Share This Podcast

Republicans unveil the most extreme federal voting restrictions proposed in modern history, Tennessee officials are accused of quietly propping up a payday lender’s failed sports betting operation, and scholars warn the U.S. may be entering the early stages of genocide against trans Americans.

News

New GOP anti-voting bill may be the most dangerous attack on voting rights ever 

How a Tennessee Official Kept Advance Financial’s Sports Betting Company Alive

Experts Warn U.S. in Early Stages of Genocide Against Trans Americans

Follow @PodSaveThePeople on Instagram.

TRANSCRIPT

DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay, and welcome to Pod Save the People. It is February, which means it’s Black History Month, but this is not a regular Black History month. This is the 100th anniversary of commemorating Black History in the United States. Negro History Week started in 1926, and then we get Black History Mon in 1976, and here we are 100 years later. We are pumped about this episode. It’s me, Myles, and Sharhonda here to cover all the news which regard to race, justice, and equity that you might not have heard a take on elsewhere. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at @podsavethepeople, here we go. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

DeRay Mckesson: This is arrest central with this administration, it seems. Here we go. This is DeRay at @deray on Twitter. 

Myles E. Johnson: That is except for my newly free men in Louisiana who broke out of jail. While others are getting locked up, others are getting free. This is Myles E. Johnson at @SunPulpit on Instagram. 

Sharhonda Bossier: And this is Sharhonda Bossier at @BossierSha on Instagram. What a wild week it’s been. I feel like the biggest story has been the arrest of two journalists and two activists related to the church protest in Minneapolis. So as you all saw, federal agents arrested Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, who were two journalists and two Black Lives Matter organizers, Tahearn Cruz and Jamel Lundy. We had a chance to see some of the footage of their arrest and also some of the footage once they were released from jail. So yeah, want to hear from y’all like what’s striking about that for you?

DeRay Mckesson: So, I don’t know where what I was doing, but all of a sudden, I see the alert that Don Lemon has been arrested. And I’m like, what? You know because I had just seen that two days before, they tried to arrest him unsuccessfully. The judge was like, nothing was, he didn’t do anything. He obviously wasn’t an activist. He obviously wasn’t a protester. And Don Lemon didn’t break into a church. So like, the judge was very clear about that. But they did arrest Nekima and they arrested the other actors. So when I saw the alert, I was like oh, this is nuts. It doesn’t make sense to me. This is certainly going to backfire. But it also highlighted to me how far they’re willing to go to accomplish the goal. Like they are like, you know, in another time the backlash to something like this, I feel like would be so strong that it would be, you just wouldn’t do it. But they’re like, it don’t matter. And you know, CNN releases a strongly worded statement. The NABJ releases a statement. And Don comes out and Don is Don, he does press, he’s like, you know, I won’t be beaten up about this and da da da. So that was interesting and you know Don will manage this message. I hope that his arrest actually helps people understand just how wild the moment is because I’ve seen people sort of excuse it or like just make excuses about why they don’t need to pay attention. So I hope the Don thing helps them pay attention, but what what actually shocked me was the video from the Black woman journalist whose name I do not have on hand. But Georgia, Georgia is filming it from inside her house and you see the agents outside, she’s narrating and she’s like, my kids are here da da. And, you know, obviously, my my day job is around policing. But the thing that I always have to remind myself is that it only takes one person to change your life. One random government official who decides to send the police to your house. One agent that shows up at your door, like and they are some of the most privileged people because you know their arrests become these national stories and da da da. But I was like, I had never heard of her before. And all of a sudden she is like now part of this national firestorm, but this administration is just willing to go hard. And the last thing I’ll say is that it also reminds me, I don’t know if we talked about it here, but the FBI raiding the Washington Post reporter’s house because a lot of people have whistleblown to her or like had leaked information or complained about the administration and the FBI raids her house. And you’re like, they really are going you know full throttle to make sure that the media does not criticize them. 

Myles E. Johnson: So, I remember, I think I put this in the group chat, I believe, that I kind of secretly hoped that Don Lemon would get arrested. This is way before there was anything for him to get arrested about. I wouldn’t have said that on air, because I don’t wish that on anybody, just like, happenstance, but I thought he would be a really good person to get arrested. And I have to be honest with you, now that it has happened, I’m like a little deflated by it. Like, I think I had like this kind of weird thing in my imagination where it was going to maybe illuminate some of his like neoliberal audience to some stuff. I thought that maybe it was also going to give a pathway for the Democrats, like the kind of like establishment Democrats to be more aggressive or just just to unleash something, but it just didn’t. It just kind of like folded into like, you know, that kind of soft milk toast nothing that like everything on the left kind of gets like folded in to and it just was like, oh, this is just another thing for the newly radical wine moms to like talk about, but like it’s not getting to that point that I have in my imagination. So yeah, I kind of feel a little lukewarm about it now that this happened. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I mean, I just like, is it for you anyway, because they didn’t spend a lot of time in jail or like, what is it you just haven’t seen the reaction you thought you were going to see? 

DeRay Mckesson: Wait, can we get T-shirts made that say, is that all there is? Because that that was a line. Myles, I’m going to give you that. We only are talking about five minutes. Is that all there is, is a line. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Is that all there is?

Myles E. Johnson: Well, we would definitely get sued because that is taken by one, Peggy Lee, one of my favorite vocalists, white women vocalists. You know, I love a Doris Day. I love a Peggy Lee, too. I exist in multiplicities. Um. [laughter] But yeah, I think probably what’s more so attached for it for me, and I’ve had like conversations digitally about this, like with strangers, like in the comments section. And then, of course, with like friends and stuff like that, that like this moment specifically for us who have always been young, but always inside of the working poor, always maybe interested in radical politics, it has been so like illuminating how things aren’t gonna change. It has been so illuminating that like no matter how big like the fascist regime gets, nothing’s going to necessarily open people’s minds on either side to the whole system needing to be revolted against. And like, I think in my head, I thought Don would be, would be like some type of catalyst. Obviously not it because Trump did it to Don, but I thought it was gonna be more of a catalyst. It just is disappointing to see how it just goes right back to bipartisan news as usual and and not anything more elevated than that. Cause just in my hand, this would be the thing that made me think differently about law and order. This will make me think differently about the constitutions and the institutions and the documents that we pledge allegiance to, and what maybe now that we see that there is no rules and there is no law and there’s no order, what should we be doing now based off of those new rules, but you know. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I think it’s telling for me that like they went after Black reporters and Black organizers first, right? Um. Like going after the Washington Post reporter in some ways kind of makes sense, right, based on their logic because this person had been covering for whistleblowers, right. What is interesting to me, though, is like, again, the targeting of Black organizers and journalists, but also because they were disrupting a religious service, which is also, like the optics of that provide a little bit more cover. So I’m wondering if we think the combination of like this being about Black journalists and organizers and the disruption of a religious service provided just like the perfect set of conditions and the perfect cover for them to go in, or if we’d think they’d go after these folks no matter who they were. DeRay, you got thoughts on that? 

