00:00:49.980If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.400Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:04.060Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:02:08.260We already know that dis and misinformation is targeting the Latinx community.
00:02:13.200Now, VotoLatino, the largest Latinx voter registration organization in the U.S., and Media Matters are fighting back.
00:02:20.940Last week, they announced the launch of the Latino Anti-Disinformation Lab,
00:02:24.920which will work to better understand and combat misinformation at all stages, on all mediums, seeking primarily to influence Latinx individuals.
00:02:32.620Now, a few weeks ago, we spoke to Meghna Mahadevan, chief disinformation defense strategist at United We Dream,
00:02:38.540the country's largest immigrant youth-led organization, about how those who want to
00:02:42.780spread confusion and chaos can prey on immigrant communities and their fears and traumas,0.97
00:02:47.700and also inflame existing tensions and fragments, like tensions that exist between the Black
00:02:52.660community and the Latinx community. Here's what she had to say.
00:02:56.860Particularly with the Latinx community, there's also a lot of work being done by white supremacists
00:03:02.860to create a wedge racially with the Latinx community and other communities of color.
00:03:09.780And the way that this is done is very strategically, almost creating a race hierarchy of affiliating
00:03:16.300Latinx with more whiteness and kind of trying to create a separation from Blackness.0.78
00:03:21.500It also is a full erasure of the Afro-Latinx identity.0.96
00:03:24.460So by using race as this wedge issue to divide communities and create this superiority among some Latinx folks, there's really a way to misinform people that by accepting and siding with white supremacy, you are now offered the privilege of being white.
00:03:45.100The case of Vanessa Guillen, a 20-year-old Mexican-American soldier who was murdered last spring, is a good example of what Meghna is talking about.
00:03:53.040We covered this situation on There Are No Girls on the Internet this summer, and it was one of the toughest topics I've ever covered.
00:03:59.580Even though I already knew that bad actors will often hijack sensitive topics to stoke division, it was still painful to see that there was no bottom to how low they'll stoop, including using a young woman's tragic death.0.95
00:04:11.920Let's listen in on what Vanessa Guillen's death can teach us about disinformation.0.97
00:04:17.000Vanessa Guillen was a 20-year-old soldier in the U.S. Army.
00:06:07.580Because her killer was believed to be a Black man,
00:06:10.440big Facebook pages began promoting stories about Vanessa's death
00:06:13.440as a way to sow divisions between Latinx communities and Black Lives Matter advocates.
00:06:19.240Unfortunately, when it comes to how disinformation spreads online, this isn't at all uncommon.
00:06:25.160Bad actors pick up on sensitive or emotionally charged topics involving wedge issues like race
00:06:30.100and use them to spread fear, confusion, and suspicion among each other.
00:06:34.340They often exploit existing fractures between communities to pit marginalized groups against each other.
00:06:40.540But because we don't actually spend a lot of time talking about marginalized communities in general, let alone how our identities shape the online experience, we aren't talking about the big threat this tactic presents.
00:06:52.080So the first time that I actually became aware of how targeted our folks are was in 2016 when I saw someone on my Facebook posted a picture of an ICE agent or someone who looked like an ICE agent with sort of the ICE acronym in the back of his jacket arresting someone at what looked like was a polling location.
00:07:22.080and it was something along the lines that someone had posted and said,
00:07:26.120be careful, everyone, ICE is, you know, around the voting location.
00:07:32.200And, you know, when I looked at it closely, I was like, well, this looks,
00:07:43.820somebody's actually thinking this through and kind of knows the nerves of the
00:07:48.580community in terms of the fear, the fears that exist in our community.
00:07:52.080Even though we all know that, you know, undocumented people are not going to go vote, but the message that we're trying to send is like, you know, immigration is doing raids around voting locations, you know, therefore people might just be fearful of going because, you know, some folks are living mixed status families and so on and so forth.
00:08:11.620So that was sort of the first time that I saw something, and it just made me pause and think about the level of disinformation that was spreading, targeting the Latino community.
00:08:23.120Vanessa Cardenas is a longtime activist and policy expert.
00:08:27.540She's seen the way that disinformation online plays on our community's fear to create confusion.
00:08:33.680But when she saw the way Guillen's story was being used online, she was shocked.
