In This Episode
Trump admin’s sweeping review of 55 million visas, the alarming rise in millennial deaths, Lil Nas X and the psychosis of celebrity, Sister Gertrude Morgan’s transition from artist to spiritual leader.
News
Millennials are dying at an alarming rate. We have a few ideas as to why.
Sister Gertrude Morgan showed art at early NOLA Jazz Fest
Follow @PodSaveThePeople on Instagram.
TRANSCRIPT
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay and welcome to Pod Save the People. On this episode, it’s me and Myles and Sharhonda talking about the underreported news with regard to race, justice, culture, and equity. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at @PodSaveThePeople. [music break]
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: Well, we are descending into more totalitarianism, it seems. And I don’t even, it’s sort of wild, there could be more of it. But here we are, another week. This is DeRay at @deray at Twitter.
Myles E. Johnson: This is Myles E. Johnson at @pharaohrapture on Instagram.
Sharhonda Bossier: And this is Sharhonda Bossier. You can find me on LinkedIn at @BossierSha on Instagram, and at @BossierS on Spill.
DeRay Mckesson: Well, let’s just start with what seems to be the biggest news of the moment, which is still D.C. and the troops being in D. C. I’m assuming that you saw that the Secretary of Defense Pete, the other Pete, not the Pete we talk about a lot, Buttigieg, but that the secretary of defense said that now they will be armed in D C, which is wild, but not only D. C., uh Trump has named another set of cities that he plans to go into, including Chicago and seemingly Baltimore. So I just wanted to bring it here um to to see how this story has grown as you’ve thought about it since last week, or is it still the same to you? And and then, you know, I’ll talk at the end, but I am nervous about the troops going to Baltimore and then the states mobilizing their National Guards to go to the red states and mobilize their National Guard just feels so wild. But what do y’all think?
Sharhonda Bossier: I mean, my first thought was that Pete Hegseth needs to focus on improving his pull-up form. He can’t even really do one. So he has other things to worry about. Um. But honestly, I mean we talked about this last week, right, which is that the language that had been used to describe democratically run cities, especially democratically-run cities where the mayor was Black, right, was all this language around war zones, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And so it’s no surprise that the second sort of tranche of cities that Trump wants to go to are Black led democratic strongholds, right? That like totally tracks and makes sense. And I think it was Myles who said last week that like even a lot of Black people who live in those cities are fearful, right, of like crime, et cetera. And even though the data tells one story, people’s experiences are telling them another. And so it’ll be interesting to see how local residents react um in cities like Baltimore and Chicago, but no surprise to me that he’s targeting Black-led cities.
DeRay Mckesson: And Myles, before you go, the states that are mobilizing the National Guards to assist Trump are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming.
Sharhonda Bossier: That just sounded like the 50 nifty [laughing] United States.
Myles E. Johnson: So I don’t think any of my ideas last week have changed around it. What I do keep on thinking about is like this shadow period of the crime bill. Like I think about how when you don’t address economic material wrongdoing in a community, when you don’t take reparations seriously, when you do not take the fact that there are white there’s white supremacy and white nationalism that is happening, that is being that was already integrated into the legal and government system, but is um only getting a bigger foothold when you do not take those things seriously, you’re going to have these opportunistic moments. And again, I am less scared and listen, I am not in a non-vulnerable state. But I am less scared of what is going to happen in the next three years and more scared about what’s gonna happen 30 years from now when the next fascist wave happens because it’s not gonna leave with Trump. And I wish that that’s what um more people would even talk about instead of being so alarmist about the events, of course talk about them, but y’all, these protests already looking weak. We can just like say that and be real and be like, yo, there are real people not showing up and there seems to be a real not care. It’s not about the internet. It’s not about what’s popular and what’s not popular or owning Democrats or owning neoliberals or owning leftists or anything like that. It’s about really looking at it and saying, oh wow, things are getting worse and people care less. And this equation in 20 years is not gonna be a good one.
DeRay Mckesson: Do you think it’s that people care less? I don’t know if I agree with that. I don’t know if people care less. I think that people just don’t what to do that I I think the left’s playbook has always been up against people that can be moved in some capacity. Either you like move the base, or you deal with their donors, or their moral compass, and all of the things that people normally do don’t work on Trump. So I don’t know if see people not caring as much as I see people legitimately clueless about like what to do because the things that you would normally do don’t seem to work.
Myles E. Johnson: So I have a very specific belief about the temperament of the of American people. When American people do not want something, when American people want something to happen, you will know about it. When American people feel backed into a corner, you will know about it, American people are not Swiss people, they’re not peaceful people. Um. And I’m not saying that they were just all violent, but I’m saying when we care about something, you know about it because something gets you know blown up and shot up. Um, something gets looted, something happens. And the part about the conversation that frustrates me a little bit is the fact that for decades, we’ve seen systematic things implemented that would depress a people that would make a people by the time you’re, you know, 34 or 30 or 25 in 2025, it would, it would just, uh, uh take out the charge in you. And I’m not saying that’s for everybody. You can’t say something’s for everybody, for millions of people. But there’s enough people who just seem to not be being activated. And my fear is because of social media and because of media in general and how we’re able to manufacture movements just like we did with Kamala Harris and made it seem like more people cared about women’s rights than who what they did. We’re going to fool ourselves again, and we’re not actually going to produce actual strategy that’s going to awaken people and make them care because we’re living in DeLuluville about how people care about it. And and and that’s something that I find frustrating. Let me know if that sounded, if that was coherent to you.
DeRay Mckesson: I think it’s coherent. I think I just actually just I think we just disagree on this one, but I think I understand it.
