In my personal capacity, I am proud to support our Democratic-endorsed candidates for Chesapeake City Council:

🔵 Santiera Brown-Yearling
🔵 Todd Mayfield
🔵 Jennifer Naperala
🔵 Daniel “Lieutenant Dan” Rosinski, Esq.
🔵 Dr. Janelle St. Louis

And for Chesapeake School Board:

🔵 Andrea Bolden
🔵 Antonia “Toni” Fauntleroy
🔵 Jeremiah Harrell
🔵 Janika “Dr. Jay” Phillips
🔵 Dr. Amanda Quillin

Okay, jokes aside — this election is serious business.

Having run for office here myself, I know firsthand that the decisions we make at the local level are not small decisions.

Who sits on City Council affects whether Chesapeake can remain affordable for working families, how we manage growth, whether our roads and infrastructure keep pace with development, how we support public safety, and what kind of community we leave to the next generation.

Who sits on our School Board helps determine the quality of education received by more than 40,000 Chesapeake students, whether our teachers and education professionals have the support they deserve, and whether every child — regardless of neighborhood or ZIP code — has the opportunity to succeed.

I personally know many of these candidates. I know their commitment to public service. I know their love for Chesapeake. And I trust them to show up, do the work, and put our community first.

But Chesapeake is only one piece of the larger picture.

This is a consequential midterm election for Hampton Roads, Virginia, and our entire country. Control of Congress is at stake. The direction of our communities is at stake. And from City Hall to Capitol Hill, we need people in office who believe government can actually improve people’s lives.

So this election season, I’m asking you to do more than like a post.

GET INVOLVED.

Volunteer. Donate if you can. Knock some doors. Make some calls. Talk to your neighbors. Take your family to vote. Help somebody understand what is on their ballot.

And above all else: VOTE.

Early voting begins September 18. Election Day is November 3.

Vote early. Vote on Election Day. Vote absentee if you qualify. I don’t particularly care how you do it — just make your voice heard.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Chesapeake, it’s campaign season.

Let’s get to work. 💙

For LGBTQ+ Virginians, the stakes are especially profound.

Virginia voters will consider Question 2, a constitutional amendment addressing marriage equality. The Commonwealth’s Constitution still contains language adopted in 2006 defining marriage exclusively as the union of one man and one woman. Although that provision was rendered unenforceable by Obergefell v. Hodges, the language remains.

Twenty years later, Virginians now have an opportunity to write a different story.

Question 2 would establish an affirmative state constitutional protection for marriage equality and ensure that lawful marriages receive equal treatment under Virginia law.

That matters because equality should not depend solely on the direction of federal courts or the politics of any particular moment. Virginians deserve the certainty of knowing that the dignity and legal recognition of their families are protected here at home.

This is one of the most consequential elections in Virginia’s history for LGBTQ+ rights.

And it is exactly why organizations like Equality Virginia matter.

From Defense to Permanence

For decades, LGBTQ+ Virginians have fought against discrimination in our laws, our workplaces, our schools, our healthcare systems, and our communities.

Too often, that work has been reactive.

A discriminatory bill appears, and advocates mobilize.

A right is threatened, and communities organize.

A court case changes the legal landscape, and families are left wondering what comes next.

This election offers something different.

It gives Virginians the opportunity not simply to defend marriage equality, but to affirm it directly in the Commonwealth’s foundational document.

That shift matters.

We should not have to wait for rights to be threatened before deciding they are worth protecting.

Marriage Equality Is About Real Families

Marriage is not an abstraction.

It is about the person who can sit beside you in a hospital room.

It is about inheritance, family security, medical decisions, parenthood, property, and the simple dignity of having your family treated equally under the law.

That is why the campaign for Question 2 must center the lives of real Virginians.

This summer, advocates helped launch Virginians for Marriage Equality, a campaign built around couples, families, and individuals whose experiences show why marriage equality matters.

Supporters can pledge to participate in the election, share their stories, volunteer, stay informed, and contribute to the campaign’s voter outreach.

Those stories matter because policy becomes real when people can see themselves and their neighbors in it.

Your Story Has Power

Laws matter. Elections matter. But sometimes the most powerful tool we have is simply telling the truth about our own lives.

Every day, LGBTQ+ Virginians and our allies change hearts and minds by sharing who we are, who we love, what our families look like, and why equality matters to us.

Real stories can cut through political noise in a way that statistics and talking points sometimes cannot. They remind voters that these debates are not abstract. They are about their neighbors, coworkers, friends, classmates, patients, congregants, and family members.

Equality Virginia is building a network of storytellers from across the Commonwealth who may be interested in sharing their experiences through social media, op-eds, community events, public education, and other opportunities.

They are particularly interested in hearing from Virginians with experiences related to:

Marriage Equality: LGBTQ+ couples, families, and allies who can speak to why the freedom to marry and the security of marriage equality matter.

Transgender Rights: Transgender Virginians, particularly transgender young people and families, who want to help people better understand their lives and experiences.

HIV Justice and Funding: People living with HIV, advocates, care providers, and others who understand why access to care, funding, dignity, and justice remain so important.

Sharing your information does not commit you to publicly telling your story. Equality Virginia will not use your submission without first reaching out to you and working with you to determine what, if anything, feels right for you.

If your experience connects with any of these issues, I hope you will consider raising your hand.

Share your story with Equality Virginia:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSebdq-phydf5UvuD6x6ALVEodyARk5wBSOrBItlXLEIMrpFJQ/viewform

Our movement has always been powered by people brave enough to say, “This is my life. This is my family. This is why this matters.”

Someone may need to hear your story.

Equality Is Bigger Than One Amendment

Question 2 does not stand alone.

Virginians will also consider constitutional changes related to reproductive freedom and voting rights restoration.

Different issues. Different legal questions.

But together they raise a fundamental question about the Commonwealth we want to be:

Which freedoms should be protected directly in Virginia’s Constitution rather than left vulnerable to shifting political majorities, executive discretion, or changes in federal precedent?

For those of us who believe in civil rights, individual liberty, and a democracy in which everyone has a meaningful voice, this election deserves our attention.

Why Equality Virginia Matters

None of this work happens by accident.

Progress requires organizers.

It requires advocates who understand the General Assembly.

It requires lawyers, policy experts, community leaders, storytellers, volunteers, donors, and people willing to show up when the outcome is uncertain.

Equality Virginia has spent decades doing that work across the Commonwealth.

The organization has helped build political power, advance public policy, defend LGBTQ+ Virginians, educate communities, and ensure that our voices are present in the rooms where decisions about our lives are being made.

That infrastructure matters most in moments like this one.

An amendment campaign is not won simply because the policy is popular.

Voters have to understand what is on the ballot.

Families have to know what is at stake.

Communities have to be organized.

People have to hear from messengers they trust.

And all of that requires resources.

Join Us at the Equality Virginia Gala

That is why I hope you will join me in supporting Equality Virginia and attending our annual gala.

This year, I have set a personal fundraising goal of $2,500, and I am asking my friends, family, colleagues, and community to help me reach it.

One of the easiest ways to support my goal is to purchase your gala tickets through my personal fundraising page:

https://givebutter.com/OUT2026/house-of-nickens

When you purchase your tickets through my page, you are not only joining us for an incredible evening. You are helping me move closer to my $2,500 goal while investing directly in Equality Virginia’s work across the Commonwealth.

So yes, I am asking my people to show up.

Buy your ticket. Bring a friend. Invite your coworkers. Fill a table. Help me hit $2,500.

The gala is more than an evening of celebration. It is an opportunity to invest in the year-round infrastructure necessary to protect LGBTQ+ Virginians, advance equality, build political power, and prepare for the fights and opportunities ahead.

This year, that support feels particularly urgent.

We have an opportunity to move Virginia beyond merely reacting to attacks on our rights and toward permanently affirming equality in our Constitution.

But that will require all of us.

Attend the gala.

Support Equality Virginia.

Help me reach my $2,500 fundraising goal.

Talk to your friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues about what is at stake this November.

And if you are able, support the broader effort to educate and organize Virginians around Question 2.

Twenty years ago, Virginia amended its Constitution to restrict marriage equality.

This November, we have an opportunity to choose a different future.

Let’s make sure we do not take that opportunity for granted.

Purchase your tickets and support my $2,500 fundraising goal here:

https://givebutter.com/OUT2026/house-of-nickens

This is not one of those moments.

The City of Chesapeake is developing policies governing future data center development, and throughout September, the Chesapeake Planning Department will hold three public open houses to hear directly from residents.

If you live in Chesapeake, I strongly encourage you to show up.

But showing up should only be the beginning.

Attend the meetings. Write letters. Submit public comments. Email City officials. Follow the hearings. Put your position into the public record.

Because this conversation is about much more than where somebody puts another building.

It is about what kind of city we want Chesapeake to become.

Data centers are expanding rapidly across Virginia, and communities throughout the Commonwealth are being asked to make enormous land-use decisions in the name of technological growth and economic development.

We should not blindly follow that trend.

I am deeply skeptical that turning more of Chesapeake into a destination for massive data center development is in the long-term interest of our residents.

And no, promises of economic development and jobs should not end the conversation.

Economic development is supposed to improve the lives of the people who already live in a community. Development should serve our neighborhoods, strengthen our tax base, create meaningful opportunities for local workers, protect our natural resources, and contribute to the kind of Chesapeake we actually want to leave behind.

Residents have every right to ask hard questions.

What land will these facilities consume?

How close could they be located to homes?

What protections will exist against constant mechanical noise?

What additional demands could they place on our electric grid and other public infrastructure?

How will Chesapeake protect wetlands, waterways, forests, agricultural land, and environmentally sensitive areas?

What happens when a proposed project conflicts with the character of an existing neighborhood?

How much permanent employment will these facilities actually create relative to the amount of land, energy, and infrastructure they require?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who benefits?

Those questions are not anti-business.

They are what responsible government looks like.

Chesapeake is one of Virginia’s great communities. We have neighborhoods people have invested their lives in. We have rural land worth preserving. We have waterways worth protecting. We have families already dealing with flooding, traffic, housing costs, infrastructure needs, and the everyday pressures of a rapidly growing region.

Our land is finite.

Our infrastructure is not unlimited.

And every acre dedicated to one use represents an opportunity we have chosen not to pursue somewhere else.

That means Chesapeake should approach data center development with extraordinary caution.

At minimum, our regulations should create strong buffers from residential neighborhoods, meaningful noise standards, environmental protections, infrastructure requirements, transparency around utility impacts, appropriate limits on where these facilities can be located, and real accountability when developers fail to meet community expectations.

And I believe the City should be willing to say no.

Not every project deserves approval simply because a developer is willing to build it.

Not every economic-development proposal is good economic development.

And Chesapeake does not have to become Northern Virginia.

The people who live here should determine the future of this city, not multinational corporations, speculative developers, or an industry searching Virginia for its next available parcel of land.

Three Opportunities to Show Up

The Chesapeake Planning Department will hold Data Center Regulations Open Houses at:

Tuesday, September 1 | 5:00–7:00 p.m.
Great Bridge Primary School
408 Cedar Road

Monday, September 14 | 5:00–7:00 p.m.
Indian River Community Center
2250 Old Greenbrier Road

Wednesday, September 30 | 5:00–7:00 p.m.
Camelot Community Center
948 King Arthur Drive

Residents can attend whichever meeting is most convenient.

But please do not assume that attending an open house is the only way to make your voice heard.

Put It in Writing

If you oppose the expansion of data centers in Chesapeake, say so clearly and put it in writing.

Send a letter or email to the Chesapeake Planning Department at Planning@CityOfChesapeake.net.

