The Power of People: How Activism Really Works with Charlie Euchner

Charlie Euchner (0:00)

The reason that the two parties are failing us, and they are both failing us, is that they pay more attention to elites than they pay attention to ordinary people. So the question is, what mechanisms might there be out there in order to force them or give them incentive to pay more attention to their concerns?

One of my answers is activism, but there's some very specific models that could work incredibly well. In fact, they have worked.

Guy Kawasaki (0:32)

Hello, everybody. It's Guy Kawasaki. I am still in Honolulu, Hawaii. So when you see that background, it means that I'm not in California, I'm in Hawaii, and we have another remarkable guest for you. His name is Charlie Euchner.

Charlie, you have done so much in so many different places, but we are going to focus on his latest book, and it's called Rules of Activism. When I saw this book, I said, we got to have Charlie on. I just love this. I was a big fan of Saul Alinsky, and now we got the man. So you've covered a lot of topics, and you've also taught at Yale and Columbia, and your body of work is really quite impressive. When I grew up, Charlie, I want to be like you.

So welcome to Remarkable People. I don't even know where to start. If you had told me that America would be where it is today a few years ago, I would have said, you're kidding. You've been reading too much of Margaret Atwood's works, and this is just not going to happen. But here we are. Let's fire away. Let's just get the big question that I want to ask you off the table, which is what should a Democratic presidential candidate focus on in 2028? And then we'll get into the details of how you came to this, but just give me that answer so I can get it in my brain.

Charlie Euchner (2:01)

Well, you already referenced Saul Alinsky. And so I'll tell you one of Saul Alinsky's greatest distinctions. He said that there's two sources of power. There's money and there's people.

And we are in a system right now that is overloaded with money and the money doesn't come from a vast number of people. It actually does, but the vast number produce only a little bit of it. There's a torrent of money coming out from billionaires and people like Elon Musk and others who really want to turn our country into a corporate system to the extent that it isn't already.

And the masses don't have that kind of money. But what the masses have is the masses. That is to say, what they have is people, they have people power.

And every once in a while, people power gets aroused, it gets organized, it gets signed up, it gets deployed. And that's when the greatest things happen for democracy. And in fact, I would argue, as I do in the preface, that democracy is impossible. I mean, by definition, it is impossible without activism, without arousing the people from the lowest levels of the system, into the vast middle, and into allies at the higher levels. And so my advice to the Democratic nominee, whoever that might be, is, look, I know you got to raise money. You don't want to unilaterally give the money advantage to the other side. But your real power lies in the grassroots. Your real power lies in everyday concerns of fairness, and equity, and opportunity, and protecting the environment, protecting the community, keeping people safe, avoiding unnecessary wars, and so forth. And the vast, vast majority of the American public is for all that. And so if you can somehow tap into that grassroots strength, then you not only have a chance to win, that's just step one, you also have a chance to govern. James Carville put on everybody's desk in the 92 campaign, it's the economy stupid, I would say it's the people stupid. You know, and as soon as you forget that, as soon as you forget not only that that's your mission, but that that is your greatest resource, that's when you lose, that's when you give the advantage to the other side.

Guy Kawasaki (4:26)

Okay, so that's the big idea, it's the people stupid, but going one level lower, are you supposed to talk about, I'm the anti-Trump candidate, it's the economy, it's the immigration, it's LGBTQ plus rights, there's a lot of things on there you can pick from, or are you saying you pick from all of that? What do I do?

Charlie Euchner (4:49)

Right, I think what you do is you say, what do ordinary people want, and what do ordinary people need? Ordinary people need healthcare. There's so many people in this country, literally tens of millions, who would go absolutely broke if they got in a car accident tomorrow or if something more serious happened. That's wrong. There are people whose jobs are being driven out, or they're being de-skilled, or they're being replaced, and they don't have a career path. That's wrong. That has broad support for thinking about that, for doing something about that. So we could go down the line. One of the greatest issues these days is with the centers for AI.