EP. 18 — CONVERSATIONS: JUSTIN GIBONEY

(Transcripts may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print.)

Weston Wamp: I'm Weston Wamp and this is Swamp Stories brought to you by Issue One.

For the second of our conversations here on Swamp Stories, I reached out to the co-founder of the AND Campaign. His voice and perspective is among the most unique I've come across in American politics. And my hunch is if you've liked our sometimes contrarian take on political reform, you may really enjoy what today's guest has to share. Without further ado, this is episode 18, a conversation with Justin Giboney of the AND Campaign.

Weston Wamp: I'd like to just start with giving you a chance to tell us the story of AND Campaign.

Justin Giboney: I think it just starts with my journey. I'm an attorney by trade, was doing political consulting and campaign management for a while, and just realized that as I was doing it in the city of Atlanta in a very progressive space, that when I was talking to the candidates that I was running their campaigns, or I was talking to friends who wanted to run for office, it became very clear that they felt like they had to surrender some of their Christian conviction.

It didn't make sense to me. There are a lot of biblical Christians, Orthodox Christians in Atlanta, and it didn't make sense to me that coming from a community like that, you would have to run like you're from Midtown or something like that. I started to think, why is that? Why is that the case? It became clear there just wasn't a lot of organization from the church around that and that because we were in a progressive space, I think, even though it's a small group, I think the secular progressive folks in some of these larger cities are better organized, have more resources. They can control the reward and punishment mechanism in urban politics, even as the minority.

I started to see that. I said, man, I got to do something about this. At the same time, I had friends who were Republicans who felt like, this was probably during the Tea Party time, that they weren't allowed to be as compassionate as they thought they wanted to be.

I began to identify, along with the co-founders of the AND Campaign, this false dichotomy, where when you went into politics, you either had to go to the left and if you go to the left you're going to surrender your convictions. You go to the right, you're going to surrender some of the compassion or the focus on some justice issues, and really began to believe that as Christians, we can't do either. That we had to be both compassionate and maintain our conviction.

In meeting Sho Baraka and Angel Maldonado, who were the other two co-founders of the AND Campaign, that's where the conversation started. Before that I had created a group called Crucifix and Politics. That was just me and other Christian political strategists and folks who are running their county parties, stuff like that. We just started to talk through these issues, but then I decided to broaden it and reach out to young pastors and artists and all that stuff. That's where the AND Campaign came from, but AND Campaign literally means it's time to get rid of the false dichotomy and talk about compassion and conviction, love and truth, justice and moral order, and how those things work together and are interdependent rather than being at odds are mutually exclusive.

Weston Wamp: It's interesting, you jumped right into that false dichotomy you talked about. It's one of the things that made me so interested in the work that you're doing. Going back to when I ran for Congress, I challenged my Republican incumbent congressmen in my twenties and almost won, but one of the things that was the most frustrating to me, even having grown up around politics, was the expectation, which just seems so unrealistic to me, and naive frankly, that we would all agree with each other 100% of the time based on the team we had picked politically. It just seems to me that it's self-evident that our experiences and our fears and the things that we've been through in life, our pain, our faith, all these things, give us a, if we're honest with ourselves, I think a nuanced perspective when we consider political issues.

You guys write about false choices in your book. I was fascinated by your speaking right to me, because I've always felt like really both parties pedaled in only offering this choice that says you're right or this choice that says you're wrong, depending on the party. How do we move beyond — and I think this cycle feels especially full of false choices — how do we move past that and encourage Americans, and particularly people of faith, to see that this doesn't have to be my way or the highway or red or blue.

Justin Giboney: I think first by understanding, that's not just the way it is. Some people say, well, that's just the way it is. I have to accept it. No, that's the way it is because we've accepted it. That's the only reason that it exists. It makes it very easy on the parties because all they really have to do is demonize the other side and say, hey, we're your only option, take it or leave it. But that's not the way it should be.

I think the first thing Christians have to do is not necessarily get rid of the parties or step away from partisanship altogether. I don't think that's necessary. I think we just have to put it in perspective. We have to make sure that our political parties are not part of our identity. You should be able to insult my political party, critique my political party, and I shouldn't feel like you're critiquing me, necessarily, or insulting me, because that's not who I am. I just use my party as a tool. Once Christians can use their party as a tool to do God's bidding, to do, as I often say, defend human dignity and to promote human flourishing, then we don't expect as much from our party. We're willing to push back on them. We're willing to critique them, because we're not our value and we're not trying to justify ourselves through defending a party that most of this stuff, all this stuff, is made with human hands and it's certainly not infallible, but we often treat it that way. We just have to separate ourselves as far as our identity from our political party and from our ideological tribes.