00:08:37.520So that was actually really shocking because obviously the Vanessa Guillen case has touched such a nerve in the community in the sense of, you know, this soldier that, you know, had dedicated her life for her country.
00:08:54.720So I guess I would say, you know, probably like two weeks, well, maybe like a little bit right after they identify the suspect of the case, you know, I would say days after it, I started seeing some of these pictures and memes about pretty much about the suspected killer and just driving this message of, you know, black and brown tension.
00:09:24.720and just amplifying the sort of the message,
00:09:29.240oh, you know, where is the Black Lives Matter movement
00:09:31.920when it comes to a Latina that has been killed by a black person?
00:09:38.620So that was, again, really eye-opening,0.96
00:09:43.360but I also feel it was, at least for me by then,
00:09:46.920I was already just, I've been aware more of sort of the disinformation
00:09:50.140that's been spreading, so I was not surprised.
00:09:53.300But again, I think it just speaks to the level of this strategy that's out there about amplifying fear, distrust, and just creating wedges between these communities, which I think we're going to see more of.
00:10:09.060And these bad actors are really using every opportunity they can to actually, you know, create these wedges.
00:10:16.640Facebook groups with big followings and reach
00:10:39.940Researchers say it has to do with the upcoming election.
00:10:43.580Acoba Lacona is the disinformation research lead at Equis Labs, a group that works to build an active Latino electorate.
00:10:50.880His team saw pretty much the same thing she did.
00:10:53.960That Guillen's story was being used to criticize Black Lives Matter and the protests that followed the death of unarmed Black people like George Floyd by police.
00:11:01.100we started seeing conservative latinx accounts including you know spanish language pages trying
00:11:06.120to build racial tension between black and latinx communities after they found her body and her
00:11:12.540death was confirmed and so we saw conservative latinx actors starting to criticize black lives
00:11:17.680matter for not protesting her death and for staying silent and you know after they found her
00:11:22.340body the man who was linked to her murder uh killed himself either the same day or the next
00:11:27.140day. And so we saw conservative Latinx accounts promoting, you know, race blindness around
00:11:31.120Guillen by amplifying the fact that the killer was a black man and that, you know, they started0.83
00:11:37.040promoting all lives matter narratives and things like that. So we saw, you know, different memes
00:11:41.860comparing the black man who killed Guillen to the white police officer and essentially saying,
00:11:46.840you know, promoting a narrative that race has nothing to do with Floyd's killing. Or we also
00:11:51.440saw bad actors, you know, asking why Latinos weren't, were protesting for BLM, but weren't
00:11:57.000protesting for other Latinos like Vanessa. And so, you know, there was a lot of racial tension
00:12:03.020building early on once, you know, reports came, once reports came out and they found her body.
00:12:08.340So do you think the people who were running these accounts actually cared about sharing
00:12:11.400Guillen's story? No, I mean, I think they're definitely trying to make it like a wedge issue.
00:12:16.180We often see, even just in other narratives, bad actors trying to, you know, seek to inflame pre-existing tensions within and between communities.
00:12:26.960So, you know, part of their goal is to depress votes in more progressive communities, including the Latinx community.
00:12:34.080And so if they can build a wedge between Black and Latinx voters, they can, you know, potentially drive some of those people to Trump in November.0.99
00:12:40.380but i think one big problem here is that you know within the latinx community we've kind of failed
00:12:46.000to confront the anti-blackness that exists in our own community and i think the far right definitely
00:12:51.120takes advantage of that to stoke racial tension so you know one thing it's important that we start
00:12:56.100acknowledging the anti-blackness that exists in our community and show unity um and you know we
00:13:02.740should especially be doing this because again like black and latinx are not mutually exclusive you
00:13:07.060know, the far right. And many people in the Latinx community tend to ignore the Afro-Latinx
00:13:11.340community. And so especially the right, you know, the right is effectively excluding them from the
00:13:15.840from their narratives. And we should ignore and I don't think we should be ignoring that. So like
00:13:20.140going back to Vanessa's death specifically, you know, I think with an increase in attention on
00:13:27.900Black Lives Matter and even, you know, brands responding to, you know, current moments of
00:13:32.720racial justice, we see a lot of bad actors looking for opportunities to create division among
00:13:38.160communities of color. Let's take a quick break.