Sharhonda Bossier: I had a thought about social media and whether people were actually, you know, we’ve talked a lot about the algorithm and what’s being suppressed. And I was wondering if people actually um maybe are looking for momentum online that will pull them into the streets that they’re just not seeing, right? So like some people in my circle, for instance, have been like, hey, I’m out every week at this place doing X or Y or Z. You’re not seeing it on social. You’re not seeing it you know in the media, but like people are out. Um, and I wonder if like part of it is just the lack of coverage and something that we’ve talked about a lot over the last few weeks is like needing to sort of re-energize in-person community building and in-person organizing so people understand that they’re not alone because I also think the last couple of years have had a chilling effect on people who feel like they have been out in front on issues and it has cost them tremendously and people are looking for cover. And so it’s like, how do we help people understand that if they are pissed off about it, there are also other people who are pissed off about and taking action and helping them figure out how to access those communities and um places where they can also take collective action.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, I just don’t know. I fundamentally think that people care. I think that they are outraged, enough of them are, but I think they are super, I don’t think they know what to do. And I do think there’s like a sort of nihilism that came post Obama, where people are like, it doesn’t matter, which is different to me than like, they don’t care. Um. Or that they think that like, it just they, the thing is so screwed, they can’t do anything about it. And, you know, And um I think the other thing is that, where do people go to look for direction? All of those places, whatever you name, they ain’t got it right now. Like if you was looking for the party, that the party’s lost. Church ain’t got it. The I you know all the places that I think people had looked, um you know it’s not much is coming from it. And I do think that that is apt, but I don’t know if I think, I just don’t think people don’t care.
Myles E. Johnson: And can I just paint just a bigger a little bit of a bigger picture, right? And this is one of the reasons why I wanted to leave New York City, because I felt, so I came to New York city when Donald Trump got elected the first time, right, that wasn’t by plan. Um. But it was a good plan, if it was. But but I came to New York during that point, and I remember, you know, I was in Georgia. I did not feel surprised that he won, but I knew a lot of people who did. And the big conversation around that was the bubbles, right? That was kind of the first goal of those conversations. And I found myself almost, even though I was critical of that bubble, by the end of my run in Brooklyn, I found myself-bubblized as well. And and and feeling like I wasn’t necessarily getting the breath of what was happening in other places and what the sentiment and temperature was in other places. And I think by living somewhere different, traveling different places, places that I’m not really always the most excited to travel in, it made me discover that yeah, there are a lot of people, millions of people who are very excited. And does it take everybody to want to agree on something for it to change? No. So you have a lot of people who are who who who want movement change, but there is a huge depression of people who are young, who do not care, who have totally divested and don’t care. And it feels weird to not kind of cry that that’s happening, and that’s happening at higher numbers. And that sentiment is is is is more popular than it was when I was 25. As somebody who came on 25 writing at New York Times about political [bleep], that is not the sentiment for so many people. And I think that just feels different to me. That feels different.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, and I’m not saying what I’m saying is I think that your experience is your experience and mine is mine. Like I I’m not even saying it’s not real I’m just saying I’ve been all over the country and that’s just not what I see that I actually see people who deeply care and are lost they literally are like I have no clue what to do and they’re just like we’re screwed. Trump is gonna like they sort of feel like a helplessness that people didn’t feel during the protests, during the protests people were like we’re gonna go stand out and now people are like yeah that don’t. That’s not the thing anymore and they are looking for somebody to tell them what to do and they’re like, mmm so I think that that is leading to hopeless. But I do think people care. You know, that takes us to Texas where they locked old girl in the chamber and then made all of the people sign that they’re gonna have police escorts so they can’t leave the state again. And they really do have state police escorts uh with everybody in the legislature. I was thinking about that on the ride back from the airport today. And I’m like, that would be, this would be a story Myles would write. It would be a dystopian story being like, the legislators didn’t agree and somebody had them have police escorts so that the people who did have power knew where they are every day. Like this is a, this is a trilogy. And I’m like, oh no, this is real life. And I both was like shout out to um, shout out to the, the legislator who protested, but then I’m like, why is she alone? I’m, like, all the other people signed this and I get it. They’re getting daily fines if they don’t agree, like all, there’s craziness around it. But what a whirlwind.
Myles E. Johnson: I probably wouldn’t write it because it would have been too on the nose, actually. I probably would have like. [laughter]
DeRay Mckesson: I mean, that part.
Myles E. Johnson: I probably, would have be like, eh not not not believable enough, get some subtlety. I think what I’m hoping is that this moment produces people who see how bad it can get. Unfortunately, I feel like we have a longer time to go until people really feel it. Um. Until some people like like really feel it, until it’s like a never again situation. You know that feeling, like 9/11, post-Hurricane Katrina, there was these moments in American history that felt like, oh, never again this will happen. And for whatever reason, Trump has not gotten that. And I’m hoping that the results of this authoritarianism, the totalitarianism, makes people say, oh never again. Like I’m not, this is not gonna happen again. This is not going to happen in my lifetime again, but I don’t know if this is the thing, but I’m hoping that this is where this is leading.
Sharhonda Bossier: You know, I was living and teaching US history in Texas when, um, Tom DeLay went to prison for trying to like, do essentially what the Republicans are doing right now, right? So it’s also just really interesting to, and I ain’t that old, right. So even in my lifetime, they have like tried this a few times. Um, and it just is, I don’t know. It’s, it’s disheartening. I think to, to DeRay’s point that like so many people have said yes, Because at some point, I think one of the other things that um people don’t often understand about activism from whatever perch you engage in is like sometimes it does come at a cost, right? But like, that’s the gig. And like, if you are going to be a state legislator in the state of Texas as a Democrat, you know it’s gonna come at some cost and that’s the gig, that what you signed up for, you know? And so it’s like, at what point do you say if you ain’t gonna do it, then like make space for someone else, right? But right now is the time for people who are willing to pay some cost. And right now, is the for people who are willing to support those people who are gonna have to pay those costs, right, to do that. But it’s been interesting to see how quickly people have been like, yeah, I’ll have a state police officer follow me around. The other thing is, and I’ve said this before all the time too. You know, these fiscal conservatives be real fiscally not conservative when it comes time to deploying the power and the resources of the police and the police state. So, you know, I guess people don’t care about wasting money if it’s being wasted in this way.
Myles E. Johnson: Could you tell me about the other moment, Sharhonda, if we have time?
Sharhonda Bossier: About Tom DeLay?
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, you said it happened earlier.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, so Tom DeLay in like the early 2000s right um was trying to gerrymander the Texas map right in the same way to ensure that um they would have a majority in the state of Texas and you know there were commissions for a long time that had to like oversee that and had to approve it. And he just was taking bribes, trying to influence people, trying to move stuff around, and folks were like, dog, you can’t, like, no, you know you can do that.
Myles E. Johnson: But nobody was locked up.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes, and what has happened since, though, is right is the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the sort of dismantling of a lot of the commissions that had to oversee some of that. Right? And so now there’s just far less oversight. And now you have a president who is openly saying, oh we are going to do this to achieve these ends, right? which is just like a fundamentally different place than we were 20 years ago.