Weston Wamp: How much of this do you think, and when I say this, how much of the division that we see today and just the rank partisanship might be generational? What I mean by that, I guess, is that, I watched the first presidential debate, as we all did, and one of the things I realized coming out of it was, I didn't see a single person under 40, regardless of their political affiliation, who really thought that was a great conversation. None of them seemed real satisfied with the way that went.

It made me think, as I have for some time, not that younger Americans are somehow going to save the day, but I do wonder if some of the depths of our divisions do pass over time.

Justin Giboney: Yes and no. I think that a lot of folks that I know, some of them that are younger are less partisan, but they're not less tribal. Even though it's not about their party, it definitely is about whether they're progressive, especially a lot of my progressive friends are very tribal, whether they're progressive or conservative. So maybe it's not as partisan in some sense, because I don't think that people... People don't really like their parties like that, and younger people don't either. But it's still tribal, which is really part of the problem as well, that we see these tribes. Really, our whole framework for engaging politics is whether you're on that secular progressive side or you're on that conservative side.

What the AND Campaign is saying, your framework for engaging politics should be as a Christian. If we have a Christian and biblical centered framework, there's room for me and you to disagree. You and I can disagree on the marginal tax rate all day, the Bible doesn't speak directly to that, but there are certain things, whether it be the sanctity of life, whether it be criminal justice, that we should be in the same ballpark on, and we should be able to work together to make better. That's what I think our focus should be. But we got to get rid of our whole understanding of politics comes through some ideological frame that is really flawed.

Weston Wamp: I fear you're right. That the tribalism among young people is the same, even though we've grown cynical about the parties. All right, let's fast forward to the final presidential debate. Justin Giboney is called in to give a few words of pep talk to both President Trump and Vice President Biden. Given how all of this has gone down, what are your words of advice in the last time they speak to the nation before people vote? What are your words of advice to both of them?

Justin Giboney: Be presidential. Be responsible with what you say. That first debate showed me, and I do, I'm going to be honest, I didn't think it was equally bad for both sides. I didn't think Biden had a great debate, but I thought as far as the interruptions and all that go, I think that the president, it's hard to excuse what he did. But I would say, remember that these are people. We're looking for solutions for hurting people. Don't let the partisanship or your own egos get in the way of knowing that people need answers. We really want to know what you're going to do to solve these problems that people are suffering today because of some of the issues that were going on.

I would just try to encourage them both to think about the people, to actually answer the questions. That's one of the problems we probably had on both sides from the Vice-Presidential debate. Answer the questions, be respectful, and let's treat this office and this country the way they deserve to be treated.

Weston Wamp: All right, well, I'll put you on the spot one more time about the presidential election, and then we'll go back to bigger issues that will live long after and we'll be talking about long after this race.

We focus a lot on the worst qualities of these two candidates. I'd say in a lot of ways, it's easier to. Maybe that's just we're fallen, so it's easier for us to critique people than it is to find the good. If you had to look at these two men, one of whom is going to be the next president, what's the best quality you see in President Trump? What's the best redeeming quality you see in Vice President Biden?

Justin Giboney: For President Trump, I would say, I do have an appreciation for his relationship with his kids, how he treats his children. It seems like they are very close and he tries to keep them close to him. I think there is virtue in that. I think there's a lot others could learn from his relationship with his children.

As far as Joe Biden, I just think he connects with people. I think he seems like he's trying to understand the common man in a real sincere way. To some people that has come off as maybe he's not as smart, but I think with all the technocrats we have all over today, it's kind of refreshing to see someone who seems to connect with people and try to understand the common man's plight. Because there's a huge divide, unfortunately, between, in some instances, our political class and just the grassroots.

Weston Wamp: I've heard a lot of pastors talk about, we'll take a step back away from the election and we'll close talking about the election. I've heard pastors, I think, speak much more eloquently in the last several months about racial justice, social justice, than politicians. It seems like politicians want to score political points. I've just time and time again been encouraged at the way that pastors, like in my community, I'm a couple hours north of you in Chattanooga, and I've heard Black pastors sit on stage with white pastors and guys from totally different neighborhoods, and talk about these things in a thoughtful way that the politicians can't quite get to.