You can also contact the members of Chesapeake City Council at council@cityofchesapeake.net.

Tell them who you are. Tell them what neighborhood you live in. Tell them what concerns you. Tell them what you want the City’s regulations to accomplish.

You do not need to be a land-use attorney, engineer, environmental scientist, or professional activist to participate.

You are a Chesapeake resident.

That is enough.

A simple message can be powerful:

I am a Chesapeake resident, and I oppose allowing large-scale data center development to undermine our neighborhoods, environment, infrastructure, or quality of life. I urge the City to adopt the strongest possible protections and to reject projects that are not clearly in the public interest.

Then make it personal.

Talk about your neighborhood.

Talk about the Chesapeake you want your children and grandchildren to inherit.

Talk about noise, energy, water, farmland, wetlands, traffic, infrastructure, or whatever matters most to you.

The important thing is to speak.

Submit Formal Public Comment

When data center regulations or individual proposals return to the Chesapeake Planning Commission, residents can also submit comments through the City’s Planning Commission Electronic Comment Form. Comments submitted through the form are provided to the Planning Commission and must be received by 4:00 p.m. on the day of the meeting.

Submit Planning Commission public comment

And when public hearings are held, residents can attend in person and sign up to speak.

Do not underestimate the importance of that record.

Emails matter.

Letters matter.

Public comments matter.

Standing at a microphone and saying, “I live here, and I object” matters.

When elected and appointed officials eventually vote, there should be no ambiguity about what Chesapeake residents told them.

Can’t Attend? Watch the Process

The City has not announced that the September open houses themselves will be livestreamed. But residents can follow the formal government proceedings online as the regulations move through the Planning Commission and City Council.

Chesapeake Television streams City government proceedings online and provides Planning Commission meetings for viewing.

Watch Chesapeake government meetings online

Residents can also follow Chesapeake Television for meeting coverage and recordings.

Visit Chesapeake Television

Public participation should not belong only to the people who can make it to City Hall on a particular night.

Watch.

Read the agendas.

Submit your comments.

Email your representatives.

And when necessary, show up again.

This Is What Local Democracy Looks Like

This is the part of democracy that does not make cable news.

There will be no presidential debate.

No convention balloons.

No viral campaign commercial.

Just residents walking into a community center, elementary school, or City Hall and telling their local government what they want their city to look like.

But these are often the decisions that affect our lives the longest.

Twenty years from now, somebody will live next to whatever we permit today.

Somebody will pay the utility bills.

Somebody will drive the roads.

Somebody will inherit the environmental consequences.

Somebody will look at the Chesapeake we created and ask whether we planned wisely.

We have an opportunity right now to answer that question before the concrete is poured.

So show up.

Write the letter.

Send the email.

Submit the public comment.

Watch the hearings.

Speak at the microphone.

Ask questions.

Demand strong regulations.

Protect our neighborhoods.

Protect our environment.

Protect Chesapeake’s ability to determine its own future.

And make unmistakably clear that economic development should serve the people of Chesapeake, not the other way around.

For additional information about the City’s data center process, residents can contact the Chesapeake Planning Department at 757-382-6176 or Planning@CityOfChesapeake.net.

Our city. Our land. Our future.

We should decide what happens to it.

For years, I have approached transportation, housing, and regional planning (or regionalism, as I like to refer to it) primarily as a policy advocate, political strategist, and legal professional. From the outside, the work can feel deceptively straightforward.

We all know we need more housing. We all know people need reliable public transit. We all know our essential workers should be able to reach their jobs without spending hours commuting on our interstates and tunnels. We all know working families like mine should not have to choose between affordable housing, healthcare, and access to economic opportunity.

Then one day you wake up, and you sit down at the governing table.

Suddenly, the questions become more complicated.

How much does it cost?

Who pays?

What can actually be implemented this year?

What happens if ridership projections are wrong?

Which neighborhoods gain access?

Which communities are asked to wait?

How does one seemingly narrow operational decision affect affordable workforce housing, jobs that actually pay a living wage, public health, equitable development patterns, and regional cohesion five or ten or twenty years from now?

That is the transition I have been thinking about as I continue my service on the Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization and Planning District Commission Community Advisory Committee, and especially as I begin my service on the Transportation District Commission of Hampton Roads.

Advocacy asks what our local and regional government should do.

Governance forces you to confront how it actually gets done.

From Advocate to Steward

There is something humbling about moving from the person making demands of an institution to becoming one of the people responsible for stewarding it.

That does not mean abandoning ambition. Quite the opposite.

It means learning how to translate ambition into decisions.

A governing board is not a campaign rally. The agenda is filled with contracts, budgets, service plans, capital projects, performance metrics, procurement decisions, staffing issues, and operational questions that may never trend on social media.

But those seemingly ordinary decisions are where public policy becomes real.

A route adjustment can determine whether a worker gets home before midnight.

A capital investment can influence where developers build.

A budget decision can determine whether service becomes more frequent or less reliable.

A land-use partnership can help determine whether a future transit corridor becomes a community where working families can actually afford to live, work, and play.

That is why I am increasingly convinced that some of the most consequential work in public life happens in rooms where almost nobody is watching.

Reading the Agenda Differently

One of the habits I am trying to bring into this work is simple: never read an agenda item as only an agenda item.

Take a route adjustment.

At first glance, the question may appear operational. Does the route perform well? How many riders use it? Does the schedule work? Can the agency afford to maintain the current level of service?

Those are important questions.

But they are not the only questions.

I also want to know who rides that route.

Are they essential workers?

Students?

Older adults?

People with disabilities?

Families without access to a car?

What jobs, schools, grocery stores, healthcare facilities, and neighborhoods become harder to reach if service is reduced?

What happens to somebody working a second shift if the final bus leaves before they clock out?

And then there is the land-use question.

What is being built along that corridor?

Is housing being added? What about parking?

Is that housing affordable?

Are local governments zoning for the density necessary to support high-frequency transit?

Are we investing public dollars in transportation and infrastructure while allowing land-use policies and sewer systems to undermine the very ridership those investments need?

That is the lens I want to bring to regional transportation governance.

Not every decision has an obvious civil-rights dimension on its face.

But access to mobility is fundamentally about access to opportunity in the 21st-century.

And access is never distributed evenly by accident.

Every Transit Decision Is a Land-Use Decision

One of the biggest mistakes we make in public policy is treating housing and transportation as separate conversations.

They are not.

Housing abundance without mobility can leave people geographically isolated.

Transit investment without thoughtful land-use policy can leave stations surrounded by low-density development, surface parking, or housing that working families cannot afford.

A good job is not truly accessible if getting there requires two buses, a transfer, and ninety minutes each way.

A new apartment building is not necessarily equitable development if the residents who most depend on transit are priced out of living there.

The systems reinforce one another.

Housing determines where people can live.

Transportation determines what they can reach.

Land-use policy determines what gets built around public infrastructure.

Economic development determines where jobs and services are located.

Public finance determines which investments governments can sustain.

And all of those decisions ultimately determine who gets meaningful access to opportunity.

That is why transit-oriented development matters so much to me.

Done well, TOD is not merely about putting apartments near a bus stop or rail station.

It is about creating communities where housing, transportation, jobs, education, healthcare, recreation, and public space reinforce one another.

It means thinking about affordability before land values rise.

It means creating enough housing near transit to support ridership while ensuring that the people who depend most on public transportation are not displaced by the investment.

It means treating transit as part of the economic infrastructure of a region rather than a service reserved for people who have no other option.

The Region We Are Actually Building

Hampton Roads has a lot of choices to make about its future.

We can continue developing as a collection of disconnected jurisdictions competing for growth, investment, tourism, and a tax base.

Or we can increasingly think of ourselves as one interconnected economic regional powerhouse in the making.

People already live that way.

Someone may live in Chesapeake, work in Norfolk, attend school in Portsmouth, receive healthcare in Virginia Beach, and visit family in Newport News or Hampton.

Our economy does not stop at city boundaries.

Our transportation system cannot either.

The decisions being made today about transit service, housing production, road investment, land use, and economic development will determine the physical shape of Hampton Roads for decades to come.

Will we continue building communities where a car is effectively mandatory for full participation in economic life?

Will young people be able to remain in the region as housing costs rise?

Will older residents be able to age in place without becoming isolated?

Will workers be able to reach major employment centers reliably?

Will new public investment create inclusive growth, or simply increase property values around infrastructure that vulnerable residents helped sustain?

Those questions belong in the transportation conversation.

Because transportation is not simply about moving vehicles.

It is about moving people toward opportunity.

What I Want You to Hold Me Accountable For

I am still learning.

I do not intend to walk into public service pretending I already know every operational answer.

I do intend to keep asking certain questions.

Can riders get where they need to go reliably?

Are we improving frequency and regional connectivity?

Are we listening seriously to the people who depend on the system every day?

Are transportation investments being coordinated with housing and land-use decisions?

Are we creating real opportunities for affordable housing near high-quality transit?

Are we building a regional system capable of connecting people to jobs, education, healthcare, and opportunity?

And are we funding public transportation as essential infrastructure rather than treating it as an afterthought?

I also want to be careful about promises.

No individual commissioner can redesign an entire regional transportation system.

No single board controls zoning across Hampton Roads.

No one meeting will solve decades of fragmented development.

But public leadership does require direction.

It requires asking hard questions consistently.

It requires building coalitions.

It requires understanding the details without losing sight of the larger vision.

And it requires being willing to explain decisions publicly, including the difficult ones.

That is the standard I want readers to hold me to.

The Long Game

My hope is that my time in transportation governance contributes to a larger regional conversation about what kind of Hampton Roads we want to become.

I want a region where a young person can imagine building a life without immediately calculating whether they can afford a car.

A region where seniors and people with disabilities retain independence.

A region where working families have access to affordable housing near jobs and transportation.

A region where buses arrive frequently enough that riders do not have to organize their entire lives around a timetable.

A region where transit investment and housing policy work together rather than against one another.

And ultimately, a region confident enough to think beyond jurisdictional lines.

That work will take years.

It will involve budgets, zoning ordinances, capital plans, elections, development agreements, state legislation, federal funding, and countless public meetings.

It will also require patience.

That may be one of the biggest lessons regional governance is already teaching me.

Structural change is often built through extraordinarily ordinary and boring decisions repeated over time.

The grand vision matters.

But so does the agenda packet.

I will be talking more about what I am learning from inside the process on the next episode of The Rodney Kendell Podcast, including a deeper debrief of my committee and commission meetings, the politics behind some of the decisions, and the questions I am still wrestling with.

For now, I keep coming back to this:

Advocacy asks what government should do.

Governance forces you to confront how it actually gets done.

And I am increasingly convinced that learning how to bridge those two worlds may be some of the most important work I can do.

Not because every conversation changes a vote. Not because every volunteer becomes a lifelong activist. But because every knock represents an act of faith.

Faith that democracy is still worth fighting for.

Faith that our neighbors deserve to be heard.

Faith that ordinary people, working together, can still shape the future of our communities.

This week, Virginia Democrats officially confirmed our statewide ticket for one of the most consequential elections in the Commonwealth’s history.

Together with Senator Mark Warner’s reelection campaign, Democratic candidates for Congress, City Council, School Board, and local offices across Virginia, we have an opportunity not simply to win elections but to determine the direction of our democracy at one of the most pivotal moments in modern American history.

As someone who has spent years organizing communities, from presidential campaigns to local races in Hampton Roads, I have learned one truth that has never changed:

Campaigns don’t win because of television ads.

They don’t win because of clever social media posts.

They win because someone was willing to knock on one more door.

I know because I’ve done it.