Myles E. Johnson: Hmm.
DeRay Mckesson: And what happens in a place like Texas where, you know, normally the federal government would come in, prosecute corruption if the state doesn’t do it, but the DOJ is not gonna prosecute any of the Republicans. And then the AG in Texas is probably the one of the craziest political figures we’ve had in a very long time. But Sharhonda, what you said made me think of is like, it’s also one of those things where it’s easier to fight when you know you got some people behind you or next to you. It’s harder to fight when you look around and you’re like, well, Schumer and Jeffries are not the people that you’re hanging your–
Sharhonda Bossier: Ooh father God.
DeRay Mckesson: Like, you’re not like, ooh, they got me.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: They don’t have you.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah no.
DeRay Mckesson: Obama’s quiet.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yep.
DeRay Mckesson: You know, you look and you’re like, well, if I put myself out here, who has my back?
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah and if you’re Nicole Collier, you know it ain’t nobody. Yes.
DeRay Mckesson: Shout out to Rep Nicole Collier, um.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Who was the G, who like is the only reason why any of us know any of this. Um. But what is it like to fight when you feel like you are literally out there alone? Like that is a hard, that’s hard.
Myles E. Johnson: It’s kind of like the movement that America deserves because of the individualism. [laughing] Because of the individualism that we that we see happening, because of the isolation, because of um our love for comfort and consumerism over real like uh real community, because everything turns and gets flattened into an infographic. Like it’s almost like we’re kind of reaping the kind of American karma that we deserve, and we’re seeing the politics that we deserve and the leaders that we deserve too.
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: It’s rough out here. I’m like, ooh this is I’m trying to think about like, what were the bright spots? Oh, you know, what was the most unexpected thing that happened this week was Serena Williams doing the opening speech to induct Maria Sharapova into the tennis hall of fame.
Sharhonda Bossier: I missed that. No, baby, we operating in–
DeRay Mckesson: Oh y’all gotta see it.
Sharhonda Bossier: –the spirit of Kendrick and Pusha T. We do not mess with our haters. And Maria Sharapova has been Serena’s lifelong, career long hater.
DeRay Mckesson: And let me tell you, Serena. I thought Serena ate with her opening speech. I was like, you know, because you it was a surprise. So all of a sudden Serena walks out and everybody’s like, why is Serena here? And she starts and she’s like I know that I’m not who you expected to be standing up here. And she gives a um the way she explains why she was there was very powerful. Let us play it for you for a second.
Sharhonda Bossier: I also am tired of black people having to turn the other cheek because Serena should have made Maria square up a few times over the course of her career.
[clip of Serena Williams] And today, her biggest joy isn’t only a trophy, it’s her son Theodore. And she’s taken that same focus, that same fire and poured it into being a mom, a great mom, steady, calm, and thoughtful. She actually reminds me a lot of Venus, and the more I get to know her, the more I think about the things we share and we can share in the future. Maria’s honest, she gets to the point quickly, she’s earnest, she’s loyal, she’s family-oriented, and at her core, she’s just a great person. If I didn’t know her better, I think she could have been my sister, the yin to my yang, the calm to my storm. So don’t be surprised when I’m calling her with all the dramas in my life, because that’s what sisters do. So what started as a rivalry turned into an enormous amount of respect. And what grew from respect has turned to friendship. And like I said, champions adjust. Maria didn’t just win matches. She built a legacy that will last forever. Last year, I asked Maria to be my tennis ball. And I think this is her way of saying yes. So tonight is my honor, as her former rival, her former fan, and now her forever friend, and one of the world’s greatest sports heroes of all times and champions, to welcome Maria Sharapova into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Congratulations.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Oh, interesting. Um.
Sharhonda Bossier: I don’t like it.
DeRay Mckesson: Tell me, tell me what you think about it. I I saw it across the timeline. I actually thought that it was one of those um–
Myles E. Johnson: Deep fakes?
DeRay Mckesson: You know, with the AI, you don’t even know what’s real anymore. So I was like, oh, that was good. And then I was, like, oh, this is real. Serena is doing the speech to induct Maria Sharapova into the Tennis Hall of Fame. Um. What did you think of her speech?
Sharhonda Bossier: I would make that woman kiss the bottom of my foot before I said anything nice about her publicly.
DeRay Mckesson: Oh, goodness, tough crowd. Myles, what you got?
Myles E. Johnson: Um. It’s weird, like being a famous person is weird. It’s already strange, but being a famous Black person seems really, really weird. When I tell you the straight lines that my logic is able to produce between humiliation rituals and just kind of part of Black people’s first um induction into being famous was humiliation and the things that most Black people who are famous have to um go through, it feels like that it it feels you know, we’re in a specific moment, you know, Serena is a specific person. So yes, she has aligned herself with Compton and Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar, but she also has made some choice decisions about partners, and skin color, and makeup color, and and plastic surgery, and and how she interacts with her Blackness, and her doing this, and her calling this white woman, doesn’t matter who the white woman is, even though this white women has been the one who really put her foot in your back. Um um in the culture and you having to not just give her an award or you know whatever getting to give her award but also have to like say such ridiculous things like she’s the yin to her yang or you thought if you didn’t know any better you’d think she was your sister. It just if it feels like there is a certain thing that happens to a Black person’s mind when they get famous because I think fame calls for a hyper assimilation and I think that something about that like being assimilated like that does something weird to Black people’s minds. This will be a good lead into the Lil Nas X stuff too.
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh, I was going to say, put Pusha T’s I will close your heaven for the hell of it after Myles speaks because just no way. Just no way, just no way. But yes.
DeRay Mckesson: I was surprised. Well, you know, as people, as the right tries to flip out over the cracker barrel logo changing and saying that it was too woke, Myles, did you see that?
Myles E. Johnson: I did, I did I did I did.
DeRay Mckesson: The rights’ outrage machine is really incredible, but I that we can talk about that later, but I do want to talk about Lil Nas X, and Myles, can you lead us?