DeRay Mckesson: I do ish, what I’m about to say, I can’t attribute to my own wisdom, but I swear to God, I like watched a video or something that said this in a much longer way. But I do think that the last decade of protests, like when I was in the street, it was new to us. And we were all shocked by every arrest and every tear gas, every da da da. And there’s something that’s happened that I’m very neutral about, but that has been absorbed into the culture. So like, Don’s arrest 10 years ago would have been truly wild. And now it is sort of like another arrest that happens. That is, I don’t know, Myles probably has better language for it, but like the spectacle is not spectacly anymore cause it’s sort of just like in the air. The hard part is that there’s a style of organizing and a style of activism that relies on the spectacle. And I, and you know, like what do you do when it doesn’t spectacle the way the spectacle spectacles, like uh, you know they use sort of where like that is sort of an interesting thing. And I will say, you know at work we’re trying to work on this, but I’ve seen eight million things about ICE being bad, and there isn’t actually a consensus about it, which it feels really interesting. Like, at least on the left, in a way that, what does abolish ICE actually mean in real life? I don’t know. I’ve talked to the pollsters. I’m as nervous as anybody else that people actually mean no more bad officers. They don’t mean no department that is ICE, right? We lived through this with the defund space. But a lot of people are pissed off. But the question becomes, like, what do you do with it? And that is where I feel like people get stuck. So when I think about like Don or any of this stuff. It’s like, if we don’t figure out how to put forth a vision for like structurally how to get there, I do think we will find ourselves rehashing exactly what happened in 2020, because it’s in my mind, the only image I can have is like, there’ll be all this energy with nowhere to go. It’s sort of like energy that’s in a bottle just swirling around. And I feel like we are in the bottle swirling because there isn’t like a clear thing. Obviously we can do a Bernie. I don’t know if you saw the vote. But Bernie actually did put a resolution to at least get rid of the $75 billion, like to cut back that. And it didn’t pass, but it got all the Dems and actually got a couple of the Republicans. So that is an option. But yeah, I just what it feels like to me is that there’s all this energy in a bottle swirling around. It’s a lot of energy and it’s a tight bottle. But the question is, like, where does it go? And I think Don’s arrest is another good thing, swirling the energy in the bottle. But I don’t think it has a place to go. 

Sharhonda Bossier: I think also about like the chilling effect that these arrests have on people who might be thinking about like actually doing something disruptive. Right. We’ve been talking about what can people do to actually gum up the works. And like if you can be shot for standing in between an ICE officer and someone that they’re pushing, right, if you can be arrested because you participate in the disruption of a church service, then are people going to start to think differently about how willing they are to put their lives right on the line. To try and gum up the works is a question that I have. 

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

[AD BREAK]

Sharhonda Bossier: I think also about the sort of the proxy stress, right? So like, I feel very anxious in this moment, right, there were a set of demonstrations in Los Angeles at one of the federal detention facilities downtown, the officers are spraying people with pepper spray, right. They’re doing the thing that they usually do with their quote unquote “less than lethal rounds.” And even though I was not in town for that set of protests, right I’m watching the footage and I’m checking on my people and I can feel the stress in my body, I can feel myself be triggered by what I’m observing, and it is making me think differently about how I want to show up in this phase of my life, right? As someone who’s a little older, as someone who has gotten a little bit more set in her ways, right, and as someone who is like, I don’t know, maybe I’m not a street protester anymore. But it also made me think a little bit about like the impact on my health and on my body. We’ve talked a lot about one of the reasons why, all of us actually on this pod are so invested in our physical well-being right now is because we feel like that’s a way to resist the system and the systems attempt to take us out the game early. And I want to make sure that we talk a little bit about the Washington Post reporting on Black mortality rates, right, and how much of the difference between the average lifespan for white people and the average lifespan for Black people in this country can be attributed to stress. And thinking about what we are all experiencing and seeing in this moment as another example of the kind of weathering that they talk about that wears on Black people. 

Myles E. Johnson: I am so tired of these reports, like I’m so tired of them. If anything is published that tells me, oh, yeah, white supremacy is a system and the system is working, and all the different ways to say that, I’m really, really, really, really exhausted by those things. If like really briefly, just so I can tie in what I was saying earlier to this point, too. So I was in the digital wilderness, commenting on people’s stuff and being a troll. And so I got into a dispute with somebody who had commented on something that I said, and it kind of stopped me in my tracks because it paralleled so much of what, like, I hear people say in my life. And I just want to read a little bit from it. I’ll leave the person’s name out just in case they, you know, even though it’s public, but, you, know, whatever. “I hear you, but this is America. How many times do we need to be told that both parties are vile? We pick the lesser evil and fight them while attempting to build a more radical world. Unfortunately, we will never have a progressive or radical candidate. Even amongst the Marxist, communist, and socialist parties, I don’t hear any of them talking about Nat Turner or John Brown. I fear a lot of us don’t know the cost of real change, war and bloodshed, and we have to be the ones to deliver it. There is no other way. Any other conversation is privileged, and I say this with love. Do you still think that America will give up its power? The natives still aren’t free. Hell, we still ain’t free. The bigger picture is revolution that we are afraid to have.” And you know I lived in hoods everywhere. I lived in the hoods in Atlanta, now in the Midwest. I was in Flatbush in Crown Heights in my time in Brooklyn. And anytime I would talk to people who were not engaged in politics or people who were newly not engaged in politics, they all came with the same conclusion that the only way to actually get freedom is through bloodshed. And we are a convenient, comfortable generation who would rather complain about it than do those things. And then also, you know, suicidal in some ways, but you know maybe not suicidal enough in other ways. So like people are like like like, my life ain’t that bad. I’ll take a little voter suppression and something in my water, rather than you know doing what it has to be done. And I’m not here trying to like advocate for violent revolution, but what I am thinking about often is how do most people feel? And I think that was the kind of like my thing with the Don Lemon thing, is that this kind of, I’m growing more and more frustrated with this like Black neoliberal class that is super loud, and then we see the results of it and we see more people not voting. We see more, and I hear more people talking about violent revolution than I’ve ever talked about, which to me also sounds like they do not believe in the peaceful routes anymore. And that to me is what’s been swirling in my head. I don’t have an answer for that. I’m just, it’s what’s got me down. 

