Share This Podcast

A federal appeals court revives a lawsuit against DeRay McKesson, prompting warnings that the decision could threaten First Amendment protections. In Los Angeles, a former police commander wins a $5.7 million judgment after alleging she was held to a different standard than her male colleagues. And in culture, Telfar announces it will donate 100% of net profits to global liberation efforts. DeRay interviews researcher and journalist Chenjerai Kumanyika about his podcast Empire City: The Untold Origin Story of the NYPD.

Judge warns revival of lawsuit against Black Lives Matter organizer ‘imperils’ First Amendment

LAPD commander fired over drunken incident wins $5.7 million lawsuit

Did Telfar just begin the revolution? And by a Black Muslim woman at that.

Follow @PodSaveThePeople on Instagram.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay, and welcome to Pod Save the People. In this episode, it’s me, Myles, and Sharhonda here to talk about all the news with regard to race, justice, and equity from the past week. And then I sat down with researcher, journalist, organizer, Chenjerai Kumanyika. We talk about the power of storytelling, how history is constructed and what it means to challenge dominant narratives in a moment like this. And I have an important Pod Save The People update to share with you. Now, I’ve been hosting and producing Pod Save the People for nearly 10 years. It’s been a long time. And I’m so grateful that you have listened week after week. And this show has been just a career highlight of mine, and I’m so proud that I’ve met a ton of people and I’ve learned so much. And for the first time since the very first episode, I’m taking a break. I’m going on sabbatical. This means that after March 24th, we won’t publish new episodes for a bit. I just need a break. It’s been like non-stop since that very first episode, which was a great episode. We’ve had a really cool run, but I just need a moment to like step back and reflect and think about the new version of Pod Save the People and just like take a breather. But in the meantime, revisit some of our previous episodes, y’all, and it’s been cool to have so many amazing co-hosts and guests over the years who have poured a part of themselves into this podcast, whether it was through their storytelling, sharing resources, giving us the game that we needed to bring the change that we want to see in ourselves. So big thanks to the crew, Sharhonda Bossier, Myles E. Johnson, our producer, AJ Moultrie, and to the team at Crooked Media, including Jon, Jon, Tommy, and every editor, engineer, and more who has touched this show in some way. Thank you for being part of this journey. Follow us on Instagram for episode recaps and show announcements at Pod Save the People, and I will see you soon. Here we go. [music break]

 

[AD BREAK]

 

DeRay Mckesson: March is coming to a close as the year began with a bang. There’s just so much happening. This is DeRay at @deray on Twitter. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: This is Myles E. Johnson at @sunpulpit on Instagram and sunpulpit.co is my new substack. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: And this is Sharhonda Bassier at @BossierSha on Instagram, at @BossierS on Spill. And because some of you are still finding me on LinkedIn, I’m still there too. Well, March is coming to an end with some pretty devastating news for those of us who grew up idolizing Cesar Chavez. I grew up in California. And so for most of my life have thought about Cesar Chavez as a civil rights icon. There are streets named after him, elementary schools named after them and the New York Times, after a lengthy investigation, has released information saying that he was harassing and assaulting women and underage girls at the height of his sort of influence in the farm workers and labor movements. Dolores Huerta, who many know and think of as his sort of right-hand person, this week released a statement saying that she also was a victim of Chavez’s abuse. Uh. That he coerced her into sex on one occasion and raped her on another occasion um and that both of those encounters resulted in the birth of two children that she then gave up for adoption or to have raised by other families. Um. Obviously bringing that to the pod um because I have seen sort of two big threads emerge from that one is on the left where people are saying things like movements are always bigger than their mascot, right? And starting to talk about Chavez more as a mascot than as a savior, which I think is a really important conversation, how we think about movements, how we think about um people’s legacies, especially when we learn that they have been terrible people and abusers. But on the right, I’m seeing people sort of latch onto this moment as a see, those woke people over there, they told you to worship this man and look at how terrible he is. This is why we shouldn’t name anything after any quote unquote “social justice warriors.” The social justice stuff is a veneer and they have leveraged it as an opportunity to undermine um our push to have conversations about people’s sacrifices and broader social justice movements. So I’m curious what y’all are seeing, particularly as folks outside of California. Um. And as folks who uh maybe are not as connected to some right-wing educators as I am given my background in ed reform. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: What do you mean? I’m all about the um right-wing educators. No. Um. [laughter] Just joking. Um. Yeah, so part of me, I’m trying to make sure that I use my words as clearly as possible. Part of me is really happy, obviously not happy that anybody has suffered abuse, but also extremely happy at all of these kind of like holy cows dying. I think that part of what capitalism, what patriarchy creates are the symbolic heroes, are these kind of strong men, no matter if you agree with them or not. So I actually enjoy seeing um people who um I admire being gutted. I of course enjoy seeing peope who I find myself politically or morally opposed to being guttied even more. But I think that in order for us to really move forward, we have to just relinquish this impulse, this, I would say, white nationalist Christian impulse to make savior, to make Jesus Christ out of figures. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: It was interesting to read that the reporter got tipped off about this almost five years ago. And it has taken him five years to uncover this or to document it. And you know, Dolores Huerta obviously knew this way before five years ago, but her statement seemed really brave to me and powerful. So she, you know she’s like, I’m 90 and yeah, I need to say this. And and I saw it and I was like, wow, this is wild. Sharhonda, I actually didn’t know at all that the right was talking about. Like I didn’t, I hadn’t heard that  until you just said it. Like, I didn’t know what how they were sort of using this. So that’s interesting. Cause in Baltimore, I don’t think there’s a Cesar Chavez anywhere. Like I don’t think he, we ain’t got a statue, we ain’t got a street. I’ve never– 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: He just doesn’t exist in Baltimore in that way. So we don’t have to rename anything cause he not named after nothing. I am interested in how we are critical of movements while they are moving. And then what gets lost when we aren’t, and this is like a great example, because what’s been interesting is that all these people have come out being like, you know, he was awful to these people, he was anti-immigration, like, you know this wasn’t the only thing people had deep concerns about, but just like Dolores, they were like, well we don’t want to hurt the overall work. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And I think about even, you know, I think about this philosophically with him, but I even think about, you know what I’ve seen in the last 12 years since the protests began, and people make these same sort of considerations. They’re like, well this is bad, but if you talk about it, it’ll hurt the movement and da-da-da. And it’s like, it seems like being quiet about it ultimately hurts the movement anyway. Like, what does that, like, it doesn’t seem like there’s a win in being quiet about it. But there is this tendency, and as somebody who like, I was critical of things in the movement, and I had elders call me and say, DeRay, don’t say that out loud, or, you know, if this person said this really mean thing about you, but if he responds, it’ll make the protestors look like kids. And you know I don’t believe those things now, but when it was happening, I didn’t know any better. You know I was like, you know I’m like listening to older people who I think have done this and are wiser and we still sort of end up in these really bad places. So that’s what I’m thinking of right now. I did see, I just want to say it cause it I saw it, somebody was really critical of Dolores actually. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, they were like, he was not able to build this empire without you. You co-signed this the whole way through. And I thought that was interesting too, this idea that like, you know, people make choices that they rationalize in the name of the work and what does that mean and how do we talk about it? I’m always interested. I’m trying to find this quote. Robin Kelley has this beautiful quote about being critical of of movements that I’m hopefully I’ll find in the next minute, but it’s something that I that I come to often because you know, you know in this moment people have been critical certainly of me and a lot of people, but he gave me real language about it so hopefully I find it soon. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I also saw there was a woman who had been a labor organizer in Stockton and knew Dolores Huerta’s other two children. And apparently in that community, it was an open secret, like who her, who their mother was, um though, like, you know, rumors only around who their father was. And, you, know, this organizer spoke like these people are my friends and I’ll just tell you right now that like even as she has come forward to acknowledge them and says in her statement that she’s built a relationship with them and that they are now connected to her other children, her website still says she has 11 children, not 13, right? And that for those children, the ones that she quote unquote “gave up” to be raised by other families, they are like, this is my mother, we all know that and she’s out here playing celebrity, right. And so a as as a person who has also had a complicated relationship with her mother, right? Um. You you recognize that like sometimes your parents are really doing the best they can with what they have and your feelings around that not being good enough for you are valid. And so, you know I think it’s a really complicated set of of conversations around culpability, around abuse and manipulation and coercion, and I think anytime children are involved, um all of our wounds are sort of picked at around our bonds with our parents or not. But I’ve also seen people defend Chavez, right, in the comments, say, you know, why didn’t you say this when he was alive? He’s been dead 30 years. What good does it do to like tarnish this man’s reputation now when he can’t quote unquote “defend himself?” So the internet is probably not the best place to have this conversation, but it’s the place we got. Um. And it’s been really, let’s just say, illuminating for me. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I found the Robin Kelley quote. I’ll just read it real quick. Robin Professor Robin Kelley. He said, we have to be critical of other regimes. We have to be critical of our own movements and critical of each other in a way that’s loving. Because if you really do criticism well, the most loving thing you can do is to critique. And the reason that I say that is because you don’t critique to make someone feel bad. You don’t critique to make yourself feel good. You don’t critique to prove to everyone in the room that you know so much. You critique because our life depends on getting the right answers. And I’ve always loved that from Robin Kelley. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. When do you know when Robin Kelley said that? 

