Today’s post is an interview with Isaac Evans-Frantz, Director of Action Corps. It has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Tim Hirschel-Burns: Hi Isaac, thank you so much for being part of Together But Apart’s second interview, after Djissa’s interview on his experience moving from Benin to the US. I like interviews’ ability to bring in voices other than my own and I’m glad to be doing another. That said, I am already yet another guy who started a Substack and I’m wary of ALSO becoming yet another guy who started a podcast, so I’m keeping them to written form for now. The reason I really wanted to do this with you is because I worry about writing about global justice issues, (hopefully) motivating people to try to make things fairer for people beyond our borders, and then those people not having anywhere to take that energy. But you are someone who gives such people an outlet! There aren’t nearly enough organizations out there providing a pathway for people to organize on global justice issues, but Action Corps is one of them. I have had the pleasure of knowing you for a few years and I’m a proud Action Corps donor, but I think Action Corps will be new to most readers. Can you tell me a little about what Action Corps does?
Isaac Evans-Frantz: Action Corps is a grassroots, global justice advocacy organization with local representatives in 30 states. We organize Americans to push back against harmful policies coming out of Washington D.C. by engaging lawmakers. From U.S. participation in genocide to the decimation of foreign aid, this administration is destroying people’s lives. In a time when many feel powerless, Action Corps is channeling everyday Americans’ passion into effective action.
Action Corps campaigns for U.S. policies in solidarity with people most affected by climate disasters and violent conflict. We mobilize Americans to rein in endless wars, prioritize human dignity over economic domination, and save lives. Here’s what we aim to do in the coming year: train organizers for legislative advocacy to stop U.S. participation and complicity in genocide, build our coalition to unblock international funds in light of the attack on foreign aid, and mobilize state legislatures to keep the National Guard out of unauthorized wars.
Tim: Those sorts of global justice issues are very dear to my heart, but there are a lot of issues out there for people to spend their time and energy and attention on. Could you tell me about your personal journey to getting invested in the set of issue Action Corps works on?
Isaac: When I was a child I went to an Oxfam hunger banquet, where people got assigned a role in the room in a simulation. I got a meals of beans and rice. Most people ate beans and rice on the floor, while a minority of people got to sit at a nice table and have a good lasagna meal with salad and juice and dessert and everything. It was set up to illustrate the maldistribution of food around the world, and the way that half’s the world’s population is not getting enough to eat. It really left a mark. It left this feeling of “wow, this is not fair, and gosh it doesn’t take a lot for someone else to be able to eat around the world.” And it just opened my eyes to the world beyond my small town in rural Vermont.
That was the initial exposure, and it left me with a hunger for justice, and for fairness, and for people to have enough. Also when I was a child I heard a Holocaust survivor speak of their really harrowing experience in a Nazi death camp. And it also left me feeling sick to my stomach, and it kind of left this idea that if there was ever an atrocity going on near me I would want to do what I could to stop it.
Tim: That actually really resonates with me, for several reasons, including that my grandparents are Holocaust survivors and that obviously had a big effect on me. I’m also happy to see Oxfam having that impact—I’m an Exfammer, as one calls someone who used to work for Oxfam. I had never been to one of those hunger banquets, and hearing about the way it put inequality on display is really powerful. In a different way, it did convey the visceral stakes of inequality to me when I lived in Benin. To see other people’s reactions to what I would eat. These are people who most days eat corn flour and water mixed into a meal. And then even things for me like eating eggs, or buying tomato paste instead of grinding tomatoes into a sauce—those little things were seen by others as luxuries, in a moment when I was living at the most basic standard of living I’ll ever live at. That was really impactful. And it’s really interesting to see the way that even in your hometown in the US that inequality was made visceral to you.
And this set of experiences did motivate you to work for a fairer foreign policy. One thing those of us who work on foreign policy often hear is that people will devote their attention to things happening close to them and not to things happening on the other side of the world. But that is not the case with your personal story, and it’s not the case with Action Corps more broadly, which is made up of people devoting their time to global justice issues. So, with your time in Action Corps, what have you seen bringing people in, and what lessons can we take from Action Corps’ experience about how to mobilize around global justice?
