Harris campaign releases initiatives ahead of presidential debate, American adults struggle with illiteracy, childcare funding under attack, a nonprofit newsroom receives past due support, and Sade teases new music as part of Transgender Awareness Compilation.

 

News

Harris/Walz: A New Way Forward

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Project 2025 plan calls for shifting funding for childcare to in-home care

The 19th wanted to ‘normalize’ women in power. In 2024, it’s dreaming bigger.

Sade to Release First New Song in Years as Part of Transgender Awareness Compilation

 

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TRANSCRIPT

 

[AD BREAK] 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay, and welcome to Pod Save the People. In this episode it’s me, Myles, De’Ara, and Kaya talking about the news that you might not have heard in the past week and then obviously talking about the election. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at @PodSavethePeople. Here we go. [music break]

 

De’Ara Balenger: Family, welcome to another episode of Pod Save the People. I am De’Ara Balenger. You can find me on Instagram @dearabalenger. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I’m Myles E. Johnson. You can find me on Instagram at @pharaohrapture 

 

Kaya Henderson: I’m Kaya Henderson, still on the Twitter at @HendersonKaya. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And this is DeRay at @deray on Twitter. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Let my people go.

 

De’Ara Balenger: We’re in the midst of a critical election. Day by day, it’s getting closer. Kamala’s pulling up in the polls, neck and neck now. But we have breaking news about Beyoncé. So [laughter]

 

DeRay Mckesson: I’m here to report this is the the news uh the news reporter that Beyoncé received exactly zero nominations at the Country Music awards. I am floored. Uh but Post Malone received four nominations at the Country Music Awards this year. I am interested in what you all have to say. I hope that Beyoncé releases the visuals for this album the moment the CMA’s start. And that she becomes the entire story that night or that she has like a live show or like gets on Instagram or something like I can’t believe she got no nominations, is wild to me, given that it was a historic album um for any Black person in country and certainly a Black woman so fascinated to hear what you all have to say. 

 

Kaya Henderson: I’m not surprised by this at all. What was the song on Lemonade? I think it was on Lemonade. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Daddy Lessons. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes, Daddy lessons. Whoo. That song is so hot. With the The Chicks who are not Dixies anymore. [laughing] Remember that? First of all, that song is so hot. But remember when that came out and they would not. They said it wasn’t a country song and they wouldn’t allow it in the country category for the Grammys? They’ve been telling Beyonce she can’t come into this space for a long time. And what I love about it is like, we don’t I mean, we got to stop looking for validation from the people who don’t want to validate us. That’s why she went on and made the whole country album anyway. Right? So bump the CMAs like, all I care about is that those people are still buying her stuff. And later for them, let’s have our own Black country Music Awards. How about that? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: It will be ten minutes long as of right now. Um. [laughter]

 

Kaya Henderson: No, no actually. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Let’s have the Beyonce awards.

 

Kaya Henderson: There are, that’s not true. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I’m all about it.

 

Kaya Henderson: That’s not true. There are some awesome Black country folks who don’t get the recognition that they need. Um my friends listen to a lot of them. Country is not exactly my genre, so I can’t really put it on. But um but come on, y’all. I mean, we never got the recognition from the mainstream that we deserve. So why is this surprising? 

 

De’Ara Balenger: I don’t find this surprising at all. And sometimes. Listen, America. Sometimes we all got to have our own stuff. Okay. It’s like cornrows and locs. Those belong to Black people. Okay. [laughter] That’s our stuff. These country–

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: –music awards. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: De’Ara. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: However they’re populated and however they come to their nomination decision. Let these folks have what they want. They can have their music, eat McDonald’s while they’re at the awards. Let them. They can have it. I think the point of this album was Beyoncé saying, again, Black people or are the originators of this genre. So we don’t need an award because we know what it is and who does it and who does it best. So have a grand time at your Country Music Awards. I wasn’t going to watch it anyway. I don’t even know who what, what channel is it on? I just who cares I just. It’s not a who cares it’s just not for me. So, Beyoncé, we congratulate you every day, girl. Every single day. So no love lost on this one. As far as I’m concerned. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, I think I agree with what everybody says. And also, I don’t know y’all I’m just tired of and I love I love Beyonce. And I guess it’s not her, but I’m just tired of like this–

 

Kaya Henderson: I was like whew– [indistinct banter]

 

De’Ara Balenger: I would like the B– I would like the Beyhive to know that I don’t have anything to do with the comments that Myles E. Johnson [?]–

 

Kaya Henderson: Right right, distance distancing ourselves.

 

Myles E. Johnson: What I do feel like is that the media, like, creates like this narrative around her that kind of puts her in this perpetual, like, victim like stance culturally. And I just think that, like–

 

Kaya Henderson: I agree. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: She’s a really rich woman. She knew she wasn’t accepted. She did something. She took a she took this so Dixie Chicks weren’t on the Daddy Lessons song. She invited them to collaborate on the CMA, um on the CMA performance that um that year. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Oh right right. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So that was the whole thing. So she’s somebody who–

 

Kaya Henderson: Yup. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –is a publicity genius who took the the attention and the fever. Dixie Chicks were blacklisted from the Country Music Awards because of what they said about George W. Bush. So she she she’s just a master publicity storyteller. And I’m not so I’m like of course they didn’t nominate her because you dissed them. And and and and who cares? I think that the biggest thing that happens from this is that now the CMAs have no legitimacy as an award show because no matter how you feel about Beyonce and about how you feel about the music, this is music that has roots in bluegrass, and country, and in folk music. And you didn’t nominate it, and it’s one of and it’s excellent music. So now you have no legitimacy as an awards show. But I’m just not crying like whiskey over Beyonce not being nominated. Like, I think she’s fine.

 

Kaya Henderson: I’m down with that. I’m well not not just she’s fine. Right. Like, I do think that like, I don’t think she cares. Right. And I think the genius of her is she creates her own thing. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Exactly. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Right? Like, I don’t need this. I don’t need to be validated by this like I am Beyonce. I released a country album, whether you like it or not. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And she said herself that it’s not a country album. It’s a Beyonce album. You know. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Uh huh. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And I think the most interesting part about Beyonce, when we think about her legacy and who she’s like she shares DNA with. So she shares DNA with like Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson and all these different people. Is that Whitney Houston, I would argue, partly died because she had to be in this pop position. I feel like um Prince and Rick James um their their feud is based off of Prince being allowed to be rock and roll and to be all these different things. And then Rick James being in R&B. So I think it’s interesting that there’s a Black artist that said, I don’t care about the genre. I am my own genre of music and I surpass all and I transcend all of this. And it just makes everybody else look silly because, yeah, if Beyonce next year comes out with an orchestral classical album and it’s excellent, it needs to be nominated or it’s not going to legitimize you, you can’t just be mad because somebody is diverse in their music output. And that’s what it just seems like. It just seems it seems it seems uh very five years old, you can’t sit with us. And I just like to think that she’s she’s flying higher on her private jet than that than to care about that. [laughter]

 

DeRay Mckesson: I do remember that Solange tweet when she got snubbed at the Grammys where Solange was like, let’s make our own things, do our own things. Of all the Black artists who could actually have an awards show that everybody would not only watch but be dying to be at, it is Beyonce. Or even if she put on a concert of Beyonce, it could be called Beyonce and friends. Everybody would be there. It’d be a whole thing. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That’s–

 

DeRay Mckesson: So maybe that’ll be what she does after she– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That–

 

DeRay Mckesson: –after she stops uh performing. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That’s so funny that you said that, DeRay. Because I actually was thinking about that. I don’t not the award show part, but I was thinking like what because uh concert sales are so down in music right now and and and and festivals are up because people can pay one festival ticket um and see a lot of different acts. I was like, oh it will actually be kind of cool if a lot more of these legacy acts um create like festival environments. So I was looking at the Busta Rhymes, Ciara, and Missy Elliot tour and I was like, if you add like three or four more people and you have a festival and I’m like, and then it will be even crazy to have a [?] festival um and have Beyoncé and Khloe and all the people who are affiliated. I, I wish that more artists who are so huge uh Gagas, Rihannas, Beyonces thought like that, like how can I maybe take off the pressure of myself from performing and put it in on and transform how we see going to see music. And we all do that though. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Well you know who, you know who is thinking that way is my Capricorn twin and Queen, Mary J. Blige, who does her own festival now every summer, because she’s like also, what y’all not going to do, is pay me less and use my name. And have me at y’alls– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: What’s it called? Knee highs and wine spritzers?

