Aaron Viles of Progress Kentucky [5:06-10:09]

kind of sprung up after this Trump 2.0 started just, you know, ripping up the Constitution and being so outrageous. So they've been great partners. We've put together great events, the Lexington event that it will be on Saturday. I think is, you know, really well in hand. And we're just thrilled that, you know, it's another chance and it's so important, especially with this war, especially with, you know, what we're seeing with just the, you know, again, like I said, the outrage that just keeps building, you know, it's really important, you know, with the, you know, ice activities, you know, that everyone shows up that's opposed to this. And, you know, even though Kentucky, of course, is still I think pretty safe to say a red state, you know, we're seeing lots and lots of mobilizations across the Commonwealth. So like, you know, obviously Lexington would do something like this and Louis will do something like this, but is it obvious that, you know, Danville would have an event and Winchester and Mount Sterling and Pikeville, you know, so many of them happening across the, what's your latest count? Where are we at right now? I think we're almost at 40. Yeah, that's phenomenal. Which is just amazing to me. And, and you're right, it's not necessarily what you would consider to be hot beds of progressive activity, but there's a lot of people out there who fed up, I think would be a good way to put it. I want to ask a question that may be getting into an area that's uncomfortable, but you named all these organizations. What's your relationship of any, with Fayette County Democratic Party, or with some of the political figures in that area? Well, you know, from, from an organizational perspective, the No Kings Alliance is a non-partisan, right? They're not just, they are very anti-Trump, but they're specific reasons they're anti-Trump. It's not that they're reflexively, you know, a arm of the Democratic Party, right? There's specific things you're opposed to, which doesn't necessarily mean you are a part of, you know, that, that entity. So they are because they are, you know, a non-partisan endeavor, they have set some ground rules about parties being involved. And the, you know, the No Kings Coalition makes it very clear that no parties shouldn't be actively involved in these, in organizing these events. You know, inherently they are public events that anyone agrees is welcome to come, right? So, you know, obviously, I think folks who, you know, lead the Democratic, you know, local county chapters, and I think show up to a lot of these, certainly. And, you know, personally, my relationship with Fayette County Dems is great. Like, I think their leadership is fantastic. And I think they do a really good job and do important work. But yeah, I think it's really important that we meet people where they're at. And then there's a lot of people who are outraged about Trump, but certainly don't see the Democrats as like, you know, the savior of this effort, right? So, you know, it's really important that we don't do something that's just, you know, not thoughtful enough to meet everyone who's outraged about Trump, you know, and get them active and involved. And I think if this is just perceived as just some thing that just Democrats are doing, you know, like part of the Trump derangement syndrome or whatever, I think you limit your, you know, your impact and your ability to meet people where they're at and keep growing that movement to get to where we all say we want to be, which is that, you know, Erica Chen with 3.5% of the public engaged in ongoing resistance. So, you know, that's really important for me right now is that we got to win. And I think the winning strategy is to get, you know, a nonpartisan effort in response to Trump's outrageous progress. Kentucky does a lot of other things and not we could, like I said, before we could spend another 30 minutes just talking about that. But you do have a lot of volunteers. And you have no staff in terms of paid people. It's all volunteer driven. It is. Yeah. Have you seen an increase in volunteers in the last, say, six months? Yeah, no, there's definitely a lot of interest. We've also met this moment, right? We see my, you know, the board myself, like, we agree that we're in a unique opportunity right now because of the election, right? We want, you know, because of the, you know, just, you know, amazing amount of people that are outraged about Trump, right? So, there's a lot of folks who want to do something, right? And what we've tried to direct people to is the most useful way to turn your outrage into action