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It’s chaos, capitalism, and counterprogramming this week: Katie Porter’s office implodes, Turning Point USA takes its culture wars to the Super Bowl, a billion-dollar political betting platform blurs the line between democracy and data, and a Philly creative turns her home into resistance art. DeRay interviews LaShawn Harris, author of Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs & the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City.

 

News

Turning Point USA, group founded by Charlie Kirk, announces Super Bowl halftime counter programming

First she turned her Philly living room into a record store. Then it became an art installation at DesignPhiladelphia.

He upended political polling by creating the billion-dollar betting platform Polymarket. But is it legal?

 

Follow @PodSaveThePeople on Instagram.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

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DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay and welcome to Pod Save the People. In this episode, it’s me, Myles and Sharhonda, back to cover the underreported news with regard to race, justice, culture, and equity. And then I sat down with the acclaimed author and historian LaShawn Harris to talk about her new book, Tell Her Story, Eleanor Bumpurs and the Police Killing that galvanized New York City. I learned a lot in this conversation. Make sure to follow us on Instagram at @PodSavethePeople to stay updated with all things Pod Save the People. Here we go. 

 

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DeRay Mckesson: We are back for another great week in this great United States of America. This is DeRay at @deray on Twitter. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: This is Myles E. Johnson at @pharaohrapture on Instagram. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: And I’m Sharhonda Bossier. You can find me on LinkedIn, on Instagram at @Bossier Sha, or on Spill at @BossierS. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: So let’s just start, let’s jump in. There’s a lot to talk about. We did not talk about Diddy fully, but you know, now that he has been sentenced, he is petitioning to be in a low security facility in New Jersey. Uh. What what do y’all think about what has happened around the Diddy trial? It seems like he, you know, it’s not clear that he’ll serve the whole time, the four years that he is I think it’s four years, right? 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Mm-hmm. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Four years that he has been given.

 

Sharhonda Bossier: With credit for time served. Yup.

 

DeRay Mckesson: With credit for time served, but you know, there are a lot of people who didn’t think he’d get this much time. He’s obviously said that these charges or what he’s what he was convicted of was not as serious and he was acquitted on the most serious charges. You probably saw that Cassie wrote a letter saying that she is still worried about him being a threat. And he did apologize to Cassie and a host of other people in the sentencing process. But what are your takes on what has happened now that the trial is over? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I think it’s weird how much it feels like this whole Diddy situation feels like light years away. I think when the Diddy story first dropped um, it really shook everything up. Um. We had a different president. And now it just kind of feels I don’t know. I don’t want to say like empty, but if it it does kind of feel empty. It feels like we have like bigger things in front of us now. And it also feels like, I don’t know, like I think the sentencing was probably right. Um. I think that he probably is a danger to people, I believe Cassie. I believe I believe that he probably won’t be so bold to do um maybe some of the stuff that he was accused of doing on the violent organized crime side. But when you when I think about like corporate and financial um revenge, I I’m I I definitely think that he’s um in on some of that or he he’s gonna be doing some of that. And um I think the only other thing that I that I think about is just the jury. That how I think that them not necessarily seeing the story of abuse or the story of organized crime happening in what Diddy was accused of does tell a feminist story, and it’s a sad feminist story about where the actual public is when it comes to understanding um sexual crimes, organized crimes, and um powerful men. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, on that organized crime piece, I listen to a lot of true crime. I’m blaming my grandmother for exposing me to Matlock early in my life. But um one of the sort of true crime tropes is that Black people can’t be serial killers. And one of the reasons for that is because in the US, we are so obsessed with the idea of serial killers as these mad geniuses. And Black people are never seen as intelligent enough, right, to even be genius enough to be your Ted Bundys, to be charming enough to be your Jeffrey Dahmer’s, right? Which I know sounds dark, but there is a little bit of like a in order to be participating in organized crime, the level of like coordination and orchestration that has to take place, people do not think most Black people, even rich and powerful ones capable of, right? So first you have to get them to a place where they think Diddy is smart enough, capable enough, connected enough, resourced enough, right, to sort of have all of these people at his beck and call and willing to do those things before they can even say, okay, if we think he’s capable of that, do we think he did it in this instance? Um and I think some of that is part of what’s happening, right? Like I do think part of what happened in this trial is that people saw him as a rapper and not as a mogul, right? And I think that actually worked to his benefit when it came to what he was convicted of, right? It’s like he’s some thug and thugs are not actually capable of participating in this kind of racketeering that he is being accused of. Um. I don’t have anything else to say around like the sentence or the sentencing. I will say that the work that his people did to create these like glossy videos about him as like a family man with responsibility for caring for all that other stuff was just gross. Uh and so yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know, uh you got me on that Sharhonda, I didn’t know where you were going with this sort of serial killer thing. I was like, you know, I’m along for the ride, this is interesting. But racism is really something. The idea–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: It is. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: That Black people can’t even be smart enough to be I mean, not that that is a goal, but– 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: No, yes. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: That’s interesting. I do think you’re right too. And you know, if Diddy, if Diddy has done anything well his entire career, it is he has managed the public incredibly well. He has been in control of his image and the way people understood him. The fact that we all called him Puffy and then Diddy and then P Did– like like all and then love at the very end was like a great way to try and get in front. Like you knew this is coming. So then you rebrand as love itself is just um he’s been very, very mindful of that. That’s why I don’t think, as much as I think accountability is, you know, long overdue for all of these people in Hollywood, I don’t think this is Diddy’s last act. I think that we will, you know, Trump already said that he requested a pardon. Trump said that because Diddy has said some mean things about him in the past, it is unlikely. But so that just to me seems like if Diddy comes out and is a hardcore Trumper, then like that seems like an option. And, you know, that feels like it’s on the table for Diddy for sure. I don’t think he has any like value that would make him not be a Trumper. So I don’t know, but I don’t think this is Diddy’s last act. I think there are some more, some more Diddy moments happening. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: If Breezy Bowl is any indication, Diddy will be Diddy bopping on somebody’s stage in a couple of years, without question. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know, in terms of somebody who the bus has just run over, I hadn’t even thought about Katie Porter in a long time. But whoever Katie Porter pissed off on her own team, [laugh] they said, let me show you what the real Katie Porter is like. Because the way she responded to that interviewer, who was just, you know, I feel like you should be used to interviews at this point. And then the way she snapped on that staff member in that Zoom call, Katie is is looking a little shady, Katie. It’s looking a little shady. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I liked it. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: [laughter] Myles. Of course you did.

 

Myles E. Johnson: I liked I liked it. I liked it. Um. It is it is weird because well tinfoil hat, but I I think there are people who do not want her to win. And I think that um the bad publicity is organized. Now she gave them the material to create the bad publicity, so you can’t do that. But I’m not a Californian. I’m not I’m not there to do the the the temperature check, but so I’ll lean on Sharhonda. But to me, how it feels is we’re not in a space where we care about people cursing out their staff or or people saying, you know what, I’m not answering that question or whatever. I think that at the best, you know, at at the most favorable, I think a lot of people see those moments as somebody who is focused, passionate, and and says what she what uh says what she means. I think that that also aligns with the brand and the whiteboard and and what kind of um electrocuted people around her to begin uh to to begin with. And then um I I I think there’s so much space to be uh inappropriate now that Trump’s in office. So it’s just it’s really hard to like paint her with a certain type of brush when we have some of the most ridiculous people. I mean, what like I don’t even think we talked about somebody calling Jasmine Crockett uh–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Ghetto. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Black [bleep]. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Or your ghetto Black [bleep] or whatever. Like I think that there’s just so much space for inappropriate behavior and how her inappropriate behavior was expressed kind of left me feeling a little warm and fuzzy. I’m like, yeah, do that to some Republicans. Sorry for the staffers, but I also wouldn’t be a staffer for a politician. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Sorry for the staffers is hilarious. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: That is wild.