I’ve knocked doors in neighborhoods where no Democrat had visited in years.

I’ve walked apartment complexes in the blistering summer heat. I’ve spent countless Saturdays talking with voters who simply wanted someone to listen. Those conversations taught me that democracy is not built in Washington. It is built on sidewalks, front porches, church parking lots, union halls, barber shops, beauty salons, and community centers.

That is where trust is earned.

That is where movements are built.

That is where elections are won.

This year’s midterm election carries extraordinary consequences.

Across the country, fundamental freedoms remain under attack. We continue to witness unprecedented efforts by the federal government to weaken democratic institutions, erode the independence of the judiciary, politicize public service, undermine voting rights, and concentrate power in ways that should concern every American regardless of party affiliation.

Here in Virginia, the stakes are equally significant.

Local governments make decisions that shape our daily lives: the quality of our public schools, investments in affordable housing and transportation, the expansion of data centers and the rising cost of utilities and gas, public safety, environmental resilience, economic development, and whether every family feels seen, respected, and represented.

Voters will also face ballot measures and local decisions that will directly affect historically marginalized communities, including reproductive freedom and marriage equality, felon reenfranchisement, and the protection of civil rights. These issues rarely dominate national headlines, yet they profoundly influence whether working families, Black and Brown communities, LGBTQ+ Virginians, immigrants, seniors, students, and people with disabilities can fully participate in civic life.

These are not abstract policy debates.

They are decisions about who belongs.

About who prospers.

About who gets left behind.

As a lifelong organizer, I remain convinced that the greatest equalizer in American politics is still a volunteer with a clipboard.

One person.

One neighborhood.

One conversation at a time.

The data consistently confirms what organizers have known for decades: face-to-face conversations remain among the most effective forms of voter persuasion and mobilization. A genuine conversation between neighbors builds trust in ways that no algorithm ever will.

That is the magic of grassroots organizing.

It reminds us that democracy is not something we consume.

It is something we practice.

So if you’ve been wondering how you can make a difference this year, here’s your answer.

Take two hours.

Knock some doors.

Meet your neighbors.

Help write the next chapter of Virginia’s story.

This weekend, Chesapeake Democrats are kicking off weekly canvasses to support Senator Mark Warner, Democratic congressional candidates Bobby Scott and Elaine Luria, along with our outstanding Democratic down-ballot candidates for City Council and School Board.

You can choose the neighborhood that works best for you:

• Hickory Grove Precinct (Hickory area – 2nd Congressional District)
https://www.mobilize.us/va26cc/event/985640/

• John T. West Precinct (Deep Creek area – 2nd Congressional District)
https://mobilize.us/s/KUKfhZ

• Jolliff Middle Precinct (Western Branch area – 3rd Congressional District)
https://mobilize.us/s/Z271Rg

Whether you’re a seasoned organizer or this would be your very first canvass, there is a place for you.

You don’t need to know every policy position.

You don’t need to have all the answers.

You simply need a willingness to show up and get involved.

Michelle Obama once said, “To win elections, we must do something.”

She was right.

The “something” has always been us.

Not the consultants.

Not the television commercials.

Not the political pundits.

Neighbors talking to neighbors.

Citizens choosing hope over cynicism.

Communities refusing to surrender democracy to fear or apathy.

History has never been written by the people who stayed home.

It has always been written by those willing to knock on one more door.

I hope to see you out there.

The latest episode of IMO with First Lady Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson featuring Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was one of those conversations.

I listened as a legal stategist and community organizer, a fellow podcaster, and someone who has spent much of my life fighting for justice while chasing excellence. But more than anything, I listened as someone who was raised to believe that public service is a calling.

Growing up, I didn’t dream of becoming famous. I dreamed of making a difference.

Like so many young Black student leaders who saw possibilities where previous generations had seen barriers, I was inspired by Justice Thurgood Marshall, Professor Charles Hamilton Houston and Judge Constance Baker Motley. They represented what was possible when brilliance met purpose. They taught me that the law was more than statutes and courtrooms. It was a vehicle for justice.

That dream eventually led me to law school.

Listening to Justice Jackson describe her journey, I was struck less by the milestones and more by the mindset. Her story wasn’t about perfection. It was about preparation. Extraordinary discipline. A remarkable family. Unwavering faith in the work. Heart wrenching sacrifice. The relentless willingness to keep showing up, even when the expectations were impossibly high.

Mrs. Obama and Mr. Robinson brought out something that we don’t always get to see from people who occupy historic positions. They reminded us that greatness is often built in ordinary moments: around kitchen tables, through siblings who keep us humble, parents who refuse to let us quit, and mentors who see something in us before we see it in ourselves.

As someone who has always identified as an overachiever, I felt deeply seen and convicted.

There is a particular pressure that many high-achieving people carry. We convince ourselves that every opportunity has to be maximized. Every credential earned. Every expectation exceeded. Sometimes that drive is our greatest strength. Sometimes it becomes a burden we place on ourselves.

Justice Jackson offered another way to think about excellence.

Excellence is not about proving your worth. It is about honoring the gifts you’ve been given through preparation, humility, and service.

That distinction matters.

Over the past year, my own life has reminded me that résumés can change overnight. Elections are won and lost. Careers take unexpected turns. Public failures become public lessons. Yet our calling remains.

The measure of a life is not whether every chapter goes according to plan. It is whether we continue answering the call to serve.

That is what resonated with me most.

Justice Jackson did not become who she is because she chased titles. She became who she is because she pursued excellence with integrity, even when no one was watching.

As a fellow podcaster, I also appreciated what Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson have built. Their conversations make space for vulnerability without sacrificing substance. At a time when outrage often dominates our feeds, they remind us that thoughtful dialogue still has the power to inspire.

We need more conversations like this.

Conversations that tell young Black children they belong in every courtroom, every classroom, every boardroom, and every branch of government.

Conversations that remind aspiring lawyers that the pursuit of justice is still a noble profession.

Conversations that encourage overachievers to pursue excellence not for applause, but because the communities we serve deserve our very best.

Justice Marshall often reminded us that the Constitution was written to endure and to adapt. Justice Jackson embodies that same living tradition, not simply through her jurisprudence, but through her example.

After finishing the episode, I found myself thinking less about the Supreme Court and more about my own responsibility.

To prepare.

To serve.

To remain humble.

To keep showing up.

Because public service was never about becoming somebody.

It has always been about helping somebody.

To view the full episode please visit:

https://youtu.be/iFIDaoSek94?is=MNFp7LeOKfcVqAkz

There are moments in life that leave you speechless.

This is one of them.

I am deeply honored and humbled to have been nominated by Governor Abigail Spanberger to serve as a Commissioner on the Transportation District Commission of Hampton Roads (TDCHR), the governing body of Hampton Roads Transit.

To say this appointment is meaningful would be an understatement.

For me, it represents the intersection of my life’s work, my personal story, and my vision for the future of Hampton Roads.

For as long as I can remember, public transportation has been a part of my life.

I have ridden city buses. I’ve depended on transit to get to school, to work, to meetings, and to opportunities that otherwise would have been out of reach. Like millions of Americans, I understand that public transit is not a luxury. It is a lifeline.

Transportation is freedom.

It is the ability of a single mother to get to work.

It is a student making it to class.

It is a senior maintaining their independence.

It is a veteran getting to a medical appointment.

It is a young professional deciding whether to stay in our region.

It is the connective tissue that allows a metropolitan region to thrive.

That understanding has shaped my career.

Transportation Is Economic Development

Long before I entered politics, I became fascinated by the relationship between transportation, housing, and economic opportunity.

During my years working in California, I had the privilege of advocating before the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), one of the nation’s premier regional transportation agencies.

I watched regional leaders wrestle with some of the biggest questions facing growing metropolitan areas.

Where should we invest?

How do we connect people to opportunity?

How do we build communities where housing, jobs, and transit work together instead of against one another?

How do we reduce congestion while improving quality of life?

Those experiences fundamentally changed how I viewed public policy.

I came to understand that transportation is never just about roads, bridges, tunnels, freeways, buses, trains, or ferries.

Transportation is housing policy.

Transportation is workforce policy.

Transportation is climate policy.

Transportation is public health.

Transportation is economic development.

And transportation is ultimately about people.

A Full-Circle Moment

There is something deeply humbling about this appointment.

Years ago, I admired regional transportation commissioners from the audience.

Today, I have the privilege of becoming one.

That perspective is not lost on me.

The Transportation District Commission oversees Hampton Roads Transit, a regional system serving Chesapeake, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach.

Together, the Commission provides governance for an organization responsible for approximately $149 million in annual operations and more than $500 million in capital investments that will shape the future of our region for decades to come.

That is an enormous responsibility.

One I do not take lightly.

Building the Hampton Roads We Deserve

Throughout my campaign for the Virginia House of Delegates, I often spoke about transportation alongside housing.

That wasn’t accidental.

The best communities don’t simply build roads.

They build transit-connected neighborhoods.

Neighborhoods where people can safely walk, bike, or ride a scooter.

Neighborhoods connected by reliable public transit.

Neighborhoods where families can afford to live near jobs, amenities, and opportunities.

Neighborhoods where businesses want to invest because people can actually reach them.

The future of Hampton Roads depends upon thinking regionally and globally.

The six cities that make up our transportation district compete in many ways, but we also succeed together.

A worker living in Chesapeake may commute to Norfolk.

A student in Portsmouth may attend school in Hampton.

A tourist arriving in Virginia Beach may spend the afternoon in downtown Norfolk.

Our economy is regional.

Our transportation system must be as well.

Gratitude

I am sincerely grateful to Governor Abigail Spanberger for her confidence and for the opportunity to serve the Commonwealth in this capacity.

Public service has always been my calling.

Whether working in the California Legislature, advocating for affordable housing, supporting communities through philanthropy, running for public office, or now serving as a regional transportation commissioner, my mission has remained remarkably consistent:

To leave my community better than I found it.

I am equally grateful to the mentors, colleagues, friends, family members, and neighbors who have believed in me over the years.

This appointment belongs to all of us.

The Work Begins

Titles come and go.

The work remains.

Over the coming years, I hope to be known not simply as a commissioner, but as a thoughtful, collaborative, and prepared public servant who never loses sight of the people behind every policy decision.

Every route.

Every station.

Every budget.

Every capital investment.

Every vote.

Behind each of them is someone simply trying to get where they need to go.

Those are the people I intend to serve.

As a lifelong transit rider, an advocate for transit-oriented communities, and sustainable economic development, and now a gubernatorial appointee, I am excited for the journey ahead.

The next stop is service.

Let’s get to work.

“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” — Proverbs 15:22

Thank you, Governor Spanberger. Thank you, Hampton Roads. It is the honor of a lifetime to serve.

This Juneteenth carries special significance as our nation approaches its 250th anniversary. The American story is one of extraordinary ideals and profound contradictions. We are a nation founded on the promise that all people are created equal, yet built in part through slavery, dispossession, and exclusion. The tension between those two truths has shaped every chapter of our history.

Juneteenth invites us to wrestle with what freedom truly means. Freedom is more than the absence of chains. It is the presence of opportunity. It is the ability to live with dignity, to participate fully in democracy, to build wealth, to raise a family in safety, and to have one's humanity recognized and respected.

As we reflect on 250 years of this republic, we must ask ourselves whether we are merely commemorating freedom or actively expanding it. Empires seek power. Democracies seek justice. The measure of our nation is not found in its wealth or military might alone, but in its willingness to continuously bend toward a more perfect union.

