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[AD BREAK]

DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay and welcome to Pod Save the People. In this episode, it’s me, Myles and Sharhonda, back to talk about the under-reported news with regard to race, justice, and equity, or some of the news that you probably heard about but didn’t hear about it from this angle. Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at @PodSaveThePeople. Here we go. I cannot believe that we are not even one year into this presidential administration, but we are back this week for the podcast. This is DeRay at @deray on Twitter. 

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

Sharhonda Bossier: And this is Sharhonda Bossier. You can find me on LinkedIn or at @BossierSha on Instagram or at @BossierS on Spill. 

DeRay Mckesson: Let’s pick up a conversation that we started last week and then so much has happened about Charlie Kirk since uh since that conversation. I don’t know if you saw that the Senate unanimously passed a resolution proclaiming October 14th as Charlie Kirk Remembrance Day. Just today while we are recording on Friday, September 19th, it has been reported that the House passed a Resolution as well, honoring Charlie Kirk. I am shocked by that. Jimmy Kimmel is indefinitely suspended from his show because Sinclair and the other affiliates said that his comments about Charlie Kirk were insensitive. Charlie Kirk’s wife, Erika, has been appointed as the new CEO of Turning Point, the organization that Charlie ran. Candace Owens, seemingly a very close friend of Charlie Kirk, has been on a rampage that the government is lying to everybody about this and she’s released a photo of the alleged killer that the police did not release. I don’t know if y’all saw Kash Patel getting grilled by Congress. It just–

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: This has just been a lot. So I am just recapping. I’d love to know what y’all make of it now that we have seen, um now that more has happened. Yeah, what’s going on? 

Myles E. Johnson: I think so I have to start one thing at a time. That was a lot DeRay. The thing with with Congress, to me, I’m not surprised by that. I think what I’m most alarmed with is where do like where do people who are left go? Because it’s been, we see it in waves that this Congress, the Democrats, I’ll just say the Democrats really are interested in courting or courting back in big air quotes, these conservative people on the right. I feel wrong calling them conservative. And they do these actions that maybe Jasmine Crockett won’t support, but also everybody else is. And it just feels like there’s really no home for a lot, a lot a lot of people on the left. So I think that is the big thing too. And I think moments like that with the Charlie Kirk and the statues and stuff, it’s like. You know, like, I have nothing against Ozzy Osbourne, but that’s like a really gross brand to me, right? Like, I am not attracted to the Ozzy Osbourne brand. And nothing that he does to perpetuate his brand made him more attractive to me. So the bat eating only made it worse. The the the sloppy drug talk only made worse. And I kind of feel the same way about the Democrats. It’s like everything they’re doing to maybe revitalize their brand or to stay consistent with it just makes them more and more gross, which gets me scared because I’m like, if I feel this way in 2026, I only can imagine how I’m going to feel in 2028 and how and of course, how other people who align with me politically are going to feel in 2028. It’s, like, where’s our home? We’re we’re Dorothy on the brick road. And this is Wicked. That’s the [?] laughing].

Sharhonda Bossier: I mean, you know, you always hear media outlets lift language from other outlets or from like whoever says it first, right? So kind of if you’re first out the gate, you get to sort of frame the conversation and influence the language that people use. Um. So I’ve been really alarmed at people calling Charlie Kirk a conservative activist. Um. There’s something in that for me that is really, I think telling and a little bit scary. Like even, you know, kind of middle-of-the-road moderate outlets like NPR are calling, and I know people think NPR is progressive and liberal, fine, you can have that, but, you know calling him a conservative activist. And I’m like, is David Duke also a conservative activists? Like, I’m not sure where we go from from there when that’s the framing. And reading about some of the Dems in Congress saying that they felt kind of pressured or coerced to voting for this recognition and this holiday, Um. You know, they were like, well, part of it was also that the language denounced his killing. And you’re like, yeah, but that this is what we talked a little bit about last week, right? Which is like, we always feel forced to take the moral high road when like they literally do not. I also do not think it’s an accident that this holiday is slated for the day after what most people in this country recognize as Columbus Day, right. Like those things don’t seem unrelated to me. And I wish that Dems had a backbone, you know? We talked about this too when we um talked about Gavin Newsom having Charlie Kirk on his podcast, right? And uh all of the ways that people have been falling over themselves to legitimize this man and to act like the ideas he were expressing or was expressing, you know deserve real debate in the public sphere. And it’s like, we just have to decide that some [bleep] is beyond the pale and we don’t engage with it and a lot of what Charlie Kirk was spewing has to be, I think, beyond the pale and things that we don’t take seriously. But here we are. 

DeRay Mckesson: October 14th is George Floyd’s birthday, FYI. 

Sharhonda Bossier: I did not make that connection. When I saw the day I saw, this is like Martin Luther King Day also being Robert E. Lee day in some states. Like, this is crazy! And I don’t even use that word. 