Myles E. Johnson: So, Lil Nas X was in downtown LA, um butt naked. The video that went viral first was him in white underwear and white cowboy boots. And then there’s another video that came out of him totally naked. Um. And he was walking down the street, rapping Nicki Minaj lyrics and inviting people to his party. Anybody who has lived child can look in those eyes and say, oh, this is drugs with a S. And this is also a type of probably like a type of psychotic break combined with it and knowing that his mother has a background in drugs too. It kind of makes sense that this would happen. Another thing too, and another warning about just drug use in general. So if you have in your family line, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, any of those different things, and you put on top of drugs, you are you do have a more likely chance of having a psychotic break. And that’s kind of what I was seeing with Lil Nas X. TMZ also circulated a video that he did in his um house, maybe like a month or two ago, and how he was speaking and his personality shift, just dealing with a lot of people who’ve had psychotic breaks. Um. It just felt really familiar. Um. Yeah, that’s what happened with Lil Nas X. Um. I guess what I want to say about it is, you know, remind everybody listening to me, more than likely, you do not know Lil Nas X. Um uh but you probably do know a Black gay person or you probably do know a gay person, meaning if you know a Black gay person either that person or definitely somebody that person knows actually knows somebody who is in the throes of addiction. That’s just the numbers. Um. When we look at the HIV rates, when we look at the drug use rates and stuff like that. So I get that we think, and some people like to imagine that they are Lil Nas X’s friend or big brother or little brother or whatever, because he’s famous and rich and he has the same identity as you, but you do not know him. But I promise you, there are actual people in your community who are dealing with it with less resources, who can use your help. I’m kind of, you know, off the a celebrity getting all the attention for these things that are really ravishing a whole community. Drug use, addiction, risky sexual acts. Again, if you’re Black and you’re gay, 50% chance you’re gonna get HIV, even though we have these amazing miracle drugs. Like, again, I know we’re gonna talk about it later, but this kind of like suicidal, nihilistic attitude, this is a part of it too. It doesn’t always look like being in your room, ordering Door Dash and being sad. It looks like having everything and still deciding that drugs and dangerous activities are your way to peace.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. I know you said, you know, we don’t, we don’t know Lil Nas X, but I think, uh, you know, when he came out and he got lots of backlash and lots of vitriol, I did like my protective auntie instincts were activated. You know what I mean? And I was just so worried about him being a highly visible, famous, very attractive gay Black, like young gay Black man. Right. And I was like, I hope he has good people around him because this machine there’s the industry, but there’s also just the city of Los Angeles, right? Is going to try and get its fangs in this little boy. And actually, when I saw the news, um and I did not watch the footage, but when I saw the story, it actually made me think of Ed Buck, right, um because as you may know, in Los Angeles there was a story about like a wealthy, white, gay political donor who, uh was was preying on you know Black vulnerable gay Black men right and like basically pumping them full of drugs right he was their dealer he was everything so that he could kind of take advantage of them and that was what I was thinking that’s what i was worried about I was like who has been taking advantage of this baby because he still very much feels like a kid to me you know um and I just I see in him so many men I had I might actually cry oh my god I’m so sorry. I see in him so many men I have loved, you know? And I just am like. I don’t know, like who’s who’s looking out for them? You know what I mean? They’re just so, so vulnerable. So that’s that’s where my head and heart went.
DeRay Mckesson: Um, Myles, I don’t know if you were on the podcast when we talked about slow suicide a long time ago, maybe not, but it was, um, somebody brought on, um it was like suicide rates among Black boys and men and the author was talking about slow-suicide, this idea that people misunderstand suicide to be like one act. They don’t think about it as like, you know, what happens when you drink every single night and you know it’s not right for you. You know, your liver is da da da and you don’t go to the doctor. And like these are all choices you’re making because there is this sort of like escape, not just from the moment, but from the world to try and happen. I won’t repeat what both of you said, because I agree with it. But I will say what makes me really sad too is the internet. Because I’m like, you know, we have all had down moments. We’ve all had hard moments that we certainly would not want to be videotaped. And if they were videotaped, we’d want that videotape destroyed immediately. But the idea that he’s just so young and this will be a thing that just lives for a long time is just hard in this in like this moment. And when I saw that, I was like, God, I want him to get help. And I was like, I hate that this will be like a reproducible moment for a long time. I just don’t like that as, I don’t know um, I hate the part of it.
Myles E. Johnson: Luckily, if we’re able to bring him back, he has a type of brand that can definitely outlast it because he has such an absurd brand and like a [?] brand. So.
DeRay Mckesson: You know, the first people thought this was a stunt. They didn’t think this was real.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, so like I hear you on that. And again, I know that I know that I’m a funny person, and but I’m being dead serious. When I look at what happens to Lil Nas X, when I look at the choices of Lil Nas X, when I looked at the choices of Jussie Smollett, like we didn’t even get to the we didn’t even get to the part when Jussie Smollett was happening, to say, A, we know you’re lying and really talk about it, cause we know it’s drugs. We know it’s drugs and we know it is fame and we know it’s because of your we know it’s because of your assimilation into white supremacy, and we’re not even able to really wrestle what that does to the Black psyche, because we’re so in denial about what we’re looking at sometimes and we won’t even get it there. We’re talking about, well, maybe it did happen. We know it didn’t happen, but let’s let’s get to the substance behind it. No pun intended.
DeRay Mckesson: It is interesting to think about what fame does to people in uh both separating you from everybody else, but also being like isolating even among the famous people because I know a lot of famous people and I’ve never been around lonelier people in my entire life. I’m like, oh, this is a very particular type of loneliness. Um. And you’re right, Myles. I think about I think about the drug use amongst the guys I know. And I’m, like, oh this is, as somebody who, like the kids of, [?] kids of people who are drug addicts. Drug addicts, um I’m like, oh, this is one, I always think about like one sniff, one snort, one needle away from like, never coming back. You know, I am like, you’re really casual with this, but I like grew up seeing people like, you know, my father used one time thinking it was like a fun thing with his friends, whole life messed up, you know? Like my uncle used one time, has never ever gotten better, you now?
Myles E. Johnson: It’s really sad. That’s the culture. And I think about, I’ve definitely done drugs. And when I think about the times that I was most vulnerable, um when my interaction with drugs was the most dangerous, um was when like suicide and depression was happening at the same time, and I didn’t care. I think that’s why I speak towards it so much, because now that I’m very optimistic and happy and in a great place in my life, I’m like, no, I know that darkness because I’ve been there, and like and it’s not always when you have the least amount of money. And that’s the thing, too. So a lot of times in New York, you’ll be like, but I’m doing it in the penthouse with y’all. But what is making us want to put our lives at risk if we’re truly thinking that we value our lives? What is making us find that this is the only way of escape? You know?