DeRay Mckesson: Myles, I actually, so I’m with you there in a way that I didn’t anticipate that I’d be with you. 

Myles E. Johnson: You’re not with me because I didn’t say nothing because you can’t sue me. [laughter]

DeRay Mckesson: Oh goodness. But I would put something like or and I would put something sort of before what you said, is that I feel like in my own sort of arc, I’ve seen the general space become smarter about things that they were not smart about. Like they sort of just have, like the the public conversation has moved around race and justice in a way that’s really cool. But what it hasn’t moved around is solutions that people can galvanize around. So like I think about ICE, I think about the end of the police, whatever is that I think there has to be a rallying cry that people can like see for them to say whether they’re willing to risk their life for it. And I actually don’t think that has ever been delivered for people. And I think that something as nebulous as that people experience as nebulous as like defund or abolish ICE da da da, is not enough, like there’s not enough there there for anybody but the farthest left to be willing to risk their life about and I think about it because like we were in this policy meeting about ICE the other day and you know, there are all these interesting things that you actually can do and but like, there’s this question of like, how far should border patrol be able to patrol the border. And half of our team is like, they should just literally be able to patrol with the border, like one mile like if you sneak past border patrol, and you win, you got it, you know like it’s over. And there’s some people are like, you know, 10 miles or 20 miles. But I say that to say in a small way, that was like one of a package of things, but it’s like, that at least is clear enough for you to be like, I willing to fight for that. Like I can fight for one of these options. And I do think that I want to figure out how we give people things that feel more tangible for them to fight about. I too am actually frustrated by the stress studies that are like Black people are really stressed and therefore die early. Not because it’s not true, I know it’s true. And I’m not even frustrated because I think there’s a fatigue with people knowing it’s true. My frustration is that I don’t think people know what to do with it. And I think that people get overwhelmed by hearing all these things and not having a, like again, it’s like the it’s like the bottle with all the energy and there’s nowhere to go. I think that is driving people crazy and that makes me nervous. 

Sharhonda Bossier: I mean, we’ve talked about a number of ways though, right, that people are reacting to this kind of research, right? You’ve got rest is radical, right. You’ve gotten nap ministry, you’ve got people who are like, I’m moving out of the big city, buying myself some acres out here, growing all my stuff, living my slow days, right I’m a homesteader now because that works better for me. It’s, you know, in all of the ways that we talk about the things that impact our health. And so I do think we are starting to see Black people in ways that you know, we can say, again, like this system is gonna have to work harder to kill me, you know? And I don’t always know if we are doing the work of helping people realize how many options there are to take better care of themselves in this system. I do think that, you know, we’ve also talked a lot about this, right? The importance of community and leaning on each other in this moment, because that’s the only way that we make it through and that’s the only way that some of the things that are stressing us out become a shared burden or, you, know load. But I’m curious, Myles, like when you hear you know people talk about literally extracting themselves from a system that tries to extract so much from them. I know you’ve had like your own phases of thinking differently about your diet. Right. Like you’ve been a raw food vegan. You know like those kinds of things like how much of that is also about insulating yourself from this system that is out to destroy you? 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, that kind of like goes into what I was thinking as like kind of both of you were speaking. Like, and again, I think that when I speak like this, like I fear I sound pessimistic or nihilistic, which I’m not around my like own individual life. I’m not even around that like when I think about the grand scheme of things, but it’s like so many of these decisions have been made. So like, by the time I decide to be a raw food vegan and I take my own individualistic individual steps to do that, those decisions have been made. By the time somebody has said, oh, I’m going to live off the grid or do those things, people are already choosing individualism. By the time somebody decides that I’m gonna take my health in my own hands and I’m to get this amount of protein and this vegetable and I’m gonna do all this stuff because I already know the medical industry is not going to be there for me and damn sure it’s probably not gonna be there for me in 20 years when I turn 50 or 30 years when I turn whatever you know, whatever. Those decisions have already been made which help exploit the people who can’t make those decisions even better, and helps the people who are already making those individualist decisions not care about bettering a system because they already made their individual system. And I think that’s just where America is going. Like, I think, that is where we are at. I think that’s where we are going, and it’s only going to get worse and worse and worse. I was watching uh like a couple of videos around this, like, podcaster named Asmongold. And he’s like a far right podcaster, like really disgusting person, but Hasan Piker got taken off of Twitch and he was using Asmongold as an example of somebody who has language on Twitch and has said vile things on Twitch and who has not been banned, right? And Hasan got banned for saying Zionist pig and this person said so many things. So as I was listening to Asmangold, I was chilled not by the hate, I was chilled by the accuracy. I was chilled by the fact that he was saying that we are eventually going to have power as white supremacists. Everybody knows it. That’s why they’re not capitulating to the left. That’s why they’re not doing this. And every all these kind of like neoliberals on the left who are still going to incrementalize themselves and distract themselves by these little edits they can do to these policies that is a part of the plan because what we’re doing is going to be so quick, so big, so fast, that all the [bleep] that they’re worrying about won’t even matter because they’re going to be locked out by the time we’re in power and that reorients like priorities to me like like you know what I mean? Again not just because he said it like or whatever. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Right. 

Myles E. Johnson: But it’s it’s what I’ve already been feeling and what like history has already shown me. 

Sharhonda Bossier: I’m compelled by that actually quite a bit. 

Myles E. Johnson: I’ll send some videos, chile. 

DeRay Mckesson: No, I’m not compelled by it, I’m not. 

Sharhonda Bossier: No? Say more. 

DeRay Mckesson: I think that white supremacists have successfully commandeered the internet. And I think the successful commandeering of the internet is perhaps skewing our understanding of something. And I think that if we can figure out how to do the offline stuff and be sneaky and really as brilliant as white people have always been on the internet, I think we got this. Because I don’t think the white, I mean, none of us think the white supremacists are like you know, particularly smart, but I do think they have like mastered the commandeering of all of the things that we use to to like, get this far the first time and they are like, yeah, this is bad. Let us just take our final swing. I understand why they would say a version like that. But that is a part of what they do is that they tell these lies so crazily that we start to entertain them in general. I mean, this is like, what is Trump? 