Isaac: Well the current catastrophe in Gaza is an example of where we had organizers who came to us having never done anything on foreign policy, having had no particular interest in international relations, being activists focused on US domestic policy—on racial justice, on mass incarceration—who were seeing pictures of children being starved to death or bombed in Gaza on their Instagram feeds. And they couldn’t get those images out of their head. And when they saw an opportunity to do something strategic and effective with Action Corps, they jumped at the opportunity. One of our most successful activists—someone who drafted legislation upon request from her congressional office—she started as an organizer who wasn’t particularly connected to foreign policy.
Tim: I’m glad you mentioned Gaza, because I think the way people come to these issues is as an extension of issues they already know and care about. For me personally, as a kid who knew more about domestic racial justice, I think it was then easy to see the history of colonization and continuing global inequalities and see it as a global version of the inequalities I already understood.
And you mentioned the way people went from domestic issues to Gaza. I also have wondered to what extent Gaza could be a link for people then thinking about just foreign policy more broadly. Not to instrumentalize Gaza, and recognizing the distinct characteristics of the situation and just the extreme horrors people have seen—and at the same it is unfortunately not the only place where US policy has enormous impacts on people on the other side of the world who are just trying to live a decent life. Do you think the way people have come to see that in Gaza could feed into a broader vision and movement for just US foreign policy?
Isaac: Yes is the short answer!
You know, one of the things I’ve been encouraging people to do is to be really explicit when we’re talking about the genocide in Gaza—as the United Nations has described it—it’s important to assign responsibility and to do so accurately. And the responsibility does not lie with Jewish people writ large. The responsibility lies in large part with the US government, which is elected by the American people as a whole.
Sometimes the hyperfocus—whether it’s with Netanyahu or the state of Israel—as the perpetrator of these crimes can miss this critical player which is the United States. If you think about a crime—and we are talking about war crimes—I saw this presentation from Massachusetts Peace Action about the US role in the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, when the US was providing all this military support and weapons to Saudi Arabia, which was bombing the poorest country in the Middle East for many years. They put together this presentation that showed all the different ingredients of a crime, like if there were a holdup at a bank—you have the gun, you have the ammunition, you have the driver of the getaway car, you have the gas that goes in the car. All the ingredients of the crime have been provided by the US except the shooter—in the situation with Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and now with Israel in Gaza. The United States is providing the diplomatic cover, the weapons, the logistics support, like maintenance of the Israeli government’s fighter craft. If we just see this as an isolated case of Israel doing bad in Gaza, it misses the way the US is not just complicit, but an active participant in the genocide.
Until we recognize the US role—and that this is not some kind of aberration but a continuation of the way the US has shown up in the world—we’re going to miss the importance of Americans speaking up, and based on where we are and where we live, the importance of us speaking up. If I lived in any other country I wouldn’t have access to affecting everyone around the world as much as I do in the United States. With that privilege I believe comes an opportunity and a responsibility. So I do hope this quest for global justice goes beyond Gaza. I will and Action Corps will, and some people who came to us because of Gaza now work on a broader set of issues because they see the way they’re connected.
Tim: I do think it’s really interesting how Action Corps works on a range of issues, from more military issues like stopping harmful wars to more economic issues about fighting hunger and poverty. I think your framing applies to some of the economic issues I’ve worked with you more actively on, where if you’re looking at a country trying to fund schools or hospitals, you could just look at that country’s government as the key actor. But when you zoom out, you realize that a lot of the country’s debt is owed to creditors based in the US, those transactions were conducted in dollars, international institutions like the IMF or World Bank that might be key here have the US holding a veto. So when you zoom out, you realize the way the situation is being shaped by the US and other powerful countries. We see that across an issue of military conflict and related atrocities in Yemen or Gaza or an economic issue like debt and poverty. But too often organizations fall into working into silos—how did Action Corps end up working across them?
The short answer is that we’ve looked at the range of issues we could have an impact on and looked where we could make the biggest difference with the resources we have. We don’t have a lot of money—the real resource we have is people. I’m the only staff member, but we’ve trained people in 30 states, and we have people in all these places we can call and see where we can be most strategic. So it’s been about where in the world there’s a need, where there’s an opportunity, and how can we be a link.