 

DeRay Mckesson: It was at the conference, Socialism 2022. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Okay well Bell Hooks’ statements about being critical, I think, predate that, but like the same sentiment. But you know, Bell Hooks has so much language around being critical. And that and I never was in school thinking I wanted to criticize things and stuff and you know or anything like that. But it was just, once I think you come to like a certain illumination around like politics and and and entertainment and media, you just feel compelled, almost feels like a guilt. Like you can’t go to sleep if you don’t say the truth about it. But the other thing too, that I wanted to say about Cesar and Dolores, everybody, everybody, is Dolores, Cesar, anybody who, and I think America probably specifically needs to sit with this is that anybody who’s trying to be in front of people, there is something wrong with you. And there just is. And if you are in this media apparatus, if you’re in this Hollywood media apparatus and you want to be seen, there’s something wrong with you. There is something wrong with me. The fact that I know that there is a fascist empire and I am in Midwest America and I wanna be on this mic talking, there is something going on wrong with me. And I think that once you see the lust or even the um the desire for fame, no matter what the use of it is, you realize that, lo, yeah, this is a complicated psychology of somebody who sees this reality they’re in and says, oh, I want more eyes on me or I want power. And I think that once you stop thinking the person who achieved it is better you know I think we’re doing that with celebrity worship and kind of destroying the celebrity. Once you stop thinking that person’s better for accomplishing it, you start seeing them for what they are, which is a human being who is at the the nexus of of of power and accountability at all times. And all the critiques that you might project onto them kind of melt away when you say, oh, they’re not a savior, they are a human being who wanted what all human beings, which is power and and movement. Last last last thing is, I guess a question. Do you think that like we’re in an era where like the movement, like big quote, “like the movement,” I know that’s like so many different things, but it just feels more democratized. Like I think for so long, it was like, oh, we have to protect the movement, protect the movement, protect the movement. But it’s almost like kind of mimics how people think about property, which I think is another thing that happens when things are born in America, is that we kind of just project on it this capitalist Christian ethos on top of it. But in my head, I’m like, oh, it actually feels like the movement is moving, and more people are participating, and no one singular person’s flaws can make legitimate or illegitimate a movement anymore, or at least that’s where we’re going towards. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Maybe we’re going there, but I think that the the whole controversy around the houses and the money like did some big damage around– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: What houses, what money?

 

Sharhonda Bossier: The Black Lives Matter organization. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Oh. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: The purchase of property. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Got it. Thank you for the clarity. Yeah. But I wonder I wonder if they even accomplished the leadership. You know what I’m, like, they weren’t Angela Davis. And I’m not saying that as like trying to compete two Black people together, I’m just saying how they sat in our collective imagination. I think that they already had um, I think everybody already has, anybody who’s participating in social media and activism already has a certain type of, for lack of better words, like stench on them. Because of where we are in celebrity culture. So it didn’t feel like the same takedown of a movement whereas if that happened with like Angela Davis in like 1971 or something, you know what I mean? Does that make sense? 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, I think that that that feels truer to me that definitely after the weight of defund and all that moment where it was like, what was interesting to me about defund as somebody who was there from the beginning, it was as strong as the message was, nobody wanted to be the messenger, like literally on the side of people who are pumping that. They would do no press, they did not want to be offend– they didn’t want to like they sort of wrapped it up in this leader listing, but like they actually weren’t willing to defend the message themselves. It was anonymous accounts, it was organization accounts into this. And I do think, you know, my organizer moment is I do think that people have relationships with people. Like, I don’t think they have relationship, like, they don’t have sustained relationships with like random [?] like that. Which is one of the reasons why I think defund sort of falls because there’s nobody to pivot, there’s nobody to explain. Like it was, it was always so you can’t name one person who defended it because they they refused to do it. I talked to professors and stuff now or like people who sort of know, and they know three people didn’t start a movement, they know it, they’re like, there’s not a question about it, da da. They won’t ever say that publicly because they, they benefited so much from the lie. And it was just such a big moment that they’re like, we need an off-ramp to talk about it. So we can’t publicly say that didn’t happen, even though we know it’s not true because we, we just sort of just don’t know how to sort of acknowledge that we all got hoodwinked by this thing. And that’s sort of a weird thing. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And you’re specifically talking about the lie that Black Lives Matter was started by three individuals?

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, this idea that the movement that the entire movement was like the outgrowth of like three people who sat down and like started a hashtag that then caused everybody to go into the street and then like and they embraced that narrative themselves. And like people know that’s not true. Like it is like but people won’t say it out loud because they’re like well, you know, I think that hurts the space or like you know we got all these grants because of it or da da so it becomes this sort of weird thing that behind the scenes people know. But in public people are like no no, but you’re like, this is weird to live through. Sharhonda, do you experience that same thing?

 

Sharhonda Bossier: The dissonance around what people will say in in public around any third rail issue, particularly around credit and what people will say privately for sure. But I think the credit piece is because I don’t know that we have created a framework for people to understand leaderless or leaderful moments, right? Like I got my nails done this week. My manicurist is a 32-year-old Mexican woman. Right? I’m trying to talk to her about this news. She had never even learned about Dolores Huerta. You know what I mean? So she only knew Cesar Chavez. And so you’re in this moment when you’re like, does she know the United Farm Workers? Does she understand the visuals? Does she understand the Si se puede chant, yes. But she only knows that movement as the work of one man, right, because the way that we were taught about that work. And so then me trying to talk to her about Huerta, trying to show her pictures, be like, look, she’s right there. You know like her brain, and this is not an indictment of her. That’s my girl, I love her. Right. We spend a lot of time together. She’s like my priest. But it’s not an indictment of my manicurist that she couldn’t understand that this movement was not the work of one man. Right? It is to say that everything that she has been taught about how great things happen are that they are the result of the work of a great man. And trying like over a manicure, I’m not gonna be able to give her a way of understanding that multiple things were happening and that there was even struggle within the movement, which is part of what you were talking about, right? When people were like, actually he was an anti-immigrant, you know, dah, dah dah dah, the reason he got held up was because people didn’t find him threatening like a whole host of things. 

 

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

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Totally switching gears, [laughter] hard pivot. The Oscars happened since we were last together and there had been lots of buzz going into the Oscars about Sinners and Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan and who was gonna win what. Um. And speaking of making people mascots or saviors, right, I think we are probably in an era where Ryan Coogler is experiencing a lot of that. Certainly Michael B. Jordan has um become an avatar for how we feel our work performance is valued or not. Um. But a big win for the folks over there. Um. I had a friend and regular podcast listener text me to say they were ready for Myles to drag everybody this week for being invested in the outcome of the Oscars. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I do not know what y’all be hearing. [laughter] Respectfully.

 