Myles E. Johnson: I don’t want to misrepresent what he was saying as like, oh my goodness, he was saying this crazy thing. Here it is, right? I think that I probably to a lot of people say things that are like bold, but I’m like, uh I kind of feel like y’all are not in the present. Like I feel like you’re not like, like y’all are really here right now. So like I’m able to kind of see past the spectacle of like what he’s trying to present, but you can’t deny the function of it. You can’t, like you can’t deny the truth that there are white supremacist Democrats. You can’t deny the fact that there are people who are working with Republican parties, and that is one of the reasons why the Republican party can be so racist and so oppressive right now is because there has been Democrats colluding and there will still be Democrats colluding. And I believe truly that one of the reasons, why there’s not as much force from the Democrats is because a lot of them are just trying to see how this goes. And a lot of them are just trying to see where this is going. And if they have to be in service of Nazis in 10 years, then that’s what it’s going to be. And I think the reason why it kind of just circles in my head so much is because I think I’m starting to find it very deeply irresponsible to not really tell Black people what’s going on and what would I think of myself if in 15 or 20 years. Asmongold or somebody who was a fan of him or Nick Fuentes is in power now, and now the things and the violence that we see are even worse. Or you know, specifically now and that’s kind of what’s been shaking my spirit now. 

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

[AD BREAK]

Sharhonda Bossier: Speaking of Democrats, you know, there is one Democrat who says that if you buck, she will knuck. And that is Ilhan Omar. We saw her get sprayed with some substance this week as she was holding a town hall and community meeting. We see her security have to intervene. And we’ve seen a little bit of the you know brouhaha surrounding that. I watched that and immediately was terrified for her, I think, especially as somebody who has been in Trump’s crosshairs from the very beginning, somebody who represents a state that is also now in his crosshaires, right? And someone who’s like a petite Black woman and who I think is like just physically, I could feel her vulnerability watching that. And I think, you know, watching her first be a voice of a more progressive wing of the Democratic Party in the face of a new wave of leadership, feel like she’s still trying to hold that ground, even though we’ve seen other people, I think, Myles, to your point, become a little bit more moderate, right? And then in some ways tell us that they’ve had to in order to get anything done, but it feels like, you know, she’s been trying to stay true to who she was and be who her people elected her to be. And I just think, you know, not that I don’t believe that this country has the possibility or the potential to watch this happen and do nothing. But I’m just like, she’s just out here. You know what I mean? Like she felt very unprotected to me. And so I’m curious what y’all thought when y’all saw that footage?

Myles E. Johnson: Obviously, it was a horrifying video, not making light of the moment that she just had, but you know in light of the other videos that we’ve seen, I think that it was also a comforting video that that there was no blood, there was no uh. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

Myles E. Johnson: She’s alive. So that was like a comforting thing to see because we have not seen that um on the left or the right side for a few years now, like you know when we usually see videos like that. Two things, first thing is, I always get shocked in these moments how xenophobic we are. It takes me out and, you know, I try to look at darkness in order so people’s hatred doesn’t surprise me. So I try, I try to look at my own darkness and darkness of others so I can like kind of meet people there and um meet those situations there. But yo, a lot of Black people have surprised me how like, they’re like, A, they ain’t a Black woman and that’s not our Black woman. So like that’s always going to kind of like gag me if I’m being honest with it. And the second thing is, is how much I wish I could have a conversation with her and AOC, and maybe even Zohran, and not for any other reason, but just curious as to what they really think. You know, I like I’ve been working on this essay for a minute called Hope is an old technology. And in that essay, I was really just thinking about how much people who peddle hope have been like peddling this kind of soulless drug to people that has helped lull so many people to sleep, that has helped disillusion so many people and because I see them as more radical choices, because I’ve seen them as more revolutionary choices, even though they’re still inside of this system, it makes me wonder where is their status of hope? Where are they finding it? And like, what’s really going on? Because what are you seeing that is making you stay in this fight outside of habit, outside of historical moral allegiance to what your ancestors might have done if they were in this point. Like so many people are mapping their current moves onto the ’60s, and I’m like, so, f*** that, what’s going on right now? How are you really feeling? And what is going on in your job or with people that’s making you feel like there is hope? And how do you translate that to other people because that would have had me quit. And I need to know what’s the ingredient outside of–

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

Myles E. Johnson: Because if you don’t let us know, it does look like you’re just a little bit of a liberal zombie because why are you doing that? Let us know your thought patterns. 

DeRay Mckesson: Plus one, we are really xenophobic, but my push to the organ– I have a lot of messages, this will be my new speech message to the organizers is that I think people didn’t think that fighting back against the xenophobia, like in organizing was their job too. And then we got here and now you’re like, now we’re screwed because it’s hurting all of us. And you’re, like, yeah, that is, you know in a world, you know I just wrote this essay called A World Beyond ICE. And one of the things I say in it is that to a white supremacist, all y’all [?] is immigrants. You know what I mean? 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yes, yes. 

DeRay Mckesson: Like you think you think it’s between you and the Haitians and you and the Somalis, to a white supremist who believes in remigration and get rid of every non-Black person, a dumb immigrant means somebody that their citizenship status is negotiable. Like white supremists are not doing this country thing. They think that Black people are like they can decide tomorrow that you are not a citizen too. Myles, you look skeptical of that. I think it’s true. 

Sharhonda Bossier: I mean, this is what the challenge is to birthright citizenship are, right? Like. 

DeRay Mckesson: Yes. 

Sharhonda Bossier: It’s like they they’re talking about, quote unquote, “anchor babies,” but every Black historian has been like, y’all, the next people up are going to be Black Americans who, for the most part, right, are descended from people who were granted citizenship under the Reconstruction Amendments. 

Myles E. Johnson: This is how come I beg of y’all. 

DeRay Mckesson: Go ahead. What you begging? What you beg? 

Myles E. Johnson: To listen to like where we’re at, right? So to a lot of white supremacists, here’s how come, I don’t I don’t I actually have grown to think that’s not true. A, I think a lot of white supremacies, specifically when I listen to Nick Fuentes and Asmongold, will they say racist things? Will they do stereotypes and all that other stuff? Of course they will, but one of the reasons why like academics is like still talking to Nick Fuentes and platforming Nick Fuentes is because there is this erasure of there being like a bloody Black genocide. So it’s not the Klan’s people coming into Mississippi. What most white supremacists think today, think Black Americans have already been defeated. And when you look at the statistics of us having a negative 8% wealth, when you at our statistics when it comes to health, I’m like, well, hold on. You might, you know, have something there when you look at anything you want to measure Black Americans on. We have experienced a social death. Most Black people, unless you have an intervention, a class intervention, are going to be a type of social zombie. That is just what this country manufactures us to be. And when I think like that, then my idea around the xenophobia, A, it makes me think of how fascism comes from those kind of pressure points and those kind of failures of an empire. And then it makes me think of less of, oh, maybe it was wrong by thinking fighting xenophobia was literally fighting xenophobia. Maybe we should find the pressure point of what is creating Black Americans to be so xenophobic. And it’s because we have for generations now totally been looked over and totally disposed of and politically maybe getting to be next to the people who get chosen, but never chosen. So Barack Obama, Vice President Harris, these kind of icons, these archetypes, and these symbols aren’t really us. And then there is, if you look at somebody who is an immigrant who’s Black and a Black American, the immigrant is going to probably have a better success story. And I’m not saying that it’s because of immigrants. I hope that’s very clear. But like I’m not saying that’s because of immigrants, but that is a very powerful, to me, pressure point. And it doesn’t go away just by saying, calling Somalis a stereotype is bad. It goes by, like, really to me. It would go by organizing or having people think and feel around their pains and those pressure points that are making them feel that way and making sure they get it. Again, I talked about housing and reparations and these things that kind of systemically can help Black people that just seem to be ignored now for police or prison, which I think is important work, of course, but and like or whatever the Democrats give us permission to care about. You know? 