 

De’Ara Balenger: It’s called it’s like sis– it’s something like that. Yeah. And it’s fabulous. But I think–

 

Kaya Henderson: You better stop talking talking about me and the auntie crew. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Come on now.

 

Myles E. Johnson: That’s me, too. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: [?]. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That’s me too.

 

De’Ara Balenger: But I think that’s right Myles. And I think you’re also on to something. And, you know, one thing I know I’m not is an expert on the youngs, but something I’ve read is that young folks also don’t listen to music in a genred way as– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: At all. At all. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Yeah. So I think that’s–

 

Myles E. Johnson: [?] 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s also something that, like, these music CM– like all these music awards have to start thinking about is that the young people aren’t they’re not taking in the music the same way. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: It’s absolete. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Yeah. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Repping for the olds. I want to shout out the Fool in Love Festival that happened in L.A.. I didn’t go, but in fact, one of my youngs is the one who hipped me to it. And listen to this lineup. Like, if I had known about this, I would have flown to L.A.. It was Lionel Richie, Diane Ross, Diana Ross, Nile Rodgers and Chic, Al Green, Santana, Charlie Wilson, Gladys Knight. The Isley Brothers, Chaka Khan, the Jacksons, the O’Jays, uh WAR, Tower of power, The Spinners. The Whispers, the Motions, Dionne Warwick, the Commodores, Smokey Robinson,  uh uh the Delfonics, the Stylistics, the Manhattans, the [?]s–

 

De’Ara Balenger: What? 

 

Kaya Henderson: The Blue Notes, The Intruders, um Blood Stone, um and a few a George Clinton, Zap, Rose Royce, Morris Day and Time, Heatwave, Kool and the Gang–

 

Myles E. Johnson: What? 

 

Kaya Henderson: The Bar-Kays, Confunction, The Jazz Band Dazz Band S.O.S. Band, Shalamar, Cameo, the Mary Jane Girls, Evelyn Champagne. [indistinct] The Pointer Sisters. El DeBarge. Y’all how come we didn’t know about this? [banter] 

 

De’Ara Balenger: I don’t know. 

 

Kaya Henderson: What? 

 

De’Ara Balenger: I know I I found out about it too late.

 

Myles E. Johnson: My knees my knees are hurting just by hearing that list. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: I found out about it too late. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: My knees are hurting just by hearing that list.

 

Kaya Henderson: Honey, listen. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That–

 

Kaya Henderson: I would have gone to that. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That’s–

 

Kaya Henderson: What a festival.

 

De’Ara Balenger: But you know another one we should go to that I never go because it ends up being the second week into jazz fest and we know I be at the Jazz Fest. But it’s Lovers and Friends, that happens in Vegas. And it’s like–

 

Kaya Henderson: Oh yeah. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Usher, Snoop, Keyshia Cole, Brandy, Monica, because that’s where–

 

Kaya Henderson: But I didn’t get didn’t it get um. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: –I really get excited.

 

Kaya Henderson: –canceled this year? 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Hmm? 

 

Kaya Henderson: Didn’t it get canceled this year? 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Oh yeah. Because there was like a sandstorm or something wild in Las Vegas.

 

Kaya Henderson: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I’m down. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I would love to do that. I like that one that you were talking about um Auntie Kaya. Once you get to the, once you started listing the the the The’s, any group that had [banter] the in the front of it. [laughter] I’m. I’m like, yes. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Not the The’s. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I’m like yes. [laughing] Oh my goodness. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Speaking of festivals, can I just rant for a minute and I’m going to try to I was watching the Today Show this morning and they gave platform to um the dude who did, Billy McFarland, who was the guy who organized Fyre Fest. Remember Fyre Fest um a couple of years ago. And after serving four years in jail for the botched thing, guess what? He is doing Fyre Fest 2. And I’m not telling you anything about it because I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to even think about this thing. But it is like peak white male privilege to go to jail for jacking up a festival and then to be like, yup, we’re going to do it again. It’s going to be better this time. And for prime time TV shows to give him a platform. Now, if I had a Fyre festival, that gave people cold cheese sandwiches and had them sleeping in emergency bunkers after they paid a whole lot of money because they were enticed by Kylie Jenner and Bella Hadid. I would be under the jail. I would not be able to do anything else. And people damn sure wouldn’t give me no money to have Kaya Fest 2. But here we are. Welcome to America. I just wanted to know what you thought about that. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And we will be bringing you on the news. You will be our topic number two. We’ll be talking about you for three weeks. [laughter]

 

DeRay Mckesson: Literally. It’s also like, who is buying tickets to this? I don’t like who if you bought a ticket to this, shame on you. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. 

 

Kaya Henderson: But he knows that people. He knows that people will they are going to be. He said they put up these packages and he had 100 people straight out the gate who bought tickets. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Insane. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: That is the [?] Myles you talk about this all the time. Is that like the the allure and the lore of of celebrity is just it overwhelms people’s sanity. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Well. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And yeah. Or replaces it. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And even with the like this situation I don’t know the entire details, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there was no or very minimal celebrity association with this um this festival because at this point, you have the lore of just being able to post a picture. You’re essentially spending whatever the X amount of money is to really have a selfie or have a picture saying, oh we have uh uh we’re at the Fyre Festival, you know, and we’re in we’re in and and we’re here. And this is this funny thing. So it’s interesting that even though everything went bad publicity wise and branding wise at the Fyre Festival, because it’s so infamous, it almost creates this kind of like haunted house effect of people wanting to go just to say they can go and to share it. And just to because it’s such a ubiquitous, um infamous thing in our culture now that it’s like, oh I went to the Fyre Festival. Back in my day you just went to like Six Flags Fright Night. But this feeling like this is like [laughing] this is feeling like the 2024 version of that. And just to hook on to what you were saying um Auntie Kaya, too, um do you all know Anna Delvey. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Of course. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Oh yes. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Why is she on Dancing with the Stars? [gasp]

 

DeRay Mckesson: With with her anklet.

 

Kaya Henderson: You better stop. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: With her anklet.

 

Kaya Henderson: You better stop. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Now I said ICE. I said ICE. I said ICE, I said where’s her cage? Like why like. If we care about all these different. It’s it’s it’s baffling to me that she’s able– 

 

Kaya Henderson: Wow. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –to be on Dancing with the Stars as we’re having these conversations around immigration and all this kind of like propaganda around like immigration, being proliferated, like the fact that Anna Delvey gets to just be twirling around with a bedazzled anklet on Dancing with the Stars. And I think we all know if you don’t know Anna Delvey is a is an allegedly is a white woman we don’t even know she could be in the whole Scooby Doo costume because she’s a scammer. So so we don’t. We don’t really know. But–

 

Kaya Henderson: Not the Scooby Doo costume.

 

Myles E. Johnson: Right, right. You and you be like you be like– 

 

Kaya Henderson: [laughing] [?]. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: [?] unzip her, and be like oh my goodness, I thought it was you, but um so [?] yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: It is. You know, there is no way that a Black celebrity would be allowed to to be on Dancing with the Stars with an anklet, like literally no way in the world. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Okay. So y’all know how I love to dig into some research? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: You know the board of Dancing with the Stars? [laughing]

 

De’Ara Balenger: Well I just this is it’s actually like this is this is sort of sending me a little bit, and I want to do some processing around this later. But this Billy McFarland, because when you go on to his Instagram, which you can go to his Instagram from the website where you can start your application to then get a, get a ticket. Is–

 

Myles E. Johnson: Which [?] I wonder if the application has social media in it because it sounds like he’s making sure– 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Probably. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: He’s making it’s like constructing it to go viral. So if you are less than this amount, then. But go ahead. Sorry. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: I think no, I think that’s right, Myles. And I think what it’s also. Conditions of is like like, okay, so on his Instagram, there’s a picture of him and Donald Trump and I did read somewhere at some point that he has been like consulting for the Trump campaign. And then also on his Instagram, it’s like it’s like MDMA fighting and like people flipping off a helicopters and like bikini’d women on a fast boat. It’s it’s sort of like a young, modern Trump. Like– [banter]

 

Myles E. Johnson: Oh they’re doing–

 

Kaya Henderson: He’s selling a he’s selling a lifestyle. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: You know what I’m saying? Exactly.

 

Kaya Henderson: He’s selling he’s selling a lifestyle.

 

De’Ara Balenger: Exactly. But it’s scary because–

 

Myles E. Johnson: But it’s just like really–

 

De’Ara Balenger:  It’s like steeped in sort of like macho and conservative. 

