Transcripts For CSPAN3 Kat 20240705 : vimarsana.com

Today. Kat calvin about her book american identity in crisis notes from an accidental activist. Kat is also im so excited to talk outoday with kat calvin about her new book, american identity and crisis, notes from an accidental activist. She is also founder and executive director of spread the vote and project id, and the cofounder and ceo of the project id action fund. In addition to being named one of the Time Magazine 16 people and groups fighting for a more equal america, kat has been featured in the new york times, l. A. Times, the Washington Post , atlanta, essence, glamour, npr, pbs, bet and marie claire. Those are just a few. Thank you for being here. Such a weird one to throw in there, glamour, npr, glamour. Cosmo girl. My favorite one. Finally i am an its girl. Forget npr, i want cosmopolitan. Just a reminder the southern festival of books remains completely free because of Strong Community support, and we want to keep it that way. Thank you firstly to our key sponsors, Metro Nashville arts commission, ingram content group, the tennessee arts commission, vanderbilt university. You could donate on the web on humanities tennessee. Org, the headquarters, this year via venmo. Please also visit humanities tennessee online literary publication, chapter 16, which i write for, on chapter 16. Org. The way we have structured this is that kat will read from us. We will return to a conversation, and then we will open it up for questions. As a reminder, when we arrive at the question portion, use a microphone upfront to make sure everybody can hear you and that it correctly transmits to the folks watching via cspan. Okay. Take it away. Well, thank you. I was just saying that my grandmother was a librarian. I love librarians. I am so excited to be here with three amazing librarians. Also, you guys, cspan book tv, the best tv. [ applause ] this is my book. It is paint and beautiful. American identity in crisis notes from an accidental activist. I am going to read four short sections that will help orient us to what the book is. It a short. You can read it in a weekend. I did that on purpose. Hopefully, people find it entertaining. I will start with the first passage from the first chapter. Doesnt everybody have an id . My first ever id client was ll. She was born in either 1942 or 1947 and had lived in georgia all of her life. I had been trying to find someone to trust is enough to help them get their id. Gary, a man i would soon oh well, called and asked if someone could help his family friend, ella, get an id. She was ailing, suffering from four types of cancer the same time, and she needed an id to get better medical care. Gary had known ella his entire life. She helped him nurse his father through liver cancer. Now he was returning the favor. But ella did not have any documents, was not sure of her real birthday did not think she would ever even have a birth certificate. Gary had no idea where to turn. I jumped on this case with extreme fervor. I really wanted to get our first id, but it was also immediately clear that her life depended on it. Fi met miss ella now, it would still be a real challenge, but we would be able to help her. We know so much more now than we did back then about getting an id. At the time, my small team and i did everything we could pick a volunteer went to her house in rural georgia and found old insurance policies and newspaper clippings we mightve been able to use as proof of life for a delayed birth certificate. Incredibly, from Elementary School still had her transcripts. In some states, you can use a birth record and family bible as a birth certificate substitute, but only if the preacher who wrote the record was still alive to sign an affidavit. Her childhood minister most certainly was not. We did not know then we could cement a freedom of information act request to the Social Security administration for an obscure document called the record to confirm her birth. We know that now, but even after we figured out how to make the request in a way the ssa would accept, it still takes months to hear back. After a while, with no success finding a suitable birth document and with miss ellas Health Declining every day, we decided to try for a passport. Theoretically, with enough proof of life documents, you can get a passport without a birth certificate. Its tough in a different way than getting a dmv id, and getting a passport is much more expensive, but it was worth a shot. It took more than one try to get miss ella to the post office to apply for the passport because she kept having medical emergencies. Eventually we got her there , applied with a mountain of documents that the passport employee thought would work, and we waited and waited and waited. And then, rejection. Devastated, we read the reasoning. None of the documents were acceptable as proof of citizenship. We decided to try again but as we are trying to find more documents, miss ellas sister called. She found a birth certificate. I almost shrieked with joy. I arranged to meet with gary and miss ella to take her to the dmv. On my way, he called. Miss ella had been rushed to the hospital. She could not make it. It turned out she never would. She died a few days later, more than a year after we started her id journey. My first client would also be the one who never got a 90. I think about her every day. She is the reason we must make it easier to get an id. She is the reason i do what i do. I have this little section in the book where i go through and try to describe, in excruciating detail, why it is so difficult for people to get an id. That is a question we get all the time. I will walk you through step number one. First, you have to prove your identity. This is usually done with a birth certificate, which 57 of our clients dont have. Side note, 15 million to 18 million American Adults dont have their birth certificate or citizenship records. Take a second and think about where your birth certificate is. Do you know . If so, congratulations, you are one of the very few people who can immediately pull it up. For most people who have homes and stability, finding their birth certificate is still a wild ride. Now try being someone who is moved a lot was evacuated because of a hurricane or wildfires, or perhaps youre like one of our clients whose mother always kept the documents, but the mother passed away and the clients were away everything they owned, including the cert birth certificate. The day you were born, your good at two things, pooping and crying. I dont know a lot about babies, maybe all you are good at is crying. This is not a book about babies. The point is, one thing i know babies for sure are not good at is holding onto documents. That say youre one of these unorganized babies who cant keep a few pieces of paper together and now 34 years later you need an id. For that you need a birth certificate. If you go to vital records and asked for a birth certificate, they will ask you for your id. What next . Theres a little website, vital check, that is a lifesaver, but also one of the most absurdly challenging ways to prove your identity short of literally chopping off a finger and putting it in the mail. It is also expensive. It costs 30 90 to get a birth certificate this way. And dont be a naturalized citizen who needs a new certificate of naturalization. Those puppies cost as much as one pair of chloe flats are 69 reasonably priced burritos, 555. For a document the government can literally print out at any second. Perhaps you were born in puerto rico in need a new birth certificate. First of all, pr recently invalidated all birth certificates from