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I think, DeRay, to pick up on your point about, like, fame and, you know, how it isolates you from people, it also, like very much dehumanizes you, right, in a conversation that we have been having is about the treatment of WNBA players recently, right? Specifically like the throwing of dildos onto the court. How much of this is about spectacle and how much of this is also about um you know, targeting them specifically as as as athletes and as people that we don’t think of as vulnerable, especially because many of them are women who look very masculine, right, or that we think of as masculine. Um. And so there is one sexual wellness company that has decided that it is going to provide a counterweight to the meme coin that is encouraging people to throw dildos onto the court and they’re calling it the championship fiend for, you know, finish. But it’s like you donate, the proceeds go to the Angel Reese Foundation. It’s a finger vibrator. It’s a company that was founded by women, for women, et cetera. And it’s like you know they its a way of saying like we we will only, um people will continue to try to shame us only if we give into that shame. And so we’re gonna try and reclaim this. And I you know I think it’ll be an interesting story for us to watch how um these women interact with this opportunity to kind of reclaim this thing that had been meant to shame them and dehumanize them as famous and highly visible women and many of whom are queer and don’t perform femininity in the way that we would want.
DeRay Mckesson: I don’t know anything about the meme coins, so I’m going to stay out of this, but I need a crash course on the meme coin thing. I don’t get it.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, so shout out to them for coming up with something that is a good you know as good of a cultural retaliation as you can create. I’m always more interested in the roots of stuff and what’s going on underneath something in the dirt. I just think that we are in really interesting, wicked times when the humiliation, like it’s so weird that American culture is mutating into a future. Right, because we’re at one point talking about another way of conceptualizing money, right? Like, that’s high thought, weird, futuristic stuff. But what we’re doing with it is still doing the things that you would see in a 1980s like film with the bully, like we’re still doing those things. So it’s a weird thing where you see technology events, certain systems events, and mutate, but you see the kind of culture of humiliation and brutality that America has in it, just stay as stay as American pie, like, and still find its way to fit its way into our future. And I think that, to me, is what’s most interesting. And I thing we need to be, I want to use my words correctly, but there we need to be like stronger about this. Like I don’t like that so many people on the left have gotten softer or have said, oh, I’m going to call him names or I’m going to go ahead and do what you do. Like I get that impulse, but I also think that like no, we need to be harder about the boundaries that we created and the ethics that we created and maybe even turn it up a notch. Like I don’t like that people are like, oh I’m scared of being offended because I don’t want to be seen as soft. No, be hard, be a Black mama. That’s who that’s who I think of who who who um who empowered ethics in my household is my Black mom. And that wasn’t soft, that you know? And I think we need a little bit of that because what like, what’s going on? There’s a lack of Black mamahood going on. Like, why are you throwing dildos on my court? What’s going on?
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: Well, into the news, I don’t know if you saw, but there are 55 million people who have visas uh who are foreign nationalists, who have permission to come to the country to visit um for some period of time. I say that only to distinguish between citizenship. And Trump has now said that all 55 million are subject to continuous vetting at his will. Now the way visas work, if you’ve ever applied for a visa to another country or if you’ve applied to a visa to this one, you apply so you’re gonna come, how long you’re going to come. Normally the embassies or like the port of entry checks and make sure you didn’t do anything wrong or they run your whatever if you’re applying to another county. Now they’ve essentially put every, all 55 million people on notice that they might revoke your visa at any point. I bring this here, A, cause you should know what’s happening. But one of the things that Trump, is doing effectively for his strategy that we have not figured out a counter to is just the broad stroke silencing of groups of people. Just like, so in DC, DC didn’t vote for you. Yes, the police are crazy. But what you’ve also done is just killed the economy. Nobody’s coming outside. Restaurants are closed. People aren’t meeting around each other. People aren’t taking the subway because you’re doing checks there like you’ve you’ve just shut down the whole thing. And it’s like with the visas, when you have people just like afraid to even travel to the country because they’re one of the 55 million. You know, in reality, they’ll probably check, I don’t know, a couple thousand more people a year than they’ve ever checked. Like it they won’t have the capacity to do more than that. But what you have done is send a message to people like all y’all will notice. Same thing with raiding Bolton’s house, the former national security advisor under Trump. Bolton is going to be fine. He will probably get out. Whatever. Blah, blah, blah. Like I mean, that’s bad. Don’t raid the man house because he don’t like you.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: But what you signal to everybody else is you’re next if you say something else loud. And that is just a I mean it is an effective and brutal and scary tactic. And we not even one year down with this man. That’s what’s really that’s really the crazy part of Trump is that we are just in the beginning so, 55 million visas on notice, continuous vetting.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I mean, the chilling effect and the cruelty and the sort of emotional and mental terror are the point, right? Which we’ve, we’ve also talked about, you know, along the same lines, I don’t know if you all saw the story that, um, ICE is tracking where, uh, immigrants are by following their wire transfers. So people who are sending money back to their home countries. ICE is pinpointing their general location by trying to figure out like what Western Union they used to wire money back home, right? And so it’s just to your point, DeRay of like everything that they can do to interrupt your daily life, everything that they can do, to let you know that you are under intense scrutiny they are doing. Um. And I don’t know what the breaking point will be for people to say like this is wild, right? Like, you can follow the rules and they can change the rules and then all of a sudden you find yourself kidnapped off the street, detained, and potentially deported to some place you might not even be from, right. Um. Yeah, it’s terrifying.
DeRay Mckesson: I will say that the one sort of very cool piece of sort of organizer action that I saw is I need to find what community was, but some white women put all these Mexico stickers on their cars.
Sharhonda Bossier: Mm-hmm.
DeRay Mckesson: Because ICE was in the neighborhood and ICE kept pulling them over.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
DeRay Mckesson: To distract away from the immigrants and the white people were like, well, we know we’re gonna be fine. So let us put Mexican flags, all this stuff and like distract the police. And I was like, you know what? That is a way that you use your whiteness to like really just screw up what ICE is doing. I thought that was interesting.
Sharhonda Bossier: There’s a white man who was a distance runner who’s doing the same thing in DC, who’s running to all of the checkpoints to update people on where they are and what’s happening. And apparently, you know, law enforcement just thinks he’s like a white guy on a run, like, you who’s doing like, I’m on mile 16. But he recognizes that he’s, like this is why I’m doing it because they’re not going to stop me.