DeRay Mckesson: So I’m happy we’re having this conversation because it’s I’m like happy to hear the argument. I think the exact opposite. I actually think that white supremacists think that Black people are the last thing they got to get rid of. Our cultural power is so annoying to them and so frustrating and so I am hearing the last stand of white supremacy being really frustrated with Blackness that they can’t just subsume it. And that it is like a roadblock to the plan. And it has historically always been a road block to the plan that the, that Black people were, you know, there’s a scholar Brandon Terry who talks about how Black people were the like ended the moral case for slavery across the world. And like what that did to white people across the world was a thing. We index white supremacy differently because Nick Fuentes is not actually like a is the arbiter to me. Like I think there are other people who I think are more sort of carry that baton a little differently. He’s just the loudest to me, but I actually read this as a moment where they realize that they need to foment xenophobia in Black people because it serves a political purpose because Black people have so much and have always had the cultural capital both here and everywhere else, and that drives them nuts. 

Sharhonda Bossier: I think what we’re actually seeing is more people get recruited into white supremacy, right? Who are not white or you know what I mean? And I think we see that with like the leader of the Proud Boys, right? And I think in ways that are very clear like the Proud Boys, and I think in ways that are more subtle like Law Roach dressing Lauren Sanchez Bezos, right?

Myles E. Johnson: Oh brother. 

Sharhonda Bossier: So, and I think there is something about Black people being the arbiters of fashion, of cool, right, of culture that people are still trying to tap into while like not having to deal with Black people. Right? And so what they do is they then recruit some of us who are high profile, who are cool, like a Law Roach, right, who are arbiters of cool, right, who can design an esthetic, who are image architects. Right? And they recruit them to do their work. And so now you are like, okay, well, do I do I critique this look? Do I critique his choice, right? I’m just using like a cultural example here because I think we’re talking about Black cultural power. And if so, is that me critiquing this Black person whose success, because we’ve also talked about those like parasocial relationships that we often have with highly visible Black people, right, I’m invested in. So if I’m invested in Law Roach, getting the bag, being the person that everybody wants to go to, love seeing him on my TV. If I call him out for the choice to dress her, right, and to have her as a client, what does that mean? And I think that one of the reasons that he and other you know highly visible Black celebrities and cultural figures get tapped is because exactly this reason, right? Which is like, they recruit folks out of community. They recruit folks away from accountability. Right, and then we find ourselves having a hard time lobbing criticism at people who look like us. And so I think it’s a tactic, it’s tactic that seems to be working. And I think that ironically, the ranks of white supremacists are growing increasingly diverse. 

DeRay Mckesson: Sharhonda, yes, people are being absorbed in to white supremacy. The point that I am trying to make is that I think Blackness is also just being absorbed in a way that is just quicker and more intense. It’s not new, but it’s just quicker, more intense, and I worry that sometimes in the public conversation, Black culture becomes synonymous with Black celebrity, and I want us to always decouple that, because I think that is a misreading of the moment as well. [music break] Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come. 

[AD BREAK]

Sharhonda Bossier: Well, one of the ways that white people have always tried to undermine Black political power in the country is by first locking us out of the franchise, right? Our ability to vote. And then secondly, when they couldn’t do that, figure out every which way to make sure that our votes were tampered with, et cetera. DeRay, I’m going to kick it over to you to kick us off on the news with your story. 

DeRay Mckesson: I’m obsessed with voter ID, like, as a topic, because Candace Owens, who I don’t listen to, but somebody was recounting an argument that Candace Owens has. Somebody I love, respect, huge in my life, was like, you know, Candace made this great comment about da da. And I was like was it great? And so we had this whole conversation about voter ID and he is like sold on voter ID because of Candace. So I’m like, I didn’t know I knew people who listened to Candace Owens. Like I literally just didn’t know and I’m like very close to him. And that put me down this road to be like, am I off or like what’s going on? So then I started asking some other people who like don’t identify as activists because I was just like, what is the what? And I realized that we are losing on voter ID in places that like we should not be losing on voter ID. That like super left people have given up on voter ID and that the left’s messaging about why voter ID is bad is just that voter ID is bad. There is no actual argument. It’s just like voter ID is bad. And then Candace comes and says you need ID to buy alcohol, you don’t need an ID to vote and it, and people are like swayed by that. So that’s how I got on this train I’m like, I missed no photo ID. In the brouhaha around ICE, you might have not seen the Make Elections Great Again Act or the MEGA Act. You get it, it’s a play on MAGA if you didn’t get it. And in the MEGA Act, it would do these things. It would impose strict photo ID requirement. It would create a centralized voter surveillance system in every state. It would mandate constant voter roll purges, gutting the motor voter law that was really important in expanding voter registration using DMV records. It would bar states from counting ballots that arrive after Election Day. It would ban universal mail voting, which states mail a ballot to all registered voters. It would bar the federal funding for voter registration by outside groups. And it would allow you to sue election officials. It would be the single biggest rollback of voting rights since a lot of us didn’t have the right to vote, including Black people and women. There would be no other rollback greater than this, but besides those. And I was struck by this because A, if I didn’t have to prepare for the pod, I don’t know if I would even know this. Like, I don’t know if would see it. None of my friends are talking about it. I just have to look at the news in a special way to prepare for us. So that made me nervous. And then the second is like, they just are like really, they know they’re gonna lose the midterms if all stays the same. So they’re like, ICE is going to be patrolling stations so people aren’t going to come outside and we are actually going to just make this really really restrictive and I just wanted to bring it here because I don’t know, voter id is not my work, I am on the board of rock the vote and shout out to rock the vote. But my day-to-day work is not on voter id and it I am scared about just we don’t have an argument around this stuff. We take for granted that everybody just sort of understands that mail-in ballots are a good thing or that you shouldn’t be able to sue the election official because that feels crazy or people don’t even know that it was a real activist fight to allow you to register to vote when you get a driver’s license. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: It was like a battle that people won to get you registered to vote, like that we just sort of, we forget those things over time and this makes me nervous. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I mean, I I agree. I don’t even know what I would say to someone because the arguments on the other side do sound quite rational. You know what I mean? And I think we’re so used to having ID to do any and everything. And so I’m thinking about how you help people understand the like systemic level impact that this these kinds of requirements have. And again, like the chilling effect, right? So like even if you can have an ID, you can produce an ID et cetera, et cetera, right. It becomes yet another barrier, it becomes yet another hurdle. And it feels like stuff that they’re doing out in the open. You know, I was on a first date a few weeks ago and ended the date when he told me he didn’t vote. And I take that so seriously. And now I’m like, well, [bleep] am I gonna have to ask like, well, was it the ID requirement that got in the way? [laugh] And that’s like a silly example, but I just don’t know how I would argue, like as I’m sitting here listening to you, why this is a set of bad moves, right? It just, it seems logical. It seems in line with what we’re expected to do anywhere and everywhere. Um I mean, even in some ways to get into our phones, right? 