Today, we also honor the ancestors whose courage made this day possible. We remember the nearly 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors who answered the call to serve in the United States Colored Troops during the Civil War. We honor those who escaped bondage, those who guided others to freedom, those who endured unspeakable cruelty, and those who gave their lives so that future generations might live as free people. Their sacrifice helped save the Union, destroy slavery, and move this nation closer to its founding promise.

As people of faith, we are reminded of the words of Scripture: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery." (Galatians 5:1)

The story of Juneteenth is ultimately a story of hope. It is the story of people who never stopped believing in freedom even when freedom seemed impossible. It is the story of generations who organized, marched, voted, prayed, and sacrificed so that future generations might inherit a better country.

Today we honor our ancestors. We celebrate Black resilience, Black excellence, and Black joy. We give thanks to God for sustaining a people through slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation, and every effort to deny our humanity. And we recommit ourselves to the unfinished work of building an America where liberty and justice are not aspirations for some, but realities for all.

Happy Juneteenth.

May we be worthy of the sacrifices that secured our freedom, faithful stewards of the democracy they preserved, and courageous enough to continue the work of justice for generations yet unborn.

After months of redistricting drama, legal uncertainty, political maneuvering, and voter confusion, early voting begins this week for Virginia’s August 4 party primaries for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

This is not a normal primary calendar. It is later than usual. It comes after a bruising fight over congressional redistricting that ended with the current maps remaining in place. And now voters are being asked to do what voters always have to do when the political class finishes arguing.

Pay attention.

Check your ballot.

Make a plan.

And vote.

Early, in-person voting begins this week. Because Friday, June 19, is Juneteenth, a state holiday, many local registrar offices that would otherwise begin early voting on Friday will instead open for early voting on Thursday, June 18. Early voting continues through Saturday, August 1. Election Day is Tuesday, August 4.

The voter registration and update deadline is Friday, July 24. The deadline to request a ballot by mail is also Friday, July 24.

That gives voters time. But not as much time as people think.

Summer elections are tricky. People are traveling. Families are busy. Students are moving. Campaigns are scrambling. Voters are still learning who is running. Challengers, especially those without major funding or national party support, have a much smaller window to introduce themselves.

That is why early voting matters.

Not because everyone must vote early, but because every voter needs a plan.

How We Got Here

Virginia’s 2026 primary was pushed back by several weeks because of the redistricting battle that consumed much of the political calendar.

Democrats in Virginia attempted to redraw congressional maps in response to mid-decade redistricting efforts in Republican-controlled states, efforts pushed by President Donald Trump to protect and expand the GOP’s narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Virginia voters approved new maps on April 21 that would have given Democrats an advantage in 10 of the state’s 11 congressional districts. But on May 8, a sharply divided Supreme Court of Virginia threw out the plan, ruling that the General Assembly had not followed the constitutional requirements for amending the state constitution.

So after all of that, the maps remain unchanged.

And now the voters must sort through the consequences.

Some candidates have had months to prepare. Others are still introducing themselves. Some voters may be voting in districts they know well. Others may still be unsure who is on their ballot.

That is why the first step is simple: check.

Check your registration.

Check your district.

Check your ballot.

Check your early voting location.

Do not assume you know. Confirm it.

What Virginia Voters Need to Know

The August 4 primary includes party contests for federal offices, including U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. What appears on your ballot will depend on where you live and which primaries are being held in your district.

Virginia does not register voters by political party. In a primary, voters may choose which party’s ballot they want to vote, but they may only vote in one party’s primary.

Key dates:

• Early voting begins: Thursday, June 18 in localities closed for Juneteenth, otherwise Friday, June 19

• Last day to register to vote or update registration: Friday, July 24

• Last day to request a ballot by mail: Friday, July 24

• Last day to vote early in person: Saturday, August 1

• Election Day: Tuesday, August 4

• Polls on Election Day are open from 6:00 AM to 7:00 PM.

The best place to start is the Virginia Department of Elections Citizen Portal. There, you can check your voter registration, update your information, apply for an absentee ballot, view your polling place, and confirm your election district.

Virginia Citizen Portal: https://www.elections.virginia.gov/citizen-portal/

Virginia Department of Elections upcoming election calendar: https://www.elections.virginia.gov/casting-a-ballot/calendars-schedules/upcoming-elections.html

You can also contact your local registrar’s office for early voting locations, satellite sites, hours, and any local instructions.

Find your local registrar: https://www.elections.virginia.gov/LocalGR/

For a helpful news overview, read The Virginian-Pilot’s guide to the August primary here.

Democracy Is Not Built for Spectators

One of the most dangerous things voters can do is wait until the last minute.

That is especially true in a primary.

Primaries often have lower turnout than general elections, which means a smaller group of voters can shape the choices available to everyone in November. In many districts, the primary may be one of the most consequential elections of the cycle.

That does not mean voters should rush. It means voters should prepare.

Read about the candidates.

Look up their websites.

Watch forums when they are available.

Review local news coverage.

Talk to neighbors.

Ask questions.

And then vote.

Voting is not just an Election Day activity. It is a civic habit. It is a form of public responsibility. It is one of the few moments when every eligible voter has the same formal power to shape who appears on the ballot and who speaks for their community.

We cannot complain about politics being broken and then skip the elections where choices are made.

We cannot demand better leadership and then ignore the process that produces leaders.

We cannot wait for democracy to save itself.

Make Your Voting Plan

Before the week is over, every Virginia voter should do four things.

First, check your registration.

Second, confirm your district and what is on your ballot.

Third, decide whether you will vote early in person, by mail, or on Election Day.

Fourth, put your voting plan on your calendar.

If you vote early, check your local registrar’s hours before you go.

If you vote by mail, request your ballot by the deadline and return it as early as possible.

If you vote on Election Day, confirm your polling place before August 4.

And if you are able, help someone else make a plan too.

Call your parents.

Text your group chat.

Remind your church members.

Check in with your neighbors.

Talk to young voters.

Ask your coworkers if they know early voting has started.

This is how democracy works in real life. Not just speeches. Not just posts. Not just outrage. People helping people participate.

The Work Continues

Virginia has been through a lot politically over the last several years. Statewide elections. Local elections. Special elections. Constitutional amendments. Redistricting fights. Court battles. National attention. Local confusion.

It can be exhausting.

But exhaustion is not an excuse to disengage.

The people who want to shape the future are counting on voters to be tired, distracted, confused, and checked out.

Do not give them that gift.

This week, early voting begins again in Virginia.

So check your status.

Know your ballot.

Make your plan.

Vote early if that works for you.

Vote on Election Day if that works for you.

But vote.

Because democracy does not run on vibes.

It runs on participation.

Support This Work

“The Rodney Kendell Substack” and “The Rodney Kendell Podcast” are powered by readers, listeners, paid subscribers, and grassroots donors.

If this work informs you, encourages you, challenges you, or helps you stay grounded in this political moment, please consider becoming a paid subscriber or making a monthly, yearly, or one-time contribution.

Support the work here:

• Givebutter: https://givebutter.com/0sGsRW

• Cash App: $RodneyNickens

• Zelle: rnstrategies@gmail.com

Thank you for helping sustain independent Black queer political thought, storytelling, and civic education.

The work continues.

Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas were finally informed that they were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. For generations, Black families and communities have marked this day with food, music, prayer, storytelling, remembrance, and joy.

But let’s be clear.

A federal holiday is nice.

It is not reparations.

Recognition is not repair. Commemoration is not compensation. A day off work is not justice for centuries of stolen labor, stolen land, family separation, racial terror, medical exploitation, housing discrimination, educational exclusion, political disenfranchisement, and state-sanctioned violence.

Reparations are owed. Reparations are due.

And they are especially necessary in a time when much of the Western world still refuses to fully acknowledge slavery and the transatlantic slave trade as among the greatest crimes against humanity in human history.

That refusal has consequences.

When a nation refuses to tell the truth about the depth of the harm, it cannot seriously pursue the fullness of repair. When elected leaders attack Black history, ban books, whitewash curriculum, and pretend racism is simply a matter of individual prejudice rather than a system built into law, land, capital, and power, they are not just debating the past. They are fighting over the future.

That is why Juneteenth must be more than a celebration.

It must be a call to truth.

A call to memory.

A call to repair.

A call to action.

Congress should pass H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act. H.R. 40 would create a federal commission to examine the legacy of slavery and recommend appropriate remedies. That is not radical. That is the bare minimum beginning of a national process toward truth, peace, reconciliation, and healing.

America cannot heal what it refuses to name.

And America cannot reconcile with a people it has never fully repaired.

This Juneteenth, I am also thinking deeply about the institutions that hold our history when the nation tries to forget it.

As a student of American History and African-American Studies, visiting the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. was life-changing. The museum does not allow you to look away. It forces you to sit with the full sweep of our story: the horror, the genius, the resistance, the beauty, the grief, and the triumph.

This year, I also visited the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia in Richmond for the first time. That experience moved me deeply. There is something powerful about encountering Black history in Virginia, a commonwealth so central to the story of slavery, freedom, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, civil rights, and modern democracy. It reminded me that our history is not abstract. It is local. It is regional. It is personal. It is beneath our feet.

These institutions matter because they preserve what others would erase. They teach what others would distort. They honor lives, movements, and communities that built this country even when this country refused to honor them.

But they cannot do that work on symbolism alone.

They need support.

They need visitors.

They need members.

They need monthly and annual donors.

This Juneteenth, I want to encourage everyone who believes in truth, memory, and justice to invest in Black cultural institutions.

Support the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.
Donate or become a member: https://nmaahc.si.edu/connect/ways-give
Plan your visit: https://nmaahc.si.edu/visit/plan-your-visit

Support the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia in Richmond.
Donate: https://67480.blackbaudhosting.com/67480/Total-Contributions-Operations
Learn more:

https://blackhistorymuseum.org/

Support the Virginia African American Cultural Center in Virginia Beach.
Donate: https://www.vaaccvb.org/donate.html
Learn more:

https://www.vaaccvb.org/

The Virginia African American Cultural Center is especially important for Hampton Roads. This region holds some of the deepest Black history in America, from Point Comfort and the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in English North America, to generations of Black labor, faith, military service, education, civic leadership, and cultural creation. A permanent cultural center in Virginia Beach is not just a local project. It is part of the broader work of preserving the African American story for future generations.

And this week, there is another historic institution to add to your list.

The Obama Presidential Center opens to visitors this Friday, June 19, in Chicago. Make a point to visit.

The Obama story is not simply the story of one presidency. It is a story about organizing, democracy, Black political imagination, family, community, and the long struggle to make American promises real. It is also rooted on the South Side of Chicago, a community that shaped President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and a generation of leaders who believed change could be built from the ground up.

Plan your visit: https://www.obama.org/visit/
Support the Obama Foundation: https://www.obama.org/donate/

So yes, celebrate Juneteenth.

Gather with your people. Eat. Laugh. Rest. Pray. Dance. Tell the stories. Teach the children. Call the elders. Visit a museum.

But do not stop there.

Call your member of Congress and urge them to support and pass H.R. 40.

Become a monthly donor to a Black cultural institution.

Buy a museum membership.

Plan a visit.

Take a young person with you.

Support the people and institutions doing the daily work of preserving our history and telling the truth.

Juneteenth is a celebration of delayed freedom.

It is also a reminder that justice delayed is still justice denied.

A holiday is not enough.

Memory is not enough.

Representation is not enough.

America owes a debt.

And until there is truth, repair, reconciliation, and healing, the work remains unfinished.

Support This Work

If this piece moved you, informed you, challenged you, or gave you something to think about, I hope you will consider supporting “The Rodney Kendell Substack” and “The Rodney Kendell Podcast.”