 

Myles E. Johnson:  Oh this is–

 

De’Ara Balenger: And you know what say– it’s like it is like, think it’s like Miami Vice but with the progeny of the leaders of the KKK. It’s like, I know that was like a little bit hyperbolic, but you know what I’m saying? It’s like scary. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: No. I love it. Um.

 

De’Ara Balenger: It’s scary it’s like [?]–

 

Myles E. Johnson: So it’s like–

 

De’Ara Balenger: This is like–

 

Myles E. Johnson: Brexit fest. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Right? This is like Scary Island. Come to Scary Island with all of us bros where we can do drugs and who knows what else to you. And be completely devoid of reality and humanity on this island. And we’ll listen to Ja Rule, like that’s what this is. 

 

Kaya Henderson: But this is this is also yes, it’s appealing to the like, fragile masculinity of, you know, the people who feel left out and abandoned and whatnot. And he’s he’s selling them back the life that they think they had. Right. It is literally people jumping out of helicopters.

 

De’Ara Balenger: It is wild. 

 

Kaya Henderson: What in the world?

 

De’Ara Balenger: Also all–

 

Myles E. Johnson: [?].

 

Kaya Henderson: –[?] ladies in bikinis. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: We need to pay attention this when this weekend comes up. 

 

Kaya Henderson: This is true. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Everyone needs to pay attention to who’s–

 

Myles E. Johnson: Who’s out of town. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: –taking off work.

 

Kaya Henderson: Mmm. That is the truth. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Where you going? Where are you going? 

 

Kaya Henderson: Right. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Take pictures. I want to see I want to see medical bands, all of that. [laughter] All of that. I want proof, no, you can’t go. No, you cannot go. That is so that is so wild that that is happening. I just. Oh my gosh. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: [?]. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: But it makes it makes it makes a lot more sense now why it’s coming back, because that is a area people who don’t care about that, who don’t care about the bad branding or the the cold cheese sandwiches. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come. 

 

[AD BREAK]

 

De’Ara Balenger: Moving right along in terms of sort of the the polar opposite of that is Kamala Harris, who they about to be so mad we about to have a Black woman president. [laughing] Maybe they’ll get stuck on that island and never want to come back. Um. Kamala Harris dropped her platform uh this morning. Which you know listen. Every y’all know this. I’m a Hillary Clinton girl, and we had policy up in all over the place, all over the website. And I don’t think the Biden campaign ever got around to putting policy things on the website, maybe because they thought a lot of their policy documents lived sort of on the White House page. Nevertheless, there is sort of a whole host of issue areas all in the space of sort of like I think the theme thematically is called like a new way forward and a lot of these policies are sort of even more aggressive, um more aggressive approaches to even Biden’s uh policies around, you know, education, health care, border, etc., etc., etc.. Um. And so I think part of this, too, and we’re this obviously just came in this morning, so we’re still digesting it ourselves. Really is um sort of steeped in opportunity. Where can there be more opportunity? So um for for listeners, please check it out. It’s KamalaHarris.com/issues/. Front slash back slash I don’t know Google Kamala Harris issues um but what do you all think and y’all scrolling through, taking a look at this?

 

DeRay Mckesson: I like it I’m happy it exists. Smart to do it right before the debate so that there won’t be a ton of random news articles about it. She’ll talk about it at the debate. That’ll that’ll manage the news cycle. So shout out again to her team who is just executing flawlessly, I think, on these issues. I also love you’ll see that it has a reference to Project 2025 in every single section. So you can see where she proposes and her team already does the legwork of showing you what the other side is saying. So that is that I thought that was really smart. Um. I was surprised that there’s not even like a mention of criminal justice, anything on here. And like obviously that’s my work, so I get it. But um, you know, even in the part about crime, the part about nobody’s above the law, it is it feels like a real choice to not even signal a anything about criminal justice. Like not a mention not a. I don’t know. Not even the phrase criminal justice. I couldn’t find it. [laugh] I was you know, I was pretty surprised by that. Especially because, you know, her team is still trying to figure out Black men. Um. And four there’s a poll that YouGov just did for young Black men, 18 to 29, issues of race and issues of crime are top two and three issues. They’re not at the bottom, which they are for some other than that, they’re not at the bottom for any subgroups. But uh for Black men, they actually are at the very top right after inflation. So, you know, I hope that they figure that out. I hope that they make a passing mention to criminal justice, at least, uh because in the press release they put out, I think over the weekend that highlighted the 100 officers who are supporting her. They actually do mention the work that the that the current administration has done around criminal justice. No knocks, use of force, um some prison stuff. But in this platform, I actually see nothing, which um surprises me, especially because Trump is like he calls for absolute immunity for all police officers, including the one that killed Sonya Massey. Uh. So, yeah, I was confused by the absence of criminal justice on this. Like literally just it’s just not there. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I don’t know if I was. Yeah, I’m. I’m. I wasn’t shocked. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Wait a minute. I have a question. I have a question. So when I first looked at the thing, there’s build an opportunity, economy and lower costs for families. And that’s a set of things. And then there’s safeguarding our fundamental freedoms. And then there’s ensure safety and justice for all, which is a little bit of gun violence and crime. Not specifically uh criminal justice reform, but something? 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Hmm. 

 

Kaya Henderson: No? 

 

DeRay Mckesson: No. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Okay. Alright.

 

DeRay Mckesson: [?] didn’t even protect civil rights. I thought it was going to be in protect civil rights and freedoms. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Uh huh. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: She said here, [?]–

 

DeRay Mckesson: I guess not. I mean, it’s good stuff in there. It is. Like, I’m not saying that what’s in there is bad. I just I was shocked that, like, even the because it’s not in [?] safety and justice for all. 

 

Kaya Henderson: For all. Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Um. It’s not in civil rights. And–

 

Kaya Henderson: [?] Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I was like, oh maybe it’s going to be in nobody’s above the law when it uh ensure– 

 

Kaya Henderson: Right. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: No one is above the law. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Right, ensure no one is above the law. Nope. Mm hmm.

 

DeRay Mckesson: It’s not there. So that just is a you know, as the first prosecutor that is a choice um to not even signal to it, I am. I was like, frankly, shocked by that. And I’m voting for Kamala I like Kamala. I’m Team Kamala. I want Kamala to win.

 

De’Ara Balenger: But DeRay when’s the when’s the last time there’s been like a legal system reform something at the White House?

 

DeRay Mckesson: There hasn’t been for a while. I’m just saying, I met with Kamala when she was running for president and she had a–

 

De’Ara Balenger: Well no. That’s what I’m–

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know, she was like, we’re going to do [?]. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s I think. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: –practice. And–

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s that’s I think that’s my point is that it hasn’t been necessarily somebody’s job to to to sort of move to move it. Right. And I think partly you’re right. I don’t I don’t know if it’s a choice not to have it or more so. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I mean, I think. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Like I’m curious like it is. It is. It is telling. And I really I want to ask somebody and of course, I will do that right after we get done recording what is happening with this piece of it. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Because we live in a democracy and we have access, as Myles reminds us all the time. You know, I’m an elite Democrat, and so I’m going to use that to figure out–

 

Myles E. Johnson: [laughter] No. You you are above we can’t talk about it right now. But you you’re the most elitest. [laughter] You the you who the other elite democrats come see once they open the tower, they said it’s you [?]–

 

DeRay Mckesson: I love it.

 

Myles E. Johnson: You the most elite. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You above elite. [?] [banter]

 

Myles E. Johnson: You the you’re the most elite in this elite elite that has ever elited. [laugh] Um.

 

Kaya Henderson: I’m just I’m just happy to be in the number honey. Happy to be in the number. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Okay. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Did y’all see Tyreek Hill? Tyreek Hill got punched by that police officer. Like, it just is an issue that is um. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: But I–

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know like we went on polling, like blah blah blah. Anyway, Myles, what you got to say? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I just think that like it’s it’s. It’s not right that it’s not there, but I think it’s like obvious why it is not there. I think that that it’s like a uh I think she’s trying to win the I think she’s trying to win the campaign. And I think there are certain things that she’s not going to talk about or address or she’s going to address in a very maybe even some some like some of the language. Once I um hit it, I was like unsatisfied with the language I see that she cares about it. I see that she wants to go–

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: The right way. But I was like, what’s so what’s the what’s the thing? What’s going on? But I think just how I was kind of upset well not kind of I was upset about what she was um saying around um what was happening in Palestine with Palestine and Israel. Like I wasn’t satisfied with her reaction to that. I think that we’re not going to be satisfied with [?] criminal justice because that is a huge that a huge, alienating subject that’s just going to alienate people. And I think that right now she wants to win this election and she does not want to say something that’s going to alienate or offend people. And it’s actually safer to do that. I remember a couple of episodes ago too, what I closed with is like just like a couple of episodes too um back that De’Ara uh that there was no criminal justice people at the um DNC or like there was no there was not a lot or excuse me, there was no like um uh representation of people of activists and and organizers at the DNC. And part of it’s because um organizing around social justice and race issues and and trans issues is alienating to people. And, you know, part of Tim Walz being here is he seems normal and and a regular guy and and she’s a prosecutor and she’s and she’s more conservative than what she’s been represented and all those subjects can really um can really to me help that like that idea that she’s on the radical left. Where I’m living right now, there is nonstop uh advertisement around how radical Biden is. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Her being a socialist. Yeah.