Myles E. Johnson: You know, I’m not I’m not super passionate about um voting. I’ve dated and more than dated many of non-voters. Um but [laughter] but shout out to you and your privileged pool. [laughter] I think what really hits me about this story is how when I think about people who are like like in the Democratic establishment or anybody who’s trying to like activate people, this is a horrible thing to activate people around, too, right? Because to the point, what Candace Owens said is really logical, and then also, there are so many people who do really want immigrants out of their vote. And I’m using immigrants on purpose because it doesn’t matter really if they’re illegal or legal. There are so many people on the left or the right who are compelled by immigrants staying out of their vote and saying that you shouldn’t be talking about this and this should be about people who came off the Mayflower or people who came through the Middle Passage and those are the people who should be talking about it. So it’s like interesting because it’s like the more you advocate for it, it will be the more it looks like a party is trying to get, like the narrative is that, oh, you care about voter ID because you want more illegal immigrants to be able to vote so you can win and not do [bleep]. And that is compelling to a lot of people. That’s that’s the story that I’ve always heard from people is that that’s why the Democrats like like voter ID. And I’m like, ah, how do you get around that one? 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know. DeRay, what what do you say to that one, right. The like the Democrats want it. 

Myles E. Johnson: Neither do they, apparently. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. I mean. 

DeRay Mckesson: Well, I think part of the battle is that we gotta try. I think that we like, what the right sort of has figured out is that like, try everything and figure out what works. We like consultant, consultant, consultant, and one thing doesn’t work and then we sort of give up. You’re like, what is going on? Shout out to the activists don’t do that, but the party definitely does that. And you’re like what are we, this is, we’re losing here guys. I think more people in my organizing have been swayed by the shadiness of vote ID than actually wanting vote like then sort of caring about voter ID as an issue. So if I tell them, did you know that in some places you can only use your like narrow state ID that was issued by this one office in the middle of whatever and they’re like that’s crazy they try that like they are more motivated by like the insanity of them taking something away from you whether you wanted it or not that actually I’ve seen being more of a motivator. Than like the straight up, like, I want to vote, if that makes sense? So I remember I was talking to a big podcaster and I was, I was talking about it. I pulled up his state’s voter stuff. We’re talking through it. And he’s like, that’s crazy. Cause it was like a state where I was walking him through why it is bad that the state law says only universities accredited in your state can use their ID to vote. He was like, this makes total sense. I was like yeah, but what if you go to the University of Buffalo? He was like oh I couldn’t use that idea to vote. You’re like, he’s like, and he was more outraged by that than sort of like the the sort of value based thing about voting, if that makes sense. And I’m sort of, like, whatever gets you there. Like, I’m happy to like, you know, whatever gets us to the thing. Let’s go. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. Well, my news this week is speaking of like wanting to disenfranchise people, and we’ve been talking a lot about like the extractive nature of our economy. And as y’all also know, I have been obsessed with online gambling and online betting, right? And so I came across this story about a payday lender, essentially, in Tennessee, that in addition to pushing for what they call a flex loan, which allowed them to loan up to $4,000 to individuals at a 279.5 interest rate. People could, at that same window, right? I’m picturing the plexiglass now, right, take some of that money and then bet on sports betting. Right? And the story is about how a state legislator, through his connections, with the owners of this business, ensured that that was possible, right? And we’ve talked a lot about like the gaps of regulation, how like our regulations are often playing catch up on stuff like this, particularly with online gambling and some of the prediction market stuff. But I’m bringing this here too, because we’ve also talked about like dollar stores and just all of the ways that like the economy and the hood is set up to rob you. And how incredibly expensive it is to be poor. And if you’re borrowing money at a 280% interest rate, right, and also have the opportunity to gamble in the hopes of making it big, this feels like a place where, I don’t know, people across party lines could come together and score a real win for poor people by imposing some sort of regulation here. But wanted to bring it to the pod, one, because I think people who are listening should know that this kind of thing happens. And then two, to hear y’all’s reactions to it. 

DeRay Mckesson: Sharhonda, I actually have a question for both of you. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Sure. 

DeRay Mckesson: Because I don’t want to make any assumptions because we’ve now talked about Kalshi, is that what it’s called? 

Sharhonda Bossier: Uh huh and Polymarket. 

DeRay Mckesson: Sharhonda what do you think, this is a push to understand not a push to challenge, that government’s like responsibility around gambling is?

Sharhonda Bossier: I mean, gambling is a vice, right, as is alcohol. 

DeRay Mckesson: Ooh she says a vice. 

Sharhonda Bossier: It is, it is, right? Like. 