AND Campaign is Christian. AND Campaign is interested in policy. AND Campaign's logo includes the words social justice and biblical values. What is social justice through the lens of biblical principles or biblical values as opposed to, or is it the exact same thing, as social justice when you hear about it on CNN?

Justin Giboney: It's different than what I think you might hear on CNN or MSNBC. We all almost are trying to reclaim that word, rather than letting it go completely left. When we talk about social justice, I think you have to start with human dignity. If we all believe that humans have an innate dignity, if we believe because we were created in the image of God, that we should be treated to a certain standard. When we talk about social justice, we're talking about biblical justice when it comes to people, treating them to a certain standard based on their human dignity in a social context.

To us all social justice is, is biblical justice applied to a social context. When someone is accused of a crime, how do we make sure that they don't serve more time than they deserve to serve? We see that happening. We see unjust imprisonment in the Bible over and over again. When you take someone, a man especially, out of their home and keep them in a prison longer than they were supposed to, it doesn't just affect them. It affects their community, it affects their children. We would say, that social justice would say that, number one, there shouldn't be any partiality within those laws. We have to make sure there's no disparity in how long people are being imprisoned, because they have human dignity. To me, that's what social justice is. It's just the social application of biblical justice.

Weston Wamp: How do you feel, as a Georgian, a Christian, somebody who's a young American, about how the conversation in our country has gone in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of a presidential race, as we've revisited a lot of these racial issues?

I sensed that there was this several weeks of due diligence and genuine soul searching. Due diligence on the issues that are relevant to political reform, soul searching of things maybe we had assumed had been addressed that hadn't been properly addressed. Those few weeks seem to then devolve back into tribalism. Feels that way to me. How do you feel like that conversation has gone and how can we pick it up in a more productive way after the election?

Justin Giboney: I think you described it fairly well. During the COVID crisis, all of us were forced to look at this racialized violence that was going on at the very same time. There was nothing else to look at. We were forced to look at it. I think it did gain acknowledgement from groups that normally weren't really acknowledging what was going on in the country, because they couldn't look away.

Since then, because of different things that have gone on. Most of those protests were peaceful protests. Thank God for everyone who took part in those protests, because I think they were necessary. But then we did see some violence. We did see that conversation go into a direction where I think we digress from where we were headed, but I do think that it is salvageable. I think a lot of people still saw what needed to be seen as far as how certain people in society are treated differently.

I think what's called for in the conversation now to get it back on track, to gain some ground, and go in the right direction, is the church. I honestly think we see the far right going in the wrong direction. We see the far left going in the wrong direction. It's time for the church to step up and show a true example of justice.

It upsets me when some people say, well, I see that distorted view of justice on the left, and therefore I'm not going to touch anything justice-related because it's all Marxism. That's the completely wrong response. The right response is to say, no, I'm not going to not deal with it, I'm going to put a better example out there and show people how to do justice in the right way. That's what the AND Campaign is doing. That's what we're trying to do with our Prayer and Action Justice Initiative, where we've brought together the National Association of Evangelicals, the Church of God and Christ, which was one of the largest African-American organizations, several Hispanic organizations, several, not several, but an Asian evangelical organization. We think we brought together an unprecedented coalition of biblical organizations to address the issue of racial justice. I think that's really where the answer is.

Weston Wamp: We'll be right back after this short break. We're back.

Weston Wamp: It's a tough question to even frame, but this president, one of his strong suits has not been handling racial questions well. He's left, at times, a lot of us on the political right wondering what he means, is there some motive or strategy to the fact that sometimes he speaks very clearly, sometimes he doesn't?

I sense that if I was a Black man, I would feel often like this president left things open-ended that should never be left open-ended. The question is, if the president were to get reelected, what should he do? What should Christians in his solar system, because there have been prominent Christians and some of them are Atlantans who've been in the White House frequently talking to the president about faith issues. How could the president walk back some of the division that he's caused and be a healer, or is that possible?

