After attending the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, Drew Galloway moved to San Antonio furthering his career in the wine industry working with large wine retailers. While in San Antonio, he was bit by the public policy bug and went back to school. Since then, he has immersed himself in voter registration and voter engagement issues through MOVE Texas. He shares successes and discusses his passion for bagpipes.

Transcript:

Justin Hill: Hello and Bienvenido San Antonio. Welcome to the Alamo Hour discussing the people, places, and passion that make our city. My name is Justin Hill, a local attorney, a proud San Antonian, and keeper of chickens and bees. On the Alamo Hour, you'll get to hear from the people that make San Antonio great and unique and the best kept secret in Texas. We're glad that you're here.

All right, welcome to this episode of the Alamo Hour. Today's guest is Drew Galloway. Drew is the executive director of MOVE Texas, and also a bagpipe player. We'll talk to him about that in a little bit. MOVE Texas was started in 2013 by some students at UTSA right here in San Antonio. The goal was to increase participation in local elections. Really I think it's largely been doing that by way of voter registration and we're going to talk to Drew about that. Drew, thanks for being here.

Drew Galloway: Thanks, Justin. Awesome to be here with you today.

Justin: I got to know about y'all through a mutual friend Stephen Lopez when he was doing some fundraiser.

Drew: Stephen's been with us for a couple years now and he's now serving as the board chair.

Justin: I didn't know that. Well, I won't hold that against you. Stephen will listen to this and he'll give me his critiques on how I did. He always does. I started all these with a top 10 give a little color to who I'm talking to. I'm just going to walk you through some. They change every time.

Drew: Let's go.

Justin: All right. When and why did you move to San Antonio?

Drew: I got a job with Spec's Family Partners. I was working in the wine business. They reached out. They wanted me to do a new market development for them and I came to San Antonio.

Justin: What year was that?

Drew: That was 2011.

Justin: New market. Did that mean they were just starting to move in here?

Drew: They had the store that was in the north part of the city. I helped work at that store and then open the days of all a store and a couple of others.

Justin: The one close to me is the one about the airport and it's pretty sad.

Drew: It's tucked away under that bridge.

Justin: You go to the Spec's in Houston and they've got all the bells and whistles and cheeses and meats and you go to that one by the airport and it's sad.

Drew: If you go to the flagship store in Houston, you get spoiled.

Justin: All right. Well, we'll take that up with specs. We're all doing our best to support right now. Things are strange. You were talking to me off the record about how you're doing some cooking but are you doing any of the to-gos or the takeouts, the places that are trying to survive and we're all trying to help. Are there any that you've found, "Hey, they've got a great deal like supporting them?" We did Play Lane yesterday and it was fantastic. Any other the places you've been frequenting?

Drew: No. There's a little wine shop called Little Death. That is right on the St. Mary's strip. I've been frequenting them just walk in pick up a bottle of wine just because-

Justin: You live over there?

Drew: No. I live on the south west side. That's one my favorite wine bar in the city. If you've never been at the Little Death you should go.

Justin: Were you there when Stephen was cooking his Italian tripe?

Drew: No.

Justin: Did you see it?

Drew: No. I did not.

Justin: I was there.

Drew: What?

Justin: Not only do I support. I went to their, and it was very earthy flavor. It was tripe cooked in a ton of white wine, and they just turned into a party. This was right before everything shut down. It was great.

Drew: I know. I've done a couple happy hours like personal and professional there. I love that place. It's my favorite little bar in town.

Justin: Also, you can grab a Burger boy and then get some wine. That's my favorite thing with wine is a burger actually. Not the steaks and all that -- burger.

Drew: I try to be good and just drink wine. Then usually I have a couple glasses of wine and then go out with a burger.

Justin: I'm not going to tell you what I do. Favorite hidden gems in San Antonio. We're going to try to stick with this with everybody. Ron brought up Denman Estate Park, which I had never heard of. Somebody else brought up Jack White Trail, which I've never heard of. To me I think the Japanese Tea Garden is definitely up there. What are some of your favorite hidden gems that if you have guests that come in and you say, "Okay. It's probably not in your little manual, but go check out this."

Drew: Yes. That's a great question. I will tell you that my family loves Pearsall Park. If you haven't been there it's amazing. I live literally five minutes away from that if not closer.

Justin: Is it Pearsall?

Drew: Yes. It's right on Pearsall Road, and the trails are phenomenal. You can do a wooded trail or there's some hills if you want to get [unintelligible 00:04:48]

Justin: Like south of 1604?

Drew: Yes. We're where overseas lackland. You can see the Boeing plane.

Justin: Okay. I didn't know about that.

Drew: I love the place. It's great. It's got a great Kitty Park too post quarantine.

Justin: Is it open right now?