before july 1, 2010. So yes, you do need a new one. Second, until very recently, you needed everything to be done in person in puerto rico. After hurricane maria, we had to have a street team in puerto rico running around getting documents notarized and signed for the many evacuees we were helping in orlando. Hopefully, you have someone at home. What if you were born in a country where perhaps the Administrative Services are not as easily navigable as other places. Its an adventure. You cant just walk into the dmv and prove you were, in fact, born because you are, in fact, standing there. You need a piece of paper. But lets say you have done that. Her ray, you have a birth certificate. You have accomplished step one. So the next part, the book, while talking about the id crisis and our clients and what it looks like, i also talk a lot about our journey starting the organization, because my process of learning about this and how hard it is is the same process the everybody goes through. And so, in this section i talk about when i arrived in virginia to start our chapter there after having been in georgia. The change we made and how things shifted for us. When i ride to virginia, immediately began meeting with groups of potential volunteers and training them. We met in living rooms, restaurants, Library Conference rooms, wherever we could. The passion and enthusiasm of the volunteers stayed the same, but my approach changed. I started by talking about the need for ids in their communities. I shared a Washington Post article about how difficult it is to obtain an id and how much it matters in peoples lives. I told the volunteers at 225,000 registered voters in virginia did not have the id they needed to vote. A karen in the audience was told me i didnt need to lie and exaggerate to make a point i showed her the exact study that proves these numbers were accurate. But as angry as i was at her approach, i wasnt surprised by her skepticism. It was very clear very early that nobody knew how big this problem was. After i got through the basics, i told these prospective volunteers that the most important thing we needed to do was find partners, not Voting Rights partners, not political groups, not Voter Registration organizations, partners that were serving the same demographic that we wanted to serve. Homeless shelters, food banks, free clinics i had realized in that long car ride from georgia that we were doing this the wrong way. We needed to go where people were trusted and where we could be validated. It only took a few phone calls for me to learn that these organizations were well aware of the id problem, that their entire communities were full of people who needed an id and that their organizations did not have the funding, expertise or manpower themselves to get people the id. I found our opening. In arlington we found our first partner, a popular food bank the jumped at the chance to have us come set up a table and take on id clients. We just finished building our brand new online intake form courtesy of the hard working volunteers. This incredible forum, which we still use today, allows us to distill all the information we need to determine exactly what clients need to get an id into a simple online answer treatment on the first day i only practiced with it a few times. I wasnt even sure how well it worked on mobile phones. The goal was to arrive at the shelter bit early and set up laptops the paperwork into a little on the ground training, and then hope that maybe a few people would show up who needed an id. I drove up to the church in my steadfast previous and look to my bags full of gear in a parking lot full of people. Incredibly kind Staff Members showed me to a table. I was just about to start unpacking when a staffer yelled, if anyone needs an id, these folks will help you. There was a rush, a rush, to the table. Before we knew what was happening, there was a line out the door. So much for set up and training. We grabbed our phones, pulled up the intake forms and spent the next two hours taking client after client with no hesitation. They told us their names, date of birth, Social Security numbers. They pulled out long expired medicare cards and tattered bursts of difficult. They told us their life stories of loss and struggle, addiction and incarceration, and a lot of hope. Mostly hope. They asked if we would really help get their id and confessed they did not have any money. Thats okay, we said, we will pay for it. I did not, at the moment, know how i would pay for it. My poor amex was already straining under the weight of the fourth month on the report i knew no matter what happened, i would find a way. At the end of the two hours, we packed up our gear, looked at one another for a long time and told a staff member we would be back next week. I got in my car and cried. We had finally figured it out. That is so powerful. That is so powerful. [ applause ] so in the book you talk about people who have not had an id, some of them for decades. When they were finally at the moment of registering for an id and you are working with them, they do not believe they were actually going to get the id. Can you talk about what that was like when they finally those of them who did get it, the moment of, was a relief, still disbelief . What was going on . One of the things that i have learned is how much people who have been let down over and over again by the government, by the system, by people who say they will help them, they dont actually believe anything will ever happen. It still happens all the time. People say, somewhat that i could get my birth certificate, but i dont believe it. I get it. Now i have been in the system so long and i see how every single arm that is supposed to help fails over and over again. And so, a few things happen. I have had grown men crying in my car because they got an id or birth certificate and they did not think they ever would. One of the things people say very often is, i am a person again. You dont exist without an id. A lot of people will ask us volunteers say, where can i apply for a job . The first thing they want to do is apply for a job. Or they know, now i can go to the case manager, because now i can get housing or whatever. They know what they want. They are so excited to jump because they have the key now to open all the doors that were close to them. There is always a lot of excitement and relief, but there is always a lot of emotion. There are always people who say thank you. I always feel terrible. Dont think me, this is just the thing you should have the past but still fundamental right. I feel guilty when people show so much gratitude. It is a thing you should just have. It is always we have volunteers who would start with us and be really unsure and a little scare. A lot of people have never dealt with folks who are unhoused or formerly incarcerated or whatever. Inevitably, you get the first person their id and you see and realize, oh my god, this persons life just changed. This is why this is my life mission. We have helped 11,000 people get an id. I cant not do that. I know what that does for each person. Yeah. One of the stories that stood out to me was the person who got his id, and then immediately he went and signed up for the national guard. Okay. Great. He wasnt playing. He said he felt it was his duty to protect where he lives, and where he lives is america. It was surprising. It is interesting. One of the things you say also in the book, which i think really ties the book together, is that we are helping people get an id so they can live the lives they want to live, not the lives we wish to impose upon them. I think that speaks to the