DeRay Mckesson: And remember that, Charlie Kirk famously made fun of George Floyd and lampooned his death and he’s the reason why he died. 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, so because I’m American-pilled, everything goes back to media in my head. And I think that a lot of Black people are, and I think even more Black people, are going to discover that if Blackne– if America is a movie, Blackness has been a plot device, but we were never the main characters. And I even thought about that when um Charlie Kirk was, uh when he was assassinated. And the response to it was the blowing up of the churches and people were like, Black people, specifically Black people were like we ain’t have nothing to do with that. How are you doing this is one of y’all, how are you going to do it? Well, the thing about that is liberal, neoliberal and conservative white folks are in a battle with each other, and we’re just being used so they know that something violent happening to Black people would, for lack of better words, hurt the liberal white person’s feelings. So it’s not about attacking us, it’s about using what they have and the sensitive points of the liberal white in order to cause terror, and oftentimes we’re we’re in the middle of that. And I think how I feel and when I when I talk to different Black people and I just read different things, I feel like this realization of like, oh wow, we’re the plot device. Like if you think about like even Toni Morrison talking about Edgar Allan Poe and talking about the darkness that’s in Hemingway’s work and how they never talk about Blackness, but the horror, the terror, the monsters in that literature is representative of Blackness. It kind of feels the same to me when it comes to this, when it comes to Black people, that like we’re never really taken seriously by the left or the right, but we’re always used in order to win this kind of argument that liberal white people and conservative white people are having about how whiteness should be seen on the global scale, on the global stage. 

DeRay Mckesson: Uh Myles just referenced an incredible genre defining essay by Toni Morrison called Playing in the Dark. You should read it. It was incredible. And it changed the way that we think of so much. Um. I think you’re right. I think I have two things. One is that I think that we can, I think that the majority of people on our side, I think that the majority of people think Charlie Kirk was not a good person, was a bigot, was racist, all those things. And I think the right knows that, which is why they are now buying every single media company that could exist. And about to buy TikTok because they know that the stories we tell on our side are not hard to mobilize people around and they’re trying to not just stop the stories, but stop the medium. That’s why I think Jimmy Kimmel matters. I you know, what were people watching Jimmy, I don’t know, da-da-da, but Colbert, Jimmy, I think it is, I do think the chilling effect has been crystallized with this idea that if rich white people get penalized for saying even moderate things or like really simple things, then they will be swept. I was shocked that The View got neutered. The View couldn’t didn’t talk about Charlie Kirk either. So, I think that that does have a chilling effect on people. And you put that up against Trump himself, who on Fox News, the host said, Charlie said there is no such thing as hate speech. And Trump said back, he might not be saying that now. And you’re like, well, that’s actually you know, Charlie wasn’t your friend. You are just you don’t care about that boy. 

Myles E. Johnson: That is so rude to say, like what? 

DeRay Mckesson: So rude, and but you know Jimmy Kimmel said what Jimmy Kimmel said was less than that. He might not be saying that now is crazy for the president of the United States to say, especially about somebody that he’s like, this is my friend and da-da-da. They used Charlie Kirk, obviously. [music break] Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come. 

[AD BREAK]

Myles E. Johnson: I think I’m just not there with the Jimmy Kimmel and the Colbert stuff. Like um the North remembers. So I remember how ABC was. I remember Barbara Walters bringing The View on and it teetering and going into politics. And I also remember before that, you know, like, that if you’re a kind of a student of media and LGBT representation, you knew that Bob Iger was one of the people who normalized there being a kind-of slight homophobia around Ellen DeGeneres. Um. Even though he let her uh go on the show and, you know you have, get into the history of Ellen and let let her do the show, when all the controversy was happening around Ellen, he protected his business. He was saying, well, American people aren’t ready for this. And I don’t think the American people are ready. And I guess what I’m trying to say is you just see how malleable and mutable these corporations are. And I don’t necessarily feel like Jimmy Kimmel and Colbert or whatever else is going on is are playing the same game. I still really deeply feel like if you decide as a white man to participate in the capitalist culture and then you get out-capitalist-ed. I don’t feel as alarmed around that. I think, and I’m not saying it my concern won’t escalate, but I will have concern if somebody tries to do something to Crooked Media or do something to something that is not beholden to corporations or the government. But I kind of feel like that’s the game that you play when you decide to be on those on those networks. And I think if there was ever a time, I know this is annoying because I probably say it every single week. But if there was ever a time to feel that chill of the chilling effect, it was when nobody was allowed to talk about Gaza. It was when nobody was talking about that on the View or anything else like that. And that was happening again under Biden. So to me, I’ve always known that I probably won’t ever get an opportunity from ABC or Disney or CBS or any of these places because of my politics and how I want to speak. So I just don’t get how you cash the check and don’t know that what you’re able to say is is mutable. I’m that’s just not clicking to me. 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, I think, so that makes sense to me. I think what I’d say is that I do, and I think this is maybe a better example of what happens when people mistake, like actual rules and hard things for norms. And I think there were norms that were like, the FCC doesn’t get involved in like random political things and da-da-da. But this was like, the FCC chair is like, I think that the statement about Charlie Kirk was too intense and da da da, and the FCC chairs like on Twitter, making jokes about the person and the network is up for a merger, and it’s so clear that even President Obama gets out and says that this is an act of political coercion, but the only thing keeping it in was norms. There were no structural things that prohibited them from happening. And I think that Trump has been a great example of forcing everybody to see the difference between norms and like hard and fast sort of things. So like hard and fast to me is he tried to find that Black woman on the federal reserve board and just cannot do it. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Can’t do it. 