This is independent, reader-supported work. It is a crowdfunding platform that depends on paid subscribers, monthly donors, and one-time supporters to sustain the writing, research, political education, podcast production, travel, and community storytelling that make this work possible.

Become a paid subscriber. Share this piece with your people. Send it to someone who needs to read it. And if you are able, make a monthly or yearly contribution to help keep this platform growing.

You can support the work here:

Givebutter: https://givebutter.com/0sGsRW
Cash App: $RodneyNickens
Zelle: rnstrategies@gmail.com

Thank you for reading, listening, sharing, and investing in independent Black queer political thought, faith-rooted storytelling, and community-centered civic education.

The work continues.

According to the article, Donald Trump’s top advisers recently gathered in a series of Situation Room meetings as they struggled to contain the fallout from the Epstein files and a scandal increasingly engulfing Trump himself.

The Situation Room.

Not a press shop huddle. Not a quick strategy call. Not a routine communications meeting.

The Situation Room.

That detail alone tells us something important. It tells us this was not viewed merely as a media problem. It was treated as a crisis of power, perception, and political survival.

And honestly, that should stop all of us in our tracks.

For years, Donald and his allies built an entire political brand around conspiracy, suspicion, and the promise that they alone would expose the corruption of the powerful. They told their supporters that hidden networks were protecting elites. They suggested that institutions could not be trusted. They claimed that if they returned to power, they would finally reveal the truth.

Then the truth became politically inconvenient.

Suddenly, the same people who demanded transparency became very careful about what transparency should look like. Suddenly, the same movement that claimed to be obsessed with accountability appeared far more interested in damage control. Suddenly, the question was no longer “What happened to the victims?” but “How do we keep this from hurting Donald?”

That is the moral rot at the center of this story.

Because the Epstein files are not just about one disgraced financier. They are not just about one corrupt president. They are not just about one complicit political party. They are about the way power protects itself.

They are about how wealthy and connected men move through the world with a different set of rules.

They are about how child victims are too often treated as evidence, liabilities, headlines, or political weapons instead of human beings.

They are about what happens when a society becomes more interested in scandal than justice.

And that is where we have to be careful.

There is a cheap version of this conversation that will reduce everything to partisan dunking. There is an easy version that will simply say, “Look at Trump. Look at the hypocrisy. Look at the panic.” And yes, the hypocrisy matters. The panic matters. The secrecy matters. The reported White House scramble matters.

But the deeper question is this: what kind of country creates this much protection around powerful men while survivors are left to carry the burden?

The Epstein case has always revealed something ugly about America. It has shown us how wealth can buy access, silence, proximity, and delay. It has shown us how elite networks can operate in plain sight while ordinary people are told to trust the process. It has shown us how easily institutions can fail the vulnerable while bending over backward to protect the powerful.

And now, once again, we are watching the machinery of politics move faster to protect reputations than to protect survivors.

That should make us angry.

Not performatively angry. Not cable-news angry. Not social-media angry.

Morally angry.

The kind of anger that demands answers. The kind of anger that refuses to let this story become another circus. The kind of anger that says survivors deserve more than to be dragged through another round of political spectacle while the powerful hold closed-door meetings about optics.

There is also something deeply revealing about the reported split inside Trump’s orbit. Some advisers apparently understood the danger of appearing secretive. Others seemed more focused on managing the base. But that tension itself tells the story. This was not simply about releasing documents. It was about controlling a narrative.

And that has always been Donald’s superpower.

He floods the zone. He attacks the press. He blames enemies. He turns every question into a loyalty test. He takes a serious matter and converts it into a performance about himself.

But the Epstein files cannot be allowed to become just another episode in the Trump show.

There are victims here.

There are women whose lives were changed forever.

There are survivors who have been retraumatized, exposed, harassed, doubted, and used by people who claim to be seeking justice but often seem more interested in proving a theory.

That is not justice.

Justice is not selectively caring about child abuse when it implicates your political enemies. Justice is not demanding transparency only when you think it will hurt the other side. Justice is not protecting your leader when the facts become uncomfortable. Justice is not turning survivors into props for partisan warfare.

Justice requires consistency.

If we believe powerful men and women should be held accountable, then that standard cannot change based on party, ideology, friendship, donor status, celebrity, or proximity to power.

If we believe survivors deserve to be heard, then we cannot treat their pain as a political tool.

If we believe in transparency, then we cannot accept secrecy dressed up as strategy.

That is why this moment matters.

The question is not only what Donald Trump knew, when he knew it, or why his advisers reportedly felt the need to manage the fallout from inside one of the most secure rooms in the federal government.

The question is whether America still has the moral capacity to confront power honestly.

Because we have seen this pattern before.

When powerful people are accused, institutions get cautious. Lawyers get careful. Staffers get nervous. Communications teams get activated. Donors get protected. Friends get quiet. Survivors get scrutinized.

And the public is told to move along.

No.

We do not get to move along.

Not when children and young men and women were harmed. Not when survivors are still fighting to be treated with dignity. Not when the government’s handling of these files has raised serious questions. Not when political leaders who promised transparency appear to be scrambling behind closed doors.

The American people deserve the truth.

Survivors deserve protection.

And no president, no billionaire, no donor, no celebrity, no political movement, and no so-called friend of power should be above accountability.

That is the real issue here.

This is not about gossip. This is not about obsession. This is not about conspiracy. This is about whether we are willing to tell the truth when the truth threatens powerful people.

And if the people in power are more afraid of the files than they are committed to justice, then we already know more than enough about where their priorities are.

The Epstein files are a test.

A test of transparency.

A test of institutional integrity.

A test of whether survivor justice matters when it becomes politically inconvenient.

A test of whether the same people who shout “law and order” actually believe in accountability when the spotlight turns toward their own house.

And right now, too many people are failing that test.

The country deserves better.

The survivors deserve better.

And the truth deserves daylight.

As campaigns across the country ramp up for the 2026 midterms, the DNC’s When We Count Virtual Organizer Training Bootcamp is an important opportunity for young people who are ready to turn their passion for democracy into real campaign skills — and potentially a full-time career in politics.

This highly selective, two-day virtual training is designed for young professionals and graduating seniors, ages 18–29, who want to work on campaigns between now and November 2026.

Participants will learn directly from veteran organizers, campaign managers, and political professionals about the core skills every campaign needs: field strategy, campaign structure, messaging, coalitions, data and digital tools, volunteer recruitment, and how to use your personal story as a tool for persuasion and connection.

But let me be clear: the value of a program like this is not just the training. It is also the network.

For young people from underrepresented communities — especially those who may not have inherited access to political spaces, elite networks, or campaign pipelines — opportunities like this matter. They create room for peer mentorship, career guidance, resume support, interview preparation, and relationships with people who can help open doors long after the training ends.

Politics needs more working-class organizers. More Black and Brown organizers. More LGBTQ+ organizers. More first-generation leaders. More young people from the communities most impacted by the decisions made in government.

And we do not just need them as volunteers. We need them trained, paid, supported, promoted, and prepared to lead.

The 2026 midterms will shape the future of our communities. If you are a young Democrat ready to learn, organize, relocate if needed, and get to work, this bootcamp could be a major first step.

DNC When We Count Virtual Organizer Training Bootcamp
Dates: Thursday, June 25 & Friday, June 26, 2026
Time: 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Format: Virtual
Who should apply: Aspiring young Democrats ages 18–29 seeking full- or part-time campaign employment this cycle. No prior campaign experience required.

Space is limited. Apply today and take the first step toward building a career in organizing, campaigns, and public service.

Because when we count our people, train our people, and invest in our people — we win.

Here’s the link: https://ats.rippling.com/democratic-national-committee/jobs/5ebac02c-4f6a-4904-b27a-f0a47e1c7c31

We Promised Data Centers a Tax Break Until 2035. But What Did We Promise Teachers?

Dateline: Richmond, Via My Last Working Brain Cell

Let me get this straight.

The new fiscal year starts next month. The calendar is flipping to July. And Virginia, home to one of the world’s largest concentrations of data centers, the engine room of the digital economy, the commonwealth that never sleeps because the servers don’t, still does not have a budget.

We are in overtime.

Or, as I like to call it, the annual tradition of Richmond burning the midnight oil while the rest of us wonder where our tax dollars went.

The sticking point? It would not be a Virginia budget fight without a fight over a promise.

Here is the clip we are all digesting: Governor Abigail Spanberger’s first budget year is already being tested, the fiscal clock is ticking, and the General Assembly is still split over a sales and use tax exemption for data centers that Virginia promised to keep alive until 2035.

That’s right. 2035.

We are living in 2026. That means there are nine years left on this deal.

Senate Democrats are looking at the math, and the math says teachers need raises and child care programs need real investment. Their proposal? End the data center tax break and move that money toward classrooms, educators, and working families.

Speaker Don Scott, speaking to business leaders in Northern Virginia this week, pushed back hard. His argument is not simply about whether data centers are good or bad. His argument is about credibility.

Scott says eliminating the exemption would mean going back on a promise.

So let’s unpack that promise.

When Virginia lured these massive server farms, the ones that power your Netflix, your bank, your cloud storage, and yes, your AI chatbot, we told them: Come to Virginia. Buy the equipment. Build the facilities. We will not tax the equipment you need to keep the internet running.

And they came.

In droves.

Northern Virginia became a global data center hub. Dominion Energy is trying to keep up with the demand. Communities are asking questions about land use, energy, noise, water, and whether the benefits are being shared fairly.

And the deal has always been complicated.

Data centers generate significant local tax revenue in some communities, but they create relatively few permanent jobs for the amount of land, energy, and infrastructure they require. They stress the grid. They reshape local planning. And under this exemption, they avoid paying a major category of taxes on the equipment that makes the whole operation work.

Speaker Scott is essentially saying: Virginia gave its word. If we break that promise now, why would any other industry trust us with future economic development incentives?

That is not a frivolous argument.

But here is the other side of the coin.

What promise did we make to the teacher working a second job at Target?

What promise did we make to the working parent who cannot find affordable child care so they can go to work?

What promise did we make to the child sitting in an overcrowded classroom, waiting for adults in Richmond to decide whether their future is a priority?

Right now, Senate Democrats are looking at both a budget hole and a moral hole. They see a major tax break flowing to an industry that is, frankly, doing just fine. Hyperscalers do not exactly need a coupon in 2026.

So we have a standoff.

The House: A deal is a deal. Stability matters. Business confidence matters.

The Senate: The future is teachers, child care, and public investment, not just terabytes.

And that is what makes this debate hard.

Neither side is entirely wrong.

Virginia should care about its credibility. We should not treat economic development promises like disposable campaign flyers. If the Commonwealth commits, that commitment should mean something.

But we should also be honest enough to say that a promise to industry is not the only promise on the table.

There is also a promise to the people who teach our children.

There is a promise to families who cannot afford child care.

There is a promise to communities being asked to absorb the costs of growth without always seeing the benefits.

There is a promise to build an economy that does not just attract investment, but actually improves people’s lives.

If you live in Hampton Roads or rural Southside, you may not wake up thinking about a data center sales and use tax exemption. You are probably thinking about whether your kid’s school has enough teachers, whether child care costs more than rent, whether your road floods, whether your power bill is climbing, and whether Richmond remembers that Virginia is bigger than Northern Virginia’s economic engine.

But Richmond cares because Northern Virginia pays a lot of the bills.

That is the tension.

Scott is betting that business confidence is more fragile than some Democrats think. Senate Democrats are betting that voters care more about services than server farms.

Here is my take: Do not make teachers wait until 2035.

There is room for a middle ground.

