SUMMARY
On this episode of Create for Change with Dillon St. Bernard, we’re joined by Chrystian Woods, a political organizer and narrative strategist with 15 years of experience in progressive movement work.
Born and raised in Georgia, Chrystian has worked on presidential campaigns and helped lead some of the largest advocacy organizations and initiatives in the country. Her work focuses on bridging the gap between big policy and institutional decisions and what they mean for everyday people’s lives.
We dig into the Common Dreams op-ed Chrystian and Dillon co-wrote, “Elections Won’t Save a Movement People Don’t Trust.” Chrystian explains why trust is the baseline for a healthy democracy, why the question institutions should ask isn’t “why aren’t young people and people of color engaged?” but whether they’re willing to share power, and why the progressive movement has confused communication with culture. We also talk about how institutions can regain relevance, the funding challenges facing organizations that serve marginalized communities, and what it takes to build a movement around belonging and vision rather than resistance alone.
Coming out of the 2026 elections, there’s nothing more important than the work of holding politicians to account. And as Chrystian advises for 2027: we have to keep this conversation going. Tune in, and share with the people in your community.
HIGHLIGHTS
TRUST AS THE BASELINE: Chrystian explains why declining trust in institutions tracks with the weakening of democracy itself. Drawing on her experience as a young, Black, queer organizer, she describes how communities that have always built their own institutions outside traditional systems offer lessons in creating identity, space, and belonging that institutions are now struggling to learn.
SHARING POWER, NOT JUST ASKING FOR VOTES: We unpack the op-ed’s argument that participation is often offered only after decisions are made, usually with an ask attached. Chrystian points to what’s happened since the 2020 election, including the rollback of voting rights, the fall of Roe, and cuts to DEI funding, and asks what voters got in return for their support.
REACHING BEYOND YOUR OWN AUDIENCE: Chrystian advises institutions and campaigns to look past the people who already agree with them: college-educated supporters, volunteers, and donors. That means engaging influencers and podcasts, becoming a trusted messenger, and following up with communities after the election cycle ends.
TRANSCRIPT
Dillon St. Bernard 0:04
Hey, hey, Chrystian, how’s it going?
Chrystian Woods 0:05
What’s up, Dillon? Thank you so much for having me. I’m happy to be here.
Dillon St. Bernard 0:08
Yes, welcome to Create for Change. So I just want the audience to know a little bit more about who you are and what you do. Can you just give folks your spiel?
Chrystian Woods 0:16
Sure. Hello, everyone. My name is Chrystian Woods. I use she/they pronouns. I have been doing political organizing and progressive movement work for about the past 15 years. I was born, bred, and raised in Georgia, but I have done work all across the country, from presidential campaigns to helping lead some of the largest advocacy organizations and initiatives in the country, focusing on narrative, focusing on communities, and bridging the gap between what these large policy implications and institutional implications mean and talking to everyday people about what that means for their lives right now and the impact.
Dillon St. Bernard 1:08
And so we recently wrote this op-ed for Common Dreams called “Elections Won’t Save a Movement People Don’t Trust.” It really lays out the state of trust and where we must go from here. So I want to start off with the basics: why does this trust factor matter so much as we think about the 2026 midterms and where we’re going next?
Chrystian Woods 1:29
Yeah, that’s a really excellent question, Dillon, and I’m glad we were able to do this together. Trust is the baseline for a healthy democracy. Do people believe the institutions and leaders are going to do the things they say they’re going to do? What the data says overall is that trust in institutions has continued to decline. We can mark the decline in institutional trust with the decline in the strength of our democracy, and I think that’s a lot of what we get into in our op-ed, Dillon, where we talk about it from the angle of being young and Black. We talk about it from the angle of being queer. We’re coming from communities who have always had to organize, who’ve always had to build our own institutions outside of traditional systems and create our own change, and then so much of what we create begins to be mirrored among the masses. We’re talking about culture, whether we’re talking about fashion, whether we’re talking about dance and style. It’s not enough to just appreciate the culture that comes from Blackness or the culture that comes from queerness. We also have to appreciate the lessons that we learn around creating identity, creating space, and allowing folks to be seen, felt, heard, and really be a part of this democracy in a real way. In this moment, we have to dream about what that next iteration looks like in order for it to happen.
Dillon St. Bernard 3:10
And then we get into this in the article. I want to read a bit from it and really discuss it. The first part that we highlight is around sharing power. So we write: “We keep hearing the same question: Why aren’t more young people and people of color engaged in the civic process? This is the wrong question. The question we need to be asking is whether or not our current institutions are willing to, or even positioned to, share power with us. More often than not, participation is shared only after decisions are made, and usually with an ask attached.” I want to jump into that a bit, because this has become more and more a point of discussion for institutions, particularly institutions that are dying or evolving and asking, “What’s going wrong here?” So I’m curious, as you think about what it means to share power, what does it look like for institutions to position themselves to share power with us? And what are some examples of one that’s done it really well?