 

Myles E. Johnson: And all and all that other stuff. There’s that’s a nonstop narrative that’s happening and I just feel like she’s not touching anything that can help that narrative. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Mm hmm. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, I think that and I don’t disagree with that, actually. And I’m again, I’m like team Kamala. I think that what I’ve loved about the campaign so far is that they have gone against the advice that everybody told them they had to do. They told them the campaign had to be a certain way, [?] and Kamala did her own thing. And it is right. She’s doing it. I’m like team strategy. What I will say, though, is that this issue and like I know it well only because I work on it, it just is that when you poll people, it is a top like we’re not losing on the issue with people. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right. 

 

Trump is crazy. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And Trump is actually calling her. But we’re not losing on the issue when we ask people and I think that if I was her, what I would say is that I’m a prosecutor and I understand both sides. I get it. Nobody should be above the law. The president shouldn’t be above the law. A police officer shouldn’t be above the law. The senator shouldn’t be above the law. Your cousin shouldn’t be. But like, I think there’s a way to thread this that actually doesn’t scare the base, but does remind them that like Sonya Massey just got killed and like, that’s not okay. You know what I mean? Like and I again it was the it wasn’t I don’t expect a paragraph on the police that I think that she would not do that I get it. But the phrase criminal justice [?] I was like, well, that is a that is a choice. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I just want to ask about the polls. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah. Like when we poll um when we poll like any issue around the police, like, should they be able to choke people? Should they be accountable? Should da da, we win across party like there’s not a– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So it’s not race specific– 

 

DeRay Mckesson: –we run on [?]– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –or gender specific? Got it.

 

DeRay Mckesson: It’s not race, when you poll things like the phrase defund, nightmare. Right, like that is a losing phrase. But even if you poll like should we invest more in communities–

 

De’Ara Balenger: Or or should or–

 

DeRay Mckesson: –and not put all the money in police? 

 

De’Ara Balenger: And also, one of the things that polls well, too, is should folks get their their right to vote back? That is something that even–

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yes. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: –in Florida, polls well across both sides. So, DeRay. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: We’re not–

 

De’Ara Balenger: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: The base is there. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: But I think it’s also this is [sigh] this is this is part of why it’s so important to make sure you have strong voices tapped into the people in these rooms, because somebody needs to be able to look at this and be like, you know what we’re missing? And it’s and partly why it’s because, yes, the opioid crisis is a major crisis, but over two million people being incarcerated is a crisis. That is one of America’s that we are at a crisis and have been for decades there. So there’s just. DeRay you’re like what you’re highlighting is correct. It’s like there has to there has to be a way to to to bring it to the forefront, to talk about it in a way. And DeRay, this is the work too I want to look at again with Vere Institute around even how we talk about the word safety. Like even how we’re talking about these issues is so sort of old school and not nuanced. And that’s how we’re losing people as well, or just kind of staying stuck in the same conversation or perspective. Um. But everything I agree with everything that everyone’s saying and somebody will be held accountable. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Okay. And that’s from that’s from OG boss liberal elite. [laughter] 

 

DeRay Mckesson: So I’ll start with the news. I’m obsessed with adult literacy. Obsessed, obsessed, obsessed. I’m obsessed with it not only because adults seem to be able to read. But I think about adult literacy as a public safety strategy that if you’re 17, 18, 22, 25 and can’t read, you’re just making different choices in the world. So my article is actually from 2022 ProPublica. It’s titled, A fifth of American Adults Struggle to Read. Why are we failing to teach them? I did not know and Kaya I mean you probably knew this because Kaya’s the OG you know, she is education, everybody. You do not know Kaya Henderson is that girl. Um. I didn’t know that a part of the war on poverty way back in the day was actually putting money into adult literacy. I had no clue. Now, one of the challenges is that the amount of money they put in, $600 ish million to the states has has remained the same when adjusted for inflation over the years. So we haven’t invested more money in it. And what I did know and I didn’t know that it was like more earnest at the beginning. It was like teach people how to read so that they could do their jobs well, they can understand their bills. And, you know, reading limits your career mobility. You can’t be a manager if you can’t read the the handbook and things like that. So there’s some stories in the article that talk about people where the supervisors are being shipped in from other places, not because of racism per se, but because the people can’t read and they got to figure out how to have a management structure that reads. Now, what I what it was helpful to actually see written here is that somewhere along the way we transitioned from actually just teaching people how to read to one of the consequences of this idea of measuring everything meant that we were teaching people how to get high school credentials and get college credentials. And if you’ve ever seen the GED course, the GED course is not a literacy course. It’s not a comprehension course. The GED course will teach you, you know, like and the I taught math and, you know, if you get your GED, I’m not convinced you’re like a, you know, a solid math student, but you know how to take a test really well. And somewhere along the way, we transitioned from sort of purely teaching people how to read to job readiness and GED programs, and we really screwed up, it seems. So what it what the article does a really good job of is showing that across the country there are huge swaths of adults who just cannot read and cities and states don’t have any structured programs for them and that even when they do have programs, they either don’t have enough money to have a full program so they can like get people in but can’t pay for the tests, can’t pay for the books, can’t pay for a quality instruction, or people can’t balance their job and the literacy program. And I’m it was just really fascinating to me to to read, you know I, the first time I ever believed that we could do adult literacy at scale was in Minneapolis. In Minneapolis, there are over 100 languages spoken in our school, in the schools in Minneapolis. They’re only 70 schools. So even when I was hiring staff, it’s hard because you’re like, you know, we got I got to find a teacher who’s who can teach the Egyptian kid. You know I’m like, I’m really out here trying to and they don’t have great licensure laws, so I’m doing creative things to get teachers. But what the district actually offers on the top floor of the school system building in Minneapolis is adult education. So parents, community members will come into the building and learn how to how to read. They learn math on the top floor of the school board building. It was like a whole department that we staffed that was adult education. School system ran it. People came. It was a it was a thing, you know, I’d be leaving the building at five. I’m like, whoa who all these people in the lobby? It’s people for adult education. And I was like, oh this is actually the first time I’ve ever seen this done that wasn’t like ushered in a community college or it wasn’t like sort of a random nonprofit doing a GED program. And I, you know, whenever I sunset on fighting the police, adult literacy is my I’m obsessed with this idea of what do we do with the huge amount of adults who cannot actually read. And I didn’t know that there was this ProPublica article about it. I’m obsessed with ProPublica. They do incredible work, um and I wanted to bring it here to see what you all thought. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Auntie Kaya, we need you to take the floor, guide us with your light. [laugh]

 