DeRay Mckesson: He is like doing everything he can to get that woman. They, you know, he might put her in prison, but like he just cannot get her off the fed board because he doesn’t have the structural power. Whereas he could rip up the Rose Garden. He can send people on planes to countries they never heard of. And he can seemingly get a TV host, their shows just taken off of TV. And I do think that, I think that has a chilling effect though, because I think you’re right, Myles, about the you play the game and the game plays you. That’s the way the game goes. But I think there’s some people who the game just never played. You know, like the game played Black people and da-da-da. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: The game played us the whole time. The game never played Colbert. [laugh]

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: And certainly not Jimmy Kimmel. You know they just sort of, you’re like, oh, the straight white man, da-de-da, like you just never thought somebody was gonna come for them. And I think that the chilling effect is when it comes for them them really whew.

Myles E. Johnson: I think that’s the science that I, everything you said I agree with up until that last point. I don’t think that, oh, like the idea is, oh if they’re coming for you because you’re a rich white man, then damn sure I’m not safe. No, now we’re starting to see it even out of class. We’re starting to see–

DeRay Mckesson: No I think I think you’re right. I think I’m saying that like we were never safe, but we didn’t think they would come for y’all. We knew they always came for us, but I just never–

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: –thought Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel. 

Myles E. Johnson: No, what I’m what I’m pushing back on is the alarm that is setting into certain pockets of the Black community because of this action. I don’t think that we should be as alarmed as we should be, and I’m saying this as somebody who’s reading the news with y’all, so there’s a lot of things to be alarmed with. I would not put this in that basket of alarm because I think they’re playing a different game when it comes to power in this case, this particular case.

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, my only closing thought on this is that, you know, back to a point you made earlier, Myles, about this being sort of a game between progressive white people and conservative white people, right, is I am thinking about the fact that I talked about Charlie Kirk and his willingness to wear blackface and tap dance on my grave if I had preceded him in death, and I’m thinking about the fact that I have been defending Jimmy Kimmel, who actually wore blackface in the early 2000s when he was on The Man Show. [laughing] And it’s just a wild place to be. That’s all I got. [laughing]

DeRay Mckesson: It’s all the contradictions. 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, like, to your point, that’s why I’ve been like seeing it. I’ve been seeing it as like this rivalry. Like, I’ve just been seeing it as like these this thing. And I’m like, oh, Black people are like the teddy bear. Like, when I like took the doll like the head off of my sister’s doll, I didn’t really care about the doll. I cared about doing something to hurt my sister that also would still make me look good to my mom because I didn’t really hit my sister. And Black people are the dolls. You know?

DeRay Mckesson: That’s your next essay, Black People Are the Dolls. This is–

Myles E. Johnson: Cultural criticism and fascism. 

DeRay Mckesson: Come on, let’s do it. 

Myles E. Johnson: How how nostalgic. 

DeRay Mckesson: Let’s switch topics. I don’t know if you saw that it’s reported that AOC is either gearing up to run for president or is gearing up to run for U.S. Senate. Um. The U.S. Senators in New York City are uh Schumer and Gillibrand. I wanted to know what you all thought of that? 

Sharhonda Bossier: My first question was really about, you know, sort of electability, right, and whether people would, even people who like her, uh be a little bruised and beaten up from the experience of supporting Kamala, right? Um. And I don’t know, I’ve already seen some conservative outlets like The Post, which is a trash outlet, right? Um, already try and revive some of the language that was sticky, uh, early in her political career, right? So it’s like socialist squad member, AOC, exploring presidential run, you know? And I’m like, man, they finna come for her. And I, and I think, again, my, my question is like, I feel very much like people want to feel like they can bet on a winning horse and I don’t know if people can see a path to the presidency for her. Um. I do think that she might be able to push the field on some issues that matter to the progressive wing, if she’s, like, seen as a contender in the primary phase. Uh, but I don’t know if I see her, wow, I sound like such a hater, making it, making it beyond that. Don’t drag me y’all. I am trying to I’m, I’m my optimist and pragmatist selves are at war right now in this moment. 

DeRay Mckesson: I think the thing that is working against her is that she still looks and sounds young to so many people, like older people who I think will be like, she’s just as young. But I think that, and Myles, I’m struck by your earlier statement that people, where do people who are truly on the left go, when you’re like, okay, I actually like some people in Congress, why did y’all vote for this? The Charlie Kirk, that you’re, like, you don’t have the backbone to vote against this Charlie Kirk resolution, you know, I’m not convinced you can really fight. Whereas I think that AOC just is such a clear fighter. She, I think her instincts are right. I think she is savvy. She’s been, you know, she’s already had to sort of retain her credentials on the left on sticky issues while also the right hates her. And we know she’ll always win her districts so there’s no fear that like she’ll lose the Bronx. And she’s like a legitimate, you know, she’s doing homework help with people in the Bronx that I think that–

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: You know, I look at the field and I’m like, Gavin. You know, he does give evil, the evil white guy, but on our side, um you know, Kamala and the book will be interesting, but I think people are like, well Kamala, why didn’t you say this before? So I don’t know, I still like Kamala. Um I don’t–

Myles E. Johnson: Wes Moore.

DeRay Mckesson: Wes Moore. I think Wes actually has a shot. Pete, you know I, Pete is still a 0% with Black people. 