universality of the work, but also am a you know, some people would read this book and say, oh, she wants more people to vote democrat in america or something. But you are saying something entirely different with this book. That is a big reason i wrote it the way i did. The only context we really have for 90 in million adults who do not have the i. D. S they need and i am trying really hard to recalibrate that understanding. And, for me, and anyone, once you really get what this is about, it is very difficult. And, you know, for instance, i have donors all the time who wants to know what percentage votes a certain way. I do not ask and i do not care. They are sleeping on their streets. They need to feed their children. That is all i care about. We have a very robust voter turnout program. We do not force them to do it. We do not ask them what their Political Party is. We do not ask people how to vote. Sometimes they choose the most random Political Party they can find on the list to register with. Sure. You want to be the purple Rainbow Party . Go for it. It is america. But what i am trying to do is help people understand that everyones life matters. I was at a donor fundraiser in los angeles at a very expensive house in los angeles that her father had given her. And we were talking before the Party Started about i. D. S. And we in los angeles have a stunningly epic unsheltered problems. There are no words to describe how bad it is. And she could see from the cliffs of her school the city. And i was talking about, you know, people on skid row and how we are there every weekend they need i. D. S so they can live and get jobs and et cetera. And i said, once you help folks with that, they are more likely to vote. And she said that is the part i care about. And my mouth kind of dropped. Because she was so comfortable saying that even though she was in this multimillion dollar house given to her by her father. And what i am trying to do is help bring humanity back to folks. People want to be homeless. Know. The thing you have in your wallet that you take for granted is the thing preventing people from getting houses, or s. N. A. P. And as 26 million adults we should care. I love how you are reframing the issue. Where we are with the state of the union and an Election Year coming up. We hear voter i. D. , voter i. D. , voter i. D. , but you separate it and say there is voters and then a ideas you. If you do not have one, you cannot access the safety net that many people have paid into for so many years. And i think that is an important distinction top make. The other thing i would tell people is if you want people to vote if you dont think you are a person, then you are not going to be empowered to access your civic rights. Right . So when we go to people to talk to them about boating but they do not know where they are sleeping at night and that the government has not done anything for them and they cannot see their children, et cetera, then it is not something they are thinking about. It is not something they think they can do or want to do are are frankly interested in. We build relationships with folks. We build relationships. We get them the things they need and they all of a sudden have doors open to reopen their lives. Then when we all of a sudden talk about voting they say, of course we want to they cannot wait. But we do not go into a Time Magazine<\/a> 16 people and groups fighting for a more equal america, kat has been featured in the new york times, l. A. Times, the Washington Post<\/a> , atlanta, essence, glamour, npr, pbs, bet and marie claire. Those are just a few. Thank you for being here. Such a weird one to throw in there, glamour, npr, glamour. Cosmo girl. My favorite one. Finally i am an its girl. Forget npr, i want cosmopolitan. Just a reminder the southern festival of books remains completely free because of Strong Community<\/a> support, and we want to keep it that way. Thank you firstly to our key sponsors, Metro Nashville<\/a> arts commission, ingram content group, the tennessee arts commission, vanderbilt university. You could donate on the web on humanities tennessee. Org, the headquarters, this year via venmo. Please also visit humanities tennessee online literary publication, chapter 16, which i write for, on chapter 16. Org. The way we have structured this is that kat will read from us. We will return to a conversation, and then we will open it up for questions. As a reminder, when we arrive at the question portion, use a microphone upfront to make sure everybody can hear you and that it correctly transmits to the folks watching via cspan. Okay. Take it away. Well, thank you. I was just saying that my grandmother was a librarian. I love librarians. I am so excited to be here with three amazing librarians. Also, you guys, cspan book tv, the best tv. [ applause ] this is my book. It is paint and beautiful. American identity in crisis notes from an accidental activist. I am going to read four short sections that will help orient us to what the book is. It a short. You can read it in a weekend. I did that on purpose. Hopefully, people find it entertaining. I will start with the first passage from the first chapter. Doesnt everybody have an id . My first ever id client was ll. She was born in either 1942 or 1947 and had lived in georgia all of her life. I had been trying to find someone to trust is enough to help them get their id. Gary, a man i would soon oh well, called and asked if someone could help his family friend, ella, get an id. She was ailing, suffering from four types of cancer the same time, and she needed an id to get better medical care. Gary had known ella his entire life. She helped him nurse his father through liver cancer. Now he was returning the favor. But ella did not have any documents, was not sure of her real birthday did not think she would ever even have a birth certificate. Gary had no idea where to turn. I jumped on this case with extreme fervor. I really wanted to get our first id, but it was also immediately clear that her life depended on it. Fi met miss ella now, it would still be a real challenge, but we would be able to help her. We know so much more now than we did back then about getting an id. At the time, my small team and i did everything we could pick a volunteer went to her house in rural georgia and found old insurance policies and newspaper clippings we mightve been able to use as proof of life for a delayed birth certificate. Incredibly, from Elementary School<\/a> still had her transcripts. In some states, you can use a birth record and family bible as a birth certificate substitute, but only if the preacher who wrote the record was still alive to sign an affidavit. Her childhood minister most certainly was not. We did not know then we could cement a freedom of information act request to the Social Security<\/a> administration for an obscure document called the record to confirm her birth. We know that now, but even after we figured out how to make the request in a way the ssa would accept, it still takes months to hear back. After a while, with no success finding a suitable birth document and with miss ellas Health Declining<\/a> every day, we decided to try for a passport. Theoretically, with enough proof of life documents, you can get a passport without a birth certificate. Its tough in a different way than getting a dmv id, and getting a passport is much more expensive, but it was worth a shot. It took more than one try to get miss ella to the post office to apply for the passport because she kept having medical emergencies. Eventually we got her there , applied with a mountain of documents that the passport employee thought would