 

Myles E. Johnson: Sorry for the staffers. I’m sorry to that staffer. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Okay. Building on your–

 

Myles E. Johnson: Should have got her shot. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Her your tin foil hat moment. Do we think that this is because she was becoming a real power player in in the Democratic Party? Like– 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Oh my God, these tinfoil hats I’m not [?]– [laughter] I am everybody–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I–

 

DeRay Mckesson: I’m taken off guard by two tinfoil hats on one episode.

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I’m wondering, I’m wondering. I’m won– I I’m just asking questions, you know, do we think that this has anything to do with her rising star outside of um California and as a member of the party and someone who was seen as a contender for the governance, the governor seat here in Cal– 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I don’t know. I I think what makes me nervous about it, and there’s a part of the honesty that I’m like intrigued by. This is I have no tin foil hat. Let me just for the record just say that. I I do, but not on Katie. But I’m like, if you would be like this, or I’ve had crazy bosses. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: If you would be like this recorded, I can only imagine what you’re like when nobody’s watching and I’m not here for it. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Who cares? If we’re if we’re with pedophiles, if we’re if if Epstein if Epstein’s list is not going, if we we’re not talking about what Bill Clinton might have done.

 

DeRay Mckesson: We care on our side. We need to we our values have to stay intact even if the other people’s values are screwed up. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Uh I don’t I don’t I don’t I don’t think I agree with that. [laughter]

 

DeRay Mckesson: Not uh. Uh Jesus.

 

Myles E. Johnson: I don’t I don’t I don’t I don’t think I agree with that. I think that there’s like, you know, you know, shout out to Palestine and and and and and and the the the ceasefire, but I think that all those type of morals in my new [?] around morals and ethics have totally been washed when you couldn’t figure uh out how to create a a– 

 

DeRay Mckesson: No I just don’t think I think the idea of like treating your staff as not as property is a value that we should keep and that is not like about whether the politicians sort of were right on Palestine or not. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I think if she can do her job and she knows what she’s doing, she should be elected. And I think that if if you Californians let American Psycho become your governor, knowing good and well, he ain’t gonna sign that reparations bill just because she cursed out yo cursed out them staffs, y’all are fools. Y’all are fools. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Oh my god. Oh this is–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I don’t agree with that. I’m not saying that. This is a wild episode. I’m not saying that. But y’all remember when Amy Klobuchar a few years ago got in trouble for doing something similar. She had been like yelling at her staff. And there was–

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yes. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: There was this whole incident where she ate a salad with a comb or something like that. That kind of, you know, because someone forgot to bring her utensils. And Amy Klobuchar seems to be doing just fine, you know? Um. So I don’t think it will derail Katie’s career. I think it’s probably the start of something. And it’ll be interesting to see what else comes out. But yeah, you should not berate your staff, y’all. That’s not what we’re saying. [laughter]

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. And I’m not saying you should. [indistinct banter] I’m not saying you should do it. I’m talking as if I am somebody whose health insurance payments are too high. I’m talking about if I’m somebody who’s in California living poor. Should this be the thing that makes you choose Gavin? No. Or whatever somebody else is, no. Like look at what she’s doing, look at what she’s telling you she’s gonna do, and go for and go and go for that. Like that that’s what I’m saying. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I think that’s fair and I think I mean we all know enough people that Lord knows if there were some cameras on these other people, you certainly wouldn’t be voting for them either. So. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: There’s that. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And Ezra Klein just talked about wanting all types of wild uh characters to go into the Democratic Party, like that are just outside of the ethics boundary of being of being the even a neoliberal. Like so I’m like if if y’all doing that–

 

DeRay Mckesson: Well I don’t know if Ezra is our you know is the guide. But um before we jump into the news, I did want to talk about our homegirl, sister girl, leader friend Auntie Kamala and the book tour, because the book was a splash, and the tour has been even more of a splash. She said them motherfuckers is crazy without the beeped out word. Do you think that, you know, she also seems pretty committed to running again and that she’s not out of the game, that, you know, she’s still a leader in the party? And before I say what I think about that, I’d love to know what y’all think about that. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I think we talked about this a little bit last week when we said, or when I said, I think anyway, that wish it feels like she’s trying to lean into this like authenticity, you know, that people seem to want or wanted from her. Um I I think it’ll be interesting to see how that language and the way that she feels just a little more like loose and free, plays uh in the sort of more respectable and particularly the more respectable Black wing of the party, right? Because when she ran the first time, you know, all of the divine nine organizations were out, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And I I think it’ll just be fascinating to see if they show up with the same level of enthusiasm if she does run again, um given how she’s shown up on this particular leg of the tour, right? Or if people are gonna be like, oh, that’s a bridge too far for me. You can’t cuss and use habitual b on a on a stage. So I I’ll be very curious to see how that plays with Black voters and particularly um middle class Black voters. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, I think she has the middle class Black voters in the bag. I think obviously. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: No matter what?

 

Myles E. Johnson: The Democrat– Yeah. I don’t. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Okay. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And I don’t think I don’t think cursing is gonna um stop people because we Black people do we we speak wink wink too. So. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So we all we we also we also we– 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Ah that’s a good title. We speak wink wink too. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You won that. That was episode over. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So we do I think that we understand we would understand what she’s doing. Um. Yeah, I just have not been inspired by anything that she’s said. I think uh I was expecting. Y’all know how I feel when I’m not being broadcasted. So I’m trying to translate that in my head to y’all. In a way that’s not as inflammatory. I don’t understand um the goals of the book tour. Now, if the goals of the book tour is just to activate and reactivate the people who already voted for you, sure, in hopes that the other people who maybe were, I guess the hope is that the people who stayed home, um specifically the college educated white men who stayed home who normally will vote Democrat would be so activated about everything that Trump has going on, um that they would go to the polls. But I don’t see her trying to gain back favor from anybody who she offended. I see her making a lot setting herself up and and and making a lot of excuses for her decision making. Um. I see that when it comes to how she’s addressing Palestine, I feel like that’s how she is when she addressed um you know, not that she was addressing me specifically, but like, but like the kind of critique people had of Megan the Stallion, she flipped it in such a dishonest way that it actually made me look at her character different. Like the fact– 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Can you explain the uh explain how she flipped it? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, so she flipped Megan the Stallion where she where she brought Megan the Stallion out for her um for for her campaigning and people had critiques of it. And she flipped people’s critiques into thinking that, oh, I was making a non-traditional uh, I was making a non-traditional choice, and traditionalists uh said this was a bad choice. And sure, maybe that is a truth, but that totally flattens the critique. Um. I know people who mirror my politics or mirror my identities who had the same critiques, and it was not coming from a traditionalist space. It came from the space of you not having not one Black trans person, you not having um any more like diverse Black women representations throughout your through throughout your campaign. And then when you do have them, they’re all celebrities, and the one celebrity and the other celebrities of namely Megan the Stallion is over there twerking. And it looks like you are trying to utilize minstrelsy in order to kind of show us that you’re down, and that is what white people do. That’s what white people do and fail at. So like we see that too. And you’re and you’re doing it, and that feels odd, and you’re not addressing that, and you’re not and you’re not saying, you know what? I pulled all my resources together and I wanted to, you know, I haven’t I’ve I listened to the quiet storm, y’all, I’m not gonna play with y’all. So I didn’t know really where to go. And I got Megan the Stallion and it was a misstep. Any of those things I would have been like, okay, okay, Auntie Kamala, like I hear you, but you didn’t you, she just made it seem like the critiques of her were from people who just didn’t understand her innovative new way of doing politics. And minstrelsy is not an innovative new way to do politics. It’s actually very old and tired, which is how come people stayed home because it was tired and weren’t galvanized to go anywhere. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I think her strategy is actually to create the space so she can do whatever she wants and not be aligned to the party when she runs again. Like not be a not be beholden to the party infrastructure. So I think all of the things that people hate about this book tour or are frustrated by, like that answer, how she’s dealing with the Palestinian protesters, I think they’ll actually forget it by the time she is politically important again, like in the electoral sense. But I think they’ll remember she was honest, she was herself, it wasn’t the consultants, she got to do what she wanted to do, it wasn’t Biden. Like that is what I think their intent is with this tour. Whether it’s successful or not, I don’t know. But I do think that’s what they’re trying to do. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So because she’s somebody who is probably going to exist, like she’s gonna do this book tour, then she probably will disappear and then try to get re-elected. This will be in the memory. And on and honestly, you see how it happens with everybody. If when you kind of move like that, people people update and refresh the last thing that they got you on. So yeah, we kind of do live in this society, like in this like culture where people forget things quickly. But when it comes to her in this big gap because she’s not filling the space and she’s not on podcasts every week, and this is just for one cycle, people are gonna go back. Like she’s it’s gonna be extremely hard to live down her eras. And because she’s not taking this this as a moment to uh to to to remedy that, she’s gonna still have to address it. And I think that if she runs again, she’s gonna get ate up. And then mind you, she wasn’t popular during primaries. I I kind of forget that because because of how the last election happened. But I forget that even before any of the madness happened, she already wasn’t popular. So I don’t I don’t I don’t see that future for her. Um. But shout out to We Moore. [laughter]. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Okay. Oh you are crazy. [music break] Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There’s more to come. 