00:13:48.620Behind every night spent making the kids lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat
00:13:53.720the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full,
00:14:48.420When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.
00:14:53.700I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.
00:15:00.700I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:15:04.400I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.
00:15:12.580Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.
00:15:16.700I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:15:21.480I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:15:29.100They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:15:33.000But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:15:36.440They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:15:40.080Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:15:47.860If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:15:54.740This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:16:06.920I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:16:14.040I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:18:39.680So, you know, but the way this information efforts, you know, what they're trying to do is just, you know, make us look like the other, right?
00:18:51.240So you do have sort of, like I was saying, this really graphic post just amplifying violence that is in how they describe it or in how they post it, you know, by black men.0.93
00:19:04.540there's also a lot of content out there about painting the black lives movement about you know0.91
00:19:10.980that is violent um they have a lot of content that's showing for example that the black lives
00:19:17.500movement protesters are destroying churches or burning bibles so really going at sort of you
00:19:24.280know some of the the themes of you know the latino community it's it's very you know faith
00:19:29.180center. And so they're trying to sort of, again, go at this pressure point and hit those nerves
00:19:36.200where the community, on things that the community cares about. We are, on the Vanessa Gillian case,
00:19:42.120there's been a lot of content out there amplifying that her, that the alleged killer was
00:19:48.240Black and promoting the All Lives Matter narrative and questioning how come the Black Lives
00:19:53.700movement doesn't show up for Latinos when Latinos are being killed and so on and so forth.0.57
00:19:59.180So that's the type of content we're seeing now. And again, we know that every time there's a flashpoint or every time there's something that's happening just, you know, at a national level or even at a local level.
00:20:14.180I mean, there was a there were some posts. I think it was, I want to say in Luciana about just about the Black Lives Matter movement.
00:20:26.500I think that there was a demand that, you know, all businesses should hire people of color.
00:20:31.960and but they how they were how the the bots or the sort of the disinformation but actors were
00:20:37.780trying to frame it was that the black lives movement were forcing latino business owners
00:20:43.400to hire not to hire you know non-latinos so things like that right so they're trying to again
00:20:50.280press this um this this really um specific issues in the community where they know that it hits a
00:20:57.760nerve and just amplify those. And we know we're going to be getting more of those as
00:21:02.820things get just more heated as we come closer to the election.
00:21:07.740All truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder.
00:21:14.820Bad actors online seize on conversations that require sensitivity or nuance to talk about,
00:21:20.260just like they had no problem seizing on Guillen's death to push harmful narratives online.
00:21:25.820After Goya's CEO faced backlash for praising Trump earlier this year,
00:21:29.960some accounts purporting to belong to Latino social media users
00:21:32.980used it to spread accusations of a mob of PC bullies
00:21:36.860attacking a hard-working community of color.
00:21:40.100But Win Black, Palante, a group that trains voters to identify disinformation,
00:21:45.400found that some of the accounts pushing this narrative were actually bots.
00:21:50.200Online, the Goya controversy appeared to boil down to Black Lives Matter
00:23:22.340Misinformation and disinformation is not a political issue.
00:23:26.940It is literally to suppress entire communities that need to exercise their right to vote.
00:23:32.760And if these tech companies don't see it that way, you really have to question what their purposes are.
00:23:38.040Vanessa also saw the way that conversations around Goya oversimplified the narrative online.
00:23:43.740But she says the narrative's pushing division, even when Trump himself picks up on it, probably won't resonate much with most folks in the Latinx community.
00:23:53.460I mean, I think they're trying really hard to sort of make the connection.
00:23:56.680Obviously, even the Trump administration picked up on it, getting Ivanka to post that ridiculous tweet with her holding a can of Goya beans.
00:24:07.980Again, I think they're just sort of trying to amplify these wedges and just really, in the case of Goya, you know, I think that the average Latino who's, you know, again, losing their jobs because of COVID and just trying to figure out how they're going to survive this pandemic.