Myles E. Johnson: Not a chance in hell. [laughter]

DeRay Mckesson: Um. You know, but I think AOC, I just wouldn’t count her. She is savvy. She is a savvy and her instincts are solid. I would want her to get away from Bernie. That frankly is what I would like. Girl, move Bernie. Just like don’t have Bernie be your only surrogate would be my advice to her. Um. Because I think Bernie’s instincts on race as somebody who met with him and what he said to me in that room. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: I think his instincts on race are bad and then she would have to defend that and I think that’s just a bad move. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Who could be the other validator for her though, especially on that issue? 

Myles E. Johnson: Zohran. 

DeRay Mckesson: No, she needs somebody Black. Uh. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: I think that people would step up. I think they’re like young people, younger people who would step up, I think there would. I also think that like in the Trump era, I do I hope that people will, just like with Zohran, it took a minute, but Hochul, all these people are like, okay, we gotta go with Zohran because, and I think that that effect will happen with Trump if we have elections again. 

Myles E. Johnson: I think the Democrats totally like like like dropped the ball on Zohran. Like like I think that even the ones who have um endorsed him like like how late it came in the game how obvious it was that they were probably hoping for Cuomo or Eric Adams and now they’re like well I guess we have to do it the fact that um you had all these candidates and you still couldn’t you had like no moral clarity like it’s again it’s it’s it’s the it’s the brand reinforcement, the reinforcement of the Democrats’ brand is, hey, we are corporatists with no moral clarity. And even though all these things, Gaza, Zohran or whatever, all seem separate, they’re all really the same. They’re really saying the same thing about um the Democrat brand. I believe in AOC. You weren’t here, um Sharhonda, during the uh Vice President Harris run, but I’m kind of all in on whoever’s um the Democratic ticket specifically, specifically earlier on, it wasn’t until, you know, Vice President Harris decided to put her hand up and tell the Palestinian protesters that she’s talking. I was like, oh, sister, I can’t I can’t. I have–

DeRay Mckesson: Not oh sister. 

Myles E. Johnson: I was like, I have to get into heaven. This is not feeling good in my spirit. Once you get there, I’m like I can’t, I hands off of you. And here’s another thing I’ll say. I think one of the reasons why Biden won was because of COVID. I think that Trump had made such a mess that people were feeling such immense pressure that so many people um risked their lives and risked their health to go vote. That did not happen the last time because that pressure wasn’t on. Unfortunately, but maybe fortunately, the pressure and heat is back on. So I think even though AOC feels unlikely, even though AOC might have all of these things that you can see fallible in her political candidacy, whatever she decides to do, I think more people will get activated because of that, because they know it’s not likely. And you’ll see that kind of like blue wave they were hoping was going to happen with Vice President Harris, which just didn’t happen for so many reasons. But I think one of those reasons being because there was no pressure on. 

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

[AD BREAK]

DeRay Mckesson: Let’s go to the news. I want to talk to you all and Myles, I don’t know if you know, do you know about the reading wars? This is not, my news is about the Department of Education trying to incentivize the erasure of history. But Sharhonda, I you definitely know about like balanced literacy, whole language, and the death of phonics. But Myles, there was a period of time for like, I don’t know, 40-ish years where there were a group of white women in different parts of the world who came up with versions of curricula that said that phonics was a bad idea. And that only struggling readers learned phonics. 

Myles E. Johnson: You and Auntie Kaya taught me about that. 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, the only real strategy was to tell kids to like look at pictures and identify words and you’re like, this is, I can’t believe we thought this was a good idea. That’s on my heart recently because I just listened to this great podcast about it. But my news is about um, another way to destroy public education is that they are partnering with like PragerU and trying to introduce federally supported civics courses that would undo the teaching of systemic oppression and all these things. And I know we’ve touched on it before, but it just got, the um the Department of Education is just doing some more foolishness around it. Nothing necessarily interesting to tell you about. You probably already know about PragerU, the very right-wing, not real um thing that is like a YouTube station and blah, blah, blah. But the reason I bring it up is I do think, you know we’re really early into the Trump administration. Turning Point USA, which Charlie Kirk ran, was a college chapter-based thing funded by funded by billionaires. And, you know, you probably have seen the superintendent in Oklahoma do all this weird stuff around the 10 commandments being in classrooms and all this other stuff. But I do think the next frontier for them will be K-12. We have seen them fight Harvard and Columbia, I think they have already made a chilling effect in higher education that will last, it’ll have a long tail. But I think soon we’ll see like, either it’ll be districts or schools. It’ll be the Baltimore’s, the Chicago’s, and New York City’s that get you know penalized really crazily if they don’t do X, Y, Z. And I think, they understand, you know Trump has said it, the more educated people don’t support him. He gets it. And I think that we will see, the reason I bring up phonics is that we did something to a generation of kids and we did not teach them how to like sound out letters, which we are still paying for. And I think if they are successful, they will do something to a generation of kids who have this like gap in, like, you know, we take for granted that everybody knows who Dr. King is. If they don’t know any other Black person, they sort of just know Dr.King. But what happens when you take a group of kids and you don’t teach, like slavery didn’t happen, ’60s didn’t happened, racism’s not a real, like there’s just no learning about it. I think they, if they’re successful, that is their goal. And I don’t want us to forget that because I think people have forgotten about K-12 because the higher education stuff has just been so crazy. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I mean, you know, I taught US history and government in three states over the course of my teaching career in California, Texas and New York. It is my passion if teaching paid a livable wage, I would be a high school teacher. Um. And so I like I loved looking for primary sources for my my students. I loved when like you could see kids make connections between what they were learning in other classes and history. Um. And so much of that just to make a connection to the reading point was predicated on young people being able to not just decode language, right, or words, but actually make meaning from what they were reading on the page. And um just the idea that people don’t have that skill set or won’t have that skill set en en masse, is like it robs so many people of so much joy um when you cannot read and you cannot make meaning of language. So I think on the sort of the the curriculum front, I think Myles has been pushing us over the last few weeks to think about this idea of like myth making and what people not being able to understand what’s happening in real time or having a grasp of a different version of history will allow the right to do in it’s myth making enterprises, right? And we are seeing that happen in real-time with this establishment of a holiday uh honoring Charlie Kirk, right, like the myth that has been created around him, what he stood for. And who he was, and all of these things are are related, right? Because if you don’t understand, for instance, the history of legalized discrimination and disenfranchisement, then you’re never gonna support something like reparations for people, right. If you don’t understand and don’t know the history that the white middle class was built by government subsidies and investments in the post-World War II era, then you are never going to understand the impacts of redlining that you see all around you, right? You’re not gonna understand the concept of white flight. So there’s just so, that you just cannot make sense of the world if people don’t help you connect those dots. And if you don’t have just the hard skills to do it yourself. You know, the last thing I’ll say is we’ve also talked about like, where are the good billionaires? And I know that sounds like an oxymoron. 