 

[AD BREAK]

 

DeRay Mckesson: Let’s jump into the news. I wanted to talk about Turning Point USA, which you all know because Charlie Kirk started it and um, you know, the right wing billionaires who funded it. And they now it’s run by his wife, which everybody knew that. But they are really worked up about this Bad Bunny thing, which again is just the culture wars. Like I don’t think they actually care, but I do think they are like stoking the fire, which is why ICE is gonna be at the Super Bowl. I appreciate that the NFL has pushed back pretty hard pub– like the NFL is sort of annoyed with the right wing rhetoric around this. And um you know, Apple Music and Roc Nation are like doubling down on what they’re gonna do with Bad Bunny. The Turning Point said that they are actually gonna run counterprogramming to the Super Bowl show. And they’re calling it the all-American halftime show, celebrating faith, family, and freedom, and that the musical artists who will be counter-programmed to um to Bad Bunny will be announced soon. And I just am, you know, I’m A, I’m like just annoyed by them, but I’m also like who is gonna sign up to be the counterprogramming artists? Fascinated to see this list of people who will sign up to be the counter to Bad Bunny. And I hope all of their careers end in a swift, joyous just join Chrisette Michele in the abyss. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I still love Chrisette Michele. I’m not gonna lie to you. I I play her. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Me too. Me too.

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I, you know, um. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: It’s okay. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I know me too. I’m like, girl, there’s still time to come home. Okay. Um. On the the counter programming, right? I honestly think that most of this is a money grab. Um. Because I think they anticipate that people, at least news outlets and you know, um, will tune in out of curiosity, right? To see what happens over there. Not that they think that anybody is actually going to want to watch whoever this is over Bad Bunny. Um. I mean, look, Bad Bunny, when he did decide that he was gonna tour in the continental US was selling out arenas years ago here. You know what I mean? Like we’ve seen everybody online say, let me brush up on my Spanish. I’m gonna tell you right now, as somebody who speaks Spanish, that’s Puerto Rican Spanish, and that’s different. But [laugh] it just feels like a cheap money grab to me. And in some ways, I I feel I hope that no one covers it. Um. Because I think that what they are trying to do is not actually provide a counterweight, not actually sort of demonstrate that they are more in demand. I think it’s to take advantage of the spotlight that’s on the Super Bowl that is on Bad Bunny in particular and see what they can, you know, kind of glean from that as people are just curious about it and want to cover it. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, it’s interesting to think about something being produced because um the Super Bowl, the halftime show was created because of the success of In Living Color during that time slot. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yup. Yup.

 

Myles E. Johnson: So then they utilized Michael Jackson in order to smash that. And now where it might maybe seem like a bifurcation. I actually think that it probably could be really successful because I do think the last few um Super Bowl performances were so niche and siloed. And I know that that’s a uh because we’re in a post-Lemonade uh Beyonce world, she is seen as um deeply racialized um and deeply politicized. And I think um Bad Bunny, and now that he made those comments, he’s seen in the same way. So a lot of the now that we know publicly that Jay-Z’s the one um who is choosing these people, I think that leaves space for an alternative. And I think there was a there’s a thirst for all the alternative representation. So I wouldn’t be so quick to think that it’ll be a failure. And I think there’s a lot of people who could be really successful at it. Um. I think that Lil Wayne I think I think I think I think there’s a few–. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Because his feelings are hurt? Yeah.

 

Myles E. Johnson: There’s a few people I can think of that might uh that could probably get a check written for them that could really um could really [bleep] us up. You know, even when you look at uh what Nikki Minaj is doing and the kind of rant she’s going on and stuff like that. So I think I and again, it all could just be all country Western, you know, adult contemporary people. But I you know, as an evil genius, I can I can I can I can think of a few ways that I would that could really [bleep] up um the the the halftime super um bowl. But the so this story to me is more interesting because Charlie Kirk and Turning Point. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: This story is interesting to me is because again, you see the right really well creating a controversy because Candace Owens and a whole lot of other right-wing personalities are asking some really interesting questions about Charlie Kirk. I’m even thinking about Theo Von talk and how he’s been talking about both Palestine and immigration. So there’s a lot of crumbling going on in the right, um the right wing media apparatus online. And what they’re doing is instead of addressing any of that that’s happening right now, they’re um taking the bait and creating a controversy and creating something that’s bigger than that noise of crumbling. And I just kind of can’t believe that there’s not more people on the left who are in positions of power who are not um teasing this out. Um. I don’t understand why people aren’t like, let’s sit down with Candace Owens and hear what she has to say. You they they do it all, you know, they do it all the time. Let’s just hear what she has to say. Why not? I can’t believe we’re just they’re just kind of like letting this like unravel. Um. When to me this seems like such a good opportunity to uh to really shake and break the foundation. But I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised because I know that AIPAC, Israel, money, they can’t really go where Candace Owens and them are going. But it’s such a, it’s it’s such a good opportunity though, because they are going bananas on the internet over this, over Charlie Kirk’s death. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: You know, I had assumed that they would target kind of country Western, you know, weirdos, wackos who had no desire to go pop or have any crossover appeal. But your mention of Little Wayne was like, I mean, shit, if they do Wayne, Fifty, Nelly, like we we might get a late 90s, early 2000s rap nostalgia concert to like battle this, especially because that all feels like it’s back in vogue with the young people these days, right? Like ’90s nostalgia is having a moment. And I think, Myles, if that is the route they go, it will be successful, right? Cause I can even imagine some of my friends being like, I mean, I like Bad Bunny, but I don’t know what he’s saying, and then putting that on, you know. Damn. Okay.

 

DeRay Mckesson: That damn was so honest. [laughter]

 

DeRay Mckesson: Damn. 

 

Myles E. Johnson:  Damn damn damn. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: [indistinct banter] we are just–

 

Myles E. Johnson: That was a Esther Rolle damn. Damn. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: It really was. That was wild.

