Oct 8, 2026 · 34 min · 10 segments
In this episode of Flor Unmuted, I’m joined by Elizabeth Chur, author of *The Joy of Talking Politics with Strangers: How to Save Democracy, One Conversation at a Time*. Elizabeth has spent years…
Those are very tough conversations.
I know sometimes, um, living here, we see the environment that we live in.
We see the air pollution.
We see the disease.
We see what's going on, and it's almost like we are so consumed with our day-to-day jobs and surviving and just keeping food on the table, and the poverty rates are so high, and there is just no time to think about or figure out that things could be better.
You know, people who are civically engaged in Central Valley, like, there are some that will say, like, "Sorry," like, "I don't have the energy or the capacity to explain this to somebody anymore." What do you think sometimes campaigns or maybe, like, outside consultants misunderstand about the communities and the people that live here?
I would not say it's the majority, but definitely some Latinos, especially those who've been in the country longer, you know, that are, like, really against more recent immigrants, and how to kind of engage with folks who feel like other people are taking advantage of the system.
And I just see so many incredible assets, I guess, in the community that I think are overlooked sometimes.
Because there is such a level of poverty, and people are really consumed sometimes with just putting food on the table, like you said, and working jobs.
We were working with, like, people who, um, may be dealing with substance abuse.
These folks were incredibly creative and really generous, you know, some of the most generous people I've met, you know, who have almost nothing and sharing with other people.
So I'm not drawing a, a parallel with the Central Valley, but I guess I just wanna say, like, there, there are, there's richness, and I wanted to show that, you know, like, like, how important family is, how important working hard...
I mean, I have met the hardest-working people that I've ever seen in my life in the Central Valley, you know, people who are out working in, like, 110 degree weather.
You know, like young kids putting themselves through college, working the graveyard shift at an Amazon warehouse as a custodian, and then going to school full time during the day.
I met a young woman who, you know, she would pick grapes all day and then, you know, go to class at night and try to stay awake.
She said that she would take a picture of a few pages of her textbook, and then she would try to study during her breaks, you know, picking grapes because she didn't wanna get her textbooks dirty in the field.
Like, something that granular in just seeing, like, how much people are... how hard they're working to better their lives.
So yeah, maybe she hadn't thought a lot about the election, but, like, that is some pretty deep experience right there.
So I wish that people would try to, uh, engage and elicit, really center people's, um, lived experience and the expertise that they bring from...
I mean, you know, people, they might not be able to articulate it, like, in, like-
Right
Those are very tough conversations.
I know sometimes, um, living here, we see the environment that we live in.
We see the air pollution.
We see the disease.
We see what's going on, and it's almost like we are so consumed with our day-to-day jobs and surviving and just keeping food on the table, and the poverty rates are so high, and there is just no time to think about or figure out that things could be better.
You know, people who are civically engaged in Central Valley, like, there are some that will say, like, "Sorry," like, "I don't have the energy or the capacity to explain this to somebody anymore." What do you think sometimes campaigns or maybe, like, outside consultants misunderstand about the communities and the people that live here?
I would not say it's the majority, but definitely some Latinos, especially those who've been in the country longer, you know, that are, like, really against more recent immigrants, and how to kind of engage with folks who feel like other people are taking advantage of the system.
And I just see so many incredible assets, I guess, in the community that I think are overlooked sometimes.
Because there is such a level of poverty, and people are really consumed sometimes with just putting food on the table, like you said, and working jobs.
We were working with, like, people who, um, may be dealing with substance abuse.
These folks were incredibly creative and really generous, you know, some of the most generous people I've met, you know, who have almost nothing and sharing with other people.
So I'm not drawing a, a parallel with the Central Valley, but I guess I just wanna say, like, there, there are, there's richness, and I wanted to show that, you know, like, like, how important family is, how important working hard...
I mean, I have met the hardest-working people that I've ever seen in my life in the Central Valley, you know, people who are out working in, like, 110 degree weather.
You know, like young kids putting themselves through college, working the graveyard shift at an Amazon warehouse as a custodian, and then going to school full time during the day.
I met a young woman who, you know, she would pick grapes all day and then, you know, go to class at night and try to stay awake.
She said that she would take a picture of a few pages of her textbook, and then she would try to study during her breaks, you know, picking grapes because she didn't wanna get her textbooks dirty in the field.
Like, something that granular in just seeing, like, how much people are... how hard they're working to better their lives.
So yeah, maybe she hadn't thought a lot about the election, but, like, that is some pretty deep experience right there.
So I wish that people would try to, uh, engage and elicit, really center people's, um, lived experience and the expertise that they bring from...
I mean, you know, people, they might not be able to articulate it, like, in, like-
Right
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