Justin Giboney: I always think it's possible. I think my faith tells me that nobody is irredeemable. I don't go along with that narrative. I think the first thing he would have to do is apologize for the things that he said. What he said about other countries, countries that are majority minority. Those things hurt. Things that have been said about immigrants coming over the border and who they are and how they should be treated. The first step would be to say, I was wrong. I didn't say that the correct way. I haven't done the right things. I want to move forward. Then creating a policy that shows that he's serious about doing that. That is possible.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that the will is there, but I always hold out hope that that's the case. As far as the folks who supported him, I'm a true believer that once you vote somebody in your primary responsibility is not just to justify and defend everything they did. Your primary responsibility is to hold them accountable. That's for Christians on both sides.

I voted for Barack Obama, but I wrote in Christianity Today that urban Christians let Barack Obama down because instead of holding him accountable, we were just trying to defend him. You cannot leave politicians to their own devices, because if you're not pushing them, somebody else is. I think for Christians to vote in Trump and then not hold him accountable, to be more worried about defending him than saying yes, what he said was wrong and that he needs to apologize for that, is unfortunate. I think that would really be a good place to start.

Weston Wamp: That brings us back to tribalism, doesn't it? I think that's, again, it's my primary irritation on Twitter. You open up Twitter and I just so often long for people to call out their own tribe. It's not that hard, frankly, to see that there's hypocrisy on both sides. But often you're right, we just knee jerk to defense. You'll see, if you watch over any continuum, you'll see people on both sides, they'll almost change positions in order to constantly be defending. Isn't that right?

Justin Giboney: The thing is, we've got to change the narrative on that. It's not brave to shout across the other side, mostly to people who aren't even listening to you, about how terrible they are. I'm not saying there's not room for that and that we don't need to hold other people on the other side accountable. It's much more brave to turn around and look at your own tribe and say, hey, here's some things we need to fix.

What people don't get, we feel like we're empowering our opposition if we're honest and we hold our side accountable. No, what you're doing is you're gaining credibility because there's no reason for somebody on the other side to listen to you if you have obvious issues that you're covering up and you won't be honest about them, but then you try to hold them accountable for something they're doing.

One of the best ways to have a conversation, I think, is by saying, hey, here are the things you get right, let me affirm what you're right on in your critique on us. Now, you disarm someone to say or diffuse the conversation to say, now, can we talk about some of the issues I see on your side, because I'm not trying to come out of this faultless, and I hope you aren't either.

Weston Wamp: Another election-related question, and then we'll talk about 2021, regardless of who the president is. What's the role of people of faith in the days after the election? As you know, there's a lot of conversation about how long it'll take to count votes and whether either side will accept their results. The president has probably added to this confusion through some of the things that he’s said. But in those, what feels like they could be very consequential days following the election, how can people of faith put their faith in action in a way that's productive?

Justin Giboney: I think one of the main things we can do is be peacemakers. Neither of us knows exactly what's going to happen or how long it's going to take to figure out who actually won, but what we do know is that it's not going to be pretty. That I can almost guarantee you. I think it's a chance for Christians to put things into perspective, to understand that, regardless of how it goes, this is not an ultimate thing. Then to be peacemakers. To be the ones that say, hey, we're going to get through this, but we're going to get through this through emphasizing our common ground.

That may need stepping away from the partisanship for a second and saying, hey, let's focus on something we can do together that's not so partisan. Again, that's where I think the Prayer and Action Justice Initiative will be helpful too, because we really want to step away and say, let's do something as a church and get away. Not ignore what's going on politically, but let's set that aside to focus on some other things that can actually bring us together and help people.

Weston Wamp: Tell us a little bit about the Prayer and Action Initiative.

Justin Giboney: The Prayer and Action Justice Initiative is a coalition of organizations from the AND Campaign, to World Relief, to the National Association of Evangelicals, Prison Fellowship, The Church of God and Christ, that have come together to say that the Bible speaks on justice. The Bible has something to say about justice in the social and racial context. And it's time for Christians to lead. It's time for Christians to speak unequivocally about how we feel about injustice and that we want to do it in the right way.

Really what we're trying to do is give Christians on-ramps to engage those justice issues. I think that's one of the keys to any type of racial reconciliation. It can't just be kumbaya sessions. It has to be self-sacrificial. It has to be us coming out of our comfort zones, looking at policy in a non-partisan way, and then also looking at sharing resources. We do that through our Churches Helping Churches challenge where we've raised $1.3 million for churches in low-income areas.