DeRay Mckesson: Okay. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Um and like, we’ve always legislated and regulated our vices. You know what I mean? And like sometimes, you know, to a point where we’re like legislating or attempting to any way morality, that’s not what I’m going for. But I am saying these, when you have an economy that looks like ours right now, we have the number of people who are stuck in the bottom rungs of our society, right where you, where economic mobility is a farce and people are trying to figure out the thing that they can do to make it big, to earn money, that might be selling pictures of their feet on the internet, that might be trying to place a sports bet and hit a parlay, right, but people are going all in out of desperation. And I think it’s incumbent upon our government to protect us from these predatory entities. That is where I think we are we’re losing the battle. It’s not that these things exist I don’t have anything inherently against gambling right like I go to Vegas sometimes I play my little five dollar blackjack for a little while until it gets too rich for my blood, right? Like I don’t have any issue with that. I have an issue with the government and and legislators in particular, right this is why Donald Trump Jr is one of the advisors for a prediction market, right knowing that people are spending their life savings from a place of desperation because there’s no other viable pathway out of poverty and out of this cycle and letting it happen to the benefit of the ultra rich. 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah I think that was one of the like more disturbing parts of the article was that wasn’t it the gambling company–

Sharhonda Bossier: Yes, is in the lending place, yes. 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, I’m like, I’m like that is some nasty, nasty work. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yes. 

DeRay Mckesson: Can you all explain it to people who don’t get it? 

Myles E. Johnson: So, how I imagine it is that just like you will go to, like, a same day loan place, you can also gamble there. So, like, you could go and get this, like $4,000 loan, and then also in the same complex or in the same whatever store, you can go ahead and gamble your money away as well. And it’s right there, so you only got to make but two steps in order to ruin your life, which is a little wild. I think if I’m remembering your question correctly, but I think that my stance is always that a government should be making sure that as many people in it’s society should be living in its highest expression, should be living specifically in a place like America that we should all be able to sustain when it comes to food and shelter. And that to me, it’s not really about just killing the predatory nature of these companies. It’s about killing the atmosphere that makes that predation possible and generating policies that make that predation less and less possible. So I’m always, I’m not always convinced about going after the predator. Because it’s going to be some new [bleep], like, you know what I mean? 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

Myles E. Johnson: Every single day they, even the polymarket stuff, like, that is so that is so loopholed, like like in order to be able to get away with that, like, they’re always–

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

Myles E. Johnson: –going to think of a different, different way. And then to do it, is really about, to me, changing the container that we’re all in that makes that kind of predation possible. 

DeRay Mckesson: I love that. I asked because I don’t have, you know, I feel like I spent so much time in a specific part of the world that I don’t think I have a deep sense of what the government’s responsibility is around sort of this. Like, besides, like, don’t scam people and like, you know, make sure there are rules and fairness, which is why I wanted to know what you all thought. And people know gambling is not not bad. But like, do people not know that payday lending is bad? Or is it is it the politics of desperation that allow these industries to remain? Like I remember I I cashed my first check at the corner store across my first job when I was 14 years old. And I was so pumped to get money that day that I was like, whatever. And I remember my father finding out being like, DeRay, we got to open up a bank account. I’m like, bank account, dad, I can get it right now. He like, you signing over your da da da. I’m, like, but it’s a little bit of change. I just didn’t know what a bank account. Like, I didn’t, know anything else. And when I understood something else, I was like, okay, well that I’m not giving away my money to the, I just didn’t understand it. So I guess I’m confused, like how these things remain so widespread. I’m not confused at why people gamble, but I am confused by like the enormity of participation. Does that make sense? I’m missing something, I don’t know. 

Sharhonda Bossier: I’m like, you watch any sports game now, right? Like FanDuel is is a sponsor, right. Like they are coming at you every which way and they are not talking about it as like gambling in a lot of ways. You know what I mean? People are like, oh, I placed a bet and I like won $5, right, and so no one thinks they’re doing the kind of gambling that they’re talking about on the bulletin board where they’re like, call this 1-800 number if you, you know. Because it’s so subtle now, right? It’s like, I think Giannis is gonna hit a three in the third quarter and then it happens and then you’ve won your little $5, but you were watching the game anyway. It’s your fantasy football league that you had to pay into, you know what I mean? It’s like all these little ways that it’s just slowly crept more and more into our into our lives. And a lot of the big sports leagues, right, again, having full on official partnerships with these gambling platforms have benefited from it, right? Because maybe you would watch your NFL team on the you know the days they were playing, but now you’ve got this fantasy league and you can pick players from all across the teams and you’re betting on all these different things or predicting what’s gonna happen here, here, or here. And so now you’re watching every game that’s on because you got to watch players across teams, right. So everybody is vying for your attention and everybody is vying for your dollar. And the fact that those two things have come together in this way. And the fact that they’re like, how do we get more money? Cause you can’t afford a ticket to go to the game, right? So how else do we get you to place bets on these things? How else do we benefit from this? And this is yet another way, like reaching deeper and deeper into our lives. But again, my visual is is similar to what Myles described, right. I’m imagining a plexiglass window and I’m in line in this line to take my, you know, 280% interest rate loan. And then I’m in line in this line to bet on whether or not Rihanna and ASAP Rocky are gonna have another baby. You know what I mean? 