Myles E. Johnson: They’re sitting with Ivanka Trump. 

Sharhonda Bossier: I know. But there are attempts at the grassroots level, right? Like even Kaya, right, in her Reconstruction US and you have Faith in Florida, right, that is like working to teach Black history in schools. And like where are the investors on our side who are helping invest in and scale those solutions and those ideas because they exist. And um they just aren’t showing up in the same way because they don’t feel implicated or impacted by this. And I think it’s a missed opportunity to think about the preservation, not just of our history, but of other histories. Actually, I lied one more thing. Um. You know, in the state of California, we have an ethnic studies curriculum that we teach in high schools, right? It was a long and hard fight by lots of community organizations and communities of color. And I worry that we’re gonna see some of that progress eroded. And when I was teaching, one of the things that my kids said that they connected to most was seeing themselves in the classroom, right? Seeing themselves in the curricula and like the idea that that will go away means we’re going to see so many other kinds of impacts on student matriculation and attendance and engagement and everything else, right, because like who wants to sit in class and hear the same version of history that’s like George Washington couldn’t tell a lie? You know? 

Myles E. Johnson: I think, so, you know, like the good, like all billionaires are evil, like, all, um, like, I mean, probably. But but you know how but you know how like it’s like a good bad thing. I’m so, again, I feel like I even in the last few months, I’ve just advanced past that kind of good bad binary like idea. And my push to myself is like, oh, have I ever seen a radical billionaire? Have I ever seen a radical millionaire? Because we’ve seen a lot of radical conservative billionaires. So it’s not about them being bad or good on the right. We know which one they are. It’s also about them be radical about um one of the things about Rupert Murdoch. When the New York Post was not making him any money, not at all, he understood that keeping it and making sure that he powered it was more important than it generating profit because he knew that he had a radical mission of conservatism. I think that just does not exist on the left. I don’t think there is no radical imagination or radical vision of anything. I just think that it’s really just this liberal hope that things can stay the same but better. And I think that that’s how come we don’t see these kind of quote unquote, “good billionaires.” And one of the things actually um that I’ve just been working on since since I moved are just working on like educational digital products. And not just educational digital products for just for where I want to go next in like my career, which is first and foremost that, but also hopefully something that can be invested in and hopefully something else that could be a blueprint for other educators because I kind of resent that the things that the Black Panthers did are seen as like Pollyanna or seen as like old school and there’s really not this type of thought where when I saw PBS being destroyed of course I want systemic change and I want to resist that etc etc. But I also want to build something with the resources that I have that can’t be destroyed because the government decides to go red or blue and I think that that is where my mind is is just about how do we um again, that myth-making thing, but then also how do we make digital products? How do we use the era that we find ourselves in to fill in those gaps of learning? Because we cannot rely on the government. And again, last thing I’ll say about this particular subject, last week we talked about that man who was so upset about Charlie Kirk and he was crying. And one of the things that he was able to say between his sobbing was he was gonna be our next president. So again, I say it all the time because I want people to get it. And Trump’s non-presidency, however it arrives, is not the end of this. So there’s never going to be a time where we do not need to make these digital education products, build these myths, build these platforms that stand in the gap of whatever um the government decides to do. Because it’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better is the least I’ll say. 