00:24:24.480this is not something that resonates with them. But I do think, again, there's online, there's
00:24:31.300just this effort to say, you know, Democrats are against business owners, Democrats are trying to
00:24:36.300shut this down, when we know that that's, you know, that that was not the case. I mean, people
00:24:41.280have, the thing that people had issue with were the comments of the Goya president, who, again,
00:24:46.460is supporting Trump. And Trump, we know, is driving a very divisive and just really anti-Latino
00:24:53.660agenda. So that's the point. And I think part of this, again, this disinformation effort is just0.95
00:24:58.340to confuse the truth, right? It's just to take attention from the real issues and just focus
00:25:04.100it on sort of these specific narratives that benefits them. And it goes along to sort of
00:25:09.480their overall frame, that Democrats are socialists, that Democrats, you know, don't believe in God,
00:25:16.800that Democrats, you know, are just driving a socialist agenda, and they don't want anyone
00:25:22.480to be successful. So again, it just goes off the broader narratives that they're trying to push.
00:25:29.560Once an official Trump Facebook page, or even Trump himself,
00:25:33.620signal boosts these narratives, they can spread far and wide.
00:25:37.580Sometimes it's not even helpful to know where it's coming from, because anything that's getting
00:25:40.980a lot of engagement, it's going to circulate pretty far. You know, like Trump, for example,
00:25:45.560is the biggest amplifier of this info. And it allows other bad actors to follow him,
00:25:51.000which can, you know, really increase conversations around certain topics.
00:25:54.560But, you know, when it comes to Latinx spaces,
00:25:57.080there's a network of conservative Latinx Facebook groups
00:26:00.280that are part of this movement called Lexit.
00:26:03.120And they tend to work together and, you know,
00:26:04.760coordinate attacks across their network of pages.
00:26:07.820So the Lexit movement itself, it gained prominence in 2018
00:26:11.300as, you know, an effort to help Latinos exit the Democratic Party
00:26:14.200or the left and kind of embrace more conservative values.
00:26:18.480There's actually another one called Lexit,
00:26:20.080which is a little more popular. And it's kind of like equivalent for the black community0.97
00:26:22.860and trying to push more black people to embrace conservative values. But the network of Lexit0.75
00:26:29.600Facebook pages, they have a wide range in their audiences. So like, depending on certain Facebook
00:26:33.440pages, some have hundreds of thousands of followers, others have tens of thousands of
00:26:37.880followers, but they frequently share, you know, misleading and factually incorrect narratives.
00:26:44.260And they tend to coordinate within each other, but also with the Latinos for Trump network,
00:26:48.700which is an official Latinx page for the Trump campaign.
00:26:53.660So when they're able to coordinate with each other,
00:26:55.240they're able to push narratives to more feeds
00:27:00.060You might expect to see messages about people on the left
00:27:02.520being godless socialists who hate hardworking business owners
00:27:05.720from a Facebook page that is explicitly advocating for Trump.
00:27:09.740But Acobo says that pages that appear to be nonpartisan
00:27:12.540can sometimes present an even bigger threat
00:27:15.080when it comes to the spread of harmful narratives online.
00:27:17.420Yeah, so I think the reality is that we often see less partisan Latinx pages help spread disinformation, especially around conversations that either resonate with the Latinx community or conversations in the mainstream media.
00:27:34.080And the real problem is that these nonpartisan spaces, they often become more dangerous in the far right spaces because they appear to be more trustworthy messengers and people tend to believe or trust what these pages are promoting.
00:27:49.440So, I mean, even around narratives around Guillen, it reached less partisan Latinx spaces.
00:27:55.780And for example, I saw one Facebook page that was intended to bring, you know, Mexicans together and it has hundreds of thousands of followers.
00:28:02.060And they're typically posting, you know, more cultural type things.
00:28:06.020But they started posting narratives around Guillen that appear to try to build tension within the Latinx community.