work, and we waited and waited and waited. And then, rejection. Devastated, we read the reasoning. None of the documents were acceptable as proof of citizenship. We decided to try again but as we are trying to find more documents, miss ellas sister called. She found a birth certificate. I almost shrieked with joy. I arranged to meet with gary and miss ella to take her to the dmv. On my way, he called. Miss ella had been rushed to the hospital. She could not make it. It turned out she never would. She died a few days later, more than a year after we started her id journey. My first client would also be the one who never got a 90. I think about her every day. She is the reason we must make it easier to get an id. She is the reason i do what i do. I have this little section in the book where i go through and try to describe, in excruciating detail, why it is so difficult for people to get an id. That is a question we get all the time. I will walk you through step number one. First, you have to prove your identity. This is usually done with a birth certificate, which 57 of our clients dont have. Side note, 15 million to 18 million American Adults<\/a> dont have their birth certificate or citizenship records. Take a second and think about where your birth certificate is. Do you know . If so, congratulations, you are one of the very few people who can immediately pull it up. For most people who have homes and stability, finding their birth certificate is still a wild ride. Now try being someone who is moved a lot was evacuated because of a hurricane or wildfires, or perhaps youre like one of our clients whose mother always kept the documents, but the mother passed away and the clients were away everything they owned, including the cert birth certificate. The day you were born, your good at two things, pooping and crying. I dont know a lot about babies, maybe all you are good at is crying. This is not a book about babies. The point is, one thing i know babies for sure are not good at is holding onto documents. That say youre one of these unorganized babies who cant keep a few pieces of paper together and now 34 years later you need an id. For that you need a birth certificate. If you go to vital records and asked for a birth certificate, they will ask you for your id. What next . Theres a little website, vital check, that is a lifesaver, but also one of the most absurdly challenging ways to prove your identity short of literally chopping off a finger and putting it in the mail. It is also expensive. It costs 30 90 to get a birth certificate this way. And dont be a naturalized citizen who needs a new certificate of naturalization. Those puppies cost as much as one pair of chloe flats are 69 reasonably priced burritos, 555. For a document the government can literally print out at any second. Perhaps you were born in puerto rico in need a new birth certificate. First of all, pr recently invalidated all birth certificates from before july 1, 2010. So yes, you do need a new one. Second, until very recently, you needed everything to be done in person in puerto rico. After hurricane maria, we had to have a street team in puerto rico running around getting documents notarized and signed for the many evacuees we were helping in orlando. Hopefully, you have someone at home. What if you were born in a country where perhaps the Administrative Services<\/a> are not as easily navigable as other places. Its an adventure. You cant just walk into the dmv and prove you were, in fact, born because you are, in fact, standing there. You need a piece of paper. But lets say you have done that. Her ray, you have a birth certificate. You have accomplished step one. So the next part, the book, while talking about the id crisis and our clients and what it looks like, i also talk a lot about our journey starting the organization, because my process of learning about this and how hard it is is the same process the everybody goes through. And so, in this section i talk about when i arrived in virginia to start our chapter there after having been in georgia. The change we made and how things shifted for us. When i ride to virginia, immediately began meeting with groups of potential volunteers and training them. We met in living rooms, restaurants, Library Conference<\/a> rooms, wherever we could. The passion and enthusiasm of the volunteers stayed the same, but my approach changed. I started by talking about the need for ids in their communities. I shared a Washington Post<\/a> article about how difficult it is to obtain an id and how much it matters in peoples lives. I told the volunteers at 225,000 registered voters in virginia did not have the id they needed to vote. A karen in the audience was told me i didnt need to lie and exaggerate to make a point i showed her the exact study that proves these numbers were accurate. But as angry as i was at her approach, i wasnt surprised by her skepticism. It was very clear very early that nobody knew how big this problem was. After i got through the basics, i told these prospective volunteers that the most important thing we needed to do was find partners, not Voting Rights<\/a> partners, not political groups, not Voter Registration<\/a> organizations, partners that were serving the same demographic that we wanted to serve. Homeless shelters, food banks, free clinics i had realized in that long car ride from georgia that we were doing this the wrong way. We needed to go where people were trusted and where we could be validated. It only took a few phone calls for me to learn that these organizations were well aware of the id problem, that their entire communities were full of people who needed an id and that their organizations did not have the funding, expertise or manpower themselves to get people the id. I found our opening. In arlington we found our first partner, a popular food bank the jumped at the chance to have us come set up a table and take on id clients. We just finished building our brand new online intake form courtesy of the hard working volunteers. This incredible forum, which we still use today, allows us to distill all the information we need to determine exactly what clients need to get an id into a simple online answer treatment on the first day i only practiced with it a few times. I wasnt even sure how well it worked on mobile phones. The goal was to arrive at the shelter bit early and set up laptops the paperwork into a little on the ground training, and then hope that maybe a few people would show up who needed an id. I drove up to the church in my steadfast previous and look to my bags full of gear in a parking lot full of people. Incredibly kind Staff Members<\/a> showed me to a table. I was just about to start unpacking when a staffer yelled, if anyone needs an id, these folks will help you. There was a rush, a rush, to the table. Before we knew what was happening, there was a line out the door. So much for set up and training. We grabbed our phones, pulled up the intake forms and spent the next two hours taking client after client with no hesitation. They told us their names, date of birth, Social Security<\/a> numbers. They pulled out long expired medicare cards and tattered bursts of difficult. They told us their life stories of loss and struggle, addiction and incarceration, and a lot of hope. Mostly hope. They asked if we would really help get their id and confessed they did not have any money. Thats okay, we said, we will pay for it. I did not, at the moment, know how i would pay for it. My poor amex was already straining under the weight of the fourth month on the report i knew no matter what happened, i would find a way. At the end of the two hours, we packed