Sharhonda Bossier: But did y’all watch? What did you think? Anything else come up for you around this award season as it comes to an end? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: No, I did not watch. I didn’t watch. I didn’t but I didn’t watch in protest. It was actually really interesting because a couple of YouTubers who I enjoy, me and my boyfriend were um home together, and a couple YouTubers I enjoy went live in that moment. And um specifically, I’m thinking about T.S. Madison and Craig Stewart. They did a live during that moment and they are, if you do not know who they are they are not political socialists, anything. So I was definitely consuming entertainment, but it was just that entertainment, but it felt so natural. And when I look at the numbers of that, even though like I think between them, they like maybe garnered 20,000 people, which is a lot of people for two singular people with, uh, or whatever. But then you see all the people going live. So it kind of felt like something that we were watching by proxy of them, which felt like a part of the, of the death cycle that didn’t feel as dramatic. Like, so I didn’t like sit home and say, no Oscars for me. And stuff. I do think it’s really, really interesting. I think when we look look back at this moment, specifically us who are post Saturn return, so post that like 27, 28, 29 little little mark, I do you think that us kind of just looking at the wealth gap. Looking at what Black people like make that we’re in the negative when it comes to like our net worth when we look at the state of the world. I do think no matter what and I think that’s maybe how come I get under people’s skin when I say certain things because they know in 30 years them enjoying this kind of last hoorah of like white supremacist media propaganda um validation for our Black stuff is gonna feel a little silly. It’s gonna feel goofy it’s going to, there’s so many moments in history in our past that we look at and say, now, how come y’all Negroes did that? What were y’all on? And I just think that– 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: People kind of can forecast that this moment is going to be one of those things. But I think the bigger thing is we’re addicted to it. We are addicted to it, people are looking for jobs, people are looking for class ascendance. And this is the way that they kind of get catharsis for those things that may not be happening in their, in their lives. The last last last last last thing I’ll say though, is Colman Domingo and Teyana Taylor. Love them both down. Love them both down. Oh my God. You can’t tell me nothing about no Colman. I saw him in Passing Strange. Teyana Taylor, I was with her since sweet 16. But when I tell you, it is so interesting when the country is in a recession and you have two people reiterate about hard work, two Black people reiterate about hard work even as you are standing 10 years, 50 years, 40 years senior to Timothée Chalamet, who people just decided is famous and just decided was talented. Like it kind of gets on my nerves that we become minstrels for labor when obviously those dynamics are dying and they’re not true or you wouldn’t be sharing the red carpet with somebody who decided to do a plank challenge. You know what I mean? Like that that that will always boggle my head, but I think that is sometimes um Black folks in Hollywood’s response to their class position. Is that, oh, it’s hard work, it’s hard work. No, it’s not. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: It’s funny you talk about the class stuff. I was just talking, I just had an internal like fireside chat at a big nonprofit in the city. And obviously I do work around the police and da da da. But I asked them, I’m like, what percentage of New Yorkers do you think live below the poverty line? The report just came out earlier this week. And it is 25% of New Yorkers, one in four, live below the poverty line. And um I say like, what do you think poverty is? And they’re like, you know, 30K, da-da-da. And I’m like its 15k, which is $288 a week before taxes. And I’m like, what would change in your life if that was your salary today? And you know, she’s like, I couldn’t live where I live. I don’t [?], like [?] daycare da da. And it was this interesting thing where it’s like you know the way we, I wanna think about like new frames to talk about the class divide because when people hear that, they, they, I don’t know what they hear, but they don’t hear that in a place like New York City, a quarter of the people are living on $288 a week or less. It’s just [?]–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Like it is just a different world to be in. So when you see all the celebrity, like the the diamonds and da da like sort of forced into people’s faces when the poverty rate is that high, you’re like, well, that it really does feel crazy. Like, it just feels nuts to me. Um. So, Myles, it made me your comment about the class thing made me think about that. And I think it helps me actually think better about why the celebrity culture is dying. Because you get this, you get a Teyana, you get people like Kim Kardashian being like, are you working hard? And you’re like, Kim, you don’t know what actually work, you don’t know what it means to work to survive. You just don’t know that. And like, you haven’t lived that, your people haven’t live it. You are just working to like buy a newer house, a bigger thing. People are working to survive and that becomes sort of interesting. Third thing is that, you know, Mamdani, I think is the best example of this in mainstream politics is just like tapped into the class. Like he like understands like the language and the ethos of of what happens with class struggle. One of my really good friends who works at a big foundation and makes a lot of money, he was not a Mamdani fan. And then he went out to get a piece of pizza. And he was like, one piece of pizza was $8. He was like– 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Mamdani has to, he’s like, I get it. He’s like how do you get $8 for a slice of pizza? He’s like that is he was like I went to the counter to ask them if they rung me up wrong. And he was like that was the right [?] he’s like, oh, I just didn’t know. You know what I mean? But I say all this to say that all of these really overt displays of wealth and celebrity, I think are falling flatter than they have fallen in the moment where everything has fallen apart. But the poverty rate continues to increase. And you know what Trump did that is gonna in hindsight be a big deal for people to process is like, when you fire that many people in the government, that trickles down to communities in a really intense way. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yup. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And we’re seeing that. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I mean, look, I feel like I’m a person who wants to be tapped into Black popular culture. I don’t want to miss anything. I don’t have live TV, so I didn’t watch the awards, but I I watched like the recaps and you know people sharing and celebrating and all of that other stuff. And I watched Michael B. Jordan go to In-N-Out afterwards, right? And as a Californian, And I was like, got to defend the [laugh] got to defend the In-N-Out burgers. Despite the fact that those people don’t share my politics. One last thing, though, before we move on to the news is a little sad news. The passing of a Black cultural icon, Kiki Shepard, who most of us know from Showtime at the Apollo. She passed away this week, 74, and just wanted to bring that to the pod to say, Kiki, thanks for the memories and, you know, truly iconic. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: What a monument to Black culture. Like such a monument. And you just like see see her in a flood of memories come by. Some of, at least when I think of like Black elegance, Diahann Carroll, Kiki Shepard, those are like some of the people that come to mind when it comes to like Black feminine elegance. And also, and I’m trying to do better even on this podcast, but also not always framing people dying as a bad thing. And I as I wanna mature my own relationship with death and with life and and with health. And I think that we all will need to do that just because of where the country’s going and I think that if we don’t mature our relationships with it, we’ll just be seeing people die and going crazy. And you know for my belief system, I find it hard to be sad for a Black woman who has been released from this body and of this nation. And I’m just in admiration that she was able to spin some elegance out of what she was offered. So, prayers up. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Kiki was a key, she was great, good vibe and fun. And it makes me think of– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Wait you met her?

 

DeRay Mckesson: No, no, just like, just seeing her. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Oh okay.

 

DeRay Mckesson: Just saying I wish. But it makes me think of the, the Apollo when you actually got booed, you know, like that would be. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yes, yes. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Kids today aren’t. They don’t have like the the stamina to get booed off the stage. But I remember when you got booed off the stage, there’s no show now where people get booed. Like that’s like, that’s like not okay to do. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: The the show is called Wi-Fi. The show is social media. [laughter] The whole world is the Apollo now. [laughter]

 

DeRay Mckesson: No, I just think, like it was, you singing this and they’re just like, yeah, wrap this up. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Boo yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Like I, what a great, boom, I even think about, like I remember when I got to college, we didn’t publish the student government results, like, the numbers, because they were like, this is unfair that the vote tallies would be public. You’re like, these people are grown adults and they can’t be but like, the the coddling that happens around people, like, Apollo makes me think of this, is that like you really did, the Sandman really did come take you off the stage. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: A hundred percent. A hundred–

 

DeRay Mckesson: What a time. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: –percent. Yes.

 

Myles E. Johnson: And y’all wonder why Lauryn’s late to them stages. They booed Lauryn Hill, and she ain’t never respect the stage since. 

 

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

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Speaking of not respecting stages, Markwayne Mullin, did he respect this congressional hearing this week? You know, Markwayne Mullin wants to be the person to replace Kristi Noem. And he had a pretty heated and colorful exchange with Rand Paul this week. DeRay?

 

DeRay Mckesson: He looked Rand Paul straight in the face and said to Rand, cause remember Rand, like somebody broke into Rand’s house and attacked him, his neighbor. And he said, and I quote, “I can understand why your neighbor did what he did.” If that’s not the coldest thing to say to somebody in their face at a hearing when they’re about to vote on you, I don’t know what is. White supremacy is one hell of a drug. But remember Markwayne Mullin only advances, so Rand Paul votes against him. He only advances because Fetterman, who is a Democrat, votes for him. And Fetterman says to explain his decision on Twitter, in January, I called on the president to fire Noem, and he did. I truly approach the confirmation of my colleague and friend, Senator Mullin, with an open mind. We need a leader at DHS. We must reopen DHS, my eye is rooted in a strong, committed, constructive working relationship with Senator Mullin for our nation’s security. I mean, just gross. Like this guy is unbelievably not qualified to do anything. And he made a mockery of the hearing. He wouldn’t say that Biden won the election in ’20. I mean, just like there’s no, I can’t find one redeeming thing that Markwayne Mullin did that made sense. And yet he is another person that will seemingly is on the path to get confirmed and might even be worse than Kristi Noem which is hard to do because Kristi Noem was pretty bad. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: So I just wanted to bring it here because that hearing was just nuts. And you see even how the Republican senators senators continue to get played by Trump. And it’s sort of just like, whatever, like Rand Paul is a, is an OG in the Congress and this man is talking about, I see why your neighbor tried to kill you and it, as the Homeland Security secretary, it’s crazy. So I had to bring it here cause I was fascinated by it. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Well, one of the things that Markwayne Mullin said about Rand Paul was he was like, I feel like you fight Republicans more than you fight Democrats, right? And it feels like we’re always trying to fight you because Rand Paul is by most people seen as more libertarian than Republican, right, which, you know, maybe a difference not worth discussing or diving into. But I think in this moment, you know, he’s not seen as the Trump loyalist that people expect other Republicans to be. I try very hard not to laugh at these people because I understand how dangerous they are. But I saw that clip and I howled. It was like the wildest thing I had ever seen. Like that’s some stuff that would make me get up from my desk and be like, we got to square up now. You know what I mean? Like, you can’t you can’t say that to me. And it feels so in line with some of the other stuff we’ve talked about this administration doing, right, like the UFC fights and all sorts of other things right that are like, I’m like they feel like they’re on the verge of a duel all the time. Um and in some ways that shows up in these congressional hearings and like flouting you know practice protocol, et cetera. But sometimes that shows up as us like torpedoing boats in the Caribbean. You know what I mean? And it just feels like all out. Uh, this administration’s philosophy and the people they are looking for to serve as loyalists within the the administration is like is hit them up, you know, and that is just like a wild thing to see so so plainly, I guess. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, you know, I love I love it being exposed. I love it, love it, love it, love it so sorry about that insult to [?]. I don’t know if I’m really sorry. I think I might just be saying that because I want to be seen decent because that was a mean thing to say. But I don’t know if I actually care, but but like about about like you might be right. I don’t know why his, I actually don’t why his neighbor beat his ass. So I’m like. I’m like I’m like– 

 