00:28:10.620and again so like when they do that these the people who are following these pages they start
00:28:18.080you know believing some of these messages because you know they're not in those pages for partisan
00:28:22.580reasons so these less partisan online spaces that are created where people feel like they are
00:28:28.360a part of a community but then disinformation comes in it's like the stuff around like the
00:28:33.440stuff around Guillen they're more likely to believe this these narratives. One of our concerns as we
00:28:39.820look at how this information is spreading is the fact that we're seeing some of this content
00:28:45.740migrate from very partisan pages to non-partisan pages, especially around the Vanessa Guillen
00:28:53.340case and her murder and all of that. We saw, for example, a lot of Mexican organizing pages,
00:29:02.680you know, the hometown associations and people who really were following the case super closely
00:29:08.540to start picking up some of these right and and they have you know thousands of retweets and
00:29:15.140and that's the concern right and and again it's because it is i think that also the message for
00:29:22.500us for progressives is that it is so important to magnify our message our message of solidarity
00:29:30.600our message of supporting each other's movements our message of you know that we're all in this
00:29:37.580together. And I think that is the real, that's the real challenge for us because we're not going
00:29:44.100to be able to, you know, what was happening on the right or in the circles or among these bad
00:29:49.260actors, we're not really going to be able to minimize that. What we can do is inoculate
00:29:57.180ourselves and our community against it. And that is by building trust affirmatively and intentionally
00:30:06.640and elevating trusted voices so that when somebody sees this, you know, this post, they
00:30:13.860are like, wait, but, you know, I saw another post from someone in my community that I respect
00:30:18.940and I know, and they are posting positive content that speaks about unity.
00:30:24.180So I think for us, that's the challenge.
00:30:26.420How are we magnifying the positive vision and the positive content to actually inoculate
00:30:33.640ourselves and inoculate our communities from this content?
00:30:36.520And it's not easy. I'm not saying, you know, and I think progressives right now we have our hands full, but I think that's the challenge that we need to create content, amplify content, not go down the rabbit hole.
00:30:49.820You know, one of the actually the hardest things about this information that we often share with progressives is don't amplify it because and that is actually harder than it sounds because sometimes people in the effort not to amplify it, they actually retweet it, you know,
00:31:05.560because there's or they repost it because they're trying to debunk the claim.
00:31:10.240But just by, you know, retweeting about it or reposting, you're actually, even if you're saying this is not true,
00:31:17.220you are, in fact, getting more eyes on that post.
00:31:21.100And that's, you know, that's the problem.
00:35:58.860You know, my people are Black, we're from the South.
00:36:01.780When it comes to things like voting, it is not always as easy as just going to vote.
00:36:05.800You know, in these states, there are voter ID laws and other kinds of barriers to just going and casting your ballot.
00:36:14.460So I really see a lot of disinformation being spread around voting.
00:36:18.120And particularly now with COVID, I've seen a lot of elders in my own community posting things that I know are rooted in this very real fear around COVID.
00:36:31.940You know, COVID has ravaged black and brown communities.
00:36:34.200So these folks are like, their concerns are very valid. It's been a frustrating challenge to acknowledge and validate these very real fears in my own community, while also not letting people that I care about give over to fear and spread harmful, incorrect information because they're fearful. It's been a challenge.
00:37:00.160No, and I so connect with you on that point, and I can totally relate.
00:37:09.160Most of my family or, like, my aunts and uncles, they came here when they're adults.
00:37:13.840So they are just, you know, this is a, I think it's really important for us to realize that this is a very difficult moment.
00:37:20.380It is a very confusing moment, you know, and I think especially the older generation, they're just like, they just don't know what's happening, you know,
00:37:41.580And then our health, you know, we are the communities that are feeling the brunt of the impact of the pandemic.
00:37:47.980Now, on top of that, you add this whole, you know, the new process of vote by mail, right?
00:37:53.800It's a new process for a lot of folks.
00:37:55.500They're not familiar how to, you know, request a ballot. They have never voted by mail, many of them. And then the other piece of this is even for young people, like, oh, yeah, they don't carry around a book of stamps like some of us did, right?
00:38:10.580So when you think about it, you know, it really presents a lot of challenges. And that's why, you know, I think that, again, part of our challenge as progressives is, you know, how are we, what voter education efforts are we implementing, even in this era of COVID, when everything has to be done virtually.
00:38:30.000I think that's going to force us to innovate, but also to have those conversations that we've been putting off.
00:38:37.660Because I do believe that the best way to inoculate people is to just have an honest conversation.
00:38:44.360And you're not going to be able to convince your aunt or uncle the first time.
00:38:49.880But I think just starting to have those conversations about what's happening in our country, you know, why their voice is so important.
00:40:02.480What might seem harmless to you is probably not harmless, right?
00:40:07.840So just really always be mindful of your sources and the messages that you are posting.
00:40:14.300So that would be the very first thing.