up our gear, looked at one another for a long time and told a staff member we would be back next week. I got in my car and cried. We had finally figured it out. That is so powerful. That is so powerful. [ applause ] so in the book you talk about people who have not had an id, some of them for decades. When they were finally at the moment of registering for an id and you are working with them, they do not believe they were actually going to get the id. Can you talk about what that was like when they finally those of them who did get it, the moment of, was a relief, still disbelief . What was going on . One of the things that i have learned is how much people who have been let down over and over again by the government, by the system, by people who say they will help them, they dont actually believe anything will ever happen. It still happens all the time. People say, somewhat that i could get my birth certificate, but i dont believe it. I get it. Now i have been in the system so long and i see how every single arm that is supposed to help fails over and over again. And so, a few things happen. I have had grown men crying in my car because they got an id or birth certificate and they did not think they ever would. One of the things people say very often is, i am a person again. You dont exist without an id. A lot of people will ask us volunteers say, where can i apply for a job . The first thing they want to do is apply for a job. Or they know, now i can go to the case manager, because now i can get housing or whatever. They know what they want. They are so excited to jump because they have the key now to open all the doors that were close to them. There is always a lot of excitement and relief, but there is always a lot of emotion. There are always people who say thank you. I always feel terrible. Dont think me, this is just the thing you should have the past but still fundamental right. I feel guilty when people show so much gratitude. It is a thing you should just have. It is always we have volunteers who would start with us and be really unsure and a little scare. A lot of people have never dealt with folks who are unhoused or formerly incarcerated or whatever. Inevitably, you get the first person their id and you see and realize, oh my god, this persons life just changed. This is why this is my life mission. We have helped 11,000 people get an id. I cant not do that. I know what that does for each person. Yeah. One of the stories that stood out to me was the person who got his id, and then immediately he went and signed up for the national guard. Okay. Great. He wasnt playing. He said he felt it was his duty to protect where he lives, and where he lives is america. It was surprising. It is interesting. One of the things you say also in the book, which i think really ties the book together, is that we are helping people get an id so they can live the lives they want to live, not the lives we wish to impose upon them. I think that speaks to the universality of the work, but also am a you know, some people would read this book and say, oh, she wants more people to vote democrat in america or something. But you are saying something entirely different with this book. That is a big reason i wrote it the way i did. The only context we really have for 90 in million adults who do not have the i. D. S they need and i am trying really hard to recalibrate that understanding. And, for me, and anyone, once you really get what this is about, it is very difficult. And, you know, for instance, i have donors all the time who wants to know what percentage votes a certain way. I do not ask and i do not care. They are sleeping on their streets. They need to feed their children. That is all i care about. We have a very robust voter turnout program. We do not force them to do it. We do not ask them what their Political Party<\/a> is. We do not ask people how to vote. Sometimes they choose the most random Political Party<\/a> they can find on the list to register with. Sure. You want to be the purple Rainbow Party<\/a> . Go for it. It is america. But what i am trying to do is help people understand that everyones life matters. I was at a donor fundraiser in los angeles at a very expensive house in los angeles that her father had given her. And we were talking before the Party Started<\/a> about i. D. S. And we in los angeles have a stunningly epic unsheltered problems. There are no words to describe how bad it is. And she could see from the cliffs of her school the city. And i was talking about, you know, people on skid row and how we are there every weekend they need i. D. S so they can live and get jobs and et cetera. And i said, once you help folks with that, they are more likely to vote. And she said that is the part i care about. And my mouth kind of dropped. Because she was so comfortable saying that even though she was in this multimillion dollar house given to her by her father. And what i am trying to do is help bring humanity back to folks. People want to be homeless. Know. The thing you have in your wallet that you take for granted is the thing preventing people from getting houses, or s. N. A. P. And as 26 million adults we should care. I love how you are reframing the issue. Where we are with the state of the union and an Election Year<\/a> coming up. We hear voter i. D. , voter i. D. , voter i. D. , but you separate it and say there is voters and then a ideas you. If you do not have one, you cannot access the safety net that many people have paid into for so many years. And i think that is an important distinction top make. The other thing i would tell people is if you want people to vote if you dont think you are a person, then you are not going to be empowered to access your civic rights. Right . So when we go to people to talk to them about boating but they do not know where they are sleeping at night and that the government has not done anything for them and they cannot see their children, et cetera, then it is not something they are thinking about. It is not something they think they can do or want to do are are frankly interested in. We build relationships with folks. We build relationships. We get them the things they need and they all of a sudden have doors open to reopen their lives. Then when we all of a sudden talk about voting they say, of course we want to they cannot wait. But we do not go into a Core Community<\/a> two months before elections and try to get them to vote and blame them when they dont. Well, you do not actually address any of the issues that they need in their lives. Why would they . Absolutely. When you just appear and seem to care about them at that moment, people can see right through that. One of the other things i found endlessly fascinating was the way the government or government offices were frustrated. Then finally the office worker, whomever they were, hit print and printed the document that you all had been requesting for so long. Can you talk more about why it is so difficult . I noticed that you kind of identified 9 11 and the fact hijackers had used legal i. D. S to do what they needed to get onto planes and so forth and after that things became a lot more difficult. But i wanted you to sort of tease that out a little bit more and identify what was the purpose . Who benefits from i. D. S being so difficult to require . Did you ever read that atlantic article the cruelty of the point. I have heard of it. I have not read it. It may be less harrowing that we are now in between trump eras. I am sorry. Political. But it is done on purpose. Has reference to 9 11, this is a problem that is a function. They had about 36 i. D. S that they got legally. And so obviously everyone sort of freaked out. So real i. D. Came from the 9 11 commission. Now, it has been what . 