DeRay Mckesson: That’s great. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I was like. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: [?] be like, well, he might be right, he might be right. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: All the investigation just said years long neighborly dispute. Like it just sounds like they were just like, you know, you live next door to somebody and you like, you know what, I actually can’t stand you. Let’s go. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I’m in the middle of of of middle-class Ohio, and in two years from now, there might be some ass whoopings that I serve, too, that I’m like, fine. So, I just didn’t want to conflate that because I know there was other stories of people, like, of terrorist attacks, like people breaking into people’s homes, thinking about what happened to Nancy Pelosi and stuff like that. So I didn’t wanna conflate those things, but he might have some tea about the situation that we don’t got. But but what I will say, and and and I guess it’s not necessarily a statement just like me pondering about how mean the Republican Party will get and how much more mean and vocal and bro-ish are politics gonna get? And are we equipped anywhere in the political spectrum to really battle those things? Because again, I love that people feel validated by Jasmine Crockett. I think that she is so legitimate for so many reasons. One of them being her education and her background. But when I think about her going back and forth, I’m like, I think this makes people feel good on the internet, but I think these are some, I think these are some freaking gangsters. And I think that these are people who are really nasty. And I actually don’t think that we actually have people who could be nasty. I’m like reading a lot about, I told you all about the essay Toni Morrison, on difficulty. And then also thinking about Nina Simone, who I love so much. But just really thinking about, you know, what I’m kind of calling the nasty ancestor, the the rude person, the um the mean person, and how that is because of corporate politeness and niceties and how things are supposed to go inside these systems, how that is kind of keeping people in handcuffs. And I’m like, do you hear what he just said to this person? If he’s saying that to his people. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Do you know what they will say about you to get you out the box? 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: You have to practice your curse words. Practice saying the meanest thing that disables somebody. You know what I mean? That’s one of those things too. That’s a comment that kind of disables somebody and no shade. That’s kind of what you need in order to create media. You can’t have people who um who can come back on you. Even when I think about what Jasmine said to Margaret. Marjorie, we understood what it was, but it was so coded in our language that we understand it as shade and we made it go viral. But it didn’t really destabilize her. She she made her millions of dollars and then left. We need people who are nasty, ruder, darker in these politics, if you going to go into politics in America. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Also, and if not, nasty and rude, which I co-sign, we need somebody. I do think we just need better storytellers. Like, I get all these organizers who come up to me and I’m like, you need to go talk to a group of people you don’t know. Like, go find some, go to a community center, try, because you just don’t have, you haven’t built like the argument muscle to like really nail it. You are talking to your friends and you talking straight to camera. You don’t actually have to be a good communicator for that. People will sort of like struggle through it with you. You got to figure out how to talk about the police or immigration in a room where like you don’t automatically have them. That is a skill that I find that people just like don’t I went to a hearing in Maryland and it was about an expungement bill, you know expungement is where the crime like gets taken off your record. And I’m looking like who had these people testify? This one woman gets up there, she goes I was convicted of reckless endangerment and served time but I want to be a nurse and you know I, being a nurse is important to me but because I have the charge I can’t work with patients. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Hmm. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And you’re like, well, you haven’t made the case. You said you did do the reckless and you didn’t say you were wrongfully convicted. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Right. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: My father is hearing you and being like, girl, you probably shouldn’t be with patients. Like this is not the best. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: This isn’t the best argument. This other woman comes up and she’s like, you know I got convicted of um an attempt to incite terrorism or whatever. And she was like, you know, that charge has stuck with me. And everybody’s sitting there like, well girl, why’d you get convicted of, and I tell you like, this is not, wrong stories. These are the wrong stories. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: To tell in this moment. They are not the people that my father or grandmother are like sympathetic about. This is like a storytelling war. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I know we all know this, but I think it just it can just use repeating that so much of people’s choices are about economic desperation. So and I think a lot of like people’s like gaps in like storytelling is because you don’t really want to do it because you just want this job because you want want some money. And I think that like we don’t have people. There are some people like, like I wonder where my bullies in high school are. Like there was some people when I would look at them in their eyes. They had like this glimmer for bullying and torturing me and we need like people like there’s not that glimmer .You just want a job and you think this is really making it hard for me. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: [?] Myles. Go take a nap. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: What I was really gonna say– 

 

DeRay Mckesson: –[?] where you go with the bully thing, but you went somewhere I did not think you would go. You said we need those people back. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: We need it. We need it, because when you look at a lot of these Republicans, when you look at a lot of people, like to me, I can see the pleasure of the torture in their eyes. Like, I can see the pleasure of the meanness in their eyes, and– 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –that’s what we need. That’s the kind of storytellers that we need, like, I think the only person, not saying that this person’s evil at all, but like when I look at like Ole, one of the reasons why I like her is because I can tell she loves dressing somebody up and down. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Mm hmm.

 

Myles E. Johnson: She likes getting into it, she’s Caribbean, and she’s like, oh, I know them arguments are loud. I know she’s vicious, and I know there is a um a spiritual, philosophical joy she’s getting from this work. And I think that is what you need too, you know? And not not just, oh, I need a–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –nursing job chile. I’m sorry what I did five years ago. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. Listen I, last thing on the dressing people up and down, I have saved Dominique Morgan’s dressing down of Jermaine Dupree so that I can go back and watch that when I need my spirit. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Speaking of the love. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Right and she she loves it. She–

 

Myles E. Johnson: She loves it. She loves it. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: She loves It. Okay. Yes. We got to she should be a paid political influencer for the left. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: First T.S. President. [laughter]

 

Sharhonda Bossier: But DeRay, to uh your earlier point about you know the stories that people tell and you know when they’re targeted by the state or law enforcement and who we think of as sympathetic or not, you have been at the heart of a lawsuit for now ten years. There’s an update. I want to talk about it, one, because I think it’s an important lesson for so many of us about the tactics that law enforcement will employ. But two, it sort of fits into this thing that has sort of popped up on my radar this this past week, right? Which is the ways in which law enforcement officers will sue when their either feelings are hurt or they think that they’re able to make an example out of someone who has ticked them off. So why don’t you kick us off with telling us a little bit about, well, first reminding us of how this all started, where this all started, and then kind of what you learned today and what the path forward looks like for you. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, it was pretty simple. You were there, actually. We were in Baton Rouge. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I was. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I had been asked to come to Baton Rouge by some of the organizers. I met with a couple of them, took a nap. Then the next day we all went outside. I was outside for what felt like an hour before I spent the next 17 hours in jail. And when I get out, there’s an officer who said he got hit by a rock. And the question is, can I be sued civilly for creating the conditions that allowed him to be injured? As a leader of the protest, there’s this idea. There’s a historic case from the [?] movement called the Clayborne decision that says, no, that you can’t sue somebody like me for what just randomly happened while I was outside. And they are trying to overturn that. So I’ve been in the case since 2016. We’ve been to the Fifth Circuit eight million times. We’ve been to the Supreme Court, we’ve been on the Louisiana State Supreme Court. I just lost two to one. You should read the decision. The dissent is beautiful. But know its I actually went to the fifth circuit the last time and I was there for the arguments. And Myles, when you talk about that look in your eye, this this I think she has a point about Trump, this is definitely a Republican judge. She looks straight up and she goes, he is no Martin Luther King. This is like in the middle of arguments that is what she’s and he and she’s sort of like, well, if he might have had a water bottle, then the jury might say that he threw it. I’m like is this what? Like is this the level of like legal analysis we got going on here. So the whole argument that day and the whole argument in the brief is sort of this idea that a jury might understand this case differently. And you know the other side also says that they have they have testimony where that we’ve never seen from an undercover cop who heard me say, let’s go kill the police. I’m like, y’all, I did not say that. And I don’t know where this undercover cop would have been, because I wasn’t in any I did not plan a thing. I wasn’t a leader of this these protests. But it’s been interesting. So we’re going to go back to en banc, which is the whole court hearing. I did that last time. I broke even at 8-8. Then we went to the Supreme Court. We did not get a decision from the court. The court punted it. But Sotomayor wrote a little note being like, hey, if the lower court see this other case we just decided, then this case will be settled. Not so much, Sotomayor. So we hope to go back to her. And then she can just write for the affirmative and I can win. And we can settle this case once and for all. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, so like what like even like earlier when we were talking about kind of like the democratization of like the movement, to me, this is such an obvious reason why that should happen, because they are singling out DeRay. They are attempting to make an example out of him. And then also to me, I mean well to me in my opinion, because what I’m about to say is going to be provocative, but I also define this as like legalized terrorism. You’re somebody who’s trying for 10 years to make sure somebody cannot economically grow, make sure that somebody’s always tied up inside of these, inside of these institutions, and you’re also trying to make a case to make somebody a hotspot for political violence for retaliation and that to me is something that can’t be looked over that the publicity and the and all this around the case is also to kind of legally destroy or wield what I would call like to legally make somebody have a social death which is a kind of lynching that is a more permissible in 2026 than the ones that we were seen in 1916 and it’s disgusting and I hope that you win and I hope that if you do not win or if it does not go the way that we want it to go, that um more people are activated because it’s really not just about DeRay. This is about everybody this can happen to. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.And I think speaking of like, you know, this is not just about the person who is being targeted, but this is about everyone that this could happen to or any of us who decide to exercise our First Amendment rights, right, to speak up. We saw the rapper Afroman, right? In Ohio, have his home raided and then decide to leverage some of that footage, right. To do what he does, and that is make art and make music about his experience and he chose to poke fun at the officers. But I’m raising it because he has also talked about his decision to go to trial and to fight this as a win for all of us, right? Being able to talk about how we’ve been mistreated at the hands of law enforcement. But also what’s interesting is the same thing for me is this like fragility of law enforcement officers that seems to be underlying all of this, while that’s often a claim levied against those of us who are on the left or who are activists, right? Where they’re like, y’all are so fragile, you’re these little snowflakes, anytime something happens, you want to sue, you wanna claim discrimination, et cetera, et cetera. But like these are two examples of like, and quite honestly, so what? You’re a police officer in riot gear. Who cares if you got hit by a rock? Like you are fine, you know, like that’s the gig, baby. But I wanted to talk about the Afroman trial. Um. One, because if you haven’t seen the clips of the testimony of the officers, and you need a laugh, they’re worth watching. But yeah, I wanted to see what y’all were hearing, what y’all were thinking, and what you see as the applicable lessons for the rest of us in this moment. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I feel so, I was hoping it wasn’t going to be like this, so I, I’m just going to have an honest, vulnerable moment with y’all. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, do it. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I saw the video, I saw the pictures of that man. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: In that American flag suit?

 

Myles E. Johnson: In that suit and that afro, and I had known that we were going to be going on a little sabbatical and I said, Myles, you don’t need to watch, you don’t need to know. So I don’t [laugh] I’m not as informed. I’m not as informed on anything that’s going on. I know it’s in Ohio. Like I do not. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: This was something that totally, like I did periphery, but I did not, I do not know. I was hoping I was gonna get like really informed by y’all, but, I saw how he was dressed and I said, we don’t need that type of people in our lives. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: No I understand.