Kaya Henderson: Um. I mean, this article brings up so much for me. The first thing that I guess I will say is um, you know, teaching reading is not an easy thing. In fact, we struggle to teach young people how to read. And only recently are we having real conversations about the science of reading, what it actually takes to teach people to read. There are not enough reading teachers for in the K-12 system, and so it would stand to reason that there are not enough adult educators out there. You have to add to the teaching of the skills, the sort of deconstruction of all of the shame and guilt of being an adult and not being able to read. Um. But I think I’m sort of encouraged by some of the influencers. Um. I can’t remember the guy’s name, but remember the social media dude who couldn’t read? He’s a fitness instructor. And he was like– 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yes. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Look, I’m a figure this out and whatnot. Um. I think, one, we have to figure out how to destigmatize um illiteracy. And, you know, I think about Cuba who and I mean, De’Ara, you know this better than a lot of people, that made a policy decision at the governmental level that said we’re going to teach everybody to read, we gonna send people out into the countryside. We are going to maestra, right. Like that’s the film. Like we are going to teach people to read because reading unlocks everything else in the world. And I think, you know, I’m thinking a lot about um we’re talking we’re going into this debate, we’re talking about policy decisions. The reason why um some of these places have solid adult literacy or why some places have solid adult literacy programs is because they made a policy decision to support their people. There’s governmental funding for it. In the ProPublica article, it’s astounding to look at states like Nebraska and Louisiana that spend $5 or $2 on adult education like that that is a policy decision to keep people subjugated, to keep people poor, to keep people depressed and out of our economy. And I think that we can make very different decisions. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So as of late, my partner, my boyfriend works with grades five through eight, um fifth grade through um eighth grade. And, you know, as we like gossip and talk about our days and stuff like that, what’s been so interesting is him talking about how everything around the school is just is mainly around behavioral containment. Is really about um uh it’s about around behavior. It’s around uh uh making sure children are in line. He says, he says, and this is like kind of what he’s talked to other teachers about too, just at different schools is that so much of the focus has really made education second, third, fourth on the list specifically for for children. And I do think there’s some type of connectivity between what he’s going through and this report because, you know, it’s been years since I’ve been in school. But what I keep on hearing from everybody who I know who’s in public education is that the environment and the and the and the nature of school, in a lot of places, specifically places in the Midwest, specifically places in the South, um has totally changed and it and it and it’s been more about just keeping all the kids in line and doing and doing well. And I feel like we’re seeing that. And I, I can’t you can’t underestimate. You can’t un you just I can’t sell it hard enough out and Deray explains it too. How illiteracy stops your life. It totally it totally puts a ceiling on your life. A very low, small New York studio apartment ceiling on where your life can go if you can not read. And I this is tinfoil hat on, I think a lot of Republicans know these stats. And I think what they’re doing with education, I think that how they’re trying to defund education, how they’re trying to destroy public education. I think that they want to create a permanent lower class that always needs to use their mind or excuse me always needs to use their body for labor to ensure that billionaires always have people to source. So once that person gets cancer because of where they were working or once this person blows their back out because of the box that they lifted. There is always this this infinite supply of people who have to sell their time and their body in order to make ends meet. And I think that’s how come these stats look so ridiculous in America. America with wifi and and and [?] and plumbing system, America. I think that’s why these stats are able to exist is also because I think there are people who are interested in this existing and and happening like this because this is embarrassing too. Just as a nation to have any types of stats. I don’t care where it is in the country. This is these are um embarrassing humiliating stats that that no nation should want to um uh to be able to sign off on so. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: The only thing I’ll add, I agree with everything and the only thing I’ll add is that I don’t know why, but this is making me think of my dad um who when we. There just always was just this notion of being curious and also understanding how important it is that reading is. It is like the thing that helps you be able to transform society. Like since I was little and understood that my dad was a lawyer and a criminal defense attorney and like what that meant. And then got curious around Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston and Constance um Baker Motley like and also just growing up in D.C., you know, R.I.P. to D.C. in the ’80s and ’90s. Like you know, you would just absorb Ida like stories about Ida B. Wells or Dorothy Height. Like they’re just, gosh man, just this like, beautiful environment of how important reading and knowledge and how all of that was so important to your identity. Right. So I think, DeRay and Myles, what y’all both are saying, just in terms of like there’s a ceiling on yourself. Like quite literally, because you can’t learn about who you are and what the contributions of your people have been without this. You know, and obviously, I’m back in my elitism, this is we’re really talking about being able to get a job. But you know, in my family, whether you were a migrant worker or worked in a factory or everybody was reading. My granny was reading her Black sex books until way in her– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Oooh. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: –later years. Okay. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Drop the titles. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: And she worked she worked at she my granny worked at at Honeywell, her for 30 years. It’s a factory, you know what I’m saying? So all that– 

 

DeRay Mckesson: De’Ara do you do you think that De’Ara do you think that the screens have contributed to this? And hearing you talk, do you think that it’s like technology? Or–

 

De’Ara Balenger: I think so. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: [?] I guess. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: I think I think so. But I think it I think it’s just our– 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Kaya said no. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: I think it’s like well, I think it’s also just like– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: But how you reading the captions? 

 

De’Ara Balenger: It’s. 

 

Kaya Henderson: You have to read on social media. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Right. [laughing]

 

Kaya Henderson: Like you can’t you this there is no getting away from this. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Not on Tiktok.

 

Kaya Henderson: Not much. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Not on [?]–

 

Kaya Henderson: But even still there’s stuff look that the, the captions that go across. Come on. You need to read, period. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: It’s just something’s missing. Something this. I don’t know if it’s it. Maybe it is. You know what? I mean, all these different different epidemics we’ve had in the Black community, whether it’s drugs or gun violence or lack of resource or gentrification in all of our cities like there. That’s why I spend so much time in New Orleans, because it just it doesn’t. And there’s been huge change there, but it don’t feel like D.C.. And I love my city, but it’s like all of these things have contributed to I don’t know y’all, it’s something going on. Somebody need to write [?].

 

Myles E. Johnson: But y’all class stratification like I hate to say it like I know I–

 

De’Ara Balenger: Exactly. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –speak about it. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Exactly. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: All the time. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right.

 

Kaya Henderson: Because your New Orleans ain’t your New Orleans– 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right. 

 

Kaya Henderson: –ain’t everybody’s New Orleans. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right.

 

Myles E. Johnson: [?]

 

Kaya Henderson: And there’s a whole lot of people in New Orleans who can’t read. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And like and and ignoring that. I think like specifically like I’ve seen seen it. I was born in ’91. So lit– I it just feels like I was in that I was in this weird spot where I can look backwards and forwards. And that’s a–

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –really like, interesting way. But I’m like those people, Black people who had to, because of segregation, had to work with each other, how to go to school with each other. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: They have a different education than the Black people who were able to move out, who were able to leave during um and go to different neighborhoods. And I can promise you, like I mean, this has not happened for De’Ara for many of reasons, um some private, some some whatever. But like if De’Ara if De’Ara’s child was going to a rural school in Minneapolis, that would be a different experience for every poor kid in there, too, because liberal elite De’Ara’s child is going to get treated. It’s just going to change the the effect. But there’s no. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yep. That’s right.

 

Myles E. Johnson: There’s nobody at these schools who. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Who, who. They’re they’re they’re invisible children. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: They’re invisible. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Forgotten. 

 

Kaya Henderson: That’s right. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Forgotten children. And if you don’t have a Louis Gates child going to your school, that’s going to change how your school interacts and gets taken care of. And I think Black people have totally separated class wise, and it’s only getting thicker. And I think we’re seeing the results of that separation. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Mm hmm. 

 

Kaya Henderson: But the interesting thing and this this is a real thing in Washington, D.C., where people where Black people won had concentrated Black excellence, two, thought the water was colder on that side of town and so fled. And then, you know, I remember having conversations with parents who whose kids started out in D.C. public schools with old Black lady teachers who were [clap sounds] like making sure these babies could read. And then they, you know, ascended and got to go to private white, you know, wealthy white private schools. And their kids were depressed, had anxiety, blah, blah, blah, and whatever, whatever. Because it’s not just about the academics that you get. It is also about the socialization and the and, you know, the sort of whole child stuff. And so we watched families who were struggling even though they were in the best schools. And I think that or the the quote unquote, “best schools.” And so I think that part of what we need to remember is in fact like people make different decisions for other people’s kids. Right? 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Right. 

 

Kaya Henderson: And there is something very different to us being in community. I mandated that my staff, you you could not you can’t lead in D.C. public schools and have your kids going to private schools because while I respect everybody’s ability or right to do whatever they think is right for their kids, how can we tell parents that they should send their kids to our schools if we don’t send our kids to our schools? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Oooh. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Right. And and so that was the thing. My kids were in D.C. public schools and I didn’t win the lottery. I didn’t get into the best schools. My kids were in the neighborhood schools. Right. And what we don’t realize is that there are assets in these neighborhood schools. There are assets in communities. There are people who there are little old Black ladies who know how to teach people to read. They ain’t been to the science arena in professional development, but they know how to teach. They know how to teach people to read. And we have to activate people outside of institutions because there are so many assets in our communities. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s right. 

 

Kaya Henderson: And and and the government can actually help to support that. I’m a I’m about to argue the exact opposite when my news comes. [laughter] So don’t hold me hostage. But.