Phase it out. Cap it. Grandfather existing facilities. Create stricter performance standards. Tie future exemptions to job creation, energy impact, local revenue, and community benefit. But to look at a classroom with 30 kids and a teacher making less than they deserve and say, “Sorry, our hands are tied because we made a promise to cloud computing companies,” is not fiscal responsibility.

It is bad prioritization.

Virginia is for lovers.

And right now, it feels like we love our tax incentives more than our literacy rates.

So what do you think?

Is a promise a promise, or is it time to renegotiate the deal?

Hit reply or leave a comment. I need to go check whether my lights are flickering from the Loudoun load.

Rodney K. Nickens Jr. is the Principal of R&N Strategies, LLC, a civic, political, and legal strategy firm based in Chesapeake, Virginia. The R&N Strategies Virginia Pro-Housing Scorecard launches later this year.

I went to college. I earned my degree. I built a life. And then, two years ago, I risked it all again and came back home to run for office.

And 15,000 of you took a chance on me.

This Pride Month, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for believing in me. Thank you for standing with me. Thank you for reminding me that courage is contagious.

I also want to say Happy Pride.

Love yourself. Bet on yourself. Trust yourself. And never forget that God created you beautifully, wonderfully, and intentionally, just as you are.

Times may be hard. Challenges may come. But life can and will get better when you keep believing, keep pushing, and keep choosing yourself.

Happy Pride Month, everybody. 🌈

P.S. New look. Same mission!

"The Rodney Kendell Podcast" is where we bring together politics, faith, culture, justice, strategy, and real conversation from the heart of Hampton Roads to wherever the work takes us next.

This platform started as a place to think out loud about democracy, community, leadership, and the unfinished work of building a more just world. It has become part of a larger calling: telling the truth, making meaning, and creating space for conversations that move people.

I am excited to keep growing this work, and I am grateful for everyone who has listened, shared, subscribed, encouraged, challenged, and supported along the way.

"The Rodney Kendell Podcast" is now streaming wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen, share, and stay connected. The next chapter is already unfolding.

Support the work and become a monthly donor today:

https://givebutter.com/0sGsRW

#39For39Campaign #RodneyChampionsOfChange

P.S.S. Episode 5 of Season 2 is now available. Can y’all believe we are already halfway through the season?

I am thinking a lot about my own family and the generations of families like mine who have carried the weight of service, sacrifice, silence, and survival.

I am thinking about the Black Virginians who went to war for a nation that did not always honor their humanity at home. Men and women who wore the uniform crossed oceans, buried friends, returned changed, or never returned at all.

We owe them more than a holiday. We owe them remembrance, truth, and a country worthy of their sacrifice.

That is what this episode is about.

Not just grief, but the audit.

America is turning 250 this year.

Across the country, there will be parades and proclamations, fireworks and founding mythology this summer.

And even as we pause to remember the fallen today, we have to be honest: our children are still being placed in harm’s way, in Iran, across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, in Europe, and around the world.

The semiquincentennial is asking us to celebrate liberty, while too many of the people who built this country are watching its infrastructure of justice get dismantled.

That tension, between the pageantry of the 250th and the lived reality of 2026, is what this episode forensically examines.

And to do that audit, we go back sixty years to the summer that changed everything about how America understood its own problem.

The summer of 1966. Chicago. The Chicago Freedom Movement.

When Martin Luther King Jr. and the SCLC brought the movement North, they were met with something that shocked even the veterans of Selma. The open housing marches through Marquette Park and Gage Park exposed a truth the country had been avoiding: racism was not a Southern problem.

It was an American problem.

The Summit Agreement of August 1966 made promises on open housing, promises that were never enforced, never kept, and never honestly reckoned with.

Sixty years later, we have the receipts.

In this episode, I trace what happened to those promises, in Chicago, in Hampton Roads, and in federal housing policy today. I look at the HUD cuts, the CDBG and HOME reductions, the hollowing out of fair housing enforcement, and I ask the question that Season 2 was built to ask: what does a forensic audit of the American Dream actually find when you follow the money, follow the policy, and follow the people?

May we honor the fallen by remembering them fully.

May we honor those who serve by refusing to treat their lives as expendable. And may we build a nation that chooses peace, justice, and human dignity with the same urgency that it has too often chosen war.

That is the work. That is this episode. That is this summer.

Wanna support the podcast?

• LINK: https://givebutter.com/0sGsRW

All politics are local, and this moment calls for informed, sustained, collective, local, organized action.

From federal oversight hearings to early voting here in Virginia, protecting civil rights and strengthening democracy begins with us.

______________________________________________________________________

💸 Support the Work

Your support makes this podcast possible and allows me to hold power accountable, defend our freedoms, and speak the truth.

If that kind of commentary matters to you, subscribe today and help sustain this work.

You’re currently a free subscriber to The Rodney Kendell Podcast.

For the full experience, additional content, and to directly support our work, consider upgrading your subscription:

• Monthly Plan: $8/month

• Annual Plan: $80/year

• Founding Member: $240/year

👉 Upgrade your membership today by clicking upgrade to paid subscriber.

Appreciate you for tuning in.

If you’re ready to take action, share this episode and leave a comment in the chat.

Like, comment, subscribe, and share. The more you like, the more you will see. Subscribe to my Substack by clicking the link at the bottom of the page to support.

This has been another episode of “The Rodney Kendell Podcast.”

Peace, love, and purpose, family. Catch y’all next time.

“The Rodney Kendell Podcast” is a production of R&N Strategies, LLC. If you would like to be a guest on the podcast or would like to submit questions or content ideas, please email rnstrategies@gmail.com.

Thank you for listening.

#AllPoliticsIsLocal #ProtectTheVote #CivilRights #VirginiaPolitics #Organize

I was listening to that classic gospel song “Balm in Gilead” today, and it reminded me of the prophet Jeremiah and his haunting question in Jeremiah 8:22:

“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?”

The balm of Gilead was a rare and costly resin, drawn from trees in a region known for its healing properties. It was sought after because it was believed to soothe and restore physical wounds. People knew exactly where to go when their bodies needed healing.

So when Jeremiah asked this question, he wasn’t wondering whether the balm existed.

He knew it did.

His grief was deeper than that. He was mourning a people who were spiritually wounded, emotionally exhausted, and desperate for restoration, yet still had not turned toward the very source of their healing.

Sound familiar?

And if I’m honest, that question still echoes today.

How often do we carry silent wounds, hidden disappointments, and seasons of overwhelming weariness while convincing ourselves we’re fine? How often do we learn to function through excruciating pain, smile through deep heaviness, and survive what was meant to break us?

But surviving is not the same as healing. And it certainly isn’t thriving.

Jeremiah’s words remind us that healing has always been available.

The balm is still there.

The Great Physician is still able. The question has never been whether God can restore what is broken.

We know He can.

The question is whether we will surrender our real wounds long enough to let Him.

So if you’re carrying something heavy today, this is your reminder: there is still balm for what hurts, grace for what feels broken, and hope for what feels lost.

Healing is still possible.

Scripture for reflection:
“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?”
— Jeremiah 8:22 ✨

#RodneysSundayReflection #SundayDevotional #BalmInGilead #FaithReflections #Jeremiah822 #HealingAndHope

Some of you found me through the campaign last year.

Some of you came here through “The Rodney Kendell Substack,” “The Rodney Kendell Podcast,” or one of my posts about Chesapeake, Hampton Roads, housing, politics, faith, family, or the foolishness of the day.

However you got here, I am grateful.

But I also want to be clear about what this is.

R&N Strategies is the strategic consulting firm I started in 2019 to help campaigns, organizations, coalitions, candidates, and community leaders build real civic and political power.

The work sits at the intersection of public policy, political strategy, housing justice, advocacy, organizing, communications, and community-centered leadership.

But I did not start R&N Strategies just to hang out a shingle and call myself a consultant.

I started it because, after two decades working across law, policy, philanthropy, advocacy, campaigns, community organizing, and civic engagement, I kept seeing the same pattern repeat itself.

Working-class communities are asked to show up when institutions need votes.

Black communities are asked to show up when institutions need moral clarity.

Queer communities are asked to show up when institutions need proof of inclusion.

Women, caregivers, renters, poor people, elders, young people, disabled people, and the people holding entire neighborhoods together with duct tape and prayer are asked to show up when someone else needs labor, legitimacy, turnout, testimony, or a story powerful enough to move a room.

But when it is time to build infrastructure that actually belongs to us, too many of those same institutions disappear.

That is the gap.

And that is why I started R&N Strategies.

I created this firm because I know what it means to come from working people and sit in rooms where decisions are made about communities like mine by people who have never had to live with the consequences of their own policy choices.

I created it because I have seen philanthropy fund everything except Black power.

I have seen campaigns chase voters for six weeks and ignore communities for two years.

I have seen public policy discussed as if people do not bleed, break, pray, organize, survive, grieve, stretch dollars, raise children, bury loved ones, dodge eviction, sit in traffic, fight for healthcare, and still find a way to vote.

I have seen the Black South treated like a turnout machine instead of a governing force.

I have seen queer people celebrated in June and abandoned in budget season.

I have seen working-class people praised in speeches and punished in systems.

And I have seen enough.

R&N Strategies is my answer to that.

The firm is grounded in a Black queer feminist working-class analysis of power. That means I do not separate race from class. I do not separate gender from economics. I do not separate housing from democracy. I do not separate local government from lived experience. I do not separate political strategy from the question of who gets to live, thrive, lead, and be safe.

My work begins with a simple belief: the people closest to the harm are often closest to the solution, but they are rarely closest to the resources.

R&N Strategies exists to help close that distance.

This is strategy, but not strategy in the abstract. It is strategy rooted in people, place, policy, and power. It is about helping communities, campaigns, and institutions build the civic and political infrastructure needed to last beyond one election, one grant cycle, one crisis, or one headline.

That is also why my media ventures matter.

“The Rodney Kendell Substack,” “The Rodney Kendell Podcast,” and “Poppin’ in the ’Peake” are not side projects. They are part of the same ecosystem.

“The Rodney Kendell Substack” is where I think out loud, document the work, tell the truth, and offer deeper analysis on politics, policy, democracy, race, class, housing, community power, and what it means to build something that can outlast one election cycle.

“The Rodney Kendell Podcast” is where the conversation expands. It is where civic life, culture, personal reflection, politics, and community meet in a format that lets us breathe, wrestle, laugh, grieve, testify, and imagine.

“Poppin’ in the ’Peake” is focused on Chesapeake. Full stop.

It is about what is happening here: the people, small businesses, neighborhoods, events, public decisions, culture, and community life that make Chesapeake more than a place people drive through on the way somewhere else. Chesapeake has a story. Chesapeake has power. Chesapeake has people worth paying attention to.

My regional work is different.

That work shows up most clearly through housing, land use, planning, affordability, and community development, including my service on the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission Community Advisory Committee. That is where my broader Hampton Roads policy lens comes into focus, especially around housing justice, regional planning, infrastructure, affordability, and the future of who gets to stay in the communities they helped build.

All of this is connected.

The firm. The Substack. The podcast. “Poppin’ in the ’Peake.” The housing work. The campaign work. The civic work.

It is all part of one larger mission: to build power where I am from, with the people I come from, using every tool I have earned over the last two decades.

I am not waiting for permission.

I am not waiting for someone else to decide Chesapeake is worth telling the truth about.

I am not waiting for national institutions to suddenly discover Hampton Roads, working-class Black neighborhoods, queer leadership, renters, elders, young people, or the families who have been carrying this region on their backs.

I am building.

And building takes resources.

It takes time, labor, research, writing, production, organizing, relationship-building, policy analysis, technology, travel, and discipline. It takes the kind of support that allows independent Black queer civic media and strategic work to grow without being watered down, bought off, or forced into someone else’s box.