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Well, my news uh today is um about prediction markets and betting on prediction markets. So I was doom scrolling on Instagram as I am want to do again these days, and got an ad uh that was asking me if I wanted to place a bet on a potential like outcome for a New York City election. And I was like, what is this? Um. And it was an ad by a company called Kalshi, but then I, as I sort of, you know, dove a little bit deeper into this, um learned about this site called Polymarket, which was founded in 2020 by a 21 year old named Shayne Copeland. Um. And so it’s not, it’s a form where people gamble, yes, but it’s different in that it doesn’t set the odds. So um each quote unquote market is basically a yes or no question. So they’ve asked questions like, will Volodymyr Zelensky apologize to Trump? Will Fyre Festival II sell out, et cetera, et cetera. But the thing that the question that catapulted them to sort of fame, so to speak, uh was they asked the question about whether or not Biden would drop out of the 2024 presidential race. Um. And despite all of the kind of major media outlets saying that they thought Biden was gonna stay in and they weren’t sure if Trump was gonna win, the betters on Polymarket were very clear Biden was dropping out and Trump was winning. And so people are like, oh, wait a minute, this might actually be better than some of the other polling sites and polling data that we um are looking at. So since then, Polymarket has become the most downloaded free news app from Apple. Uh. And it’s and it processed more than three billion with a B dollars on the 2024 election alone. Um. Nate Silver, who we all know and many of us have strong feelings about, has joined Polymarket as an advisor. Elon Musk has given them a shout out. Um. And again, people feel like some of what they see in terms of odds and bets on Polymarket um has really been more accurate than a lot of the sophisticated political polling. Their competitor, which is Kalshi, which is the ad, the company that whose ad I saw. Um. Donald Trump Jr. joined them as an advisor in January. Uh. And so yeah, it’s just interesting because this was some like it was like a thing I didn’t really have an idea about. I saw an ad and I was like, what is this? And I have just discovered that there’s this whole world happening out there. Um. About 90% of all prediction market activity now takes place on polymarket. Um. It has about 200,000 active users who are trading each day. And it was announced this week that its founder, Shayne Copeland, has become the world’s youngest quote unquote “self-made billionaire” at 27. So I’m bringing this to the pod because I I think it’s really interesting to think about people betting on like real life stuff in this way. I also think that we have seen in the US anyway, a growing level of like engagement around gambling, particularly sports betting. And I think about like the addictive nature of gambling in particular. And I think as people become more desperate financially, given all that’s happening in the, you know, in our economy right now, everyone’s looking for their get rich quick opportunity, which is often extractive of poor people and poor people of color in particular. But this just was not on my radar at all. Um. And so yeah, wanted to make sure that our listeners had a chance to hear about it, but also welcome y’all’s reflections. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: This immediately reminds me of The Wisdom of Crowds, great book that came out in the early 2000s, if you’ve not read it, and based on a theory that is much older. But you know, crowds are way smarter than we give them credit for. And whether it’s polymarket or a million other ways that we can manage like crowdsourcing things, this study from this the theory came from this old study where I think um it was like a crowd was able to determine the median weight of an ox at a fair. Like this is where this was like the root of this, better than like individual people were. Like the crowd got it right. And the wisdom of crowds, the book does a phenomenal job of of noting this phenomenon across societies. Um. And I think it’s true. Like I think I I the polymarket is interesting to me in in that it uses the stock market to just take crowd wisdom. But I just think about all the other things. I think we know this intuitively in Black, you’re like listen to like I think about somebody who’s talking about John Fetterman and how the Black people never supported him in uh that boy, he’s in Pennsylvania. And it’s like listen to the crowd, crowds are smarter than we think. And we have we have done a lot of things to make people think that that is not true, and the rise of individualism might be the end of us all. But I am interested, not necessarily in po– polymarket, but how we use that crowd wisdom to to make better decisions, especially political decisions. I think about what Myles keeps saying about Kamala. I think this is true of a lot of people. This is what we have joked about with Pete. It’s like it actually means something that he polls at zero percent with Black people. It’s not just like an–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: –interesting thing. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: It is like an imp– that is a that means something powerful. So that’s my only takeaway here, but um it also scares me because I’m like, what is going on when the right owns the whole ecosystem? [?] Did y’all see that Bari Weiss is making all of the reporters at CBS send her a memo outlining what they’re working on? I’m like–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: This is what people think–

 

DeRay Mckesson: We just [?]–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: –management and oversight are. But yes. Yes. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I’m like, this is crazy. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Um. This was a really interesting, this is a really interesting story to me. Um. I don’t know, I don’t I don’t feel that optimistic about like like about it. I think it kind of it feels it feels a little strange to me. I think that we time we we consistently turn politics into entertainment and games. And I think that that makes more brutal um choices possible. I think that the more distant you feel, or the more um if we have this game gamification of politics, um the more people make these kind of decisions that are that are oppressive. I I think the reason why there’s not this uproar around what is happening um to Venezuelan ships is because it looks like the video games. I think the–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I think the reason to the average person. I think the reason why we don’t feel this way around uh what we’re seeing with ICE agents is because all of this has kind of been flattened to a type of like entertainment game circus. And I it it it it it does feel a little, it does feel a little gross to me. It feels um and gross and it feels eerie. It feels eerie that that’s where we’re at right now. And the other thing um that you mentioned, a lot of what’s going on with polymarket is the same thing that um revitalized people inside of um Bitcoin. So–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That kind of like that kind of those kind of like Bitcoin schemes and stuff like that, they’re kind of reproducing those same things. So you do see a lot of people, specifically young men, Gen Z, um uh like millennials participating in this because there’s only so many pathways to class transcendence. And now virtually gambling is really for a lot of people the only realistic route to um uh class mobility. And uh it just feels odd to see people betting on it because last thing I’ll say, because I just kind of want to map it out because in my head, I’m seeing somebody who is betting on something and betting on politics that might end up hurting them in hopes that the poly the politics that are hurting them, this bet can get them out of the political choices that are hurting them. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: But then more than likely it won’t happen. So you’re just kind of in that loop because it did happen for somebody. So it could happen for you. And it feels–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –really it feels it feels really weird. It feels if if it it feels eerie. [music break]

 

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

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Myles E. Johnson: So this week’s news comes from Philly Inquirer and it comes from Sharhonda. Sharhonda has been hooking me up. So I feel like she understands my wavelength. So she’s been sending me all types of stuff where I’m like, I love this. This is great. This is an excellent. And this story is no different. Um. So the story, I’m gonna read a little bit from the Instagram um from the Instagram post. So it goes when Alexa Collas realized she needed more music in her life, she found a simple solution. She turned her living room into a record store and a listening room and a performance space and the set of Philly Cam TV show. It goes on to say her immersive art installation, Club Friends Radio and Records. I turned my living room into a record store is featured at the Design Philadelphia Festival, which runs through October 12th with 68 events at galleries and other spaces all over the city. So um. I want you you all, now that you know that news, I want you all to go look it up because to see it really is to to really feel immersed inside of it. Um. The esthetic slightly reminds me of the esthetics that Black market vintage have been um playing with. And it also just reminds me of those kind of mid-century Black esthetics that I think a lot of us have been uh playing inside of. I’m even thinking about Hood’s mid-century modern. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Oh yeah. Love them.

 