 

DeRay Mckesson: She said let me just–

 

Kaya Henderson: I’m just gonna be clear. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Let me just lay it down now. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yeah yeah yeah. [laughing]

 

De’Ara Balenger: So my news today, y’all, is about the 19th. And I often get my news from the 19th. But it’s a nonprofit newsroom and it’s entering its fifth year, and it’s growing and growing, and I’m so excited. And so the 19th, it sort of was birthed out of um 2016 with uh Hillary Clinton’s loss. Um. And I think they were you know, there’s sort of Errin Haines, who’s the founding reporter. There just was growing frustration around traditional news media and how it wasn’t really ready or equipped to cover women in political life. And so nearly five years later, this news outfit covers politics and policy with a focus on gender. It’s continuing to cover the presidential election cycle. Um. And I mean, what an incredible time and like to go from ’16 to start where you’re starting because the loss of the loss of this woman and now here you are five years later and growing in a space where our candidate is a Black woman. So Emily Ramshaw and a co-founder Amanda Zamora, they started in January 2020 with just one reporter and no website. Since then, it’s grown into a digital operation that has raised nearly $60 million and has 55 million people working there. And I’m just I just wanted to bring this to the pod because, y’all for our listeners, we are sometimes prepared and sometimes scramble with our news and sometimes we can’t find news. And partly why we can’t find news is because, well, this is more for me, Kaya, and Myles. We’re looking for like joyful, uplifting news where DeRay is always looking to bring us down, down, down, down, as he did today. 

 

[spoken by everyone but De’Ara] Wow. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: As he did today. 

 

Kaya Henderson: [?] down. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: And so but it is– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: [?] I’m just remindind you where we are. [laughter]

 

De’Ara Balenger: He was like that art show is nice. But the children. So–

 

Myles E. Johnson: Don’t Black joy yourself into prison child. [laughter]

 

DeRay Mckesson: [?]

 

De’Ara Balenger: So it is so wonderful to have sources like the 19th where you can actually find sort of curated news um for, you know, so for what your values are. And they also and it’s like good, truthful, fact based news that just has a but it has a point of view. It has a point of view. And so I think it’s it’s I know I often go to them when I can’t when I when I’m looking and I really want to find something good. I always go to the 19th and you and typically can find what I’m I’m looking for um because it is covering sort of subject subject areas and individuals that traditional news media wouldn’t cover and, you know, sort of local races that are happening. Those candidates, you know, if they’re women, particularly women of color, I can always find what I’m looking for, what I need to find about those candidates on the 19th. So, yeah, I just wanted to bring it here. I’m very excited and, I’m you know, shout out to them for um continuing to grow. I think they’re also up for a bunch of other multi-million dollar endowment and grants and I hope they get them all. I hope you get every dollar that you applied for. Um. I hope you get that coming in. So I just wanted to bring this, just wanted to highlight, highlight them as a platform and then just to congratulate them around their continued success. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I remember when they first started, and it’s cool to see them growing because there were a lot of news outlets that sort of tried to start around ’19, uh ’19 and ’20 that did not survive. So to see them not only still be here, but grow is actually really awesome. So shout out to the 19th. 

 

Kaya Henderson: I thought this was really, really interesting. First of all, I didn’t know about it, so thanks De’Ara. And um I signed up for their weekly newsletter, which all of our listeners should do if we want to support the folks. Um. There were a couple of things that stood out to me. One is, you know, back to this conversation about creating your own thing when people are not doing what you need to do. We actually all have the power to go create our own thing. And I think that there is a revolution happening in the media world where um quite a few people are creating new news outlets because they, you know, argue that the traditional news outlets aren’t meeting the mark or are too partisan or what have you. Um. And I think this that the business model of this is very interesting. They didn’t start out trying to be a full fledged, you know, news outlet. They did good articles and then they put them in other people’s publications. So they put stuff in The Washington Post and they put stuff in in other places. And one that not only strengthens their reputation and their reach, it doesn’t it means that you don’t have to stand up a whole, you know, organization in order to do that. So it’s it’s it’s smart, but it also strengthens the quality of The Washington Post and these other major news outlets. And I thought that that was kind of cool. The other thing um that I felt super excited about is this idea of um and they got a big grant from Melinda French Gates and they used it toward an endowment. And I am I’m obsessed right now, DeRay, with endowments, because when you are in the nonprofit space, you spend most of your time not doing the work, but hustling for the dollars to do the work. And in my new role, you know, we got a huge contribution and we set it up as an endowment. For those people who don’t know, an endowment is a large chunk of money that you put in the bank and the interest spins off every year enough if you have a good enough endowment, it will spin off enough money to pay for your operations. And so what we didn’t want to do was run around and fundraise every year. But to have a significant enough of an endowment that every year we get a check from the bank that covers our operations. And I think that we have to start thinking differently about how to make the nonprofit space sustainable. People can’t keep doing these jobs when they’re burning themselves out, fundraising and all of these kinds of things. And so I think it sets a couple of really good examples about how to make this kind of work much more sustainable for the long term. So shout out to the 19th for not just doing good work, but for changing the game. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Um I echo what everybody else said. Thank you for bringing this, um De’Ara. I’m so passionate about media, specifically people on the left having media. I think that as many platforms, as many newspapers, as many channels and video sources, Instagram pages whatever, I think as many of those things that can exist, the better. Um. I’ve had countless I actually can count them. I had a few conversations with DeRay around just trying to push him to do something like like just I just think as many people who can create stories and media who are on the left side as possible is just we just need it. So I love hearing that something is is is successful and still living and and and growing because I know that it can be really, really hard, but it’s so essential specifically when we get to times like this where um we’re in an election year or when something’s controversial or important happened, and you need trusted spaces to be able to not just report on it, but also be able to examine it. And and I love hearing that there is a space that is uh successful. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Don’t go anywhere. More Pod Save the People is coming. 

 

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Kaya Henderson: My news this week is actually related to I wish I had known um that Vice President Harris was releasing her policy platform this morning because this kind of relates um it actually relates pretty specifically. So I just didn’t know that before this morning. So thanks DeRay. Um. But I want to share some news this morning about um what I learned some more about what I learned about Project 2025. So as most of you already know, Project 2025 is the Republican kind of wish list of policies for a second Trump presidency. It was created by the Heritage Foundation, which is a leading conservative, like a radically conservative um think tank that is staffed by many of the former Trump administration officials who are expected to go back into the government if Mr. Trump is reelected president. Um. And it contains some pretty controversial proposals. So um they you’ve heard things like um they want to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. Um. They want to decrease taxes on rich people and raise taxes on poor and middle class people. They want to cap Medicaid, which would cut off lots of people’s access to health care. They want to eliminate Head Start. All these kinds of things. Um. But I recently learned that the plan also calls for defunding child care. What? Child care? Right. Bread and butter is what we all think is important. Apparently not these folks. So the plan calls for shifting funding away from universal daycare or daycare centers as we know them, to in-home family care, because they claim that children who go to childcare to day care centers are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and neglect. Did you know that? How many people here went to childcare? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I went to childcare. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Right. Uh. And–

 