Sharhonda Bossier: My news is about um two U.S. attacks on Venezuelan uh boats that the Trump administration claims uh are boats that are being used to smuggle drugs into the U.S. Uh. So the first attack took place on September 2nd, and in that attack, 11 people were killed. Um. And in the immediate aftermath of that attack, Trump posted a video on Truth Social of like the aerial footage um and said that the attack was against a quote unquote “positively identified Tren de Aragua narco terrorist in the Southcom area.” Southcom is an acronym for a unified combat command of the US Department of Defense. And it’s responsible for operations in 31 countries across Central and South America and the Caribbean. So that’s like just important to kind of know, like the US is always there and has a presence there. Um. Trump’s post about the second attack, uh which happened this week, uh was accompanied by a 30 second video clip showing the vessel explode into flames. So he’s like making content as this is happening, right? And like sharing it, which I think is also pretty rare for a president to do. Um, the clip has like the word unclassified in like this kind of neon green across it. Um, and he says, quote, “three male terrorists were killed in that attack.” Um, so he continued on and he said, be warned if you’re transporting drugs that can kill Americans, we are hunting you, which wild. Um, because even if you are a drug trafficker, and I’m not saying that these people were. Um, drug trafficking is not a capital offense, at least not in the U.S. So, uh, anyway, neither the U.S. Nor Venezuela has released the names of the people killed in either attack. So we actually don’t know who they are. Um, and Maduro has, uh said that the attack is a military attack on civilians who were not at war and were not military threatening to any country. And he also says that the U.S. is trying to provoke Venezuela into a war and that the ultimate goal of the U S is regime change for oil rather than a crackdown on drug cartels. So I’m bringing this to the pod um because I think there are a number of things in these two stories. One is like how the U.S. is deploying its resour– it’s military resources and policing this part of the world. Two is like what this is setting us up um with in terms of a dynamic between the US and and Venezuela, which, as you know, we already talk about every Venezuelan here as a criminal. Um. And I think three is Trump’s use of social media to talk about it, to amplify it, and to show footage that I think you know most of us would not see on social media on a regular day. So yeah, bringing that here. 

DeRay Mckesson: I was shocked by this, you know, I will say this, this to me is important in the context of all of the media platforms being owned by the right very shortly. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: What it’s going to be something like five families own or five groups of people and everything when the right buys TikTok, they’re about to buy U.S. TikTok. Is that I think most people would be like, you can’t just like, you know we lived through the war on terror, which we were all like, okay, terror, and they did all this crazy stuff. People are like, yeah, you know, I think people are off that train of like you can just blow, especially when the president is a convicted felon multiple times over and like nobody just killed him, like, you know. So I think that most people are like, hey, there should be a trial. There should be some sort of fact finding. But what happens when the only reason I even know this is I saw it a little bit on Twitter, maybe. Like I saw some articles about it. I don’t watch TV all that much, but if not for random tweets, I don’t think I would have seen any of this. Like I really, I just didn’t see it. Um. I believe Maduro, like, I think this is not about, he doesn’t care about these people. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Right. 

DeRay Mckesson: He definitely cares about oil, but he certainly doesn’t care about the people on the boat. And he’s making this up. So I’m shocked by it, but I would tell you, I’m actually gonna call my dad after this. I don’t think my father’s even heard of this. Like I think he’d be outraged if he did. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Wow. 

DeRay Mckesson: But I don’t think. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: And if we didn’t have to do the podcast and I have to pay a little bit more attention to um to the news than I would normally pay attention to it. I think I also wouldn’t have heard about this, which is scary to me. And that is a, that is I think, a result of like who now owns everything or tied to who now owns everything. 

Myles E. Johnson: I think zooming in and out. I think it’s interesting to live in an era where I’ll say people’s political pain is enough excuse to do whatever they want. So it’s not like I was hearing you when you were talking about like capital offense and stuff like that. But I was also thinking about how so many people kind of manufacture a consent for these type of moments because of the opioid crisis and Fentanyl and all this other stuff. So as long as you wrap whatever type of um action you wanna do inside of uh the Fentanyl crisis or immigration or transgenderism and there is consent for it and there’s not this um need by most people to look at the rules or the constitution or the laws or whatever and make sure those align with that. That’s just not like where people, I’ll say where people on the right are, which I think is obviously really, really, really, really dangerous, but also kind of telling because I guess zoom back out, everybody is still kind of them versus us-ing this like these situations. And I guess I guess the thing that sits in me is that it’s really sad that we have people who are on who are on the right. People who are conservative, people who are in midwestern and southern towns who are dying of fentanyl and drugs and because of big pharma, because of um predatory drug dealers, etc, etc. And it’s also really sad that you have people who are in so much pain or so addicted who take the risk of their lives in order to get that high. I do think that’s sad. And what’s even sadder is that that reality does not radicalize somebody to be against Big Pharma, does not radicalize somebody to never need somebody to sell drugs in order to pay their rent. What it does is make you manufacture consent to blow a thing up that may or may not have the people who you think are responsible for your demise. Who’s responsible for your demise is is your leadership. And for whatever reason, uh it seems as though a lot of Americans are allergic to that kind of accountability. And it’s not strange because Americans are allergic to accountability in general. So it makes sense that we would maybe project our accountability on foreign people, then we would project it on our own personal leadership. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Can I can I say something about the point that DeRay made and the connection to um the war on terror at its at its peak um is that one of my favorite pieces of like cultural political commentary is Katt Williams’s Pimp Chronicles uh from the early 2000 where he does that bit on um the US like dehumanizing people through language and talking about insurgents. 