Myles E. Johnson: Um. Who they they they kind of they kind of play all like in that world too. Um. The reason why this, well, A, it’s just an interesting, cool idea, like period, point blank, period. But also what I think is interesting is that she created a communal space out of what she had. And I think that that is such a story that we kind of all need to, all need to um uh digest that sometimes it the barrier is the rent at another place. Sometimes the barrier is the upkeep at another place. Or do you even want to do that? Do you want do does that even feel does does sometimes I think about having a brick and mortar for some people it does feel um like a vanity project more than it feels like a project that’s actually addressing the people who are living in this world. Um. And this, because she was already going to be paying her rent here, she she already had the space and she decided to recreate it into a communal space. She decided to make it a space where people can interact with music, interact with older Black music. I say this also. The well, well, another reason why this um feels really important is because I think the preservation of specifically older Black music, is really, really, really important. And so I’ve been looking at um I inherited my grandfather’s record collection. He had thousands of records and they’re all around, all around my apartment. But what I’ve so of course I like the the Frankie Beverly and Maze, the Earth Wind and Fire, but there’s so many artists who I’ve never heard of. I Google them, they’re not there. I go on Spotify, they’re not there. They might have only had one album. They might have only been location specific. And I think about how we can be on the internet or be on social media and how it we can say, oh, this is a good thing to do, good thing to do. But sometimes it does take a person saying, come to my house and do the thing. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Mm-hmm. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Don’t worry about your getting a record player. Don’t worry about doing your deep dives. I did that for you. Just get to my address and I’m going to transform my living room into a space where more people can commune and listen to this music. So I just think this was such an inspiring way to think about space where you live. I think it makes it feels anti-colonial. Cause I think about the privatization of property. I think about individual individualism. So I think about how anti-colonial it is to have a place that’s, you know, in inside of inside of colonialism supposed to be just for you in private. And you actually say, you know what? I’m actually gonna queer that idea and make it public and make it a place for um uh make make it a place for community. It just it’s it just has inspired me so much. And I love this story, and it made me feel so warm. And again, Black people do I I’ve I’ve I’m so glad that I push myself to look for Black people doing really innovative work during this time because I have not been disappointed. There has been so many findings of Black people doing just amazing, cool, interesting things in order to preserve their history. And the last thing I’ll say about it is like the vibe of it is like I’m trying to say this appropriately. Um. The vibe of it is like, oh, we’ve been here before. So let’s freak it. Like, like it’s almost like we’re so bored with the oppression that we’re constantly facing that the ideas are getting more elevated and more interesting and more avant-garde. And I really love that too, because part of me, Sharhonda knows this, DeRay knows this, like anybody who knows me knows this. Is that I I really have been um scared for the Black avant-garde and the Black avant-garde ideas and those ideas getting to community and not just staying in galleries or theaters, but getting to um regular ordinary people because I think that Black avant-garde pushes our imaginations forward. And I love seeing people you know, just just just just morph their own um their ideas into something that is still really nutritious for the Black community. I I I’m sure you all can hear it. Like I can’t stop smiling about this story because it just makes me feel so good to see it. Like, and you have to see the pictures because she’s sitting down and she has her wood her wood grain furniture and she looks really cool and people get to be inside of it. And I’m like, yes, this is what we need. And again, this is something the state can’t take from her. This is something–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That um nobody can uh take take away from her. This is my living room, you know. And I think–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Sometimes it does it does call for that. Um. Yeah. How how well, I know how you feel about it Sharhonda, but the listeners don’t. How did you feel about it? 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Well, I am really grateful for what has become somewhat a standing segment on this podcast, right? Cause it’s also forced me to look at and look for things like that I might not have otherwise looked at or looked for. Um. Even as someone who was surrounded by, as as you are coming to know Myles, right? Lots of people who do this kind of work who are always thinking about our histories, our stories, our art, preserving those things, sharing those things. Um and uh what I loved about this was first I saw it and I was like, aw, vinyl and preservation. This is a Myles story, right? Um. But to your point about the esthetic, one of my aunts had this friend named Ruby, and Ruby’s living room looked like this. Ruby’s living room had a had beaded curtains. That’s a whole other thing. I think Ruby was, you know. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Okay. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Ruby. But they’re like it, it I immediately felt transported to a moment and all of those feelings were warm for me based just on how she had set up her living room, right? And I also think it’s beautiful that like while she created this space in her home, that it is, I hate to call it elevated. So forgive me for the use of that word and that term, but like it’s now gonna be part of a festival, right? Which I hope inspires other people, that it’s gonna be on this bigger platform, people are gonna see it. The other thing that I thought of was like, I have a home and I have resources. And, you know, I don’t know anything about this woman or her life, but I have quite a few resources at my disposal, right? Like, how am I leveraging my home to also create spaces for Black people to come together around things that are different than what I usually host, right? So, like I’ll host a fun, you know, all of those things people would like to–

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: –reach out to me for. But like I have interests that I would just like to share with people. And can I think about doing that beyond like my three or four home girls who come over for our wind down? So it’s actually this story in particular, and I and maybe the series of stories that we’ve covered in this same vein have really inspired me to think about what I might do in this world and in this way that are not about my work and that are not about my activism, but are about just creating spaces for Black people to be Black together. Because in LA, especially, those spaces are fewer and far in between. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And it’s so important because you see that when we don’t do those spaces, I don’t know about you. Well, I do know a little bit about LA. I have a I have folks in in in in in LA. I don’t know if y’all’s spaces overlap because I’m I’m in Black, queer, trans land a lot oftentimes. But um a lot of the conflicts, a lot of the not understanding different people’s cultures is because sometimes when we do come to convene, it is centered around politics or work. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Mm hmm.

 

Myles E. Johnson: And and and that doesn’t actually give us a space to really figure um figure figure ourselves out. The other thing that I wanted to say that you that that your comment reminded me of is because DeRay’s in the jail and I always comment about how bad the jail looks and it’s for kids. As ridiculous as it might sound, unfortunately, could you only imagine if the kind of communal Black esthetics that we’re all familiar with? You know, like you you saw those esthetics and you’re like, oh, this took me to Ruby, and I see those esthetics and it takes me to people who are recreating that, but it also takes me back to my family history and pictures that I’ve seen. Could you imagine if Black kids who were in were were in a rehabilitation um space were surrounded by things that felt that familiar and that beautiful? And and could you imagine the di– the the different way that they would feel valued just by the esthetics–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –of a space? And I think that again, we undervalue it oftentimes as as an American society, but it is often weaponized against us. It gets taken away when they want us to feel enslaved, you know. So I think that just thinking of ways of how can we employ that and put and and put that in spaces where people could can feel that warm. I you know, it just feels valuable that we have like an esthetic language. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That somebody can walk into and feel like this makes me feel like I have family, even when nobody’s in there. And I’m like, how do we use that feeling? 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: You know? 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. Go see the show, y’all, if you’re in Philly. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Go see the show. You all have a good week and we love you. [music break]

 

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

 

[AD BREAK]

 

DeRay Mckesson: This week I sat down with author and historian LaShawn Harris to chat about her new book, Tell Her Story, Eleanor Bumpurs and the Police Killing that galvanized New York City. Her book highlights the life and 1984 murder of a beloved Black grandmother that changed community activism forever. It was an early and important marker in the ongoing fight against police violence. Read the book. I learned a lot about this incident, and I knew nothing about Eleanor Bumpurs before the book came out. So it was important for me. I think you’ll like it too. Here we go. Professor Harris, thanks so much for joining us today on Pod Save the People. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Thank you for having me. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Before we start talking about the book, the incredible story of Eleanor Bumpus called Tell Her Story, which has a great cover, everybody. Not all the books have great covers, but this is a very cool cover as well. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Thank you. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Uh. How did you get to academia? What’s your story? How did you get to the field of study? 

 

LaShawn Harris: Well, I’m from New York City. I’m from the Bronx. I went to three HBCUs, Virginia Union, Virginia State, and Howard University, and majored in history and thought I wanted to be a lawyer, but didn’t want to take the LSAT to get into law school. But I always loved history. Um. You know, I read a lot as a child and I had good history teachers, and just when I got to college, I’ve had great professors and just wanted to stay with it. I was always interested about the past as well as, you know, the many genealogies of like current current movement. So I graduated from Howard University in 2007, and my first job was in Georgia in a small town, Statesboro, Georgia. And I’ve been at Michigan State since 2008, but I’ve always had a love of history, growing up in New York, you know, we had libraries all around us. My mom, you know, went to school. Um. She was a college student when we were, you know, in elementary and junior high school. We’ve we did a lot of museum, you know, stuff, but I’ve always, you know, I just loved um reading about history. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I love that. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Shout out to mom. And how did you get to the story of Miss Bumpus, Grandma Bumpus? How did you get to her story? 

 

LaShawn Harris: You know Eleanor Bumpurs lived across the street from me. I was ten years old. Yes. I was ten years old when she was killed by the police on October 29th, 1984. I was actually, I had just turned ten. And I didn’t know her as a child but my parents had dogs. And her uh daughter Mary Bumpurs had dogs. So we were neighbors in that sense, we became you know my parents became you know friends friendly with her daughter. Um and you know coming out of writing like going into writing a second book. My first book was on 1920s, 1930s like numbers, runners, Madame Stephanie St.Clair bank, you know that sort of underground economy. Uh type of of thing um I wanted to do something that was different. I wanted to still be in New York, I still wanted to do the urban stuff. I wanted to follow Black women. I wanted to follow this line of policing. But I was really curious about and so much has been written about Harlem. I’m not from Harlem. So I really wanted to kind of understand, like, my community. And after like kind of engaging and talking to my parents about like the history of our neighborhood. You know they they were like you know like this happened here, right? And I started thinking about it and I was like yeah I kind of vaguely remember this incident because it was Halloween. Eleanor Bumpurs was killed two days before Halloween. And the kids in the neighborhood had um you know made plans to go trick or treating in the projects where she lived as well as in the neighborhood. But that particular year we could not go because after she was killed, the NYPD um newspaper reporters like Jimmy Breslin and Ed Codwell, and others had kind of swarmed the neighbord. So kids couldn’t go trick or treating because the neighborhood was so chaotic. So we ended up trick or treating in you know our apartment building. Which is something that we hadn’t planned. So I really wanted to understand you know what type of upheaval that particular incident caused in the neighborhood. And I really wanted to understand like what did Bronx folks? Initially I thought it was just Bronx people. Like, what did the Bronx, what did they have to say about this? Like, how did they come out and, you know, perform activism for Eleanor Bumpurs? So it was really a calling, you know, kind of doing something on like where I grew up. I was interested in the upheaval that it caused on my community and my neighbors. And I really wanted to understand the sort of kind of aftershocks of police violence on families. Like, like what happened to like Mary Bumpurs? Like what happened to them? You know, they’re in the spotlight doing activist work, they’re grieving publicly. But what does, you know, what does that look like privately, perhaps? Like, how were they coping with the death of their mother, you know, days, months, and even years and decades after she had been killed? 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I did love I love the photos in this book. I was like, oh. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: This I can like see what the daughter looked like and the mom. Like I can see. Um. You know, I was sad that so much of this felt familiar. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You talk about how they made her out to be violent and that wasn’t true. Can you just take us back to the incident itself? Help us understand what happened as they said it was a a an eviction and clearly. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know, more happened. But take us–