 

DeRay Mckesson: And what I do love about it is that Afro Man had cameras all in his house. Just randomly he had his whole house, the inside of his house had cameras. So when they raided the house, he has the footage of the raid. This is how he makes so many videos because he has the footage of the raid. And he was hell bent on the fact that they stole his money. That like the money they took out and the money they logged were two different amounts. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yup. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: So he talks about like, I wouldn’t have done this if I didn’t feel like they did me dirty, but they did me dirty. And then the videos were amazing. Like he’s like parrodying them, but he has the footage of them coming in the house and like leaving the house, which is how he just has so much content to make fun of them. And then it turns out that they have to admit that they, they would say they didn’t steal the money, but that they logged less money than they took from his house. Like that’s amazing that that comes out in the trial. But really the best part of the trial for me is that his only witness was the ex-wife of the sheriff. I mean, what a win. That, like, the only witness you bring is the ex-wife of one of the police officers. I mean just brilliant. And even like, you know, his own lawyer is like, you know Afroman’s wearing that crazy suit. His own lawyer’s like, should somebody take people seriously who wear suits like this? I mean it’s just like, the whole thing made such a great mockery of the fragility of the police. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And meanwhile, the police are up there crying. They the one exchange– 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yes. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: –that was really gold is that um one of the videos one of the videos says that like he slept with one that Afroman slept with one of the officer’s wives. So they asked the officer, like, well, do you think he slept with your wife? Like, is that? And he’s like, I don’t know. And you’re like, what do you mean you don’t now? Like do you not know? And it’s like the kid is coming home being like, is Afroman my dad? I mean, just like, what a mess. It’s a beautiful mess that Afroman has created. And you’re like you guys are suing him civilly when you broke in his house for no reason. Like it wasn’t like there–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: –was like a, a stash or something. So I thought it was brilliant. And I love that Megan who covered the Meg trial. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yes, yes. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: She was in the courtroom. She covered this. She narrated it. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: She did. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: For the public. It was really just beautiful. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: She did, she did, She did. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Even like what I’m seeing as I’m like looking it up is that like, A, it looks like he he he probably voted for Trump, but like also um it looks that he is meeting, it feels like the success of the trial, but then also kind of like the media success of the trial, like the virality, like people being on his side is like that he kind of met the moment, right? Like. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And like I think that’s one of the reasons why it like repelled me from it because it looked so absurd and it looks so just like this big Black man in this like American flag suit. I was just like, oh, I do not need this. But like, also, it looked really absurd and it seems as though that was kind of like the recipe to– 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Get like the internet, but then also the courts on like your side. So that to me is really interesting is that like you know, they say the little bit of poison that, or whatever, however vaccines work, put a little bit of the illness inside of the vaccine so your body can use it. It seems as though he put a lot of the absurdity poison inside of his strategy and it seems to have paid off. That’s interesting to me. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, for sure. I definitely think worth worth watching for all of those reasons or, you know, diving in a little bit deeper there. My news continues on this theme of what law enforcement will sue for and about. It is about an a former LAPD commander, Nicole Mehringer, who lost her job after she was caught drunk in an unmarked police car with a male subordinate. Which is against department policy, which she admits and you know owns is against department policy. But when she was fired for it, she sued claiming discrimination because she said, men in the department do this all the time and they never get fired. In fact, some of them get like promoted. And so you are firing me for this because I am a woman. The jury awarded her nearly $6 million because the jury found in her favor, saying that she was wrongly fired. And I’m bringing that mostly because it feels like on this theme again of like law enforcement officers and and and their fragility, but also the absurdity piece of this, right? As a taxpayer, I’m like, damn, I am paying because of LAPD’s bad behavior left and right? But yeah, just wanted to elevate that as another thing that happened this week that I think people should pay attention to. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: The only two things I’ll say about this, one is that the police know everything that’s happening in the departments. There’s this idea that like they don’t know and it’s just the leaders, they know. She knew that people were doing things wrong and got covered up. And the moment that it came to her, she was like, let me call out these people. But there’s this ideal that like that that somehow you know if you watch movies, it’s like the bad cops are this like stealth group of people that like, you know, only operate in one part of the city and nobody knows its, no, everybody knows the shadiness is happening at all levels. People know. The second thing is that weirdly in this last week, I’ve gotten a lot of calls about police training. People are like, DeRay, well, what if we just train the police better and da da and I’m like, none of that training will undo this. Like. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: This this culture stuff that is, like, deep-seated around the wild lack of accountability, the way the department uses its institutional power to cover up wrongdoing. There’s not like a three hour training on integrity that is gonna fix that, there’s not a 20 hour training on telling the truth that’s gonna fix that. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And again, if you had a job where it was impossible to get fired, including this woman, she knows she right. And there’s not a question whether she was right or wrong, she is wrong. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And still walks away with seven million dollars. I mean, who doesn’t want that job? It’s an incredible. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Incredible job to have. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Such a wild story, oh. [pause] I just think about like poor Black people. I’m sorry, like, I just think about how like criminalized um just people are and just, I just um I have a friend here in Ohio and he was telling me about just like his different experiences with um with jail and like prison and like kind of like reform and stuff like that. And how like it’s almost like once you go into jail, like staying out is its own job. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Mm-hmm. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Because like you just stay hopped on. And it’s just weird to be in a society where somebody can like make a decision out of poverty and ruin their life. And somebody else can just make a decision out of just, I don’t know, just like, just, just evil know-how and then get rewarded seven million dollars. And it’s just like if that doesn’t make you wanna abolish the state institutions, I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what will. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Speaking of abolition, I was so fascinated with the new Telfar campaign. So first of all, Telfar is donating 100% of their net profits from their bags to different organizations. I’ll list off some of the organizations, Black Alliance for Peace, December 12th Movement, All African People’s Revolutionary Party, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Sudanese Resistance Front, Palestinian Youth Movement. It also is giving direct to Samir Project, Cuba Sea, Believer’s Bailout, Sudan Solidarity Collective, which I think is so beautiful. But because I love esthetics and culture, I was also interested in how it was presented to us. So I implore everybody to go to the Telfar page. It features a really popular speaker. I hate calling people social media influencers, but like social media influencers. Her name is Factsandfire. You might have seen her depending on what algorithm you are. You’ve probably seen her go viral. And um I was super fascinated by the Telfar campaign because A, it has this kind of like urgency. It’s this kind of like Black newsroom, which Telfar has always done. I remember going to like their fashion show and they actually turned it into a newsroom um while while you were there. But like it’s filled with this urgency, and you have Factsandfire talking about the liberation of people from Queens and Brooklyn to Sudan and Palestine. And the energy of it, to me, really encapsulates where I think most people actually are, but most, namely, politicians will not touch that taste that we have for revolution that I’ve kind of talked about. And I think this is such a good example for that taste being satisfied. I think the virality shows that it’s being satisfied. But I also think that somebody who’s in a fashion house or who’s making clothes came, who’s already kind of on the edges of culture, can forecast that and employ it in their in their brand. And I love that it actually is not just talk and there’s actually money going towards these movements. But I think it’s so interesting that this is what people who are on the edge of cool are creating for the public, if that makes sense. And then what makes me think about it, even, what I think about even deeper, is if this is where people really are, like visually and culturally, if this a good symbolic cultural representation where people really are, you can kind of can see the big gap of of like kind of like the nonprofit and the political like institutions trying to galvanize young people. And again, I think there are ways to find some type of equilibrium between, in my opinion, this violent revolution that people have a taste for versus um this systemic kind of uh the systemic, slower change that is a part of like kind of being absorbed into electoral politics and and and um and institutions. And yeah, I just wanted to like bring this in because it felt so jarring at first. It felt like other things feel behind, even when I think about Talarico, when I think about Zohran. I’m like yeah, y’all hit it, y’all got closer, but this is really where most Black people are right now. So how are we going to like really satisfy where most Black people are right now? When you see Black people vote less, when you see Black people participate less, it’s mainly because this is the soul of what people are feeling is somebody’s not activating this or feeling like this is going to be a vehicle for that energy. It feels like a waste of time, specifically when you’re somebody who is faced with like poverty and other decisions that are presented in our community. It’s like if you’re not talking about burning something down, we don’t really want to hear it. And yeah, I just wanted to bring it in, see what y’all thought, see y’alls point of views, if it hit y’all because also I’m I’m I’m East Coast pilled. So I feel like I know a lot of things are going on in like the Telfar New York land, but I was wondering if it like hit Cali. And yeah, how how if if there’s any way for people who are um politicians or these different institutions to see this energy and absorb it. Is there any way for this to be absorbed into something that maybe it’s like less violent? I don’t know. [laugh] [?]. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah I, I didn’t see it before you shared it. Um. It did not come up on my algorithm. I watched it and I was struck, not just by like the visuals, but also like the volume. I don’t know how else to explain it. I was like, oh, that’s loud you know and I was like okay. And it felt almost like remember when Wolf Blitzer used to do those like breaking news, like CNN things that like we poked fun at for a while it felt almost like that. I was surprised because I do feel like while Telfar has a loyal sort of consumer base, right, that it does feel risky for a brand that feels like it’s on the verge of like blowing up or not to take this stance and to be very public about where the money is going, right, which I think is important accountability and transparency for those of us who are like, oh yeah, this is something I want to support. But I also think could be a huge liability, right? When you think about um some of these organizations and their positions being very polarizing to use polite language around it. The other thing that it made me think of though, Myles, was like the limits of like consumerism and advancing our collective and shared goals because I’ve been thinking a lot, like as someone who, you know, and 10 years ago was an owner of every protestee that existed, you what I mean? And constantly is getting Instagram ads for like these very specific niche you know interests that I have, right? Much of it you know sponsored by big protein. I am I’m interested in how because even the language around like net profits, you know what I mean is like a very intentional one. You know we hear net proceeds all the time and you’re like, what does it mean to like to think about needing to buy something, to purchase a good, right, in order to advance a social justice cause that I care deeply about. But I also, you know, went on the site and have identified a pair of boots that I’m definitely gonna buy. One, because they’re cute, and two, because I’m gonna feel better about it now. You know? So that’s the that’s the thing that’s really sticking with me is like how easy I can assuage my own concerns around my consumerist instincts because I feel like I’m doing something good and for the cause, you know? 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know, I both think this is a brilliant business decision, because it’s a moment where every brand has moved away from social justice. So to be one of the brands walking towards it, you really are an outlier. Unlike 2020, where people are tripping over themselvBs and say, black anything. They are not now. And they are even more afraid because of Israel-Palestine, even more afraid because of Iran, even more afraid because Trump is just so unhinged with ICE. So I think this is like smart for the moment, super smart for their brand, because they’ve always been countercultural. They start out as countercultural, you know, the first thing that Telfar ever did was to be like, everybody can buy a bag. I’ll make enough bags for every like scarcity won’t be the way that you think about the brand is, you know was already a thing that was big. So so shout out to them. And like they the team is reading the moment right. The thing that I always get like and um this is not a critique of them. It’s a critique of the movement space is there are so many winnable messages that I wish were the things we talked about. And it’s just like, we haven’t, we haven’t figured out how to seed them in the space of celebrity or people who have like very different platforms. So like, when I think about ICE, I’m in a lot of rooms down by ICE and people I like say things that like, won’t do anything to limit ICE’s power. It just won’t like, it just, we’re not even talking about it. Even in, you know, I was, I was just talking to the state legislature who’s about to do an ICE bill and we’re helping them do it. And I say to them, you know, I think you could message around the hundred miles because your entire state is included as a border. Like the whole state you’re in is considered the border. And he’s like, really? I’m like yeah, I’m like it’s a hundred miles from the ocean. And your ocean is like down the street from your office. A hundred miles is your whole state. He’s like I didn’t know. I’m, like, well, now you do. Cause 12 states are subsumed in the hundred mile border. And like, I wish we were able to seed some of these ideas to people that like, 100 miles is not the border and have people wrestle with like, if it’s not 100 miles, what should it be? Which like, I think people can, they can figure that out. Or like, there are these other things about ICE that would actually limit, and I’ve been in meetings where people are talking about mutual aid or evictions. And you’re like, all the right things, won’t do anything about, if you if ICE is what you think you’re fighting, that’s not gonna do it. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: So that is my challenge is like, how do we mobilize them differently with different messages? [music break] Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come. [music break] On today’s show, I’m talking with Chenjerai Kumanyika, a researcher, journalist, organizer, and professor at NYU, whose work sits at the intersection of race, policing, and storytelling. Chenjerai has helped shaped some of the most important narrative audio projects in the last decade, including Uncivil and Seeing White, challenging how we understand American history and the stories we tell about it. His work looks closely at how myths about race, the Civil War, and policing continue to shape the present, and his most recent podcast with Cricket Media about the NYPD blew my mind. Here we go. Chenjerai, it is so cool to have you on the podcast finally, uh how have you been? 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Um. Great to be here and you know, really excited to talk with you about this and much respect for the work that y’all been putting in, you know. Um. As the national conversation about police has gotten more foolish, less historical, less strategic, I feel like y’all are doing the opposite, so I really appreciate it. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I appreciate that. I don’t remember when I met you, but it had to be in the heart of the protests because it feels like we met 18,000 years ago. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Yeah, I got to say it was, it was I you know I I had decided to come uh to to St. Louis and and didn’t really know the lay of the land. The only people really guiding me was my brother, Jusiri [note: not sure of spelling], and then I was seeing, really early on in your Twitter journey, I was see your thing, and it was like, here’s where things are happening. And you know I’ve always felt like you were very clear to say, look, I didn’t organize this, I’m not in control of it. You were like really disciplined about that. But here’s where some things are happening. And you helped me, I think, in a couple of cases to avoid some some things that were being advertised that would not have been productive. So, yeah, that’s how that’s how we, you know. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Uh yeah. A long time ago. It’s a crazy thing to protest for uh 12 years ago is when Ferguson, when my Mike Brown was killed. Now talk to me. I didn’t know that you were a professor when I met you. I don’t, you know, you were one of many people who came out on the street in those early days and like supported the work that was happening. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Right. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Can you talk to us about your career in the last decade? Like, what have you been up to since I last saw you in the streets in Ferguson? And then I’d love to transition to talk about when I saw that you were doing stuff on the NYPD, I was like, we need more people talking about the police. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I think at the time when you met me, I was, I had just started my first appointment as a professor at Clemson University in South Carolina. And I was teaching, you know, my area of study is like critical media studies. So I’m always looking at the intersection of media and movements and you know how those things are. And just felt like, you, know, there is a kind of scholarly mode and I don’t look, I don’t want to, I don’t want to like hate on anyone who’s doing their work like this, but there is a thing where it’s like, you’re always writing about things. And I just felt like the world is happening now. So my strategy is going to be to put myself where the movement is happening and observe, make media. I mostly was making terrible live streams. I remember, even in St. Louis, I remember one of my people was like, Chenj, man. People are saying, you got to turn your camera off on the way to the john, man, you can’t. [laugh]