[clip of Katt Willliams] Our government pimps, they get on the news, they act like we ain’t even over there killing real people. They don’t never get on news and say, today we killed four men, three women, and two children. They use a word niggas can’t readily identify. Today we killed a group of insurgents. Niggas be at the house like, I don’t even know no motherfucking insurgents. You can kill all them motherfuckers, I don’t have not one insurgent friend. 

Sharhonda Bossier: I just think it’s it’s like so good, it’s such a keen observation of what happens in moments like this. And it feels like even in my short lifetime and my relatively short adulthood, right, I’m seeing these like cycles repeat in ways that feel very recognizable, right, the dehumanizing of the other because we think that they have done something harmful to us, a la a 9/11. Right? And therefore a coming up with new language, a la a narco terrorist, right? To justify whatever we do in response to that. And yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know what point I’m making, except for those are some dots I’m trying to connect in my own brain. 

Myles E. Johnson: That makes a lot of sense to me too because, so one of the things about this, like this conversation where I think one of reasons why I kind of get like a little antsy around it because these are the kind of conversations that get utilized in order to make the left look ridiculous. Because once once you have this many people dying, once you, um, have this much of crisis and once you name a group of people or name somebody a narco terrorist or whatever, then you look ridiculous defending them. And any and you know, not that we’ve been cut and used on on on the right, but but we could be. And this kind of conversation makes it sound how out of touch we are, how um how we are um in collusion with with with global terror. Am I making sense?

DeRay Mckesson: Sorta I think I think I’m I think I’m lost a little bit. 

Myles E. Johnson: So what I’m saying is like, once you already name a group of people, narco terrorists, once you already say what something is, if you if you are an American citizen, specifically if you’re an American citizen whose politics are on the left and you try to give a nuanced or critical view of that thing, if you try to um maybe push back on that narrative, it just looks like you’re defending what they named it. So it looks like you’re defending the–

DeRay Mckesson: Yes, yes, yes, yes yes. 

Myles E. Johnson: –narco terrorist, and that is easily dismissable. 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah. No [?].

Myles E. Johnson: Which makes those and we do that so often no matter if it’s trans prisoners getting recorrective surgeries, whatever it is. We are constantly seeing ourselves in an easily dismissible space, which I think helps us leak power. 

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

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Myles E. Johnson: So this news is coming out of Kansas City. There is a vinyl bookstore called Willa’s Books & Vinyl. So, A, Sharhonda gave me this news. You know, I’ve been searching for good news. It was bleak this week, y’all, but she but she sent it to me. And this story was really fascinating to me because essentially, so this woman by the name of Willa Robinson, who is now 84, has spent 60 years amassing Black literature. And it’s in this bookstore. And when you go in, it feels like maybe a, not like a Borders or Barnes and Noble, but it feels like this kind of living monument to Black writing. And um before I even go, before we go even deeper in this story, this place needs help. So if this, if that sounds interesting to you, if you feel like that needs a that needs support, this place needs um help paying property taxes and upkeep. So please support that. That is something material you can do in order to help the Black community. But um I found this story really interesting. Not just because this is a Black woman who’s been amassing all this vinyl and these books in Kansas City, and now this is a space where Black folks and all folks can go in order to see the beauty of Black literature and Black writing, but also it ties into this kind of mainstream conversation that’s been happening around third spaces. And of course, anytime something occurs in the mainstream conversation, I always think, well, what’s the Black. Because you always need the Black and if once you paint something that’s happening in mainstream Black it actually becomes powerful and useful I find so when I think about third spaces I think about the necessity of Black third spaces. A third space that prioritizes the safety and illumination of Black people and if that is uh centered. Then that space will automatically be safer and more illuminating for everybody else who participates in it. And I think that this is one of those places and one of those stories that needs our support and also serves as a model of what things we should be producing of when we think about the literacy raids, when we thing about a space for like a third space for Black people and Black kids to go and read, to be around books, to feel safe, to also one of the things that um the writer describes is the smooth jazz that’s playing. And um, you know, there’s lots of studies around jazz and classical music being good for things like blood pressure and being good for things like stress and anxiety that we know it over represents in the Black community. These are the spaces that are that are needed and they have to be intentional and they have to be funded, and they have to be able to pay their property taxes, they have to be able to pay their rent, and they also have to be produced because sometimes the person with the vision isn’t the same person with the credit. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Mm-hmm. 