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: –there on that day. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Eleanor Bumpurs, so I’m just gonna backtrack just a little bit, but she had stopped paying rent in July of 1984. She was killed in October of 1984, but she stopped paying rent in July of 1984. And immediately after she, you if you stop paying rent and you live in a public housing project, the NYCHA will um initiate eviction procedures immediately. So that’s what they that’s what they did by, you know, it was just some, it was their policy. And when they did that, some of those um they also had to inform her that if she was being evicted. They did a house visit, and initially she would not let them in because she is she was a person that that was that suffered from uh mental health conditions. Initially, she did not let them in and eventually she lets them in, and they see that she has she has a knife. But the knife that she carries is sort of like a security blanket. This is not a knife that she had used on people. There was no history of her being violent towards anybody with a knife. And once they um they they saw the condition of her apartment, which is really neat, they went into the bathroom. And in the bathroom, they saw they found buckets of feces. That buckets of feces really um um made them, made them want to get her out of the apartment even more. So what they did was they hired, they had a psychiatrist who had been a consultant for the city, and he did a 30-minute interview with Eleanor Bumpurs, maybe about four or five days before um she was to be evicted. And he said that she, you know, was someone who does not know reality from non-reality, and they still continued to to go on with the eviction. It’s important to note that the city at any time could have stopped the eviction. They could have paid her rent, but they refused to do so because of municipal disinvestment as well as municipal bureaucracy. Um so the eviction, the eviction did not happen. And I say that to say that even before the police officers went into her house on October 29th, 1984, she had already been harmed by the city because they did not give her adequate psych psychiatric services and they did not give her municipal services, which was to pay that, pay that rent. So on that particular day, the housing authority, they go out of their way to get her out of the apartment. They hire movers. They have two different police units. They have the housing police unit, which is not, which was not part of the NYPD. And then they have the emergency service unit officers. And these are the police that are kind of highly weaponized. They they carry shotguns. They carry shields. Um. They also had social workers outside of her apartment. And Eleanor Bumpur’s hallway is really narrow. So it was a lot of people in that hallway. They go to the door, Mrs. Bumpers, can you come out? She refuses. You know, she curses at them. And they start taking the locks off the door. They take the locks off the door and they eventually go in. And according to police narratives and according to city narratives, she had the knife in her right hand and she was wailing and she was about to stab one of the officers. And Stephen Sullivan, who was holding the shotgun, shot her in her right hand and blew off three fingers. Now, normally you would think that if someone’s three fingers are blown off a hand, there’s no way you can still be holding a knife. According to police narratives, she was still holding the knife. She was still flailing her arm. So she was, you know, quote unquote “a danger.” And then Stephen Sullivan shot her with the shotgun in um her chest. She doesn’t die right away. She actually has car– she they take her to the hospital. She has cardiac arrest on the way, and she eventually dies at Lincoln Hospital. And the neighbors um went, you know, they were just everyone heard the gunshot blast. When they took her out of the building, there was, you know, bodily fluids, there was blood in the hallway, and neighbors could not believe what they had heard. And they definitely could not believe what they saw when they brought her when they brought her out the building so so bloody. I mean, this was a 66-year-old grandmother of 10, mother of, you know, mother of seven, um who had just been shot down by the police. And neighbors couldn’t understand why police went in with so much heavy weapontry, right? You know, but they didn’t see her as a grandmother or a mother. They didn’t see her as a sickly person. They saw her as someone who was a threat, who was violent, you know, who was a heavy set woman who they felt could move her body in a particular um threatening way to them. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Again, all too familiar. One of the things that I loved in the book is you talk about the Cedric Houses Tenants Association. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah.

 

DeRay Mckesson: And the reason I bring this up is that, you know, I have this is my work today for the past decade has been issues of police violence. And I I deal with so many families. And I am always frustrated by the way people talk about the organizing that happens afterwards. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: People sort of think that it just sort of goes away. You’re like, no, people. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You might not see them on the news, but people are fighting. They are meeting about this stuff. So I know that to be true in the decade that I have done this work. And when I read this in the book, I was like, I knew it. I was like, I’m happy she put this in the book. Can you talk to us about why you included this part about the tenants association? 

 

LaShawn Harris: I wanted to show that the first wave of activism for this grandmother was local grassroots activism. And these were folks who were had been seasoned activists who lived in Cedric Houses. These have people been people who had no experience as activists. But I wanted to show that um these weren’t like national leaders. I wanted to show that these were not people who lived in, like Herbert Daughtry is a big part of this movement, but he lives in Brooklyn, and he’s a pretty well-known political activist throughout the, you know, you know, the late 20th century. But I wanted to show how how her neighbors, like ordinary people who have been doing activist work prior to her getting killed, came in and really showed up for the family and really supported the family in really unbelievable ways. I mean, even them writing letters and trying to get Mayor Codge and Benjamin Ward, the police chief at the time, to to issue an official city report, these are the people that helped pay for her funeral. So even, you know, beyond like the letters, the the protests, the vigils, you know, if it wasn’t for these local people, the neighbors, Eleanor Bumpur’s family, right? Her daughter becomes an activist, um she wouldn’t have been buried. I mean, it would have been hard for the family to bury her. So the the community really rallies around her. And the reason why I did that is because when we think about the 1980s, we tend to, or we think about like a kind of post-civil rights Black power era, we tend to think that there’s no political movements happening in the 70s and the 80s. But in fact, there are whole host of local movements happening around the country, around a whole bunch of issues, including police violence. And it was really um the purpose to kind of highlight, you know, um organizations like the Cedric Tenants Association, as well as the women and men and even children who were out there side by side with David Dinkins, who, you know, is the first Black mayor of New York City, with Herbert Daughtry, with um Roscoe Brown, who was the president of Bronx Community College, who’s who was also a former Tuskeegee chairman, who were right beside these kind of, you know, juggernauts of political activists marching with them. So I really wanted to understand um the political activism, just kind of local ordinary people, like grass grassroots folk. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know how small of a world it is, I didn’t realize until now Herbert Daughtry’s daughter, Leah Daughtry. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Who I know. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And I was actually on a panel with Herbert, um I don’t know, like eight years ago in Brooklyn. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: It’s a small Black world. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah.