This has ended up being a focus on areas where the US is dominating other countries, whether it’s economic or military, and where the US has played a harmful role. As we saw with the release of Special Drawing Rights, the US can play a really important positive role in the world.
So we look at where we have focused on campaigns where we see we can make the biggest difference with what we have. That’s how we got called to organize to stop US participation in the Saudi bombing of Yemen, which effectively stopped in 2022. And after getting the Yemen War Powers resolution through Congress, we were asked to work on the global COVID response and the release of resources called Special Drawing Rights. We’re also working on Gaza, and looking at working for another release of Special Drawing Rights to counteract the impact of the decimation of USAID with these resources that don’t have to be paid back. And we’re also looking at some work we can do in state legislatures to stand up to Trump on these endless wars.
Tim: I’m glad you started to cite some of the impacts Action Corps has contributed to, because a lot of people overlook the impact that organizing on foreign policy can have. With philanthropies, they only invest in wonks who write policy papers, and then when they don’t see grassroots organizing out there they see it as evidence that it can never happen. Or with ordinary people, I think they’re so used to seeing fundraising appeals from nonprofits—you know, sponsor a child, fund someone to start a business—that they see the only way to contribute to these causes as giving money. And they don’t think about the systems that contribute to whether these people have economic opportunities or free and high-quality schools in the first place, so people don’t think about using their time and energy to change those systems. Don’t get me wrong, people are welcome to give their money to Action Corps! But on this subject of time and energy, I wanted to give you the opportunity to make the case for what organizing on foreign policy can accomplish.
Isaac: Well it can stop wars, and it can release hundreds of billions of dollars of resources that can save hundreds of thousands of lives. We’ve seen it happen. You actually said it really well. One of the things I’ve seen is that foreign policy is sort of an elitist field. There’s this group of people in Washington DC, and maybe there’s some in New York who think about this stuff too, and they really dominate the field. When we were trying to get the Yemen War Powers Resolution passed, really the feeling was “isn’t that cute, and you don’t really know what you’re doing or you’re talking about. You’ll never win. This isn’t politically feasible.” Those are the things we heard, and then with Special Drawing Rights it was the same thing. And lo and behold, we were successful with both of those campaigns.
Strategically, showing up in front of key congressional offices with 10 people with signs all fueling the same message—like “Rep. Eliot Engel, stop fueling famine in Yemen”—that directly led to us getting a meeting with him, and then him supporting the resolution to stop the war, and then him making floor speeches. When people had told us, basically, dream on. And what happened is that it wasn’t politically feasible when we started, but in part because of the organizing we did, it became politically feasible.
People are much more powerful than they realize, especially in the United States. I would also say that organizing is transformative. We’ve had people who had no idea they could meet with their members of Congress. People who have immigrated to the US, people whose families are refugees, or refugees themselves who have gone with us to Capitol Hill. At the end of the day we’re changing policy but we’re also changing the concept of what we see as possible for ourselves.
Tim: It always does surprise me that you can have people who know so much about weapons transfers in the Middle East or the flow of finance to different countries who forget that members of Congress decide many of these things, and ultimately they’re accountable to their constituents—not DC think tanks—and often those constituents can force change that even the best policy papers can’t.
Isaac: And you need all of it. We need policy papers, and we need think tanks. But the organizing is sometimes this piece that’s missing. It’s a long-term investment. It can take time to build up people power. But when we don’t do it, and we don’t invest in organizing, we see the results in bad policies.
Tim: Let’s get really concrete as we wrap up here. If someone were to get involved in Action Corps, what would that look like? I think there are a lot of people out there who see injustices around the world and they know it’s wrong but they don’t know what to do about it. Like you said, people might not even know they could lobby their member of Congress. It’s also the case that a lot of people who used to pursue that global justice mission through their jobs have recently been laid off, and are not able to pursue it professionally anymore. If people were to get involved in Action Corps, what would they do?