So if you believe in this work, I am asking you to invest in it.

The best way to support this work is by becoming a monthly donor through Givebutter. Monthly gifts help create the steady foundation needed to sustain this work over time.

You can make a monthly gift here:

https://givebutter.com/0sGsRW

And if a monthly gift is not possible right now, one-time gifts are also deeply appreciated.

In honor of my 39th year on Earth, I am inviting folks to send a $39 cash tip, buy me a coffee, or send a small gift of support.

Cash App: $RodneyNickens

Zelle: 757-402-9575

I also want to thank everyone who is already subscribed to “The Rodney Kendell Substack.”

Whether you are reading, sharing, commenting, forwarding posts to friends, or helping bring new people into this community, I see it and I appreciate it.

If you are currently a free subscriber and have the capacity, I hope you will consider upgrading to a paid subscription. Your paid support helps sustain the writing, analysis, storytelling, and independent civic media work that makes this platform possible.

And if you are new here, welcome.

I would love for you to become part of this growing community. Subscribe, share the work, invite someone else in, and stay connected as we build something rooted, honest, strategic, and lasting.

Every contribution helps sustain the writing, podcasting, organizing, consulting, storytelling, and community-rooted strategy I am building through R&N Strategies and across my media ventures.

This is bigger than content.

This is bigger than consulting.

This is infrastructure.

And I am building it to last.

In Virginia, Governor Abigail Spanberger vetoed legislation that would have created a legal retail cannabis marketplace, despite previous expectations from many Democrats and cannabis advocates that she would support the move.

She also rejected legislation expanding collective bargaining rights for public employees, including firefighters and first responders, prompting frustration from labor advocates who expected more from a Democratic administration.

At the same time, national Democrats released a long-delayed 2024 election autopsy, then immediately distanced themselves from it.

The report criticized the party for underinvesting in state operations and failing to engage key voter groups, including men, rural voters, non-college voters, and irregular voters. The document also drew criticism across the board for avoiding or under-addressing issues like the war in Gaza, AIPAC, racism, sexism, and the deeper moral fractures inside the Democratic coalition.

Taken together, these are not separate stories. They are the same story on repeat.

Democrats keep asking why working-class people do not trust them.

Then, too often, when given a chance to shift actual power to workers, tenants, patients, young people, queer folx, criminalized communities, and families of color trying to survive, they retreat into caution, process, risk management, and institutional self-protection.

That is not a messaging problem.

That is a governing problem.

And no autopsy can fix a party that refuses to tell the truth and shame the Devil.

The Party Cannot Study Its Way Out of a Power Problem

I am writing this not as a detached observer, but as a strategist, organizer, former candidate, and working-class Black queer man living with disabilities from Virginia who has spent years watching communities be asked to save democracy while being given very little democracy in return.

I have knocked doors.

I have made the calls.

I have sat in rooms with working families, public workers, young voters, Black elders, queer youth, housing advocates, union members, faith leaders, and community organizers who understand politics better than many consultants give them credit for.

People may not always use the language of “institutional trust” or “coalition erosion,” but they know when they are being played with.

They know when a party praises workers but fears labor power.

They know when a party celebrates racial justice but hesitates to repair the damage of criminalization.

They know when a party posts for Pride Month, but goes quiet when trans people are under attack.

They know when a party says democracy is on the ballot every two years, but cannot seem to defend voting rights, reproductive freedom, labor rights, immigrant rights, housing security, or human rights with the same urgency it uses to raise money.

And they definitely know when a report is being used as a substitute for accountability.

The DNC autopsy may have identified some of the symptoms: weak state infrastructure, poor engagement with key constituencies, failures among rural voters, men, non-college voters, and irregular voters. But even the controversy around the report proves the deeper point. A party that cannot even release and own its own diagnosis without disclaimers is not yet prepared to rebuild trust.

Trust is not rebuilt by a PDF.

Trust is rebuilt by power.

Virginia Is Not a Side Story

That is why the Spanberger vetoes matter beyond Richmond.

The veto of the cannabis marketplace bill is not just about cannabis.

It is about whether Virginia will finally move from the war on drugs, the overcriminalization of Black and Brown communities, police misconduct, mass incarceration, and partial legalization into a regulated, equitable market after decades of racially disparate enforcement, criminalization, and missed economic opportunity. A legal market is about public safety, consumer protection, small business access, tax revenue, and whether communities harmed by prohibition get any meaningful stake in the industry that follows. The veto blocked legislation that would have created a legal retail market for adult-use marijuana sales in Virginia.

The veto of expanded collective bargaining is not just a labor procedure fight.

It is about whether public workers have the power to negotiate over the conditions of their own lives. It is about firefighters, teachers, sanitation workers, public employees, and first responders having a meaningful voice at work. It is about whether Democrats believe democracy should stop at the workplace door.

For organizers, this is the part the party often misses: voters do not experience policy as isolated bills.

They experience patterns.

A cannabis veto tells one set of voters: your freedom can wait.

A collective bargaining veto tells another set: your power can wait.

A delayed and disowned autopsy tells the base: even our own failures are too politically inconvenient to face directly.

And then the party wonders why people are tired.

Working-Class Politics Cannot Be Whitewashed

One of the most dangerous lessons Democrats might take from the 2024 autopsy is that the party needs to abandon “identity politics” to win back the working class.

That is a lie, and a lazy one.

The working class is Black. The working class is brown. The working class is queer. The working class is trans. The working class is immigrant. The working class is disabled. The working class is rural and urban, Southern and coastal, young and aging, housed and unhoused, union and nonunion, documented and undocumented, overworked and underpaid.

The problem is not that Democrats talked too much about identity. The problem is that they too often failed to connect identity to material power.

Black workers need collective bargaining.

Queer workers need housing.

Trans workers need healthcare and employment protections.

Immigrant workers need due process and labor rights.

Young workers need wages that can afford rent.

Disabled workers need accessible public systems.

Rural workers need hospitals, broadband, transportation, and schools that are not hollowed out.

Poor and working-class people of every race need a politics that does not treat them as demographic puzzles but as human beings with material needs and governing demands.

A working-class agenda that throws marginalized communities under the bus is not a working-class agenda.

It is resentment politics with better branding.

A real working-class agenda must be multiracial, feminist, queer-inclusive, pro-union, pro-housing, pro-care, pro-environment, pro-transit, anti-criminalization, and serious about public goods.

Anything less is not solidarity. It is triangulation.

Civil Rights and Human Rights Are Not Side Issues

The Democratic Party’s failure is not only economic.

It is moral.

The party has watched civil and human rights be gutted in real time. Voting rights have been weakened. Reproductive freedom has been attacked. Trans people have been turned into political targets. Immigrants and asylum seekers have been criminalized. Workers have been told to wait. Protesters have been surveilled and punished. Communities abroad have been devastated while American leaders hide behind procedural language and diplomatic fog.

The DNC autopsy controversy shows this clearly.

Moreover, the report did not adequately grapple with Gaza, racism, or sexism. Progressive leaders and advocates have argued that the party cannot honestly assess its losses without confronting the moral consequences of U.S. foreign policy and the alienation of Muslim and immigrant communities here in the U.S. that felt ignored, dismissed, or betrayed.

That matters.

Human rights abroad are not disconnected from democracy at home.

Palestinian families, Haitian families, Sudanese families, Congolese families, immigrant families, Muslim communities, Jewish peace activists, Black internationalists, students, organizers, and veterans of anti-war movements do not experience foreign policy as an abstraction.

They experience it as grief, censorship, displacement, family separation, militarization, and moral injury.

You cannot build a durable democracy while asking people to compartmentalize whose suffering counts.

You cannot ask young people to vote for democracy while ignoring the human rights crises that have shaped their political consciousness.

You cannot ask Black and brown communities to trust a party that condemns authoritarianism selectively.

And you cannot ask vulnerable people to save democracy while asking them to survive on apologies, disclaimers, and delayed reports.

Caution Is Not Competence

One of the great Democratic mistakes is confusing caution with competence.

There is a certain kind of politician and consultant who believes the safest move is always the smartest move.

Do not offend business. Do not upset law enforcement associations. Do not move too fast on labor. Do not say too much about Gaza. Do not center trans people too loudly. Do not talk too much about race. Do not scare moderates. Do not let the left get too excited. Do not give Republicans an attack ad.

But here is the problem: when the party spends all its time managing fear, it forgets how to inspire trust.

Working people do not need leaders who simply avoid risk. They need leaders who are willing to take risks for them.

That is what organizers understand.

You cannot build power by asking people to knock doors for half-measures. You cannot recruit volunteers into a movement that does not move. You cannot ask someone to give $5, $25, or $250 because “our internal polling suggests we should remain cautious.”

People organize when they believe something real is at stake.

People vote when they believe power can change hands.

People stay in movements when they see that their sacrifice is connected to actual material outcomes.

A party that wants working-class trust must be willing to fight for working-class power.

The Autopsy Is in the Rent Bill

Democrats do not need another consultant to tell them working people are frustrated. The autopsy is everywhere.

It is in the rent bill.

It is in the grocery receipt.

It is in the hospital closure.

It is in the student loan balance.

It is in the bus that does not come.

It is in the firefighter working without the bargaining power they deserve.

It is in the young person who cannot afford a home.

It is in the cannabis conviction that outlived the politics of prohibition.

It is in the trans teenager watching adults debate their existence.

It is in the immigrant worker whose labor is essential but whose life is treated as disposable.

It is in the voter who hears every election is existential and then watches the people they elect shrink from governing like it.

As a strategist, I understand message discipline.

I understand targeting, turnout, persuasion, base mobilization, earned media, narrative frames, and legislative timing. But as an organizer, I also know this: the best message in the world cannot cover for a party that refuses to shift power.

The message is not separate from the material condition.

The message is the material condition.

What Democrats Must Become

If Democrats want to rebuild trust, they need to stop treating working-class politics, civil rights, and human rights as separate departments.

They need a politics of material solidarity.

That means being pro-union without apology.

It means housing as a public priority, not just a market outcome.

It means reproductive freedom, trans freedom, and queer safety as basic democratic commitments.

It means cannabis justice that repairs criminalization and builds real economic opportunity.

It means immigrant justice and due process.

It means voting rights and election protection.

It means public schools, public transit, public health, public workers, and public goods.

It means confronting corporate power, not merely managing its discomfort.

It means foreign policy that values human life consistently, not only when it is politically convenient.

It means investing in state parties, local candidates, community media, organizers, and year-round civic infrastructure, not parachuting in during presidential years and calling it democracy work.

Most of all, it means telling the truth.

The truth is that the Democratic Party cannot be the party of working people if it is afraid of worker power.

It cannot be the party of democracy if it treats democracy as a slogan rather than a structure.

It cannot be the party of civil rights if marginalized communities are only centered when they are useful in a turnout model.

It cannot be the party of human rights if it cannot look suffering in the face and name it plainly.

The Way Forward

This is not an argument for nihilism.

I am not writing this because I have given up on electoral politics. I ran for office. I still believe in organizing, voting, governing, and building power inside and outside institutions.

But I also believe love requires truth.

And the truth is that Democrats do not have a messaging crisis so much as a courage crisis.

The party knows how to ask for votes. It must relearn how to deserve them.

It knows how to produce reports. It must relearn how to produce results.

It knows how to warn people about authoritarianism. It must relearn how to materially defend the people that authoritarianism targets first.

This is the assignment now.

Not another autopsy that gets released, disclaimed, and filed away.

Not another round of consultants explaining working people to themselves.

Not another campaign built on fear without a governing agenda strong enough to earn faith.

