are disability issues, remember every issue has a disability perspective. That’s why we need to be everywhere.
So, when considering running for any office level position, don’t forget about the basics.

Neal:
I mean, do you know your neighbors, whether you live in an apartment building and they are next door, or you live in a house, and they are across the street, do you know your neighbors?
And this is a conversation that I have with for the first time candidates or candidates running for reelection all the time.
Far too often, candidates do the thing where they’re like, I’m going to focus on every other area, except for my home area, because I know I can win my home precinct, because they know me.

TR:
That sounds like a fair plan. At first!

Neal:
And then we fast forward to election day, and they lose and then they come back to me, they’re like, Yeah, how did that happen?
Well, you told me you were known commodity in your precinct.
then why did your neighbor have your opponent’s yard sign in their lawn?
They didn’t focus on their home precinct.
If you can’t even win over the support of your neighbor, then you shouldn’t be running for office period.

TR:
Being known by the people is not the same as you knowing other people. They may not know you. And by know you, I really mean, what have you done that would give them a sense of your seriousness about the role you’re seeking.
In the Getting Involved episode earlier in this season, Lolly shared this same advice.
That episode focused on finding and pursuing opportunities for disabled people to participate in the ICE resistance.
I’m sure there are some who are wondering. Are there any restrictions barring people with disabilities from running for office.

Neal:
There isn’t. There’s more stigma.
And it’s not just around cognitive disability. It’s also around physical disability too and
unfortunately, we’re in a political climate where at the moment cognitive disability Community is being challenged, not just from our HHS Secretary, but obviously also from our president. They believe that disabled people as a community don’t deserve to live, let alone run for office and be elected officials.
So, the short answer is no, there isn’t any law stopping someone with a cognitive or physical disability from running for office.
There’s a lot of external stigma and in my opinion, a lot of internal ableism that disabled people still have to work through. That is stopping a lot of them for running for office

TR:
Working through internal ableism should be a requirement of us all.
In fact, I’d say the past 10 years or so have really proven that self-assessment in general is lacking in those seeking or in leadership positions.
What goes into training leaders? And how does disability factor in?

Neal:
Usually, folks come to one of our trainings and they join our academy.
We have affiliate organizations that we work with that do training as well for potential candidates. We have likeminded organizations that we partner with to lead the ttraining

TR:
In addition to the training, Disability Victory offers various resources on its website

Neal:
We also have spaces where folks who have gone through our training can communicate with each other internally about best practices. We have ways in which some of our board members have run for office previously and have that experience so they can talk to our Academy members about best practices in running for office, whether they were successful or unsuccessful.
That kind of communication space doesn’t really exist. Within the disability community, folks aren’t actively communicating on how to not just train to run for office, but former candidates and existing candidates and elected officials aren’t communicating with prospective candidates on what works and what doesn’t.
TR:
While Disability Victory isn’t the only group to help train future leaders, they do offer something others may not.

Neal:
Yes, there are a number of fantastic organizations that are actively training folks to run for office, run for something, and we operate in that same ecosystem, but because our target audience is a niche group of disabled folks. We want to make sure that disabled folks are counted in that number, because oftentimes, unfortunately, while a lot of those same great training organizations that I mentioned already do tremendous work training candidates, there are a lot of gaps when it comes to accessibility, unfortunately, and that doesn’t mean that we are the only organization that is providing accessible trainings. What often happens, unfortunately, is disabled candidates will reach out to us and say they went to a training with one of these other organizations and say I wanted to learn more about how I can run as a disabled candidate, and they didn’t really give me a platform to figure that out.

TR in conversation with Neal:
So, tell me a little bit about the training itself. What are some of the high level topics that you all go through?

Neal:
Sure. We do an intro to campaigning, like how to file, what your immediate campaign needs are, building a campaign website, what tools to use, how to fundraise at a digital level, how to make a fundraising call, those kinds of things.
And then we also have communication training where it’s like how can I communicate my story as a candidate to my potential constituents?

TR:
Other topics include economic and environmental justice. Canvasing as a disabled person in rural and urban communities.
Disability Victory is helping with the how. But they can’t really help with the why. That is what drives you to want to see the changes you want created and implemented.

What is it that you value, that you feel strong enough about that if threatened, you would be ready to fight.
Not a physical fight.
Although, if we’re being honest, I’m here for those stories too!

Rebeccaa:
I became disabled from being pushed on the New York City subway.

TR:
That’s in part two of Disability Victory, where we will wrap up this season, Power to the People.

This season in my mind is our time to think about all of the things that are in our power to change.
Too often disability related conversations are presented as if we are powerless.
If we’re not careful, we may start believing that.
One thing you can believe in is following or subscribing to Reid My Mind Radio wherever you get podcasts.
We have transcripts and more at ReidMyMind.com.
And you best believe, in order to get there, you gotta spell it right!
That’s R to the E I D!

— Sample: (“D! And that’s me in the place to be.” Slick Rick)

Like my last name!
— Reid My Mind Radio outro

Peace!

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