22 years . There probably never will be. Every single state in the district decided they were not going to wait. Something people do not even think about our care about because why would you, the requirements for what you need to get a idea in most states is not statutory. It is just a person. Just ahead of the department of transportation or secretary of state. Or in d. C. , it is literally just muriel bowser. It is just somebody in most states who decides. And so they made a lot of changes since 9 11. It used to be if you moved from tennessee to texas, you can take your tennessee i. D. And they would give you a texas i. D. Now, every time you need a new i. D. In a new state you need new documentation. Your birth certificate. Texas just changed the law in most states you do not need your birth certificate if youre just replacing, but now texas requires a birth certificate every single time. That is texas. So, you know, part of white no one knows that this is a problem is that for probably everyone in this room, when we got i. D. S it was a lot easier. When we got our first one. But also because in america we do not actually recognize something as a problem until it has been at least 100 years. Like, 20 years, we just discovered there was Police Brutality<\/a> four years ago. So we are just very slow on the uptake. And so because all of those things were made so much difficult, the birth certificate, the types of documents that are required, they also put a lot of different security measures in your i. D. And all of these things. It was specifically done to make i. D. S more difficult to get. And we overreacted to a situation and did not think about the people it would impact on the other side. So, yes. You know, we had a volunteer and we cannot get someone a Social Security<\/a> card because it was so hard without an i. D. And she finally just started crying. And the woman at the Social Security<\/a> administration was like, here you go. They have that power. In virginia, the dmv can just pull up someones birth certificate. You should have a lot of mom says your volunteers. Because a mom starts crying and all the sudden bureaucracy opens the doors. You know what, i can just pull it up from here. You can what . All of this time and i have several examples in the book of all of the ways that every, you know, we have built into this system all of the things that we need to make it easy for everyone to have an i. D. They exist. We just purposely do not use them for that function because we are purposely making it difficult to get an i. D. I think that also adds value to the i. D. Once it is acquired. I appreciate what you said about the rules seeming arbitrary statebystate. I remember when i had to get a tennessee license, i went to this dmv or the county clerk or wherever i do not remember they smashed might new york i. D. , punched a hole in it. I stood there with my jaw open. Like, okay. That was kind of it. I have never had a new york drivers license again. And in other counties and in tennessee it is different. It just feels so random. I mean, it is random. Sometimes by statute or by role. In 16 states, if you are undocumented, you can get something called a 8060 drivers license, which is, you know, in almost all of the states you cannot if you are undocumented get just a i. D. But we can get you a drivers license because a. We need people to get to work. But you cannot do anything with that. And the states will put big black lines. They want to make sure you do not get benefits. You cannot use it for anything except basically driving to work. And the roles get very complicated. Oh, hey, we had two people from the same family who had the same exact documents and dmv windows right next to each other and one persons was accepted and one was not and it literally was just the discretion of the person at the desk. And we knew they all had their stuff because this is what i do for a living. I am hungry. I am trying to go to lunch now. There is nothing you can do. You can call the manager. Sometimes, it is really just up to the discretion of the person at the desk. That is horrifying. There is a whole chapter about veterans, which we have a big problem in this country with unhoused veterans and veterans do not have i. D. S. In some states like california, they can use their 214s. I am almost uncomfortable as some workers who will reject the veteran and not take their 214. California allows this and et cetera. Someone just does not like the look of the paper or the veteran or whatever, and if they choose to reject it there is nothing you can do. Well, you can be mean and yell at them and almost get arrested. That is what we call commitment to the work. Wow. That is remarkable. But one of the things you say in the book is that most of us will not know this is happening unless we have had to struggle to get an i. D. You do talk about this. They had i. D. They somehow lost it. Then they somehow realize this is actually a problem for so many other americans. Yes. So, you know, we are very segregated by socioeconomic status in the country. Youre either in a room of people where everyone has the i. D. Or where everyone doesnt. Once i started talking to people who served the people we wanted to serve, they are all like, yeah, i know. Every social worker in america knows. It may not be 26 million, but everyone who works with the people who do not have them know. And i think when it comes to, you know, we are seeing all over the country this huge increase in homelessness. And we get a lot of people who are very welleducated. You know . Have houses or whatever. But we are all one medical disaster away from being unhoused. Something has to happen in l. A. If you are not in a rent controlled building one day it is 1000 and the next day it is 5000 and then you are out on the street. And uc two different things. Sometimes you see people have a lot more empathy for folks who are on the streets because they now understand what it looks like. And sometimes people go the Clarence Thomas<\/a> route. But it sort of depends. But there are, you know, two groups. One of the things that happens and one of the articles read in 2016 about voter i. D. Were seniors who, you know, had always had an i. D. , but then have not needed one for a long time or whatever. You know . Then all of a sudden the voter i. D. Law was passed and they did not know the laws had changed and they did not know and they cannot get one and they cannot vote and we have a lot of situations like that. So many seniors. You know . Like ms. Ella. A lot of folks are older and have cancer and you can only get certain very kinds of very basic healthcare. And so then they are desperately in need of i. D. For health issues. They maybe have not needed one in a while. You also so one topic of a lot of domestic abusers is that they lock up i. D. S and documentation because it makes it more difficult for someone to escape. So i had a client who escaped a violent abuser in indiana, and the police like got her on a plane essentially and sent her to l. A. , but without any documentation she could not get anything. But then she was on the streets of l. A. And did not have any documentation. Put them on a plane to l. A. But were kind of like good luck. Eventually, she found our skid row operation. And we had to help her get everything all over again. But that has happened a lot where people finally are able to escape and have to make a decision. And maybe they have always had their documentation but do not have free access to it. I mean, right now in maui, i was just talking to a