Chrystian Woods 4:15
The Biden administration received a lot of movement and progressive support to win the 2020 election. Young people came out to spark change in 2020. Black people, and specifically Black women, did what we always do. And then we’ve been actively living since 2024 with the Voting Rights Act being deconstructed before our very eyes. We saw the chance to codify Roe v. Wade, and that didn’t happen. Subsequently, Roe fell through the Supreme Court, and now Black women and women who are poor, especially in rural areas like in the South, are feeling the brunt of that, with abortion bans, with where they can get access to care and who can give them access to care. We’re seeing what that has meant for the workforce. We’re seeing companies and philanthropic organizations shy away from DEI and from funding initiatives and organizations that support marginalized communities. We have to ask ourselves: What was this for? Was this for a street and a party, or was this for people to have tangible change in their everyday lives? They needed those structural policy changes that we were willing to negotiate away, and that’s what I mean when we talk about decision-making power. We came to movement with an ask. We came to Black people with an ask. We came to young people with an ask. We came to queer people with an ask. And now, where is their support when we’re seeing the attack on trans rights? I just want us to not just ask, but also think about what we’re giving and the implications of what happens when those needs are not met.
Dillon St. Bernard 6:20
Yeah, and I think part of this, too, is that institutions are facing the fact that if they don’t show up, there are consequences. We talk about that in the article as well. We write: “A collective 20 years inside politics has made it clear to us that institutions rarely fail overnight. Long before they lose public trust, they lose relevance. They become more concerned with protecting existing power than with creating new possibilities, optimizing for stability rather than adaptation. Eventually, they find themselves speaking fluently to one another while struggling to connect with the people they were created to serve. That is where much of the progressive movement finds itself today.” So as institutions grapple with this impending loss of relevance, what does it take to regain it? As you advise institutions and think about this work, where do you start?
Chrystian Woods 7:19
Much of that operates within a system that was built around a world that, quite frankly, no longer exists. But when we talk about communications, narrative architecture, and reaching people, that very much exists in the context of now. It’s no longer “have talking points, do a news interview, put something in the newspaper, and you have a centralized message.” Our feeds have changed that. You have to reach audiences not just through traditional channels but through new media, through engaging with influencers, through going on different podcasts. When I’m advising institutions and campaigns now, it’s very much getting to the meat of this: you are more than likely talking to people who are already with you. You’re talking to folks who are college educated, who are getting their news from certain types of sources, who agree with your policy stances. You should talk to those people. They’re probably going to volunteer for you, donate to you, and share your content. They can have conversations with their friends and family members. But there’s a second and third layer to that. Are those the only people you need to be speaking with? Do you need to be engaging with folks who maybe agree with you, but whose feeds, educational backgrounds, and news sources are very different from those of the audiences many of these organizations are used to speaking to? That’s where the comfort level becomes a little shaky, because it is difficult to get out of your comfort zone and to figure out what you’re coming to them with. Are you a trusted messenger for them to begin with? Even if you’re the one coming to them, sharing information, sharing a message, are they going to receive it from you? Then we can get to the meat of what our organizing needs to look like. Who are the folks who can help us establish trust? What can we be doing in these communities outside of just voter engagement activities to establish trust? What can we do after the election cycle to follow up with people? We talk so much about literacy crises and attention spans. Are you changing the way you communicate to account for that and really meeting people where they are? Those are some of the baseline questions I think we have to not only ask, but be willing to put time and resources behind addressing.
Dillon St. Bernard 10:23
Between 2026, this year, and 2024, have you seen an evolution in a good way, more toward this ongoing civic engagement? From your expertise, have you seen an evolution from 2024 to 2026 in terms of this very question?
Chrystian Woods 10:41
Yeah, I still think we’re very much in it. But across the ecosystem, the thing I’m continuing to hear is that it is hard for people to get funding right now. I don’t know if the post-election or in-between-election infrastructure can be there at the depth and level it needs to be if we are shying away from funding initiatives and organizations that are focused on marginalized communities, that may do things like DEI. Because what that means is we’re placating an opposition to our own detriment.
Dillon St. Bernard 11:21
Yeah, and I think that’s been very interesting. I know the AP had an article on this last month, but this funding reality has been the talk of the town, and I think it’s a really concerning reality for many organizations. I want to shift a little to what we’ve already been discussing, which is communications versus culture. In the article for Common Dreams, we write: “Too often the response has been to refine the message rather than rebuild the institution that delivers it. We have mistaken communication for culture, which has led to the consequences we are currently living with. The progressive movement has been extraordinarily sophisticated at producing content. We can generate messaging guidance overnight, build rapid response campaigns within hours, and create endless streams of digital content. Yet none of those capabilities automatically produce trust. Trust is earned when people see themselves reflected not only in the message but in the leadership, values, and relationships behind it. You can’t message your way out of a deficit of trust. No amount of message testing can compensate for institutions that people no longer believe understand their lives.” So I’m curious about this distinction between communication and culture, because I think institutions naturally get it wrong, or there’s no nuance. How do you distinguish the two?