Myles E. Johnson: And America doesn’t know that you can drown in shallow water just as much as deep. So I think sometimes we wait for like a big, deep tragedy to happen. You’re like, oh [bleep], started wearing black and white and and swastikas. Oh, I guess we in Nazi [?]. It’s like, no, it can look goofy and still kill your ass. I think that like sometimes when it comes to like the nihilism and desperation and the suicide culture that we live in, specifically if you are somebody in an under class, that we need to take off the Lee Daniels indoor Tyler Perry filter that we put on top of it. It does not always look like that. It looks like I just got some sneakers too and this is just the life that I’m living. The life that I’m living today, I have no idea that it will be better next week. That’s how I’m living those things. So even though the desperation is so in the air that I wouldn’t say that like oh this mama got $5 and, and oh, I just need to, I’m just betting. Like, I don’t think there’s too much of that happening. I think it’s just baked in. And I would dare to say, so I’m just thinking out loud, but I would dare to say that these in-person places are trying to catch up to the digital spaces because so many of the things, whether you’re talking about Klarna, whether you’re talking about Cash App having loans, even like I do um invoice pay and now in the invoice pay in the bill and the bill app that so many people who are in a gig economy and a freelance economy use, now they offer you, oh, you want your money faster? We’ll give it to you, but we’re just going to take 10 or 5%. So so many of our new digital financial institutions have absorbed that predatory behavior. And I feel like what we’re seeing now, the one of the reasons why it’s so ridiculous and so absurdist. Like, here’s $4,000, here is a betting machine, is because so many people are taking their suffering and their desperation digitally and brick and mortar is trying to keep up. So with more uplifting news, there’s a trans genocide. There was a news article that went pretty viral, a report released by the Limpkin Institute that let us know that America is in the early stages of a trans-genocide. There was a few reasons why I wanted to bring this to the podcast. I didn’t really have anything to say directly about the article, like any, like, critique around it, but I wanted to maybe stretch it. Because I’ve been, like, really obsessed this week with Mulvaney. She was on the Bud Light can. She was a trans woman and she was on the Bud Light can and Kid Rock and so many conservatives ended up taking their guns and spraying those Bud Light cans and saying no trans people on my Bud Light can. Mind you, it was one Bud Light can that Bud Light sent to her with her face on it. It was not, like something you can buy in stores. And I instantly, when I saw this report, thought about that moment because I think that, again, sometimes certain things aren’t said until there’s conservatives in office. And I get really annoyed by that because it was happening underneath Biden, too. And I’m not saying, of course, that Biden was responsible for it, but this is an erosion that’s been happening. If we’re not able to speak about it or able to talk about it seriously, as something to be taken seriously and not just a quote-unquote culture war issue, then by the time it really gets the gas and people are able to absorb it into policy, it’s really, in many parts, too late. I don’t know any trans person in my life who is not looking to leave America. That is just what’s going on. The second thing that I wanted to bring up around that is that trans in this article is used, but I think that’s because language is a place of failure. So trans, most people, specifically, I know a lot of fishy girls, so like specifically for most people trans is not something that you just know or that you just see. You know if you can see it, that person is clockable is what you would say. You oh, I can clock that you were born biologically male. So what this really is, is a genocide on all visibly queer people. So that’s all people who transgress the established gender binary, which puts a bigger slew of people in danger and makes a bigger slew of people targets, people who would count themselves as trans and people who would not. So I wanted to put that as some perspective. And then also, as I’ve been reminded as soon as today, but then earlier this week is that we have a nice white audience, a big white audience. Um. We have a big audience of people who are maybe more privileged. And I see that as I get like comments in or like messages about like things that I said or in stuff like that and people telling me about, you know, where their status is at in life. And I think that like this is the time to really, if you have any privilege, whatever that looks like, to really extend it to the trans people in your life. You know, if that’s 1% of the population or how many, whatever percent of the queer people, if you own a glass making company, is 1% of your glass-making company trans? Like, like if you, you know what I mean? Like if we know that the established net worth of Black people is negative eight, and we know that Black trans and queer people are the worst inside of the Black community who are doing it, are you doing things in order to like keep the trans people in your life safe, to keep them knowing not just where the fish are, but how to fish, you know, I can’t even tell you how many times somebody has helped me, not just by like giving me something, but by teaching me how to do something or guiding me with something that has like saved like my life in so many ways and still does. Just last year, I um tapped DeRay and Sharhonda to look at stuff and that just does a lot for people. And I think sometimes we can be so either in our heads or individualistic that we don’t think to really reach out. And now that this has been established as an early stage of a genocide, I think there’s some things. Tangible things that we should do, and it really just looks like seeing where you have accumulated wealth and privilege, and not just wealth when it comes to money, but where you have accumulated wealth, and privilege and how can you share that specifically with somebody who is trans?

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. First, thank you for bringing this this article. I’ve shared it with a couple of people in my circle. When I initially saw the headline, I was like, well, that’s a statement. That’s an assertion. You know and I went in, honestly, like, okay, what argument are we about to make here? And I I found it really coherent and compelling, right? Like the case that’s being made. I think you’ve added a couple of shades of nuance, Myles, that are also making me think I had not thought about, for instance, right. Like anyone who is genderqueer, whether they identify as trans or not, is likely experiencing what’s detailed in the research, right? Like the targeting, the violent language, the being locked out of employment, right, in attempt to like destroy people who, to your point, don’t fit neatly within that gender binary. The other thing that it made me think of is I have a couple of people in my life who have legally changed their gender marker and have gotten like passports and IDs and all of that. And they were the first people I thought of when I was reading this, right? Because, clockable or not, right, they have legally said, like, I am trans, right. Or nonbinary. And I think that I had not thought about the people who have not yet done that, right who are also caught up in this. So even in thinking about the trans and nonbinary folks in my life. I’m recognizing based on just what you shared right now, the level of like privilege that they have had in some ways, right? To have employment, they got passports, right, those kinds of things. And so I’m definitely like, oh yeah, this is something that a much wider group is likely experiencing and will continue to experience. It also means though, that this reported 1% is an undercount. Right. That there’s an opportunity for us to kind of broaden the number of people who see themselves as needing to act in response to what’s happening here. 

DeRay Mckesson: What I’ll add is that I’m reminded that a genocide in the flesh is always preceded by genocide in the language and story and in the narrative. And that has been happening with the trans community, especially in a really heightened way. I think about the most transphobic I’ve ever seen in public was during the election. I’d always seen transphobia just like I see homophobia, but it was just so normal for people in a way that I just had I personally had not experienced during the election with Trump and da-da-da. And I simultaneously have seen, and this is like why the issue of it, we talked about earlier with like absorption, I’ve seen so many communities absorb, steal, pilfer things that only exist because the trans community gave them to us. You know, like it’s like sort of wild to watch, but I just have seen the mainstreaming of transphobia while also watching people steal, borrow, barter all the things from trans culture in a way that seems to be happening all at the same time. 

Myles E. Johnson: One last little idea around this. So also what kind of pisses me off, not kind of, what really pisses off about this whole conversation too is I think like it needs to be studied. It will be studied how irresponsibly the trans conversation got absorbed into electoral politics. And just got gutted of all meaning. Like when I think about conversations around gender and being, these are philosophical, existential questions that are okay to have in public. But because, in my opinion, like Democrats won’t actually come up with actual policies that galvanize people, they kind of latch on to these issues where they’re like, oh, we can do that. Oh, you just want to Trans rights? Well, we can do that. Minimum wage is going to stay the same, though. Or these other, we’re not going to do anything around health care in a universal way again, but we can like latch on to that. And I just think that it’s been so irresponsible. And when I look at how everything’s happened, like Mulvaney, the young trans girl who I was talking about, like she went to the White House. And I’m not saying she shouldn’t have gone to the White House, but also she was less than a year in her transition, I believe, when she went to the White House. So like a lot of this in this kind of like absurdist, quick TikTok culture and trying to absorb that into politics has really backfired. And again, I think that we can drown in shallow seas just as much as we can deep. And I think that this was a deep conversation. Transness is a really deep conversation and it got shallowed out and it upsets me. [music break]

DeRay Mckesson: Well, that’s it. Thanks so much for tuning in to Pod Save the People this week and don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save The People and Crooked Media 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 will see you next week. Pod Save the People is a production of Crooked Media. It’s produced by AJ Moultrie and mixed by Charlotte Landes, executive produced by me, and special thanks to our weekly contributors, Myles E. Johnson and Sharhonda[music b Bossier. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.