 

DeRay Mckesson: Right. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: You can’t just, you’re letting the cops. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Whose this guy? 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Everybody’s watching. [laugh] So anyway, yeah, so um, but since then, um, I was, I went on to Rutgers, which is a great university. And now I’m at NYU in the journalism department which kind of matches with the kind of work I do so I try to do, make, you know interventions asking critical questions. A lot of my work is historical and it makes sense in the Journalism Department. Um, I should also say briefly that uh, the first podcast I made was a podcast called Uncivil which was an audio documentary and we won a Peabody Award for that. It got like it got, you know, at the time we got like five, six million downloads. And I was like, oh wow, people do want good history if you can make it compelling. Then I made a podcast, a couple of podcasts with a organization called scene on radio. We did history of whiteness and you know, and then, um, now most recently I’ve made Empire City. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Now, I’m interested, you know, 12 years later, when you look back at the Ferguson protests, you look at George Floyd, how do you, you know I’m always interested in how people contextualize what happened in Ferguson now that we get further away from it, especially because I go in some rooms where people sort of forget about it. People sort of think about 2020, 2021 is this sort of watershed moment that changed everything and people don’t think about 2014 as as the moment that was sort of a very big moment in this conversation about policing, but I’d love to know as somebody who studies the media and sort of the literacy of communities, how you think about Ferguson? 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: I mean, well, you know, I tend to think about things historical. So I’m always asking historical questions. I mean one very concrete thing I could say though is that, and it’s funny, you know, we just launched an issue of Hammer and Hope and we’re talking about Minnesota and I see the similar thing I see in the uprising in Minnesota that I also see in Ferguson is that these moments are unique in their own ways, but they don’t come out of nowhere. You know? There was ways, when I arrived in Ferguson, some of the networks that had been built there were because you had people who had already been doing some work you know. Now that, I gotta say, I wanna draw a distinction, and I hope it’s not a little too weedsy here, but you know I remember, this is not so much like just Ferguson, but Baltimore. I remember talking to an organizer in Baltimore, and I was like, yo, y’all put in the work, man. People is stepping up. And she was very clear to say, nah, this was regular people who stood up. Like we, we kind of came in as organizers and added some infrastructure, but it was also just like regular people who was like, enough. And I remember being out there on [?], it, it very much felt like that. You know, there were people telling me that when they watched Mike Brown’s body just laying there in the street for hours that allowed, you know, for something to really take shape. So I look at what exists, you now, how Ferguson was built on stuff that existed before, because even before 2014. You know, you had like, you know, December 12th movement. You had, like I’m you know you had like all this, you know, a long history of Black organizing around police. And that was a crucial moment. And I think that, you know, so when you get to 2020, yeah, 2020 absolutely does not play out the way it does if you don’t have all those struggles that happen. If you don’t have Mike Brown, if you don’t have Baltimore, if you don’t have uh you know other stuff that happened in Minneapolis. I mean, none of those moments, it just doesn’t play out like that. So I think. And I think that’s important, one reason why that’s important is that you can read this as a history of defeat and of poor organizing and people and like, you know, just America being trash, or you can sort of read it as a, a history people not giving up, you know, and people actually handing down certain kinds of movement infrastructure and insights um in ways that, you know cause 2020 was, you know I mean it, Ferguson was big, 2020 was bigger, you know? And then Minneapolis actually got major labor unions involved. It was like almost like a general strike, even though they didn’t call it that. So I think these it’s important to see these continuities. I don’t know, what do you think? 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know I mostly [?] I think I’m always fascinated by the way that Ferguson becomes sort of a side character in the way people tell the story of all this stuff, whereas like for so many people in my generation, like it was the first time we stood in the street, it was like the first time we stood up to the police, it was like the first time we thought of, you know like, so we’re by 2020, protesting was cool by 2020. By the time 2020 comes around, it is like. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Right. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: People are like protesting brunch and da da. 2014, it was like, this is wild, we what is tear gas? I’ve never seen this many police in my life. You know, like it was, it was just so different. Um. But I say that to say I was interested in Empire City and like, what was the, you could have told a million stories, you know, you know there are a gazillion things about race and justice that are wrong. Why the NYPD? 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Well, you know, the first thing was why, you know, I mean, it was, I wanted to approach this historically. Having lived through what you and I both lived through, right? Like we were both, you know, we you know we I went to you know Ferguson again. I admit I was not some experienced organizer. I just was someone who saw people getting hit with, you know with bullets and rubber bullets and tear gas. And I was like, enough, I gotta go. You know what I mean? And I lived through that, lived through 2020. And, but even before, because I started Empire City before 2020. It felt like we were immersed. There’s so much media about police. Everybody’s talking about police, there’s you already started to see these cycles play out where there’s like, oh, reform, we get a Black police chief, this and this and that you know. I would ask people, do you know where like the first three or four police departments in the United States started? And nobody could answer that question. You know, there were like the sort of um barbershop version of it where people just would be like, slave patrols. Which is not inaccurate, but it’s also not the whole story, right? It’s like, first of all, slave patrols is not actual history. It’s just like two words. And then secondly, it’s like slave patrols where, and then also like, for example, if you look at, for examples, an institution like the Pennsylvania State Police, it’s not really about slave patrol, it’s just actually about labor suppression is the origins of that institution. And I said, we have 18,000 plus, you probably know the actual numbers, policing institutions. This is even before ICE. If we can’t figure out where the first three or four started, if that’s, that should be something everybody knows. You know, in some of the histories, as I started to dig into developing this project, you know, some people said Boston was first, but it’s actually, what it what I found in my research was that Boston drew the plans for a modern police department, right, first. But it was actually New York who instituted it first. And now, again, we can we can quibble a little bit and be like, but what about let’s talk about [?] you know the major, um like the Charleston City Guard, which preceded these institutions by like a hundred years. And we should have those conversations because in a way they were you know modern-ish, they were like policing institutions that had some of those features, like salaries, all those things before. But when we’re really talking about the modern history of the police, like not just wild ass constables, well you know like but actual policing institutions, I think it starts in New York. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And I’m interested in like what, you know, you obviously knew about a lot about the police way before you started Empire City, but I have to imagine you probably learned things that you didn’t know in this process, like– 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Oh yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: In the process of telling the story. I’d love for you to tell us some of those. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Well oh, man, I’m trying. I mean, I think one thing was to really understand, like, for example, one thing I learned, you know, you talk about New York. I mean, you know, we, we when we have this story about racism in the United States, a lot of, you know, sadly, there’s, I don’t actually, I don’t know, I would be, I would be curious to get your take about, there’s a narrative that like racism is like a particular kind of problem in the South, right? And if you think about what you picture when someone says slave patrols, you know you’re picturing like Harriet Tubman running through the streets and somebody with the dogs chasing her. Like that’s at least what I pictured, right? I didn’t understand that in New York, right, people were being kidnapped and then taken into slavery by actual police officers and that this was a major industry and that this you know essentially after slavery was made illegal, this got more and more expansive. Um. I didn’t understand how much these slave patrols were integrated into the actual financial well, you know core of New York, right? Like it was Wall Street needed this labor, but it but beyond the actual like the fact that they needed like, it wasn’t so much that New York needed slaves in New York. It was that they had relationships, business, New York relied on business relationships with Southern plantation owners. So those are things I didn’t know. Another thing I didn’t know that really surprised me was how hard New Yorkers fought having a uniformed police department, which you have to remember is that these are people who just lived through the revolutionary war. Like, there were people alive at that moment. You’re talking about, like 1840, you know, people, they’re alive. They lived through that. They got relatives who were imprisoned in British prisons in New York. So when you came to those people and said, the way we’re gonna make you safe is we’re going to have uniformed dudes walking around with guns who have the power to arrest you. People was like, hell no! 