DeRay Mckesson: I went to wee pals. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Right. [laugh] And uh, I mean, maybe you suffered from anxiety, depression and neglect, but we don’t have any evidence that that came from your daycare experience, in fact, where is the research to back that up, you might ask? There is no research at all. What the text states is without evidence. It will, it says prioritize funding for home based childcare, not universal daycare. Without evidence, it adds concurrently children who spend significant time in daycare experience higher rates of anxiety, depression and neglect, as well as poor educational and developmental outcomes. Instead of providing universal daycare, funding should go to parents either to offset the cost of staying at home with a child or to pay for familial in-home health care. Now um, one of the things that this really brought up for me is the whole rant that I have been on about these educational savings accounts, because that basically prioritizes giving money to individual parents and families to make their own educational decisions. And as we’ve seen both in Arizona and in Indiana, I think DeRay you sent the Indiana stuff recently, the results have been catastrophic. The people who benefit most are the wealthy people. Um. The people who benefit least are the poor people, and the people who pay for it are the public, which is not how this is supposed to go. Um. These folks also claim that the overtime pay requirement protections that the government has put in place to make sure that workers get overtime pay if they deserve it, that that actually discourages employers from offering childcare benefits. So in addition to decreasing universal child care, they want to scale back overtime pay protection for workers. Hmm. Who do we think is most affected by this? Um. Women, poor people, middle class people, working people are all the targets of these policies. 96% of daycare owners are women, 96%. So these people will lose their livelihood. 58% of working parents rely on child care centers. What would it look like if 60% of our our working people no longer had access to child care centers? 70% of young mothers in the United States work and use childcare, and only 30% of infants and toddlers go to home based childcare. So again, we’ll see massive amounts of money move to small handfuls of people. You know, what those people look like um and the people who will suffer are the most vulnerable kids who need it most. If you have you been paying attention to J.D. Vance, um he’s been signaling this, right. He’s been talking about grandparents and family members helping out to alleviate child care costs. Well, you can imagine that there’ll be a lot more of them if they’re getting a check from the federal government after they’ve shut down your local child care place. And we already know how he feels about working women who he says prioritize their careers over having children. Um. You know, he’s talking about childless cat ladies and all of that kind of thing. And so I brought this to the pod because I think, um one, it ties into the piece about the educational savings account that more than 22 states now have. Um. I now am excited that it came out today that uh Vice President Harris, in her policy platform, has explicit policies around protecting headstart, protecting and expanding child care, expanding um the the child care tax credit, which pulled millions of kids out of poverty during the pandemic. Um. And I brought this because, I mean, DeRay, you you mentioned earlier the war on poverty, like the war on poverty used to mean that we were using our tools and resources as a government to fight poverty and to provide Americans with a better way of life. But these Republicans are actually declaring war not on poverty, but on poor people and middle class people. And I think we can’t and we won’t let that happen. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: So I have a lot of thoughts. First is I will just shout out to her including this in the policy platform. My last plug for criminal justice is that the cost of criminal justice is just so wild. So it’s an estimated $230 billion total reduction in lifetime earnings for incarcerated people. And that is mostly people of color who are disproportionately incarcerated. So I’ll I’ll start there. But what is um. What’s really interesting to me about this is that if you put a white man in a suit, people just think it makes sense. They like give people credit for it. And the ideas are just so wild. And people like they stand up there in suits [?] and they’re like, we are investing in home child care. And you’re like that like that I dunno. It is nuts. And uh the fact that they are getting away with the media pretending as if this is like a sane credible idea is actually really fascinating to me. I just use this as just one of them. But I think that the Republicans do that well. They get up in suits. They say things that are totally nonsensical and people give it credit as if it’s like a sane idea where as if if we got up there in a hoodie and say anything like this, we would be the wild da da da no matter how many degrees and stuff you have. So I’m interested in the performance of all of this, but I also am um you know, what the Republicans get is that who has the most money anywhere, they government. And they’re like, it’s more money than we have as people and we deserve it. That’s it. That’s that is like what this all boils down to me. So they’re like, get rid of child care. Screw those people. They don’t matter anyway. And we will figure out how to siphon the money back to families that look like ours because the process is going to be one that only they can fig– like the voucher thing. You know, you invest vouchers so you can do whatever you want. But the way the process is set up, only certain people can even participate in it. And in the first place and, you know, I don’t know if it’s storytelling or what, but I will say in my organizing, when I try and tell people this stuff around [?] and incarceration, I don’t know what it is. And I’m interested. You know, Myles, you’re the culture savant, but, you know, people really do. They think that it’s like a conspiracy they think when you say it to them, they’re like, couldn’t possibly be that. They’re like, no, no, no. And you’re like, I don’t know. They really gonna get it, get, get rid of head start. And head start is the only reason why you got somebody to watch your child. That’s it. I don’t. They it’s the only thing you got down the street. Head Start is all you got. Your mother, the grandparents today are still working. My grandmother, my great grandmother moved in with us when she was 65. She helped raise us. She could do that. She had retired da da da. They can’t do that, right, the 65 year olds are going to work. My father’s–

 

Kaya Henderson: Every day.

 

DeRay Mckesson: –turning 65 on the 15th. And he is far from retirement. You know, he couldn’t move in when my sister and the kids if he wanted to. And but you tell people some of this stuff and they’re like, oh well, it’s always been bad or but and I’m like, well no, no, it wasn’t always the end of childcare. That is crazy. I don’t know. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I was watching over this weekend, I was watching um watching Hillbilly Elegy because Glenn Close plays the grandmother Mamaw. And and um the film adaptation of J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. And what was so, horrible movie, Glenn Close, she’s she, she, she, she’s a Gift because she really ate that role up. But like, as far as storytelling and and just it was such a trite Hallmark-y movie, but as I was reading this article, I was glad that I watched it. Because it’s such an unserious deeply unserious uh uh idea because it kind of situates itself on a perfect American family dynamic that doesn’t exist. So the first thing I think about are all the people who don’t have the who don’t have the grandparents, don’t have the family, grandparents are grandparents are working. It just creates this idea that you have a uh uh a whatever it is, ten eight whatever generation long American family lineage. And you have two grandparents on each side. And this all this can all this can all all of this can happen that way like that way or you yeah. So it it feels like it’s just totally ignoring people who live outside of that. And I also think and I guess DeRay hinted at this well well not hinted at it, just said it. I think that’s the design of it. Again, I think sometimes, and like and like what um Kaya said around, oh no, this is not a war on poverty more it’s a war on the impoverished. So it’s hard for me in the same way that I was saying about the literacy stuff and the illiteracy stuff. It’s hard for me not to think that they know that there are these imperfect families. And what we want to do is make it so these families don’t exist within a couple of generations. Because we’ve made these laws and these and these policies. So if you have a family like this, that and if you and if you make um uh I don’t want to call the child a mistake, but if you make a mistake or something happens or whether anything happens that makes you poor or makes you impoverished or or puts some class or race onto your situation, we want to make sure that that kind of family doesn’t even have a chance to persist, because I feel like there is a resentment in seeing the people from the single, uh the single family households and the single working mom household be in DC or be rich or disturbed their plans. So I think they want to make sure that there is not a world where essentially a Barack Obama can happen again because that is a person who, from the sounds of it, wouldn’t be able to exist and be able to have the  [?] be able to have the um have the pac that he had with with without the without assistance. So anybody who comes from outside of this world can never get this kind of power again. And that’s how I see it. Like this there’s a I don’t know, I don’t know if my tinfoil hat is too tight [laugh] or what, but it’s really hard for me not to see because I’m like, you know, these there’s other types of families here who can’t fit into that into that policy. And I think that’s the point that they don’t fit into it and they disappear. And in a couple of generations, we don’t have to deal with them. So y’all I want to bring the happy news. Um. You know, there’s certain people I have horrible parasocial relationships with a lot of people. And within the last ten years they have been dropping like flies. One that has sustained is my relationship with Sade. Sade is the soundtrack to my mama’s 30s, which means it’s the soundtrack to my childhood. And I love her so much. And I’ve been so I’m so excited about this news. This news comes from Variety and it reads, The reclusive singer songwriter will release Young Lion as part of the transa benefit album, arriving on November 22nd. The project, assembled by the nonprofit Red Hot, is intended to support transgender awareness and spotlight both trans and non-binary artists. Young Lion is dedicated to Sade’s son Isaac, who identifies as a transgender man. Variety, stop saying people identify as a transgender man, just say who is a transgender man. That makes it so we’re not making people’s um gender stories up for debate. Any who, we’re being positive. Quote, “We started talking about all the gifts that trans artists have given the um world and wanted to create a red hot project that centered and celebrated those gifts,” says Dust Reid, who put together transa alongside artist Massima Bell. We hope to create a narrative that positions trans and non-binary people as leaders in our society insofar as the deep inner work they do to affirm who they are in our current climate. We felt this is something everybody should do. Whether you identify as trans and non-binary or otherwise. If you took the time to explore your gender, get in touch with the feeling side of yourself and maybe we will have a future oriented around values of community, collaboration, care and healing. So not only am I excited that this is going to exist in the world, obviously, and and I love Sade, so I mean, she could really be releasing a song around a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and I would tune in. To listen to it. But I also think that there is such this anti LGBTQ um IA+ place narrative specifically as it pertains to Black people. And I think a lot of times when I see um things that intersect queer news, trans news or ideas and Black folks, usually it has a cis, heterosexual Black person as villain and as trans person as victim. And I like the idea of a Black mom, a Black mom who we love, who who is not fame guzzling, or there’s just none of those narratives that people can put around it. She minds her business in between projects, and this statement is not just saying she loves her Black child who is trans, but also it’s this bigger public thing, um just simply by her giving her art. And I think it really pushes back on this narrative that cis heterosexual Black women specifically, specifically cis heterosexual, older Black woman um are inherently transphobic or inherently homophobic. And I just love that because I think that there’s just a few artists. I mean, every artist that um Auntie Kaya listed at the festival is one of those people. But there are some huge legacy acts and artists who have these cultural caches and power in our, in our in our society to make things seem normal, to make things seem respectable. If Sade says she’s okay with something it hit us different than if–