lawyer who is helping pro bono because the families in maui had, you know, three minutes to get out hopefully with their family and dog. They did not get all their documents out. But you know what you need for fema assistance . You need a i. D. So now they are stuck. So there are tons of situations where people have everything. Have the house. Have the certificate. Then all of a sudden they find themselves in a situation that they did not even know was a situation they could be in. I also just like recall i was shocked. I did not know you could only get 10 copies of your Social Security<\/a> card a lifetime maximum. And you are not allowed to laminate it you cannot laminate it. You get it at birth and when youre at 70 you are not supposed to have it. We have had people who have hit their 10 limit. But there is a lifetime limit of Social Security<\/a> cards. I was shocked by that. I mean like, take a minute. Put it in a safe. I was going to ask, what should we do with our documents now . Should we keep them all like in fireproof boxes, i guess. But how do we protect our documents . Yeah. I mean, so what i would say is, it partially depends on where you live. If you live in an area prone to hurricanes, prone to fires, things like that, then you really need to be sure that your documents are in a fireproof, waterproof case, et cetera, because you are more likely. You know . I have family in north carolina. They still live there but every year they evacuate. Louisiana, same thing. Even if you just have a filing cabinet and do not necessarily think your house is going to burn down, it is important to know i have a folder. My birth certificate is here. Have a picture on your phone. If you do have to get it replaced, it is helpful to have all of the information on there. Or if something happens, we have a lot of clients suffering from different forms of Mental Illness<\/a> and cannot often remember their mothers maiden name or things like that. If you can have a digital copy you save on the cloud in excess from the library or whatever it is helpful to know where that information can come from. A lot of states now are doing digital drivers licenses and i. D. S, and just having that information in place where you can pull it you are still going to need to order the original copy and all of that but at least it is helpful to have all of that information. Yeah. If my house ever burns down, i am grabbing my passport. I always know where my passport is. It is my most valuable possession. I always have it in a specific place so i can get it in a hurry. Someone breaks into my house, i am getting my passport. That document opens up every other door. And i know that i do not ever want to be without it. Noted. Duly noted. Okay. I do have like a gazillion more questions, but we are going to open it up to you all at this time. So if you do have a question, up to the microphone. Actually, if you use this one at the front this is sort of perfect. Great. Thank you for being here, and you are doing amazing work. You kind of described yourself as an activist. I guess my question is how do you sort of avoid often when you do this difficult work the cynicism. Fight back against saying, why do i keep doing this. Why do i keep going if, for instance, people at the dmv denied people a i. D. Because they feel like it or they are hungry or Something Like<\/a> that. How do you fight back against the cynicism of the work you are doing . Ray question. Two ways. Oneway is knowing that we are the only people who can help. And so i know if we are not doing it, no one is. If we are not fighting for that person at the dmv new york is both the toughest place to get a per certificate and a i. D. We are now the leading experts in the country on how to get these birth certificates, how to get these i. D. S. We get just, you know, flooded with calls every day of people who need help. And it is worth it. Like, we have to. The other thing is we have a policy arm. Project i. D. Action fund. And we are working on changes so i do not have to spend the rest of my life getting 26 Million People<\/a> and i. D. So we have a bill in congress. We have california legislature. We are working on local and state changes all over the country with the goal of being able to eliminate this problem entirely. So i think, you know, for a while we were building up and everything and once we got to a point where we were really good at this and could have had it down and i knew i cannot spend the rest of my life helping one person at a time. You are waiting for a hurricane. It is never going to stop or go there is always going to be more people. And when i started this, there were 21 Million People<\/a> who did not have i. D. And now it is 26. So having the policy arm. Having a bill in congress saying, i have been working on these solutions. I think a lot about what it must be like for ralph nader to get in a car and see a seatbelt and airbag and be like, i did that. I really want to be 70 and for this to be like a hilarious joke. There was a time when people did not have i. D. S. That is michael. And being able to work on that larger goal helps me with all of the small, frustrating things. s its okay, you can tar time. You take it. Okay. You can take s,your time. We have time. Unless you just want to get your cardio in. How prevalent is this in foster care . Unless theyre 18 and have not been adopted. It is. I actually have a whole chapter about young people in my book. So, yeah. The steps for it the steps for former foster youth, and their employment and income rates after foster care are shameful. Like, we should really be embarrassed as a nation. There is a huge problem, a. , with, you know, there is actual federal money so every single foster once emancipated can get their documents. It does not happen in every state. And they are almost immediately homeless and then there is nothing to help them get replaced. We work with 10 a , which is the biggest organization for local foster youth. But it enis the biggest challen for former foster youth. One of the big things that infuriate me as you are allowed to unadopt a child and it happens all the time. We have youths whose names have been changed all that time. They have no idea when their name that was change. It does not match the name and Social Security<\/a>. They do not know what county they were in our what court they went to. There are so many things that are so complicated. When you go to the dmv, youre supposed to get it changed every time you change your name. I did not know that. It impacts women significantly and former foster youth. And we have so many youths where that is a real challenge for them. And, you know, we are dealing with documentary challenges that almost no other demographic has while at the same time dealing with very young people who are coming from a very traumatic situation who often have disabilities on no one who can help. This story is in the block. In dallas or fort worth, we had a young man who had adopted family that dropped him on a Street Corner<\/a> the day he turned 18. He was still in high school. And they said good luck. They did not give him a birth certificate. Did not get him his documents or anything. Luckily, he came to us. He had to go to congress to get help because it was so complicated to be able to get him his i. D. And birth certificate. Then they found a family at church i would take him in because he was still in high school. At his 18th birthday they kicked him out. That happens a shocking amount. Yeah. There are very few groups in this country. I think foster kids and people with disabilities in this country. We just really, really do not care if they live