Chrystian Woods 12:52
I’m a Southern woman. I’m a Black woman. Look at me, even with my locks. There’s a certain culture that comes with the way I present to the world. And when we talk about culture versus trust, there is this readiness to borrow culture, whether it’s brands saying stuff like “on fleek” or doing dances they see on TikTok. It seems trendy, but what happens is we’re flattening culture. We’re taking things that have cultural significance, that have regional significance, and turning them into, quote unquote, a Gen Z trend. So much of what a Gen Z trend is, a lot of it is just shit Black people have been doing for years. It’s one thing to borrow culture, but what’s happening after you borrow it? Are you going into communities? Are we helping with job training? Are we helping with childcare? Are we helping people get access to resources, whether municipal, state, or federal? There are still avenues out there, whether it’s funding sources or people going into communities and breaking down some of that bureaucratic red tape that can be hard to navigate. Yes, let’s vote. That is an important piece. It’s an imperative piece, but it is no longer the only piece. If we’re coming to people and asking them for their vote, I think we need to ask ourselves what we’ve done for them before we ask. The new iteration of organizing has to be: yes, there is an ask, but there is a before and there is an after, and we can’t just keep extracting, extracting, extracting and then wonder why we’re seeing a decline in trust across these communities. We’re seeing people become more radicalized. We’re seeing people become more conservative. You just cannot take demographics for granted, because we’re not monolithic, and that’s where the nuance of culture becomes critical.
Dillon St. Bernard 14:58
There are a lot of interesting experiments, and to your point, this takes an ongoing investment of time and energy. A lot of campaigns and organizations are thinking about the ROI of things directly around votes, and I think the infrastructure just isn’t set up for that as it stands right now. We write in this piece for Common Dreams: “Sentiments such as ‘fight’ or ‘protect democracy’ are important calls to action, but they are not visions of the future. They put us on the defense and describe what we oppose more clearly than what we are building. People don’t organize their lives around resistance alone. They organize around belonging, purpose, hope, the possibility that tomorrow can be better than today.” As you think about those examples, we also talked about mutual aid in our piece, and about the queer community and belonging being a piece of it. What are the examples you go to as the model we should be building this civic space with?
Chrystian Woods 16:02
I’m someone who was literally raised in the cradle of the civil rights movement. The first political campaign I ever had any kind of interaction with was my fellowship with Congressman John Lewis. I very much believe that part of what made the civil rights movement so powerful, because we know those were humans with so many imperfections, and we can get into the sexism, classism, all of those things about the movement, but the most powerful piece was that they had a vision for the future. Black people were literally being murdered in their efforts to vote, but they kept fighting for it anyway and talking about what their vision for the future was. The 19th Amendment: women fighting for their place in the democracy. Or even fighting for the right to an abortion, because back-alley abortions were so dangerous and so many women were losing their lives. They had a clear vision of what they were fighting for. I think we’re at that stage now. So much of what we talk about in terms of political visioning and political policy is also iterative, and what history has taught me, at least, is that when you come with a bold vision, when you come with the values to back up that vision, people will stand with you. You may not get that change within a year, two years, three years, but you see the impacts over time. I want to give my hats to Black women. I want to give my hats to the reproductive justice movement and the vision they put forth. We see so much of it being borrowed, and when we get to that point, it makes our movement so much stronger. I just don’t think we’ve gotten there yet.
Dillon St. Bernard 18:04
To close this out, is there anything you really want folks listening to hear from this article or beyond, about how you’re thinking about this work as we go into 2027?
Chrystian Woods 18:16
Yeah. Listen, follow me, follow you, engage with it, comment on it. So much of it wasn’t just us putting our vision or our experience out there. It’s also us wanting to continue to be in conversation. So those two things. And follow this podcast. Dillon, the work you’re doing is amazing. I love following Create for Change, and continuing the dialogue is important to me. I recently did a panel, and I left everyone with something similar. It sounds so small, but just having conversations with your friends, family members, and coworkers, there is a level of trust you have that I will never have, a president will never have, a mayor will never have. I know sometimes those conversations can feel intimidating. They can get heated, but I’m telling you, you don’t have to yell at anybody, you don’t have to disrespect anyone. Just simply talk to them, pique their curiosity, and know that maybe it’s not a one-time conversation. Maybe it happens over time, even if it’s just families who once a month have a family dinner and talk about stuff intergenerationally. I think that’s where it starts, because in isolation, us just scrolling, liking, and getting further affirmation for beliefs without context, without a shared baseline of truth, is not going to be healthy, and it’s not going to get us where we need to go.
Dillon St. Bernard 19:58
Yeah, awesome. Thank you, Chrystian. Thanks for joining Create for Change.
Chrystian Woods 20:02
Thank you for having me, Dillon. Peace.
To keep up with the Create for Change podcast, visit createforchange.com.