Weston Wamp: Lastly, let's go here. Let's talk about political reform. This is what Issue One is known for. Specifically in Washington, we're known as the bipartisan political reform group, specifically work in a lot of money in politics reforms, limiting the influence of money, trying to end dark money, which the law doesn't intend for dark money to exist, and closing other loopholes that end up undermining the intent of our laws.

I've always looked at my work with Issue One as being in defense of the least of these. I say this having grown up around politics, but common sense also just reveals in 2020 that people with a lot of resources, companies with money, buy their way to the front of the line. I don't think it was the intent of our Founders, it's not the way our country functions best.

I've always seen a role for Christians and other people of faith to take an interest in the rules that govern our political system, because they do tend to work to the advantage of people who have money and work against people who don't and don't have access.

The follow-up is, or the question there is, does that make sense to you? I acknowledge that I'm a unicorn. I grew up in this stuff. It matters to me because I was always fascinated by campaign finance laws and who they benefit and who they didn't. I don't think it's as simple as they benefit the right side or the left side, but I do sense that when you engage in the fight for reform with the goal being that our democracy, that our republic, functions for everybody, that I've always felt, just as a believer, that there's an alignment to the values of Jesus. But there are other people who see them as siloed very separately. Do you see a connection there?

Justin Giboney: I certainly see a connection, because I think you're talking about people's voices and you're talking about people counting and what people think and believe and their interests, mattering. Unfortunately, in this country, sometimes we haven't done a very good job of making sure that everybody mattered, that everybody was considered, and that we weren't giving huge advantages to certain groups. I think you hit it on the head. To some extent for whether they're conservatives, liberals, or whatever, people with money have advantages in our civic process that they probably shouldn't have.

Something else that I would add to that is voter rights. I think that's something that is worth having a conversation about. It's worth investigating to see if these allegations are real. I've gone into Republican spaces and said just that, that it's one of those things that have more transparency doesn't hurt anybody.

To investigate this and to make the process as transparent as possible helps a lot of people. When I go talk to the Concerned Black Clergy and things like that, they will tell me that voter rights are one of the main reasons that they don't really vote with white evangelicals and things of that nature, because if you don't want us to be part of the process, then it seems that I don't know that you would want to give your political capital to someone in that position.

My proposal is that we just open it up. We make it as transparent as possible. But our civic process certainly needs some reform. I'm excited about some of the work you guys are doing in that regard.

Weston Wamp: We'll wrap up with this. One of the reasons I love what AND Campaign is doing, is I have a feeling that 2021 will look pretty much the same for you guys, regardless of who the next president is. Tell us what's next.

Justin Giboney: The big thing for us is we're expanding our chapters. We have probably about 15 more chapters that'll be launching in the near term. We're excited about that, the expansion of our organization around the nation. Really we'll be putting a lot of force, and I keep bringing this up, but we'll be putting a lot of our effort into the Prayer and Justice Initiative and to continue to raise civic literacy among Christians and help them apply their values to the biggest issues of the day.

The Christian witness is so much more dynamic and brilliant than conservatism and progressivism ideologically. We want Christians to see that and be Christian first. We'll just be pushing our message. As you may know, we had a book come out in July, which is, Compassion (&) Conviction: The AND Campaign's Guide to Faithful Civic Engagement. We'll be using that to just give Christians a framework to better engage the civic space.

Weston Wamp: Well, Justin Giboney, thanks for being the second guest on our Conversations sub series on Swamp Stories. Love the work you're doing and hope we can be partners and friends moving forward and look forward to better days ahead.

Justin Giboney: I hope so, too. Thanks for having me, man.

Weston Wamp: On the next episode of Swamp Stories, I'm going to interview Leonard Downie Jr., who for 24 years ran the newsroom of the Washington Post. We'll unpackage what happened in November and December of 2000, when a recount took the attention of the country. We'll talk about how it might relate to the unknown of November 2020.

Thanks for listening to Swamp Stories, presented by Issue One, the country's leading political reform organization that unites Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fix our broken political system.

Please subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends. Even better, rate and review it on iTunes to help us reach more listeners. You can find out more at swampstories.org. I'm your host, Weston Wamp.

A special thank you to executive producer Ethan Rome, producers Evan Ottenfeld and Sydney Richards, and editor Parker Tant from parkerpodcasting.com. Swamp Stories was recorded in Tennessee, edited in Texas, and can be found wherever you listen to podcasts.

HOW TO LISTEN