 

DeRay Mckesson: They’re like, no thanks, no thanks. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: It was like no, and they fought it. And the police themselves fought some of the things that we really associate with policing, like uniforms. They didn’t want to wear uniforms. They were like, you know, I mean, look, it was, you know, they were like you can you can basically have some person, some boss is going to tell me, a man, how to dress? And they actually, one of the fascinating moments to me was they actually protested when George Matsell, one of the early police chiefs, institutes uniforms based, by the way, on Britain, British uniforms, which is wild if you think about what I just said. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: They we’re like, no, thank you. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: They protested. Police protested at the chief’s house. You know and so you know um there’s there’s a whole lot of other things I learned in every phase. You know we learned about the Lexow Commission. I didn’t understand that in 1894, there was a case that generated 6,000 plus pages of testimony in which the entire police department was on trial. And, you know and I mean, it’s like the stuff that you find out in that, you know, in that case is stunning. So to me, it feels to me like this history has been forgotten. And I just, one reason why this history was important to me DeRay was this. Like we, lots of people have different answers to what, how we get public safety, right? Like there are some of us who are like, we don’t need, you know we want to straight up abolish all police. There are some people who are, like, we can maybe tweak the police in certain ways. There are the really interesting and I think, you know, fascinating and I agree with a lot of the solutions that Campaign Zero and eight, you know, Eight Can’t Wait, certainly seem like these are great places to start that empower local people. You know, and there might be some things we could quibble about, but my point is, regardless of where you’re at in this, you have to know how we got here because otherwise you might be repeating a solution that has already failed before. It just seems basic, right? And listening to like, if you go to like the Lexow commission or you look at these histories. Sometimes, honestly, not even like the hist– the way the police were abusive and violent to Black people. I’m talking about like European immigrants in New York who the police just oppressed and beat and shot and even, you know, and I’m going to say it because there’s one case in that comes up in the ’90s, like, you, know, and just like sexual assault. I mean, like and I’m and what I think is like somehow that record of harm has to become a part of our story that we tell ourselves. I know it’s not comfortable. And not to be defeatist, but it’s just like, what does it mean, in other words, to have all that harm happen, 6,000 pages of testimony, and then say, actually, that doesn’t matter because we want to look forward. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And that’s what I was going to ask you, is like, what is your hope in uncovering the history that it’ll do in this moment? And do you think that, like, the history wasn’t uncovered because of something malicious or people just weren’t paying attention? One of the things I struggle with, you know, we do all this work around policing, we pass all these laws and policies and da da. And, you, know, I did not inherit a playbook around the police. There are incredible playbooks around voting rights and around housing, around environmental stuff. You know, we started from a data perspective we started from like who are the police killing was a question we couldn’t answer in 2014, you know, it’s like. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Right. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: We just didn’t inherit a playbook. So what even when I hear you uncover this when I think about the podcast is it’s like, why why is this the first time we’re telling so many of these stories in 2025 and 2026? What do you think? Why?

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Yeah, no, it’s a great, I mean, I think in general, you know this country is not necessarily big on actual history, particularly history that is critical. Um you know I mean you just think about this, even so many things about African-American history. You know what I’m saying? I remember, you may not remember this, but I remember that you know you and uh [?] and I were in actually South Carolina. And there was that point of kind of like, I feel like it was a Twitter kind of thing that was circulating around what generation reader are you? You know, and it was just profound. Y’all were talking about, I wasn’t hip to it. And it was like, I just remember when y’all first said it, I got chills in my body. Cause it’s like, the fact that we’re even at that phase, even then, whatever that was, like 2000 you know 14 or 15, thinking like for the first time, we might not, we might be like a second or third generation reader. This shows you like history is not really an important, you know, in America we don’t really value it as much as we should. So that’s one thing, you know much more than, you know obviously, the police themselves have become a tremendous propaganda force that have then told their own stories, not just through media, like in terms of like what they, you know, like, for example, the the NYPD at one point had like 80, something like 80 PR professionals. I think hopefully Mamdani is starting to cut into that a little bit. But you know and that’s just New York and then LA. So that’s one thing they tell their own story. There’s also the way we’ve been invited to understand them through popular media. So but I do think that um, you know, when you talk about what I hope to get out of it, I just want to say that, like, let’s just take some of the solutions that are posed have a long history of having been debunked as things that worked. So for example, you know, remember when they rolled out the Black police chief, I forgot, you know, there was at least–

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yes. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: –one version of that, maybe several. I you know.