00:40:16.760The second thing is, you know, it's informing yourselves, especially when we talk about
00:40:21.520voting and because we know that's actually going to be a big um target of the attacks and the
00:40:26.800disinformation moving forward especially as we get closer to election and especially because this new
00:40:32.160process is around vote by mail so really informing yourself of yourselves about the the deadlines
00:40:38.080and the requirements on voting absentee or voting by mail so that you can share that information
00:40:44.480um with your community and your loved ones and and then the the third thing is again you know just
00:40:51.120trying to amplify a positive message, a message of unity and solidarity.
00:40:55.540I think if we do that, it will go a long way because right now, bad actors are trying to amplify fear.
00:41:04.800Therefore, we need to amplify a positive message, a positive vision for our movement and for our country moving forward.
00:41:12.320Ashley's team at Win Black Palante is taking this message to heart.
00:41:15.480Rather than waiting for tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg to do the right thing and curb the spread of harmful disinformation on their platforms, her team has established a disinformation war room to train Black and Latinx voters and other grassroots advocacy organizations to spot disinformation themselves and provides messaging tools to counter it with accurate information without amplifying it.
00:41:39.000our strategy is really teaching people that we don't want to amplify the misinformation, right?
00:41:45.500That is counterproductive. But what we do want to do is put in the space counter narratives
00:41:50.920while also educating folks. And so we have a daily war room where we bring our team together
00:41:58.520to go over analysis, go over our research briefs. And so it really adds another level of authenticity
00:42:05.720because it's not just, you know, our campaign that's trying to come in and talk to folks,
00:42:10.480but we're working with these organizations that have created a sense of community with
00:42:14.540their, not just their online audiences, but, you know, the citizens within their regions.
00:42:20.960And we're able to really spread this message of like, look, this is how you identify.
00:42:35.180And the only way to fight back is to register and vote.
00:42:38.680Loosely translated, the slang term Palante means to go forward.
00:42:44.180And Ashley's team at Win Black Palante are working to help communities of color go forward stronger in solidarity.
00:42:52.440You know, I can't help but notice that your organization has two names, Win Black and Palante.
00:42:57.360You know, we see these narratives being pushed by bad actors that the Latinx community and the Black community, we can't work together.0.66
00:43:05.560We have to be living in fear of each other. We have to be suspicious of each other.0.86
00:43:09.500Not only does this framework obviously erase the fact that there are plenty of Afro-Latinas out there, but it's also just not true.0.99
00:43:16.960And I guess my question is, how do we get to a place where we can present the truth that our communities are stronger together?
00:43:24.320Absolutely. And I mean, you took half my answer in the last in your last sentence, because simply that's the truth.
00:43:31.280We are stronger together and they know that. And so they want to do anything to divide these two communities.
00:43:38.340And, you know, it's simply just disgusting, quite honestly.
00:43:41.400I mean, we most recently were seeing this misinformation around, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement did put out a letter that was that was kind of describing some of their demands.
00:43:54.080And we're seeing a lot of right wing operatives that are boiling it down, taking out a lot of the context within the letter and sharing that the Black Lives Matter movement are against immigrants or they are, you know, doing mafia tactics, if you will, which is simply just not the truth.
00:44:15.200And they're spreading these untruths in a very broad manner. And so, you know, it's really important for us. And I'm glad that you underscored the palante, because we do have a Latinx focus. And because we want to bring our two communities together in this fight, there's so many critical issues that both communities share. Right.
00:44:36.500But also neither of these communities are monolithic. And it's really almost embarrassing to see that a lot of these operatives think of our communities as such. And so they're doing these tactics to really, you know, it's almost like this distributed racism to really pit these two communities against each other.
00:44:58.940And so we're really building a sense of let's educate Black voters, Latinx voters, let's educate folks on what are the issues that really matter to us, who are the leaders in this space that are supporting our issues, are supporting our values, and then also recognizing that, again, we're not monolithic.
00:45:19.540We need to speak to voters as individuals. And we're not just pitting everyone against each other. We're working under an administration right now that is trying to divide this country at every turn.
00:45:32.980And so it's really important that as we are mobilizing and reaching voters, that at every step of the way, we are trying to unite folks under one goal, which is to make sure that we have a democracy that represents our communities, that represents our issues, and that is going to fight to actually move our communities forward.