Myles E. Johnson: It’s funny that you brought that up, because that was my exact commentary, that only white people can stop white supremacy. The older I get, the more I read, the more I’m like, oh, it’s actually just been like an illusion that anybody outside of white people can stop white supremacy in a white nation. And I think what we’re seeing is systematically, they’re being different people. Black people are not coming out for their own reasons. I’m not saying every single Black person ever, but like the Black people are not coming out for their for their own reasons, trans people are not coming out for their own reasons. The immigrant community is not coming out for their own reasons everybody’s not coming out for their own reasons which really leaves us with white people and what kind of country white people want to make out um got really annoyed with a white person who I spoke to a couple of days ago because they were talking to me about how they came from Kentucky and now they’re here and blah, blah, blah. And they were just saying how um they were in this community in Kentucky and it was rich, but, you know, it was conservative and I just had to leave there because it wasn’t cool. And I had to look at her in her face and I was like, I wish you would go the hell back home. Because now you’re in a Black hood and now you are here because now you can afford to be in a Black hood, so you’re gentrifying here and you decided to not disrupt the one place you can actually disrupt with less fear of violence than I could. And that’s how we end up in these situations because you want to go to LA and go to New York or go where the Black people are because they’re nice to you and you can live your artsy little fantasy and not deal with the family curses that you were planted in, go home and fight white supremacy. Like that is what, that’s the call.
Sharhonda Bossier: My news is uh about, I don’t even know what to say, my news is about to be honest with you, um it’s about these mortality experts who are studying sort of mortality rates among millennials and Gen Zers. Um. And the title of the article that I shared with you all for discussion is American millennials are dying at an alarming rate. Um, and I just want to pull out there are like five parts of this that I just want to pull out and highlight for people, cause it’s a pretty, um, dense article. So I’m going to read part of it, but, uh, about three million Americans die every year compared with other rich countries, we die at an alarmingly higher rate. One quarter of those deaths would not have occurred if America were only as deadly as its peers. Zoom in and things get even more concerning. Among Americans younger than 65, almost half of deaths wouldn’t happen if we had a death rate that matched our peers. Among those aged 25 to 44, a group we call early adults, it’s 62%. Nearly two out of three deaths at those early ages. So in 2023, there are about 700,000 quote unquote “missing Americans,” those who died in 2023 but would be alive if they had lived somewhere else. And that 700,000 is almost exactly the number that these experts could have predicted back in 2019 based solely on pre-pandemic trends. So COVID, we know, right, um had a disproportionate impact on us and relatively low vaccine adoption are a problem for Americans. But our country seems to be at a deeper level, a deadly place to live. What’s more, all of the studies we have stopped before Donald Trump began his second term with enormous cuts to medical and health research and now to Medicaid. Okay, last thing I’m gonna read is actually, but the fact that death rates have remained high across so many kinds of deaths, from car collisions to fatalities, from circulatory disease and diabetes, hence at a more encompassing and systemic problem. Uh. And I wanted to bring that to the pod because, you know. I have talked about the Republican Party, the current Republican Party and particularly the current anti-vax wing of that party as a death cult. And I’m like, oh [bleep], this whole country is a death cult. And we’ve talked about like our various health journeys and the reasons why we work out and you know, the reasons why we try and eat well, right. And for all of us, it’s been because we come from families where we had people die too early, right? And we want to take better care of ourselves. And I’ve like, yeah, man, I’m going to make this like white supremacist patriarchy fight a little harder to kill me. But I’m like, I don’t know, man, like it am I is it even possible here when these are the numbers, right? When you have 700,000 people who died in 2023 who would not have died if they had lived somewhere other than United States feels wild. So wanted to bring that to the pod and yeah, get y’all’s reactions.
Myles E. Johnson: Oh, there’s so many different things that this article makes me think of, because it kind of sometimes when I was reading it, it felt like proof to like what I’ve been saying. I’m like, things are not going so well for many people, specifically in our um in my age group and our age group. Um. First thing is I don’t say it to be quippy that more people need to strategize around how they’re going to leave America. That’s why I say it. Like I didn’t move or or or save or any of that and leave America, like it’s not like a quippy thing to say or I’m going to leave, it’s literally strategy. And I think that this data shows that this is strategy. When I think about going to places that are um already Black and maybe not telling people that they’re already Black and buying cheaper houses and and and thinking about homesteads and farming, that’s not just me thinking about a off utopia. I’m literally thinking of it as strategy of what what needs to happen if we’re even gonna be here to fight, like I said, in 30 years when another wave of this fascism comes. Um. I think I think that’s so important, but the other thing that I thought was really interesting is that it doesn’t matter if it’s diabetes, it doesn’t matter if it’s a car collision or all this other stuff. What to me, what the underlying story is, is this nihilistic irreverence to life. The this recklessness to life, because maybe you don’t really feel like there’s nothing to live for. And I think that is a story that I see in a lot of this data too, and I think that is a spiritual concern. I think that is a cultural thing. And I think when we don’t address that and we only focus on policy and and and we only focus only on government, we’re missing the point in such a dramatic way of what’s happening to specifically our generation and I think that these numbers are only going to get worse with Gen Alpha, you know, unless we really think now about strategies outside of this, you know, and how to get people out of this. Like you said, this death cult, last thing I’ll say is it’s also been done. The maroons, um different communities that have existed inside of America. There’s always been communities inside of America that have um left America culturally and spiritually, even though they are still inside of America, so it’s not an impossibility um to be done. But people have to take it seriously, and as long as we have people who are just as much in love with kind of the promise of like a neoliberal class transcendence, instead of addressing this, we’re always going to be stuck. But more people see the data and see, oh no, something bad is happening. And unless I come up with a strategy to leave that, things are going to get worse. But thank you. Great, great, great article, Sharhonda. But its its scary. But also, I think I like this article because it gives you the data. Now let’s do something. Now, like, what can we actually do now that we know this is actually what’s happening to our communities?