 

DeRay Mckesson: It’s a small world. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. And I interviewed him twice. And there’s actually a picture of Leah Daughtry and maybe two of her other sisters and her mother and Herbert Daughtry on the cover of the Daily Challenger, which was a Brooklyn newspaper, holding up a sign like Elea– um Justice for Eleanor Bumpurs. But I wasn’t fortunate to get the interview with with Leah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: It is a small world. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah, it is. Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Um. When you talk about the funeral, I also love that you um that there’s the scene in here and like what people said at the funeral, what that looked like. I was shocked to see Ruby Dee. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yes. Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, they had been um comrades with Daughtry. So when Daughtry becomes, it’s just it’s really similar to like Ben Ben Benjamin Crump, right? Or Al Sharpton. So when they come to a movement, they’re bringing all of their political contacts, you know. Um. They’re bringing all of their friends and all of the folks that they know. So Daughtry and Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis were were comrades. And you know, the they’re they’re they’re also from New York, too. So they they definitely heard about the case. But I found that when Daughtry and Wendell Foster and um David Dinkins, David Dinkins was the city clerk at the time. When they get involved, there’s a host of other kind of um you know, well-known political activists and you know, entertainers that that get involved. There’s actually a really great photo that Daughtry has at his church. I could not get permission to use it, where it’s Herbert Daughtry, David Dinkins, and Ossie Davis, and a few other activists, and they’re it’s at Bumpur’s Eleanor Bumpur’s funeral, and they’re kind of just like looking down at her in the casket. And Ossie Davis is looking away. So I said to Reverend Daughtry, like, what is he looking at? Like, why is he looking away? And he said that Ossie Davis could not look at her while she was in that casket. So they also too become a part of this kind of you know, grassroots movement that really becomes a citywide, you know, movement for legal justice for for Eleanor Bumpurs. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know, I’m I’m gonna ask you, can you talk about what happens with her family following this? And one of the reasons why I was so excited to talk to you is that we still support Mike Brown’s mom. So we essentially staff her foundation. We meet with her every week, we fund the scholarship in Mike’s name. She doesn’t celebrate August ninth when he was killed. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: She only celebrates his birthday. 

 

LaShawn Harris: That’s right. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: So we throw a birthday party for him. So we are with Leslie a lot. We’re like just always with Leslie. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And I have been able to see what it, you know, his death in so many ways sort of reignited this protest for my generation around the police. Um. And so many people sort of forgot about Mike’s brothers and sisters. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Oh yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: They forgot about his mom. And um and you do such a good job in here of refusing to let people forget about Mar– like the, you know, Mary and and everybody around Eleanor. Can you talk about that part of this story? 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. I wanna I I was really influenced by the reading of memoirs from survivors. So um Sabrina Fulton and Tracy Martin’s memoir of Trayvon Martin, Gwen Carr’s memoir of her son, Eric Gardner, Amber Gardner’s memory of her father, Eric Gardner, uh Brenda Sevenson, who’s a historian at UCLA, her conversations, her book on Latasha Harlands, who was killed in LA in the 1990s. So I was really influenced by like what families were saying about their loved ones, but also their experiences after, like after these things had happened, and even after legal justice was not um had, right? Like what happened to these families, like you know, in those moments, but also like years down the line. And I thought that was a I thought that was like missing in like a lot of the historical scholarship. And I really don’t hear, I mean, I don’t know about, I know the activists are definitely on the front lines doing this, but I don’t hear like a lot of historians talking about these kind of aftershocks of violence. I mean, some are really starting to do this when we think about like lynching victims, like, you know, who were these families who would have to go into these woods and and and take down their loved ones, you know, hanging from trees. So I was interested in what that looked like for Mary. And I keep saying Mary because Mary was the spokesperson for the Bumpurs family, and she was the only family member that would talk to me. And she was the only one that would talk to me. And she was, you know, she fought for her mother, but she was a reluctant activist. Like this was someone who was, you know, unemployed, who was looking for a job. She was a single mom with three kids. You know, she also thought about the potential backlash of going up against the police and this in the city, right? That would give anybody pause. But as a second daughter, she she she had told herself that what she couldn’t do for her mother on that particular day, and Mary lived down the street from from Eleanor Bumpurs, she would do for her in death, which was to help her mother fight, you know, fight for her mother. So I wanted to look, I wanted to think about, you know, um her in those moments. And there were times where, you know, she said that, you know, she didn’t feel like going to you know, Herbert Daughtry’s church in Brooklyn. Like she didn’t feel like giving a press conference and having to answer like invasive questions about her mother or, you know, answer questions to the point where she has to prove that her mother did not that her mother did not deserve to die, right? You know, she had to think about like her children. She had to think about like like her other family members. And it makes me think about another case that that that helped me kind of shape this is there was a woman who died in December of 1984, maybe two months, two months after Eleanor Bumpurs, killed by a Black police officer in Queens. And that family did not become activists. And I interviewed those three, the all of the children from that particular family. And it was because they didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to do so. So that was the other side of it, right? The limit of my book, which I love, but the limit of my book is the kind is is I feel like, you know, it would have been so great to talk to other family members who supported what Mary Bumpurs was was doing, but who did not become activists to see what like grief looked like for for those people who don’t become activists. But for Mary, I wanted to kind of understand like what that meant, what that meant for her, like to kind of grieve publicly and do this really tremendous work at the same time where you don’t have the emotional bandwidth to really do it. But you know that you have to do it. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And just take us through the aftermath. It is again as you know, like they there’s a you know, what happens to the police? It just makes me sad to even ask because, you know, it just is the too familiar story. But–

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know. 

 

LaShawn Harris: I know. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: What happens to the police and then um does the family get any settlement? 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. So um in New York, in the Bronx, they had a, I guess what we would call a progressive DA, Mario Marola. I say progressive, he was a Democrat. He had been in office since the 1970s. And this was a DA who went after cops. Like he was not afraid to prosecute cops for like, or, or just try to have them indicted for like murder, manslaughter. So the police union, um the BPA at the time, um did not did not like him. So he brings Stephen Sullivan, the case to a grand jury in about between November and December of 1984. And by January, the end of January, um five days after Bernie Goetz, the subway vigilante who shot four African American boys in December of 1984. They call them the the subway white man um who shoots four four Black men, Stephen Sullivan is indicted, and that’s the end of January. Um. And the indictment is actually, and he’s indicted for manslaughter, not murder, not murder, manslaughter. Oh which, you know, the family was not that thrilled with. They were happy that an indictment happened, but they wanted murder. And Daughtry also, activists wanted murder. Um. The indictment is actually thrown out twice, you know, by the local courts, by the state court, and eventually in November of 1986, the indictment is reinstated by the Court of Appeals. And by 1987, the end of January, February, they go to trial, which is bittersweet for the family because so many families don’t make it into a courtroom. And that happened a lot during the 19, the 1980s. And um Stephen Sullivan elects for a bench trial, which is just which is a trial by judge, not a trial by jury. They were afraid that that jury would be, you know, it’s in the Bronx, and they were afraid of Latino jurors as well as Black Black jurors. So they elect for a trial by a judge, and he’s acquitted. So between 1984 and 1987, there’s a three year battle for the family, for activists, and for um the legal community in the Bronx to bring Stephen Sullivan to to justice. The settlement, the settlement, they filed for a lawsuit of ten million dollars in December nineteen eighty-four, a couple of months after Eleanor’s killed. And the case is not settled until the early 1990, 1991. And the person who settles it, they settled it under David Dinkis. By that time he’s he becomes the mayor. They um sued for ten million dollars and they actually the city gave them a little over four hundred thousand dollars. However, the city placed a lien on the money because, you know, they surmised that they had paid over the women, the the daughters, they’d given them too much money in welfare benefits. So the daughters only get, you know, at they only get about $200,000, which is not a lot. It’s the nineteen, it’s not a lot of money. It’s more money that than that than they had ever had. Um. But it’s five daughters. Two of them had died by that time. So each of them get a little under $20,000, which is again, it’s not it’s it’s a lot of money, but at the same time, it’s not, it’s not a lot of money. So they don’t they don’t get any legal justice at all, really. Um. And they have to live with the fact that, you know, Stephen Sullivan, the person who shot Eleanor Bumpurs, he gets promoted to detective. You know, and he goes on to stay in the force for the next, you know, twenty years. And actually he just died this summer. Yeah.