The next Democratic politics must be rooted in material solidarity, moral clarity, and the courage to shift power.

Because you cannot tell working people democracy is on the ballot while vetoing their ability to bargain, organize, build wealth, and survive.

You cannot ask vulnerable communities to save the republic while leaving them exposed to the violence of policy abandonment.

And you cannot message your way out of betrayal.

You have to govern your way out.

There is a particular kind of grief that comes with being a millennial in America.

Not just stress. Not just burnout. Not just the anxiety of doomscrolling through another constitutional crisis, climate disaster, genocide, foreign war, mass shooting, tech layoff announcement, or attack on civil and human rights.

I mean real grief.

The grief of realizing that we may become the first modern American generation forced to confront the possibility that our children could inherit a country — and a planet — worse off than the one our parents and grandparents received.

For many millennials, especially working-class millennials, Black millennials, queer millennials, disabled millennials, immigrant millennials, and those living at the intersection of multiple identities, that realization does not feel abstract.

It feels deeply personal. And deeply depressing.

Because for all the rhetoric about progress, innovation, and opportunity, the material conditions of life in America have become increasingly unstable for ordinary people.

Housing costs are crushing families.

Healthcare remains tied to employment and profit.

Student debt has reshaped an entire generation’s economic future.

Union density has declined for decades while corporate profits soar.

Climate catastrophe is no longer theoretical.

Democracy itself feels increasingly fragile, if not all but completely broken beyond repair.

And underneath all of this sits an uncomfortable truth that Critical Race Theory scholars, labor organizers, Black feminists, disability justice advocates, and movement lawyers have been naming for years: systems do not fail randomly.

They produce outcomes consistent with the values and power structures they were designed to protect.

That matters.

Because too often millennials are framed as uniquely fragile, irresponsible, entitled, or incapable of “adulting,” while very little attention is paid to the structural realities shaping our lives.

You cannot separate economic insecurity from policy choices.

You cannot separate racial wealth gaps from redlining, segregation, exclusionary zoning, mass incarceration, and labor discrimination.

You cannot separate attacks on LGBTQ+ people from broader political efforts to consolidate social control and define whose humanity deserves legal recognition and protection.

You cannot separate climate collapse from decades of corporate deregulation and political cowardice on both sides of the aisle.

And you cannot separate any of this from capitalism’s long history of extracting labor, privatizing public goods, and concentrating wealth into fewer and fewer hands.

As a working class Black queer person living with a disability, I often think about how millennials inherited not only economic instability, but emotional and political instability too.

We inherited a nation still fundamentally unresolved about race.

Still unresolved about gender.

Still unresolved about labor.

Still unresolved about whose lives are considered disposable in the pursuit of profit and political power.

A Black feminist lens teaches us that oppression is interconnected. That race, gender, sexuality, disability, class, housing, healthcare, environmental justice, and labor rights cannot be treated as isolated policy silos because human beings do not live siloed lives.

A queer lens teaches us that survival itself can become political when systems refuse to recognize your dignity.

A labor lens reminds us that workers create value, not billionaires.

And a legal lens reminds us that none of the rights we romanticize in America simply appeared on their own. Every expansion of democracy in this country was fought for through organizing, litigation, protest, coalition-building, civil disobedience, and sacrifice.

The weekend was fought for.

The minimum wage was fought for.

Voting rights were fought for.

Marriage equality was fought for.

Worker protections were fought for.

Disability rights were fought for.

Housing rights were fought for.

And now millennials are being asked to fight for the basic possibility of a livable future itself.

That is exhausting.

Especially because many of us came of age during overlapping crises that fundamentally reshaped our worldview.

We grew up in the shadow of 9/11 and endless war.

We entered adulthood during the Great Recession.

We survived a global pandemic.

We watched billionaire wealth explode while wages stagnated.

We watched states criminalize homelessness instead of solving housing insecurity.

We watched public education, public transit, public health, and public trust erode simultaneously.

And we are now watching climate change threaten the long-term viability of communities across the globe while political leaders continue operating on election cycles instead of generational timelines.

From a Critical Race Theory perspective, none of this exists outside history.

America’s political economy has always relied on stratification.

Racial hierarchy was not incidental to the development of American capitalism. It was foundational to it.

The wealth of this country was built through stolen Indigenous land, enslaved Black labor, exploited immigrant labor, gendered labor, prison labor, and generations of public policy designed to distribute opportunity unevenly.

That history does not disappear simply because people become uncomfortable discussing it.

It evolves.

It modernizes.

It adapts.

And millennials are now living through what happens when decades of privatization, deregulation, anti-union politics, austerity, racial resentment, and corporate consolidation collide all at once.

This is why so many millennials feel tired in ways that are difficult to explain.

Not lazy.

Not apathetic.

Tired.

Tired of surviving systems that continuously demand more while providing less.

Tired of being told to bootstrap our way out of structural inequality.

Tired of watching corporations celebrate diversity during Pride Month while union-busting workers the rest of the year.

Tired of being told there is no money for affordable housing, healthcare, mental health services, climate resilience, or public education while billions continue flowing toward tax breaks, subsidies, and endless militarization.

Tired of being told to lower our expectations for what a dignified life should look like.

And yet, despite all of this, millennials continue building.

That part deserves recognition too.

We are organizing unions at Starbucks and Amazon warehouses.

We are pushing conversations around trauma, therapy, masculinity, and healing into the mainstream.

We are building mutual aid networks and community care systems.

We are demanding environmental justice and housing justice.

We are running for office.

We are challenging white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, and economic exploitation simultaneously because we understand these systems reinforce one another.

We are creating new political language rooted not just in individual success, but collective survival.

And perhaps most importantly, many millennials are rejecting the lie that suffering is morally necessary in order to deserve dignity.

That shift matters.

Because previous generations were often taught to endure quietly.

Millennials increasingly understand that silence protects power.

So yes, there is grief in recognizing that we may leave behind a country and planet more unstable than the one we inherited.

There is grief in watching climate change intensify while billionaires build bunkers.

There is grief in realizing that many working people now labor full time and still cannot afford stability.

There is grief in knowing that democracy itself cannot survive indefinitely alongside extreme inequality.

But grief is not the same thing as surrender.

In fact, some of the most transformative political movements in history were born from collective grief becoming collective action.

The labor movement.

The Civil Rights Movement.

ACT UP.

Black Lives Matter.

Marriage equality.

Environmental justice movements.

Tenant organizing.

Disability justice movements.

None emerged because conditions were easy.

They emerged because ordinary people reached a breaking point and decided that another world had to be possible.

That is where I believe millennials are now.

At a crossroads between despair and transformation.

And despite everything, I still believe transformation is possible.

Not because history guarantees progress.

It does not.

But because people make progress possible when they organize together.

The task before millennials is not simply to survive collapse quietly. It is to build something more humane on the other side of it.

A country where workers are valued.

Where housing is treated as infrastructure, not speculation.

Where healthcare is a right.

Where unions are strong.

Where queer and trans people can live openly and safely.

Where racial justice is not symbolic but material.

Where climate policy reflects scientific reality.

Where democracy belongs to the people instead of the donor class.

Where dignity is not reserved for the wealthy.

That is not radical.

That is what a functioning society should look like.

And maybe that is the deeper truth millennials are forcing America to confront.

We are no longer asking whether the system is working.

We are asking who it was designed to work for in the first place.

From the Civil Rights Division to the steps of the Supreme Court, I have seen this moment coming.

Now we decide what comes next.

April tested me. Physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Between the constant noise of current events and the quiet toll it takes on the body and spirit, I had to step back, regroup, and remind myself of something deeper than the headlines: pressure does not mean defeat.

But let’s be clear.

What we are witnessing right now is not just political turbulence. It is structural. It is intentional.

And it is dangerous.

The recent Supreme Court decision gutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is not just another court ruling.

It is a direct strike at one of the most powerful tools this country has ever had to protect the political voice of Black communities and other historically marginalized voters.

And for those who may not know, especially my Gen Z babies, let me ground this for you.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not come out of nowhere.

It was born out of blood, protest, and relentless organizing during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. After decades of Jim Crow laws, literacy tests, poll taxes, and outright violence designed to keep Black people like my grandparents from voting, the movement reached a breaking point in the South.

In 1965, civil rights activists in Selma, Alabama, led by organizers like John Lewis, Amelia Boynton, and countless unnamed foot soldiers, marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge demanding the basic right to vote. They were met with brutality on what became known as Bloody Sunday. The images of that violence forced the nation to confront what democracy actually looked like on the ground.

That pressure moved Congress.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, working alongside civil rights leaders and lawmakers, pushed for sweeping federal protections. The legislation was shepherded through Congress by figures like Senator Mike Mansfield and Representative Emanuel Celler, with bipartisan support at the time, because the injustice was undeniable.

The result was the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the most powerful civil rights laws ever enacted.

It did two critical things.

First, it banned discriminatory voting practices nationwide.

Second, and just as important, it created enforcement mechanisms.

Section 2 allowed individuals and the federal government to challenge discriminatory voting laws in court. Section 5 required certain states with a history of discrimination to get federal approval before changing their voting laws.

In plain terms, it didn’t just say discrimination was wrong. It gave people the tools to fight it.

That is what made it powerful.

And that is exactly why it has been under attack ever since.

In 2008, I had the privilege of interning at the United States Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section. I saw firsthand how those tools were used to protect voters and hold jurisdictions accountable.

By 2012, I was standing on the steps of the Supreme Court protesting the Shelby County decision, watching the Court strike down key parts of Section 5, effectively weakening federal oversight of discriminatory voting laws.

In 2015, I wrote my law school note on why the Civil Rights Division would remain the central battleground for American civil rights in the 21st century.

Even then, the writing was on the wall.

The fight was shifting, and the courts were becoming the primary arena where rights would either be protected or dismantled.

By 2019, when my very first consulting client was Pack the Courts, a grassroots initiative calling for comprehensive judicial reform, it was clear that the judiciary itself had become one of the most consequential fronts in the fight for American democracy.

So when I say this moment is serious, understand that it is grounded in lived experience.

Section 2 was not symbolic.

It was enforceable. It was the mechanism that allowed everyday people to challenge discriminatory maps, systems, and practices that diluted their power. It was one of the last remaining pillars of the Civil Rights Movement still standing in federal law.

And now, that pillar has been severely weakened.

This is not a rollback by accident. This is the continuation of a decades-long strategy to narrow who counts in American democracy.

As someone trained in the law, I understand how devastating this is from a structural standpoint. When you remove the tools people have to challenge injustice, you do not create neutrality.

You create silence.

You create barriers that are harder to see and even harder to dismantle.

But I also understand something else.

The law has never been the sole engine of justice in this country.

Every major advancement we point to in American history was forced into existence by people like you and me who refused to accept the limits of the moment.

People who organized.

People who sacrificed.

People who believed, even when the system gave them every reason not to.

That is where we are again.

This moment is heavy.

There is no reason to pretend otherwise. It is frustrating. It is exhausting. And for many of us, it feels deeply personal.

But pressure does not mean defeat.

It means the stakes are clear. It means the work must evolve. It means we build differently, organize deeper, and refuse to be pushed out of a system our ancestors fought too damn hard to access.

So if you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, if you’ve needed to step back and catch your breath, I understand that. I’ve been there this month myself.

But hear me clearly.

Do not confuse rest with surrender.

Keep the faith.

Trust the process.

God is still in control, even when institutions fail us. Even when the path forward feels dangerous, scary or uncertain.

Because weeping may endure for the night.

But joy comes in the morning.

And that morning is not something we wait for.

It is something we build together.

Let’s get to work.