Myles E. Johnson: The credit score, I should say. So, like, sometimes those things need to be, those things just have to be married. And I think this was such a good, beautiful example of a communal space that um should be saved and should be honored. The last thing I’ll say about this story, too, is that it took her 60 years to create this collection. And I thing as young people on this podcast, some younger than others, Goo Goo Gaga um I think that sometimes we can I can we can always think about the project that’s in front of us and we can think in one year or two weeks or one month or six months or what do you corporate elites call it, quarters? Um. We can only think in quarters. But here is a Black woman who didn’t think in quarters, she thought in her lifetime. And I think when you think in your lifetime, you really give something to the community that can change another person’s lifetime. So a six-year-old who is um interacting with this woman’s 60 years worth of work is going to have a different life based off of what she decided to put work into her lifetime. And I love um rewiring my brain to think of our lives as this kind of um legacy relay race instead of um just these like quarter bits and pieces. Because as we can see, when we think like, uh people who have shareholders to to answer to, we don’t do as well, but when we think of ourselves as um stewards of thought, stewards of art, stewards of legacy and history, that we’re doing that for our whole lives, and we think of ourselves that way, we usually come out with something that sustains even the hottest of fascist moments. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I really loved this story for a host of reasons, many of them you’ve talked about. I also think that this happening in the Midwest also was worth elevating because I do think sometimes I live in my little coastal bubble, right? Um. I appreciated also that it was a news organization or you know that has decided to step in, right, that they have started volunteering at the store, that you know they’re trying to help her pay down her debt, trying to make sure that this place uh, remains open and accessible to many more members of, um, of the community. And, you know, even just the way that she talks about having built the collection over the course of her career, right? She was like, people would need a home for the thing that they had that was by this Black author or this Black artist. And I would say, yeah, bring it. We’ll figure out a place for it. Right. It wasn’t about something being like a perfect fit all the time. It was about at some point this is gonna make sense and I’m gonna hold on to it until it does, which I also thought was beautiful. Um. And I think about in our, you know, particularly in my family where, you know, the generation before me didn’t necessarily archive or hold on to things in the way that my grandparents’ generation did, how much we’ve missed even in our own family history by not doing that. And so sometimes when there are gaps in my understanding of what was happening in my family during a particular era or point in time, I will go look to a public archive to try and fill in some of those gaps. And so I’m grateful for people like Ms. Robinson who builds those public archives, who make it possible for those of us who weren’t alive in particular moments to connect with our own histories, both shared and individual. So grateful for her work. 

DeRay Mckesson: Well, this makes me think of somebody online recently was like, you know, they were like, that Black book that you read online or that Black PDF or da da. They were, like, buy the book, print the book. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: Because especially the way things are going, all this stuff that we have in the digital world is precarious. It might not be there soon. But when you buy that book of Black knowledge or whatever it is, you’ll have it in the house and can read it and can mark it up. I, because of the podcast, um I get pitched eight thousand books, a lot of books every week. And I look up and I’m so thankful that I got to like touch it and read it. And I was helping a friend who was writing a book recently. And I’m like, you know, I’m like a good reader. I’m like giving feedback on. And then I’m, like let me print this. I like I need to print it. I need to touch it, and feel it. And I think about a generation of kids who like they were digital first, or like they sort were as they got older. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: Digital was just a part of their world. And I’m like, oh, y’all don’t even, it’s not even that you don’t appreciate libraries, you just never went to one. Or like, it’s not even that you don’t appreciate hard books. Like you just have had a, you’ve had a literary life that digital has been as real as paper. Whereas for us, we had paper lives solely and digital is like a new interesting thing that we got, not the other way around. So when I thought about this bookstore, I think about how many books she must have where she has some of the only copies that exist. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: Didn’t get scanned.

Sharhonda Bossier: Mm-hmm. 

DeRay Mckesson: We don’t have pictures of them, da-da-da. And I do worry that we overindex that the digital stuff is either ours, which it is not, or that it’ll last forever. And I was um, History Makers, which is a beautiful archive of videos of Black people over time. I was listening to Juliana, who runs it, talk. And I never thought about the fact that videos get corrupted. So she’s like, you know, people think about books and da-da-da, but she’s, like, I have this video archive and every X years we have to like, preserve the video footage again. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

DeRay Mckesson: Because it like the files get corrupted. And I was like, oh, I didn’t even, that just sounds, I’m like, oh, you record it, it’ll be here. And she was like yeah, that’s what people think. And that’s not true. But I think about, um you know, I’m gonna ask you guys offline, in February 2026 is a hundred years of Black history month. 

Sharhonda Bossier: Mm-hmm. 

DeRay Mckesson: And I’m really interested in how we talk about stories like this as we come up to February 2026. All these sort of archives of Black life that get lost and forgotten in the national conversation. 

Myles E. Johnson: You know, like, I’m really grateful for this podcast and this, um, and be able to speak to you all every week because I feel like it just is a place for the reading and writing that I, that I’m doing for it to be practiced. And I feel, like I’m like, oh, I believe something different. I’ve been having conversation, I’ve been learning, and now I believe something different and how I feel and I, and I think this story kind of exemplifies it, I don’t think that inside of a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy that you can be an apolitical millionaire or billionaire. Like I think that once you have that financial status inside of a nation that has poverty, I think that it becomes your political um necessity to figure out ways to alleviate the pain of poverty on other people. And I think that it’s kind of ridiculous looking at the numbers of this bookstore, of Willa’s Bookstore, to not, and to know how many you know Black billionaires we have apparently, or Black millionaires, and how many people are living soft lives. Why is our life not soft enough to help her her have a better pillow? Like why why if why is our Black excellence not excellent enough to support, again, these things that people want to see on the left? Like I think that there is, to me, there feels like a devastation of political morality, the fact that we have this many Black millionaires and this much uh Black financial-born crisis. Like I think that is something that we just have, we just should be more cold and hard on. Like that that you can’t be my friend and a millionaire and not support Black folks. Choose the Black folks you want to support, but we need, let the dollar circulate. 

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 @PodSaveThePeople and @CrookedMedia on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. And if you enjoyed this episode of Pod Save the People, consider dropping us a review on your favorite podcast app. And we 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. [music break]

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