Highlights: Symone Sanders on Strategy and Social Activism

JOHN WOOLLEY: Democratic political strategist Symone Sanders spoke with Georgetown students about social activism and her new book, “‘No, You Shut Up’: Speaking Truth to Power and Reclaiming America” during a virtual event on May 21. 

The forum, hosted on Facebook Live by the Georgetown Institute of Politics and Public Service, was the first in a new series of online summer programming set to continue through the season. Hosted in conversation with GU Politics Executive Director Mo Elleithee, Sanders discussed her experiences campaigning as a woman of color and spoke about how she was inspired to write the book.

“I never thought of myself as a writer,” Sanders said. After being approached by United Talent about the prospect of a book in the middle of 2018, she eventually partnered with HarperCollins Publishers to take on the project later that year. “We had a very ambitious timeline—they needed a draft in like four months.”

The book itself is a collection of stories compiled from her activist experiences, both on and off the campaign trail. The title, as she explained, was inspired by a memorable interaction she had in 2017 with CNN host Chris Cuomo and former Attorney General of Virginia Ken Cuccinelli. While debating the political intentions of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Cuccinelli told Sanders to “just shut up for a minute” after she brought up the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer.

“I was incensed,” Sanders recalled. “I knew if I was 35 and my name was Tommy, I probably wouldn’t have been told to shut up on national television by anyone, let alone the former attorney general of Virginia.”

Later, Sanders spoke on the importance of youth empowerment and the need for activists, especially women and people of color, to “get out of line” when trying to enter politics: “If I literally waited in my career for somebody to pick me, we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation, I wouldn’t have wrote a book, and I wouldn’t be super active in this election to get Donald Trump out of the White House,” she said.

Though she now works as a senior advisor to the Biden campaign, Sanders made history at age 26 as the youngest national press secretary in United States history while working for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.

“I go into his office and it’s just he and I,” Sanders said, retelling how she ended up getting her position on the 2016 campaign. “And then we end up getting into an argument, basically.”

After discussing and debating recent events, Senator Sanders asked her what position she would want if she were to join him on the campaign trail. “He asked, did I have an idea of what I’d like to do? And without hesitation I said yes —  I would like to be national press secretary, I want to be your on-the-record spokesperson, and I want to have a hand in some of the messaging strategy, just like we discussed here. And I said it just like that, with a straight face.”

In explaining her thinking, she ended with a simple lesson to students: “Ask for what it is that we want. Not what we think somebody is going to give us — ask for what it is that we deserve.”

John Woolley is a reporter, musician, and executive editor for On the Record. He is a junior and studies government and journalism in the College.