Drew: No.

Justin: Is it a city park?

Drew: It is a city park. The trails are open. I don't think the playgrounds are.

Justin: All right. Are you a reader and if so, anything right now?

Drew: Yes. I am a reader. I read a lot. I'm reading How to Be an Antiracist right now. It's a great book.

Justin: [laughs] Is it like one page long which is don't be a racist?

Drew: No. I'm reading that. Let's see. I recently, like a year or so ago, brought a book to move called Radical Candor. I'm rereading that because we've got some new staff members on and stuff. That's another great business organizational book.

Justin: Okay. Do you watch South Park?

Drew: Yes.

Justin: All right. I feel like Radical Candor might have micro aggressions discussed on there somewhere, but I don't know. Who's your favorite bagpipe player?

Drew: Oh man, that's such a hard question.

Justin: Is there more than six of them?

Drew: Yes. I'm going to totally nerd out now. I've started playing bagpipes when I was 14, in Georgia, and I loved Simon Fraser University, and which is in British Columbia, Canada. They alternate with a couple other bagpipe bands as the world champions every year. The pipe Sergeant of that band is Jack Lee. I get to see Jack Lee a couple times a year, and I'm always like giddy.

Justin: Okay. This is the bait, that one of the major reasons behind this podcast is there are so many people with these strange passions that are just, they're interesting to hear. I wanted to do that. We're going to talk about bagpipes in a little bit. Are you a social media person and if so, which is your favorite platform?

Drew: That's a great question. I'm a forced social media person. I do quite a bit because of my work. I would say my favorite platform right now and for the last year has been TikTok. If you are on TikTok, it's the win.

Justin: Do you TikTok?

Drew: I do not okay. I am a voyeurisc TikTok observer.

Justin: I have it. I've gotten on it a few times. Have you ever heard of Gary Vaynerchuk?

Drew: Yes.

Justin: Okay. I was at some conference. He spoke and he starts talking about TikTok. I had never even heard of it. I opened it and now I've realized, I don't know. You swipe one way and you favorite them. You swipe another way you get a new video. I don't really understand the process so I think I've favorited a lot.

Drew: There's like a 4UChannel and then a following channel or something like that. MOVE has to TikTok channel and so we're building content for that.

Justin: Okay. Well, Gary Vaynerchuk said, even lawyers should have one and I don't know how that would work.

Drew: If you want to talk to under 21-year olds, that's where you do it at.

Justin: I don't know if the wife would be real jazzed about me marketing under 21-year olds, or the law, for that matter. Outside of the pandemic, take that veil away right now. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges facing San Antonio?

Drew: I think that the two biggest challenges facing San Antonio right now are equity and poverty and that's only been elevated from the market.

Justin: What do you mean by equity?

Drew: The fact that there's such like we're the most economically segregated city in the United States. If you grow up in the neighborhood that I live in right now, versus if you grow up, say 15 miles to the north of here there's essentially a 15 to 20-year life [unintelligible 00:09:03]

Justin: Or one mile to the east of here.

Drew: Yes.

Justin: Or one mile to the west of here.

Drew: I think that we can do more as a city to address that and poverty is linked in with that. I think that we can do a lot to address that and that has been exasperated by this moment.

Justin: Mayor Nirenberg made a good point when he was on. We were talking about the opportunities of the pandemic. One of the things he brought up was that it is going to give the city an opportunity to rewrite our rulebook because it has highlighted those problems, but it has also put so many people in the pot that they thought they were not in. Hopefully it'll allow attitudes to change and therefore policy to change.

Drew: Yes, absolutely. If it happens to you or somebody that you know and love, it changes that perspective.

Justin: Favorite Fiesta event.

Drew: I'm going to be super basic and say Battle The Flowers because typically-

Justin: It's the first so far.

Drew: Yes. For me, I typically work most of Fiesta, or I do fundraising events or that kind of stuff. Battle of the Flowers is the first morning off that I have and I take my kids to the parade and that kind of stuff.

Justin: Have you ever done pooch parade?

Drew: No, but I have friends who actually have had dogs that have won or have placed in it.

Justin: Anyone can have their dog in it, by the way. If you've got a friend who's like, "My dog was in it," that just means they walked in the parade.

Drew: They just walked down. Okay, great.

Justin: It's a cool event. A morning event, cool event, kid-friendly.

Drew: My dog is not capable of that. She's a very good dog, but not to the quality of the pooch parade yet.

Justin: Mine probably wouldn't do well because he's just going to bark at all the dogs. He's a good-looking dog so he could probably win it. A lot of what I'll do is voter registration. You do not have a voter registration background as a human being. I mean, you went to Culinary Institute, you did wine, and then you had this circuitous path to get there. Once you got into voter registration and voter engagement, what has been one of the more surprising demographic groupings or behaviors that you have seen that you thought, "Wow, I would have never expected this?"