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –anybody else says it from from the Gen Z generation the if if um even when I was watching um Marlon Wayans um speak to uh that big the Shannon, Shannon Sharpe. Um I was like that big [?] and Sharpe he was um Marlon Wayans was talking about his trans child and there was something inside of seeing a Black man accept his trans child with all the language fumbling that we get and just all that stuff and I all those critiques that we can give, how that was explored. At the end of the day, that was a cis heterosexual Black man embracing his queer trans child publicly. And there’s been such a narrative that Black folks um don’t like trans people, don’t like queer people. And I love that this is going to exist as a counternarrative for that. And it’s happening in a way that feels organic to Sade’s brand, that feels generative. It doesn’t feel like a political thing. It feels like, what would you do if you had a child who you love and who and and who you saw their journey, as a Nlack mom. You would make something called Young Lion. And it is so her and it doesn’t say it like I’m having a hard time articulating what I’m like, exactly what I’m saying, but it sounds like something Sade would say, You know, it does. It feels like something that come came from her core that she gave to this thing. It doesn’t feel like she was politically um seduced into creating something. It feels like, oh no, this feels authentic to the Sade that we know. And I just I just love that this was coming out. I love that this exists. I can’t wait to hear it, um on this as well. There are a couple of other acts that are um that are on this. So a lot of the people, a lot of the a lot of the news stories that I’ve seen have been around Sade. But according to this article, Sam Smith is going to be a part of it, which is uh which is um sounds about right. But also Andre 3000 is going to be a part a part of it um with when it comes to original songs, there’s going to be a lot of mixes with this. But there’s also gonna be original songs and Andre 3000’s counted as one of the people who are going to be giving original songs. And I think that’s amazing. I think that Andre 3000 is so respected in patriarchal hip hop, and he’s always on somebody’s top ten list. And I think him doing something that shows that he is in support and and has an open mind around queerness and transness is really powerful. And I’m all for this and I can’t, you know, of course, Dwayne Wade and and and Gabrielle Union. I’m just all for more Black people, specifically older Black people, middle aged Black people who get it being public about getting it because I think it’s such a great, great, great counter-narrative. So I wanted to bring this all to y’all because I was excited and hopefully my excitement is contagious and I’m getting my little midriff ready. I have my incense blowing. I got my I’m gonna be vegetarian for the three minutes and thirteen seconds that song is, however long the song is. I’m like, oh I’m vegetarian I’m going to light some incense. I’m going to have some I’m going to have some sheer curtains, you know how you Sade gets you, into the mood. So I’m going to–

 

Kaya Henderson: Listen. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I’m I’m– 

 

Kaya Henderson: For for me, I’m a have to find a way to make myself a pull back slick pony tail. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Okay. [laughing]

 

Kaya Henderson: My my big silver hoops, my all black dress with no shoes on. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Okay. 

 

Kaya Henderson: In my bright, bright red lipstick. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Okay. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Honey. Because yes, yes, yes. I mean, first of all, um any time you hear that Sade is bringing out some new music, it is a cause for celebration. Um. Definitely soundtrack of my teens, 20s, 30s, all of the things. This is actually interesting. So I had two posters in college that I had on my on my walls for all four well, one for four years and one for three years. Um. One was this huge poster of Sade and one was the Wings poster of Michael Jordan. And and I carried them with me from my freshman dorm to my sophomore apartment to my junior dorm to my senior um apartment. And what was interesting is Sade lasted the whole of college and Michael Jordan did not. Because I decided, Myles, that I didn’t want to mess with Michael Jordan because he was not using his platform for good. In fact, I felt like the whole entire world, if Michael Jordan said eat strawberry ice cream, everybody in the world would eat strawberry ice cream. He transcended race, class, gender, everything. And we at that moment in my life as a radical, you know, 20 year old, I was like, you need to be telling these people how to make the world right. You need to be talking about divesting from South Africa. You need to be talking about Rodney King and all of the issues of our time you need to say something about. And I felt like he was not. And, you know, he was like, that’s not my job. The whole I’m not a role model thing. All of that. And while I feel like people have the right to make that choice for themselves, I had the right as a young, sort of strident person to not support that. That’s not where I want to put my time and my energy. And so that brings me right back to to this, right? Like I want to put my time and energy and support around people who use their platform to extend their power to other people to fight for what’s right and to do good. And and again, like I don’t I don’t get to criticize you if you don’t want to use your platform, but I do get to take my money, my time, my attention and put it in the places that I think are going to help change the world. So I appreciate Sade for that. I think, Myles, you’re right that not just Sade because she’s a singer or she’s the bomb and she’s super cool and we all love her, but because she is a 50 or 60 something year old Black woman, um it matters differently than other people doing this. And the other thing that this made and and the other thing that this made me think about is everybody that you named, all of the stars that you name who have done this have family members um who are trans. And the reason why Black people can’t be anti trans or anti gay is because we all got family members who who who who are who reflect the rainbow. And I think that um while it messes up our our supposed church, you know, image or whatever, for some people. If you really know Jesus, you know that the Jesus that I serve created us all. And you could be mad at me if you don’t like that statement, um but we are all part of the human family. And so I think when we think about each other as family, it makes us stand up for the people who we love. And so shout out to Sade, shout out to everybody in our family and let’s find more ways to to see each other as family members. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And and before you go um De’Ara, as well, just to guess everything you said about the Jesus you serve. But if we really want to get real about Black people and church, also about who is serving these choirs. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Honey, listen. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And– 

 

Kaya Henderson: The choir director. The pianist. [laughter]

 

Myles E. Johnson: So we ain’t even got to go far back to BC, to find Jesus–

 

Kaya Henderson: Listen. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –was okay with LGBTQ people. Some part of y’all are okay with it, too, because who’s making the music? 

 

Kaya Henderson: That’s right. That’s right. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Myles, Thank you for bringing this to the pod. I’m very excited. I’m also excited you left them out but it makes sense because you’re a young. But Wendy and Lisa, who are lesbian icons. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes. Yes.

 

De’Ara Balenger: Okay. Who are part of Prince and the revolution. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Doo doo do doo. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Who are the co-writers of Computer Blue. Have done–

 

Myles E. Johnson: I love that song. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: They have they’re–

 

Myles E. Johnson: [pause] Are they the ones who talk?

 

De’Ara Balenger: Yes. They’re on, they’re–

 

Myles E. Johnson: Oh Wendy. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: –part of the project. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Oh yes

 

De’Ara Balenger: Wendy and Lisa. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Right. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yeah yeah. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Hello, Wendy. Yes, Lisa. [laughter] [humming]

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yes. 

 

Kaya Henderson: You know you know you got a whole wife. Right? [laughter]

 

Myles E. Johnson: Y’all it’s early– it’s early. It’s early. That didn’t even click me that that’s– 

 

De’Ara Balenger: They–

 

Myles E. Johnson: That didn’t even click to me. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Well, and they have. They did an I would die for you cover. That’s on this. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: That’s a–

 

Myles E. Johnson: Wow. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: –part of this project. So I’m so excited about all of this. But also so the nonprofit that put this together, Red Hot, I didn’t know about this nonprofit and they’ve been doing–

 

Myles E. Johnson: Me either. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: –this since like the early 90s um around, you know, the Aids epidemic. And so they’ve worked with all kinds of incredible artists from David Bowie and like so many um and so one– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Maybe we can get them on the podcast? 

 

De’Ara Balenger: I, absolutely and I there’s nothing that I love more or that I think is actually more effective to to changing hearts and minds than projects like this. Like when we– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Absolutely. 

 

De’Ara Balenger: –really start to fold in culture and and and sort of and to start from that place to then create a work that really pulls people in and celebrates people. Um. I just think that’s that’s where it at. And I want to read something too. So the okay Red Hot executive director, Dust Reid, who assembled transa with artist Massima Bell, told Variety, we hope to create a narrative that positions trans and non-binary people as leaders in our society. In so far as the deep inner work they do to affirm who they are in our current climate. We felt this is something everybody should do. Whether you identify as trans or non, non-binary or otherwise. If you took the time to explore your gender, get in touch with the feeling side of yourself. Maybe we would have a future oriented around values of community, collaboration, care, and healing. Word up. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: [?] 

 

De’Ara Balenger: Red Hot. We’re coming to look for you. Thank you. So thanks so much, Myles. I love this. [music break]

 

DeRay Mckesson: Well, that’s it. Thanks so much for tuning in to Pod Save the People this week, don’t forget to follow us @crookedmedia on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. And if you enjoyed this episode of Pod Save the People, consider dropping us a review on your favorite podcast app, and we’ll see you next week. Pod Save the People is a production of Crooked Media. It’s produced by AJ Moultrié and mixed by Vasilis Fotopoulos. Executive produced by me, and special thanks to our weekly contributors Kaya Henderson, De’Ara Balenger and Myles E. Johnson. [music break]

 

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