or die. You know . Sorry. Can you use the mic over here . We just want to make sure that the folks online can hear. Thank you. And then you can take your time. Why isnt there any consequence for the socalled parents of these people . Believe me. I think there should be. As far as i know, it is illegal. It is an appalling thing that is allowed to happen. Thank you. Our ability to share data. Birth certificates. Lets just start there. Why hasnt there been a National Movement<\/a> for central something access. It would make life a whole lot easier because i have had to get birth certificates for kids before. I had to figure out which county they were born in and which hospital. And it was not easy. I am sure for kids or people who have moved around or maybe did not know, it is really hard. Why hasnt there been a movement . Why hasnt there been a National Movement<\/a> to fix this . I think because the people who would be able to make those changes do not have a really hard time getting their birth certificate. We also we have privatized pretty much every state has turned over all of their online birth certificate operations to a private company, which is the only company. That whole government operation is now in the hands of one company. I have given them so much money they should give me an award or job or something. And so we are kind of going the opposite way. Every single county has their own rules, and state and et cetera. Because there is one way to do things by mail or in person and there is a private company that does things according to every different sort of state or role. It is actually getting more difficult. I think it is just, you know, this is not the first book anyone has written on i. D. S. We all know about this issue. We all kind of privately suffer. Also in bureaucracy, we all sort of expect to suffer. And we do not realize or talk about this is what i am trying to change that this changes someones life. I just saw a bill that governor gavin newsom vetoed. Somebody throw eggs at his house. One of the things i would have done is make birth certificates free for low income californians. Birth certificates are like 30 each. I have had single moms with kids come because they all need birth certificates. That is a lot of money. If you have section 8 housing, there is all these things. So individually, you know, with all of these issues, with documents, with i. D. S, with a lot of different issues that impact Vulnerable People<\/a>, only the people who are suffering or the people who are working with those people really know and care that it is an issue. Like 11 of adults in america do not have i. D. , but 89 do. And that is really good enough for america so we just do really not care. Okay. I think we have time for one more question. Yes . Lets do it. Now that you have your long term vision and strategy, i know you probably started more locally helping people one on one. Where do you find the gaps are where you are now . Great question. So we are actually in the middle of shifting some things to address that. You know . For the first seven years, a lot of time has been spent convincing people this is a issue. A lot of time has been spent learning, how do we get a birth certificate for someone in florida who does not have an i. D. , or Something Like<\/a> that. Now, we are at a point where we have done this so much in so many states that we have organizations and agencies coming to us and saying, show us how to do this. One of the things we started doing we started a little bit in 2019, but then covid forced us to scale it up. While we were working with staff and volunteers and getting i. D. S on the ground, we were trading and funding organizations around the country to do this work that sucks. So there is some places, you know, like a lot of food tanks are shelters or different places that may not have the capacity to go through this kind of process, but there are a lot of social workers and caseworkers who have tools or whatever where they are already doing a lot of inperson work with their clients, and they really need i. D. S to get most of the things that they are trying to get them, but they do not have the funds or training to actually make it happen. So we have been training hundreds of organizations around the country to learn how to do this themselves. So, now, one of the things we are actually sort of switching to is doing a lot more of that. A lot more going to agencies and social workers and saying, hey, we can train you on this. We have a proprietary tool that will make it easier. We have guys who know exactly how to get birth certificates in every single state without i. D. All of these things. And we are putting all that together because, you know, our goal is i dont want to be the only organization that gets people i. D. S. I want there to be 5000 of them. I want this to be something that everybody can do. So along with the policy, one of the things we are doing is, you know, we work with so many good wills and salvation armies but we work with them in like five states. We want to go and say, we will just train all of your good wills on how to do this. You know . And like speaking of librarians, first of all, you are doing gods work, but second of all libraries are starting to hire social workers because libraries are really centers of where Vulnerable People<\/a> go for assistance with everything from access to the internet, applying for jobs, applying for services, and we are talking to a lot of librarians about how can we train you. A lot of librarians are starting their own i. D. Programs but do not know what they are doing. I think that is really where our next phase is. Becoming more of a nonprofit i. D. Consultant going to all of these places, saying we will get you set up and show you how to do this. I will teach you how to fund raise and how to get grants and all of the things you need to do this on your own so we can have people in all 50 states that are doing this and really scale it in a way that we just would not be able to do if we were trying to do it hands on as our own organization. All right. Well, founder and executive director of spread the vote executive i. D. Kat calvin, thank you for being with us. As a reminder, her book is american identity in crisis is quote the and we are now heading to the author signing tent. And i hope you enjoy the rest of the southern festival of books. Thank you. Thank you, cspan. Weeknights at 9 00 eastern, cspans encore presentation of our 10part series, books that shaped america. Library of Congress Explores<\/a> key pieces of literature that have had a profound impact on our country. Tonight, the 1980 book free to choose. Art guest is lenny even stein. Author of Milton Freeman<\/a> a biography. Watch the encore presentation of books that shaped america at 9 00 eastern on cspan or go to c span. Org booksthatshapedamerica to learn more about what was featured. Every saturday, American History<\/a> tb documents americas story, and on sunday, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. Funding for cspan two comes from these Television Companies<\/a> and more including cox","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"archive.org","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","width":"800","height":"600","url":"\/\/ia601304.us.archive.org\/0\/items\/CSPAN3_20240102_031500_Kat_Calvin_American_Identity_in_Crisis\/CSPAN3_20240102_031500_Kat_Calvin_American_Identity_in_Crisis.thumbs\/CSPAN3_20240102_031500_Kat_Calvin_American_Identity_in_Crisis_000001.jpg"}},"autauthor":{"@type":"Organization"},"author":{"sameAs":"archive.org","name":"archive.org"}}],"coverageEndTime":"20240707T12:35:10+00:00"}