Drew: That's a good question. I think that the biggest misconception that I hear all the time is that young people don't care about this. They will tell me that I'm talking to a very thin group of people and that's not necessarily the case at all. We see that, if we engage them, tell them why their vote matters, that kind of stuff, we can move them from unregistered voter to registered voter to active.

Justin: What's the harder thing there? Moving them to a registered voter or moving them from registered voter to someone who actually votes? I would think the latter.

Drew: Yes, it is. For the most part, it takes only a couple of minutes to get registered. In this moment, with COVID-19, it takes much, much longer, because we can't actually see people. If it was normal times, I could register you in a couple minutes. It really does take some significant work to get a registered voter to the polls. The average at least remove and most youth organizations is somewhere between six and eight touches and that includes text message, phone call, door notch, potential like maildrop, that kind of stuff.

Justin: It's just such a strange dichotomy because the passion level among those age groups is so high up there, going to the polls is so low, and then you take the maybe elderly, who's going to the poll is very high, but their passion levels way less. It's just a strange dichotomy in that world.

Drew: It's really like a habit is what it is. Voting itself is a habit. It's like going to the gym. That's the way I see established elderly voters as they've been going to the gym for weeks and weeks and weeks and then they just go do it. It might not be like, "Oh, my God, I've got to go to the gym." It's like, "I'm just going to the gym because this is what I do." Then the new voter is the folks that are like, "We're trying to get to go the gym twice this week." What we really do is focus on vote three times, and then studies show that that person is almost a lifelong voter. We've got to get them to vote in a city election, a state election, and a federal election, like back to back to back.

Justin: All right. That's what we're going to talk about for a little bit and then, as we get close to running out of time, I'm going to talk to you about bagpipes because it's my show and I think it's interesting. What is MOVE and how is MOVE different than thrive and some of these other voter registration groups?

Drew: That's a great question. MOVE is an acronym and most people don't realize that. It stands for mobilize, organize, vote, and empower. Even though we're one of the largest youth organizing groups and youth voter registration groups in the nation now, it was started by these seven students at the University of Texas at San Antonio. We're homegrown.

Justin: Are they still involved?

Drew: Yes, our advocacy manager, Alex Bernal is one of the founders. It's one of those things of like these students came together in 2013, and said, "How can we get more involved, especially in city politics, but how can we get more involved, to get more of our peers voting, that kind of stuff?" They decided, "We're going to form the student organization at UTSA called mobilize, organize, vote, empower. They formed it and they were like, "We're going to register people to vote or young people. We're going to teach them why voting matters and link issues that they care about to voting.

Then we're going to do the most crazy visible things we can possibly do to make voting fun, engaging, cool. They registered 1000 people in 60 days at UTSA. Over the course of that 2013 City Election is when they really worked out a lot of the early model on dressing in banana suits and putting our robot-like cardboard costumes on and throwing parties at the polls and things like that. We were like, "We are going to make voting fun and engaging for young people and not just this top-down narrative of something you got to do.

The one thing that we have learned is that it's your civic duty narrative is actually detrimental to voter turnout for young people.

Justin: Young people being 35 and younger.

Drew: Yes, I would say 35 or younger. We deal with that entire spectrum of young people.

Justin: It's nonpartisan?

Drew: Nonpartisan, yes.

Justin: Okay. I'd ask but I'm going to go back to it. How do you all separate yourself? How are you different than some of the other young person voter registration groups that are in Texas?

Drew: We're youth-lead. We're hyper grassroots. We believe that young people are powerful, and we believe that they can make a massive difference in essentially, all levels of government. We're really working with new, first, second, third-time voters and the best way to show that that power is by getting them involved at the city level or regional level and showing them that they can have a voice. If they show up to County Commissioners Court of Bexar County, most likely, they will be like, if we can mobilize 15 people on an issue there, that is a giant like turnout for Bexar County Commissioners court because your average large groups are not paying attention to that hyper level local.

Justin: If you're nonpartisan, how do you all decide what specific issues you can and cannot get involved in?

Drew: That's a great question. Nonpartisan, to us, means independent so we don't endorse parties. We don't endorse candidates, that kind of thing. We do work on issues. We identify those city by city that we work in. When I joined MOVE, it was just in San Antonio. I joined in 2016. We were moved to San Antonio at that point, we're in about 10 campuses. In early 2018, we began growing. We went to Laredo, and then to Seguin and San Marcos, and Austin. Then, in 2019, we went to Dallas and Houston. We're now in seven cities, 55 campuses. We've got six field organizers that are doing this work day in and day out with advocacy folks as...