Isaac: There are three things people could do right now. One is that they could sign up for our action alerts on our website and raise their voice to talk to people, talk to their member of Congress, and write letters to the editor. The second thing they could do is they can join our nationwide action calls the first Wednesday of every month from 8:30-9:30pm ET. We have speakers on there and we take action together. Our November 5 call we’re going to be writing letters to the editor of our local paper about Gaza and submitting them together—we’ll be on Zoom. The third thing is donating money, whether that’s a monthly contribution of $10 or a more substantial commitment. It goes a really long way when you’re doing grassroots organizing. A substantial majority of our organization is volunteer-based but it takes some resources to give them the support that they need. Any of those ways—whether it’s through raising your voice, or joining our action calls, or donating—you can get connected through our website at actioncorps.org.
I would also say that people sometimes start out coming to an action call and they stick around and want to do more. Or they’ll send me an email and say “I’d like to host people in my home to be able to work on this together.” And that’s really great when people to decide to take it to the next level.
Tim: That was wonderfully concrete and spoken like a true organizer! Before we close, any last things you wanted to raise?
Isaac: I do have something. In this moment in the US, a lot of us are feeling overwhelmed, powerless, pulled in a lot of directions. I hear some people say “what’s the point?” But being able to connect with other people and choose something you’re going to work on and giving it a real shot, that’s a real big antidote to that feeling of powerlessness. It’s really good for our health and our wellbeing and our spirits and it’s good for showing other people around us that there’s some hope here. So I really encourage people not to retreat at this time, and to instead jump in. Whether it’s marching in the streets or taking action with Action Corps or another organization, this is a really great moment to show up in whatever ways big and small when can.
Tim: 100%, and I think that’s a great way to close. Thanks so much for taking the time.
AOB
There’s more where that came from: If you also thought that was an awesome conversation, there’s more! A lot of the subjects I discussed with Isaac have come up in past posts: the scale of global interconnection, how the US development community underinvested in organizing, and how to think about the role of the US in the world right now.
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Against pollingism: With a focus on the Democratic Party but with relevance to political change much more broadly, I thought this essay from Anat Shenker-Osorio was excellent.
SCOTUS says foreign aid appropriations are optional: In the now-regular ritual in which the Supreme Court tears up one additional clause of the Constitution without any hearing and hardly any stated rationale, the Supreme Court green-lighted the Trump administration’s refusal to spend foreign aid funding appropriated by Congress. When you read it closely, somehow the decision is even dumber and more cynical than it seems: they suggest the lawsuit challenging illegal impoundments is precluded by a statute that explicitly says it does not preclude lawsuits about impoundments, they ostensibly made a provisional decision but did it ten days before the funds would expire and no recourse would be possible, and they suggested that the harm to the Trump administration of not being able to withhold funds in a way no president has ever done before is greater than the harms that would result from withholding the funds—something that could kill people.
The gateway drug to authoritarianism: The scenes of ICE and National Guard invasions spreading throughout the country is horrifying. But it’s also a reminder of how much the fight to protect democracy at home links to our relationship with the Global South. Trump’s mass deportation push is focused on people who came from the Global South, people whose decisions to move grew out of factors like the global wage gap, conflict and political stability, and other global forces like climate change—and it’s a movement of people that isn’t going to stop any time soon. Attacking the Global South is time and time again proving to be a gateway to eroding the rights of all Americans. Just as destroying USAID allowed the administration to set a precedent for an unchecked executive, the expansion of tactics ostensibly aimed at controlling immigration is providing a playbook for violently entrenching authoritarian control. In times like these, we see the ways that lawless and cruel behavior towards people born abroad enables lawless and cruel behavior towards everyone.
Trade, not aid. But also not trade: In the 3% of the time the Trump administration remembers that it’s a bad idea to actively antagonize a continent with one-fifth of the world’s population and many of its most critical resources, their message to Africa has been “trade, not aid.” They have a funny way of showing it. You might have heard about something called tariffs. And most recently, the African Growth and Opportunity Act expired on October 1, marking the first time in 25 years there was no deal in force to facilitate pro-development trade with Africa.
America First (terms and conditions apply when it’s Argentina): It’s true that the US bailout of Argentina is disgraceful, but a lot of people are misunderstanding why. Some of that confusion stems from the technical details, but some stems from buying into zero-sum nativist logic. The problem isn’t that the US is supporting another country. It’s that Trump tells slashes funding for everyone else under an “America First” logic and then turns around and bails outs his right-wing buddy who’s about to lose an election.
Freddy’s take