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yes. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: And like, and then he’s marching arm in arm and like look, if you don’t know the history of that technique having failed, that could be compelling. You know, if you’ve never seen that, like a police officer in uniform seeming like he’s in solidarity, but the history shows you that actually Black people had that dream in like the 1880s. In fact, what I didn’t know, you talk about something that surprises you. When I went to go find out exactly how did police become integrated, you know, I went in thinking, okay, pretty much probably what happened was some you know like white police leaders were like, let’s get some Black police to trick Black people, basically. Like that’s that’s kind of how I was thinking of it, right? But no, I found out it was Thomas J. Fortune, powerful Black advocate and journalist himself who who fought to integrate the police. Because as my comrade, Mariame Kaba said, Black people believed if we can’t have police that can protect us and be police, we’re not really American. So like you know my point is, like if you don’t know the history going back to 1880, and then a politician comes now and goes, we’re having a diverse police force and we’re going to do bias trainings and then we’re gonna have you know body cam, it’s like, you might be like, oh, all right, these are good solutions. But if you know the history, you can say, let’s not waste time on that. Let’s go over to, lets lets talk lets talk to some of the serious abolitionist folks. Let’s talk to, Eight Can’t Wait and look at what their campaigns are. Like you know you stop wasting time on things that have already been debunked. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: What do you make of this? You know abolition becomes no longer a fringe idea in movement circles. It becomes a mainstream conversation talking point in 2021. What do you make of that? In so many ways, I think it took people by surprise. All of a sudden it like, aboli– you know I we see, I saw so many more people talk about abolition than I ever imagined would talk about the end of the police or the end of mass incarceration in the way that it happened. What do you make of that? What do make of that then? And certainly, what do you make of that today? Do you think that it helped, do you think that people are less empathetic to the idea? Still is on board? 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: I mean, look, I try to listen to people who are really thinking in smart ways about police. And again, I you know, again, we we hopefully we can talk more and you know with the fun stuff is we can get into things that we may agree or disagree about. But one thing that I try to myself, you know think critically about is like, how is a movement do we need to be messaging? And how does our message sometimes, maybe one way to say this is what are the different ways we need to hit people. So I actually made Empire City, like I said, I’m not going to start this out and say, hey, this is a podcast about police abolition, because I wanted it to be an entry point for some people who may believe very, very different things about the police, or who may have that sort of knee-jerk fear of like, well, what if we have no police, then what does that mean about public safety? And by the way, that’s a thing I’ve seen you debunk very well in so many interviews where like, you don’t even know how much, the one I remember in particular is when you just were like, do you, you asked the uh journalist how much of police work do you think even goes to stopping violent crime? Something like that, you know, and just let, and then you just hit him with the silence. The silence is the killer, because then he realized they don’t know. And it’s like. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah. Tell me what you think it is. It’s 5%. You think it’s 80. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: So. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: The police are hanging out. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Yeah, they’re not. They’re not, so I wanted a person who thinks that though, that maybe it’s like, you know that police really are the thing to be able to go on this historical journey. And then, you know kind of, you know this is the power of narrative, right? So with that is one way I think about abolition, which is that I think like my sort of take on this is the smartest work about the problems of public safety comes out of reading the abolitionist tradition. Like there’s a great interview on a website called history is a weapon um, by you know, it’s an interview with Angela Davis and she talks about having read all this work about abolition that informed her thinking. Works like um the politics of redress, where even you in some cases you have like European scholars who really dig into the question, like what does it mean to have a violent crime committed against you? What does it really mean to have like for that to be dealt with? And what makes us think like incarceration is the thing? And they really explored these questions in depth and Ruthie Wilson-Gilmore, Angela Davis, they were reading that work in addition to the other work about Empire. So to me, abolitionists have um at least the smartest, I think most historically informed take on the questions. Whether the language of abolition is what’s gonna pull in the masses to this movement is something I think we need to be kind of flexible about. That said, like, this ICE moment is shocking because when I pitched Empire City, when I first, you know, I pitched Empire City a bunch of places and uh Crooked Media, um you know uh thankfully believed in me enough to let me develop the project. But when I would go to people and I said, you know the police is not, it’s not just that the police are a problem about racism, I said the police are actually a problem of democracy. I said, when you have these forces of armed people who are not accountable to us, that’s a democracy problem. And a lot and you know a lot of these kind of like you know liberal pundit types and different people at different, even in some of the different media outlets, they would just kind of be like, uh-huh. And you could tell that they were like, Chenj, you’re you know you’re taking it a little far. I mean democracy problem? I hope nobody’s saying that now, you know with ICE, which is a policing institution. Um and [?]–

 

DeRay Mckesson: ICE really got people. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Yeah, you know, it’s like, you know, because, and even me, I mean, I gotta say, if you had a told me, Chenjerai, who’s making Empire City, if you’d have told me in 2026, there would be masked agents shooting people on the street and, and everybody and major political figures defending that, you know, I, I even I would have been like, I don’t know, I mean, yeah, I don’t know if it’s gonna happen like that, you know what I mean, but it’s happening like that. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Now I know that you’re starting a podcast club as a part of Empire City. What is, tell us about that. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Yeah, we have this podcast club coming up. Um. It’s gonna start March 31st. We would love everybody who’s listening to this to join. And what it is is, you know, it’s kind of like, you know it’s just, it’s like a book club in a way. It’s a chance to slow down and listen to the podcast. And if you’ve ever, you ever listened to like a really great narrative podcast, cause let me tell you something. If you haven’t heard Empire City y’all, it’s like a movie for your ears. Somebody told me it’s like a graphic novel for your ears. You’re left with all these feelings. And then you’re like, you want to talk about it. You want to understand it. Maybe you want to understand certain pieces of it more. So what we’re going to do, we’re gonna come together virtually and we’re going to have some of the, some really exciting experts in history. I’m going to be there and we’re just going to talk. We’re going probably listen to like a couple of episodes for each meeting and people can bring questions in. And we’re just going kind of go all the way in. And uh I actually think we should do this with more media and find more ways, you know. Um. So yeah, I hope I welcome everybody uh, to join the Empire City Podcast Club. And I, and I– 

 

DeRay Mckesson: It’s virtual or in person or both? 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: It’s going to be virtual and we’re going to meet, we’re gonna meet four times to start out with. And one thing that’s really important for me to say is we’re going to start out with this ICE moment. We’re going to kind of approach it like, how did we get here? Because we want people to understand the way that ICE emerges from a long history of police. And we ultimately do want to get to some conversations about what do we do with this? You know I want to bring some of your work into the conver– figure out a way to bring your work into the conversation. But, you know, there is a thing with history where I think Khalil Gibran Muhammad said this, and it was, he said, you know, when it comes to an urgent problem, like policing or ICE, people feel like it’s too urgent for us to deal with history. And he said you know another area that’s really urgent, but where history matters is like medicine. He said the doctors are very interested in your history. Imagine a doctor going, I don’t actually care about your history You’re like, but Doc, I got diabetes. He’s like, I don’t care about that because it’s so urgent. We got to fix you now. I mean, they might do some things now, but they also need to know the history. And so we want to deal with solutions, but we want to talk about how we got here. We want to make room for people who believe different things about the police. You know, I mean I’m not, it’s not like you got to be, you know, and I want to, and we should challenge, you know, I mean I, maybe people will have some critiques of the show. I want to engage those if they’re good faith. So it should be great you know.

 

DeRay Mckesson: Boom. What advice, as we close, what advice do you have for organizers in this moment? You you, like I, have been able to see this arc you like from the from the first moment that this generation stood into the street and then you know we’ve seen huge rises and then dips where the protests are not even part of the story and then all of a sudden it’s the main story again and then all of sudden it’s not the story again and then it’s you know ICE comes and it’s the only thing people talk about. I’m interested in what advice you have for people who care about these issues who and especially the people who might have their hope might be challenged. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Right, right. Well, I do think it’s important to understand at least the moments of victory. Um. I know that in some of the campaigns y’all are working on, there’s been tremendous, there’s been some moments where people got certain legislation passed or moved something, and those can be dismissed. There’s certainly, look, I you know I have pretty radical politics. I got radical comrades for whom everything is too reformist, right? But like but I’m like, but if you do that, the problem is you demoralize people. So we got to attend to what people have won. But I think this is a time to, you know, the only way we’re going to really, I think, make change here is it has to be, we have to move institutions to make some structural changes like what ICE, for example, it has be institutional rejection. I mean, the rapid response networks and all that is great, but if you really need this to scale the way you need, so we were canvassing businesses here in New York, I think every business in a certain part of Manhattan has been canvassed and understands certain rules about ICE. But that means that you then have to also be doing like the nuts and bolts work of organizing. You gotta you gotta be in community with each other. Um. And we have, and I of course we have to study history. You know I’ve put out some little videos on social that give like concrete steps of what you can do. But what I’m seeing is that this is a time when everybody has to have kind of like organizer as part of what you do. I’m a professor, I’m a media maker and I spend a little bit of time organizing for me with the AAUP. Um. You know, I try to lift up organizing on my podcast, Unruly Subjects, which everybody should check out, you know, and I and I and also I would say we got to be curious you got to be curious, you know like we sometimes but folks one of the things I don’t like sometimes about the way people move um. Is that people can be really dismissive because everybody has to show up like we already knew everything. And I’m like well, if we haven’t solved these problems, you got to be curious, when someone comes with an idea. You can’t dismiss that. You might have some critiques of it. And I don’t know. I mean, those are maybe cheesy things, maybe not, maybe, you know, but I just think like those things matter. Those are the things that have worked for me and and um and they’re also just the way I want to be in the world, right? Like I don’t want to be a I want to be a in community with people. I don’t want to be like a joyless person because we got to survive this. So that’s my advice. Listen to Empire City. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Listen to Empire City, and where can people go to stay in touch with you? Is it Twitter? Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram? Is it TikTok? Is it all of the above? 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Yeah, at Chenjerai on Instagram. I’m on Twitter, but I don’t really engage there. I’m on Blue Sky, along with all the other long haireds or whatever, whoever else is on Blue Sky. And uh, you know, we’re there, but uh certainly Instagram and uh oh, and I got a Patreon, unrulysubjectspodcast.com. You know what I mean? I’m a big believer that we also got to create our own little spaces to do certain things because these platforms. We use them, but they’re part of the problem. And I think that’s that’s maybe it’s coming clear to people now. So yeah, please stay in touch with me. Yo, love to Pod Save the People. Thank you for bringing us on. You know you got you know y’all could be covering a million things, and we really appreciate that y’all gave some time to Empire City. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You are a friend of the pod, and we can’t wait to have you back. 

 

Chenjerai Kumanyika: Absolutely. Sounds good. [music break]

 

DeRay Mckesson: Well, that’s it. Thanks so much for tuning in to Pod Save the People this week. And don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save The People and Crooked Media on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. And if you enjoyed this episode of Pod Save the People, consider dropping us a review on your favorite podcast app. And we will see you next week. Pod Save the People is a production of Crooked Media. It’s produced by AJ Moultrie and mixed by Charlotte Landes. Executive produced by me and special thanks to our weekly contributors, Myles E. Johnson and Sharhonda Bossier. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]