DeRay Mckesson: You know, Myles, I agree with you and I don’t think it’s either or. I think that like some of the spiritual nihilism that’s coming is actually a result of structural things and I think people don’t locate it there. So I think about even at work, um something that happened that was not, we talked about this before, but we didn’t do anything, but our health care provider dropped um therapy. Like there were people whose therapists were covering it and all of a sudden I’m getting people who like haven’t gone to therapy, who now are like. I don’t know if I can afford it. And we’re trying to do everything we can do on the back end. We’re like calling, we you know we get our lawyer involved, da da da. And and now they are experiencing what was not sort of a crisis originally. They now are like, I you know this was a part of my life. This is how I like processed the world and suddenly it’s gone, right? Or same thing with our healthcare with like urgent care. Like you know somebody’s kid would get sick, they had it. Now they’re like, DeRay I went to urgent care, its $70. You know, it’s like and these are like, so the nihilism, I just use these as examples. I think the nihillism actually comes as a result of a system that is just like, you had been told there were at least some safeguards to help you out a little bit. And then you look and it’s like, what happens when there is a drug to save your life and you can’t afford it? Like it exists. Its excuse me. It’s not even like the thing doesn’t exist. It’s like no, no, it exists and your mom just wasn’t sort of rich enough to get the cancer thing this and like and that and I think when that happens at the scale that it’s happening now, I do think I agree with you on that part that I think that it is really rough. I think, and this might be just organizer me, one of the things that I try to help people see is like locating it back, you know, most things, the origin of the problem is something structural, like that was what broke or failed or you couldn’t access or capitalism, blah, blah blah. Um and I worry when people locate the problem in a set of choices that sort of people around them made. And I’m like, yeah, that’s not the, you know, the problem actually originated somewhere structurally. That’s my push. But this was fascinating to me. It was interesting to see the numbers um because I do think when people think about some of these deaths, they think about choices. People may, I even think about my student who passed away in a motorcycle accident. And I’m like, you know, we actually have not made the infrastructure of of a lot of roads to like be motorcycle friendly, like this is like a traffic thing as much as it is a sort of what was happening that the car and you were doing, right? And how do we actually like force people to locate these things in systems?
Myles E. Johnson: I just I have a question. Just to make sure I’m understanding correctly. So you think if those structural things were addressed, that these numbers wouldn’t be so because like essentially the roads would be better. So less accidents or the healthcare is is is great. So, or, or you know, affordable. So more people would have access to the healthcare system and less people would die.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, even like I think about one of my best friends uh just graduated from grad school doesn’t have a job yet, so had to join the exchange.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. Ooh.
DeRay Mckesson: And he had he’d always been either employed or a student. So now he’s doing it. And he’s like, I didn’t know that the moment I sign up online to join the exchange that brokers were going to call me. So he’s like, I got 10 phone calls where people pitch their health insurance plan to me, he’s like, I don’t know. So he’s like you know doing his best to just be uh like negotiating on the phone, but he’s like, you know so the guy tells him, um how are your teeth? He’s like my teeth are fine. He’s, like well, don’t get this plan. And you’re like, is this really how we’re doing healthcare in 2025? Like that is a crazy, that’s crazy.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah.
Sharhonda Bossier: The health care thing we’ve talked about, the physical built infrastructure, right? Like and the the number, I’m in LA, as you know, we’re experiencing another heat wave, right. And like the fact that there are no trees in certain neighborhoods, right, means that those neighborhoods are hotter, which means that people who have health conditions, that’s exacerbated by the heat. When the power grid goes down because of the heat, right, people who depend on power for their life-saving devices or to refrigerate their medications, all of that just sort of has these like compounding impacts. And like, we know pedestrian deaths, right? So there was um a 12 year old boy killed in the neighborhood I grew up in hit by a car on his bike, right because we don’t have bike lanes, right, because Los Angeles is a city that is hostile to pedestrians, you know? Like, and yeah, I mean I, there are there are investments that we can make that are just not true in other places, right, and that other places have made. And I think that is what’s interesting about this. I also think it’s really interesting that they call out this is what we know before we’ve seen another wave of massive cuts. So it is going to get worse, because to the extent that any safety net exists, it’s being further eroded.
Myles E. Johnson: So I definitely think that structural things need to be changed, and I think there’s probably not even space on this podcast or any political podcast to talk about anything outside of that. I don’t think that things spring from structures. I think that structures spring from the psyche. And I guess what I’m saying is I think that we have a country that is culturally and spiritually bankrupt. So that produces culturally and spiritually bankrupt structures. And I think just thinking that correcting those structures will address it is a misstep to me because there is something that’s making you drink those sodas. There’s something like so some of, so yeah some of it’s personal responsibility, some of it is just but some of it is that cultural spiritual temperature that we have, and some of is structural. So yeah, maybe if you got to a hospital sooner, you wouldn’t be able to do it. But there’s something making people take risky chances with their lives that to me says something about what’s happening in a way that structure completely wouldn’t be able to address.
DeRay Mckesson: I take your comment as like a doubling down on structures actually, and a reminder of how structures at their best work in invisible ways that people don’t recognize. And so like I think about, I think about the first time I ever got tested for STDs, it was so long to get an appointment. I was like, oh my God, if I if something if I needed you today, in Baltimore, you couldn’t do it. It was like it was so hard to get tested. I was like this is crazy.
Myles E. Johnson: So you think 50% of Black gay men, even with the medication and it being freely available, are dying or being diagnosed, excuse me, are being diagnosed with HIV because the wait time’s too long?
DeRay Mckesson: Well, I think that, you know, I don’t know if that’s the question I’m answering. What I am saying is I know people who don’t get tested because it is, or when I first got tested, because it was really hard to get tested. It actually legitimately was. And in a place like Baltimore, you know you people were nervous that you were gonna like see a high school classmate as the nurse and da da da. So people they were, people were misunderstanding that people didn’t want to know their status. It was actually just like structurally very hard to go. There were not a lot of places. It was like a weird thing. It is easier now and like certainly in New York, it’s like much easier, but even my primary care physician, if I wanted to call and get an appointment today, she’s booked for the next–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Four weeks.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: That matters in terms of healthcare. Like I think that is not insignificant. Um. And I think that is even the medication, you talk about the HIV rates. It’s like, it is, you know, this is where I would push you around, like where you live, is that it is not easy for a lot of people to get it. It is not accessible for people with health insurance plans. Like it is really hard in a lot of places for people to get things that are actually like possible and real. And those are structural to me. Those are not like people making really poor choices. Um. That is structural to me. [music break] Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
Myles E. Johnson: So my news, speaking of the spiritual and cultural child, my news is Gertrude Williams. I did not know about Gertrude Williams. And like I said, I’ve been on this quest of–
Sharhonda Bossier: Wait, Gertrude Morgan?