 

DeRay Mckesson: I didn’t know that Audre Lorde has a poem dedicated to Eleanor Bumpurs. You know. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I when I read this I was like, I need to go search everything. I’m like, I’ve never heard–

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: –of Eleanor Bumpurs. I’m like this is– 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah and if you–

 

DeRay Mckesson: And Do the right thing. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Do the right thing was dedicated to um the 1989 Spike Lee film was dedicated to Eleanor Bumpurs, graffiti artist Michael Stewart, Edmund Perry, all of those, all of those, you know, New Yorkers who have been killed by the police. Spike Lee in his first film, She’s Gotta Have It, has like a little collage with Eleanor Bumpurs. Towards like the end of the movie, Nola Darling is sitting in front of her mirror, and there’s like a clipping of like Eleanor Bumpurs from the New York Daily News. And then all of the music, like all of the rap music, you know, where rappers are just, you know, saying, you know, saying her name, right? So this is someone that, and I think, you know, if you’re of a probably if you’re of a certain generation, probably, right? But more recently, Tamika Mallory, um her organization, I think it’s called Until Just Until Freedom, she did a protest rally in New York City, maybe like in 2021, something like that. And the protest rally was a tribute to families, but specifically to Breonna Taylor and Eleanor Bumpurs, like two Black women who have been killed in their house by by police. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Look at that. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Um. How do you think about this killing in the context of today when there’s been a reign– I mean, today is sort of brutal cause Trump. Well, what are we doing? But you know, this this entire last decade of protest is a reemergence in so many ways. And these are the types of stories that preceded my work that I did not know about. And I when I got this book from your team, I’m like, well, I don’t I’ve never heard, you know, I know Amadou. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Sure. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I know Sean Bell. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Right. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Um. These are the names that I knew before Mike Brown got killed. And now I know, you know, a million since he was killed. But how do you think about this story in the context of today? Or how do you think about this issue as it continues, especially since you lived across the street from Ms. Bumpurs? 

 

LaShawn Harris: You know, it’s it’s so I think you opened up, you know, correct. It’s so sad that we have to keep talking about these, these these killings, what’s happening to Black people, even if they’re not killed, what’s happening to them on a daily basis with police harm and just just state violence. Um and the thing that I would say is that after Eleanor Bumpurs was killed, there was a host of reforms, right? A host, you know, it was a host of reforms. In fact, the policies that that the police used on her was a reform was a reform since 1970 since the late 1970s. And since then, since the 2010s, 2020, there have been a host of reforms that the NYPD has implemented. Um. Those that pertain to de-escalating, de-escalation, and those that pertain to encounters with persons with mental health conditions, right? And if you believe in reform, that’s that’s fine. But people are still continuing to to die, right? People are still continuing to die at the hands of police. So for me, you know, reforms don’t don’t don’t work at all. Um. I mean, I think about the death of you know, Deborah Danner in 2016. Same, you know, Bronx, 66 years old, um you know, someone with mental health challenges. Um. This was the officer that went into her apartment was supposedly a trained officer, right? Um. But she still ends up dying. I think about the case of, you know, Winn Rozario in Ozone Park in Queens, another person with mental health challenges dies at the hands of police. So these are kind of ongoing things. Uh. What I take, what’s hopeful for me is people like yourself, you know, people who are doing the work to challenge uh police and the state, especially when it comes to reform, and activists who are staying the course with families. Um. And I think that’s so that’s so important, especially given we’re seeing the, you know, more occupation in police in places like DC, maybe coming Chicago, maybe New York next, definitely in you know, definitely in in LA. And we see that, you know, a lot of this is being sanctioned not only by the federal government, but also by local local officials, right? Um. So I I I think that reform is tricky. I don’t think reform works, but I I have faith in the work of activists who are like on the ground doing the work that needs to be done. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Boom, there we go. Yeah. It is so interesting to think about how much has changed and how much has not. You’re like. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know, phew like we are chipping away at it. And it still is like, gosh, you know, one of the things that I’ve learned is um just I you before the protests started, I would say that the police don’t have to follow any rules. Like that was what I was like, you know, the police da da and as now with the work that I do, I’m like, oh, the police are following rules, but they are rules that they made up for themselves. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Sure. Sure.

 

DeRay Mckesson: That are just a mess. I’m like, this is–

 

LaShawn Harris: Right. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Crazy. Like I think about–

 

LaShawn Harris: Right. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: We have the only database on police union contracts in the country. In that database, we so we have 3,000 contracts, we look for six things in them, we’ve coded them. In Detroit, the contract literally says if you get convicted of domestic abuse, you get put in like desk duty for nine months, but you cannot be fired. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: For the purpose of overturning the conviction. That’s what the contract says. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah yeah.

 

DeRay Mckesson: You’re like, this is crazy. 

 

LaShawn Harris: And a lot, a lot of I mean, the other thing about the police, at least in New York, is the union. Like the union is like the union is so powerful and they are tied to politics. I mean, people know that you, you know, in New York, you it would be hard to get elected without the support of the union, right? That’s why this election coming up, the mayoral election. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Up until now baby. Lets go!

 

LaShawn Harris: I can’t. I can’t vote and I mean, you know, I’m a I live in Michigan now, but it’s gonna be interesting. But we know with this current administration, you know, you know, we have a mayor who, you know, former police officer, but someone who was heavily supported by the un– by yeah, by the police union, right? Um. So it’s it’s those policies, right? Those are those things are kind of like ironclad policies until something until something happens, right? And once something happens, there’s more policies again that support the conduct of police and policing, not not the people. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: It is interesting too in New York City. Um. You know, we do work around the Civilian Oversight Board, which is one of the most well funded in the country. They’re all sort of mediocre, but this one is well funded. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: But when we tell people that they can only make a recommendation, they’re like. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: What? You’re like, you’re like, yeah, if they could actually fire people, game on. We would be–

 

LaShawn Harris: Right. Right. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: But they can only make a recommendation. You’re like–

 

LaShawn Harris: Right. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: That’s not oversight. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Yeah, not at all. Not at all. And there’s so many people who have different, you know, um experiences and interpretations. I’m talking about civilians with police, even even Black and Brown folks, right? Who are all for the various levels of policing. You know, I had these conversations about more police on the subway, more police in around the neighborhood. And and folks are like, yeah, this is this is this is what we need, right? Um. And I understand that crime is definitely an issue in in certain communities. Um. But people feel like, you know, with police present that there’s they feel more protected, right? Um. And then I, you know, I I think you just have to question that. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: What advice do you have for this new generation of people coming to this issue, if you have any? And then I want you to tell us uh where do we go to stay in touch with you? Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram? Is it Twitter? Is it snail mail? What’s the thing? 

 

LaShawn Harris: Um. I think the most important thing for activists and scholars is to tell stories, complete stories of um you know, state violence victims, right? You know, we enter into situations at the moment that they died, right? You know, we’ve seen the videotape of George Floyd. How much do we know about George Floyd? You know, there’s a brilliant book called His Name is George Floyd by it’s a co-authored book by um Robert Samuels, and I can’t remember the other reporter’s name who’s on, who’s actually on I think CNN a lot. But how much do we know about the lives of victims, right? You know, I think if we tell those fuller stories, we can we can really invest in the many different lives that that they had. I also think it’s important to think about families, right? You know, families and you know, not just during moments, explosive moments, but after, you know, after the months and days and years, right? Because we also know that slow violence happens to families. You know, this kind of veiled type of violence, violence that’s really gradual that appears over over time. And the other thing that I I really love about this generation of activists is that they’ve connected these um atrocities to other larger systemic issues happening within our communities. So for example, Eleanor Bumpur’s death was connected to, you know, tenants’ rights and how you know housing rights and um you know, the a campaign for against you know municipal disinvestment and and and neglect. I think it’s I think it’s good if activists can connect those deaths, um those killings, those everyday harm harms to larger issues happening in in the country and really the the world. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Where do we go to stay in touch? 

 

LaShawn Harris: I am on Instagram as @BronxHistorian08. Facebook, uh I don’t know if people still use Facebook, but @MadamClaire08. And that’s it. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Boom. Well we consider you a friend of the pod and can’t wait to have you back. 

 

LaShawn Harris: Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate you. [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 Moultrié and mixed by Charlotte Landes, executive produced by me, and special thanks to our weekly contributors Myles E. Johnson and Sharhonda Bossier. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. 

 

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