Myles E. Johnson: No, she was born she was born Gertrude–
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh sorry.
Myles E. Johnson: –Williams, and then–
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh yeah, sorry.
Myles E. Johnson: Come on.
Sharhonda Bossier: Sorry, sorry!
Myles E. Johnson: Let me do my thing. Let me cook.
Sharhonda Bossier: All right, I’m a pause, I’m a pause.
Myles E. Johnson: Keep this in AJ, keep this in, AJ.
Sharhonda Bossier: I’m a pause.
Myles E. Johnson: Let me cook. Okay um, but no, Sister Gertrude was born in the year 1900, and like y’all know, I’ve been on this kind of exploration of just different Black artists, Black musicians, who um I don’t know about, but I also think are important for us to know about. And also, I’ve been reading Black Psychedelic Revolution by Dr. Nicholas Powers. And as I’m reading this text, I don’t know if it comes up, I’m not done with the book yet, but as I was reading this text, I always would think about how I wish that people would kind of review Black Christian, Black kudu, uh voodoo that’s happened here and those experiences. So like talking in tongues, hearing God, you know, Harriet Tubman is noted as saying she heard the voice of God, it would tell her to do certain things. And I think because those um instances are reported by people who are disrespected. They’re not seen as maybe Black people having the ability to have their own psychedelic experiences and maybe using Christianity as a means for that. And Ms. Gertrude fits inside of that myth for me. Let me read you a little bit. This is from nola.com. Born Gertrude Williams in Alabama. Okay, Sharhonda. Sister Gert– Sister Gertrude Morgan experienced her first divine revelation instructing her to be a preacher in 1934. She later followed her faith to New Orleans where she preached and sang in the French Quarter. Following another revelation in 1957, Morgan proclaimed herself the bride of Christ and began dressing in all white. Near that time, she also began to show and sell her religious themed artwork. Morgan often included autobiographical elements in her painting, but her practice was primarily concerned with biblical passages which she used as a visual aid when preaching. She gained national attention for her paintings and displayed them at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in her tabernacle booth from 1970 to 1974 before another revelation led her to quit painting to focus on poetry and other aspects of her ministry. So her painting is really interesting because, A, her use of colors, her depictions. So I take really seriously the depictions of Black people and their spirituality and also their lived reality and how those things meld. I’m really curious about that. I brought um another artist who was making these kind of renderings of the slave master, but the slave-master ended up looking both like Blue Demon and like a colonial person, which to me tells me something about how that person’s mind was uh translating the evil that they were born into. And I think that this is the same thing. It’s interesting to see, oh, this is how a Black woman experienced her own spirituality and her own relationship with both um her God, but also her environment, that environment being New Orleans, and that environment being um the South, and that environment being um the church. And again, I just want to reiterate, I think, that sometimes like folk art, like um what they call naive art, like jazz when it was first created, blues. A lot of things don’t necessarily get studied because we don’t necessarily respect them. And then fast forward, if a white person does it or if a white person thinks that it’s worth studying, then we’re like, oh my goodness, all this time, I thought those people in the Pentecostal church who were speaking in tongues. And who are embarrassing me, were uh just faking it, but it turns out there is something there that happens to the mind that is worth studying. And again, we do not know enough about the mind. We do not know enough about what how people um we don’t know enough about consciousness, the mind, and if there is or if there is not a God, and if there is a God what it looks like. And if there are ancestors, people whose consciousness survive their bodies, and they are communicating. We do not know enough about how those people are communicating, and I think stories like this help us stay curious and help us fight our own nihilism, as it were. At least it helps mine, because I’m like, well, you know what? There are there’s recorded history of people who have um translated communications with God through their own religion and have found really heroic moments or really beautiful artistic brilliant moments, like in the case of Sister Gertrude. And I wanted to bring this here because I think it’s an interesting conversation. I think its I think sometimes Black folks, specifically smart Black folks want to not be associated with religion because we don’t want to be seen as dumb or spirituality because we don’t wanna be seen as dumb. And I like this story because it’s somebody who who totally didn’t care. And to me, there’s a lot of interesting things in her story that I think we should still be studying and curious about.
DeRay Mckesson: Myles, what you make me think about with this is um, I think about what happens to all of the spirituality and relationship with a higher power and each other that wasn’t recorded because of because it was illegal for enslaved people to read and write, right? But it clearly was present, both because the spiritual fortitude you needed to just make it to tomorrow under the cruelty and the brutality of slavery just was worse than anything we could ever imagine. And, you know, we see practices, like we have documented vestiges of it today. And I think about like how powerful the early art is and like, you now, the 1900s is still, is like, you know depending on where you start at the beginning, could be late in some ways. But when I think about the early art, I in my mind, I tell myself, oh, these are just the first people that got to draw, paint, and write, and do all the things that like helped us recover at least the pieces. If they couldn’t get it all, they got the pieces of what kept a whole people alive in the wildest part of this country’s existence. And that gives me, I saw this and I was like, I love it. I love that God was telling her all types of things. I loved that she stopped painting because God said, its you know let that go and go preach. And I think about all the other relationships with God that our people had. Um, when they could not record it in any way and like how the early art is probably the closest we’ll get to, to the, the like real pieces of that.
Sharhonda Bossier: I love that, that sentiment, DeRay. I also um, and a thing that stuck out with me, or to me, is um Morgan’s preaching style was her own, although it derived from Baptist and holiness churches as well as West African oral traditions, right? And to your point of like, we we hold on to things, right. And those of us who have had the opportunity to travel have like found ourselves in places where we recognize parts of our culture and you’re like, oh, same, same but different, you know? Um. And you can just kind of see the through line and there’s something really beautiful in that to me. The other thing that I thought about is um in some ways what uh what the cloak of religion might have allowed her to experience as more artistic freedom. That not cloaking it in religion would have prevented her from experiencing or expressing as a Black woman of this era, right? And so um that is not to say that she did not have or feel she had a connection to the divine as much as it is to say, I could not imagine being a Black women in the South in 1900 or 1934 and being like, you know what I want to do? I want to paint. You know what I want do? I want to write poetry, right? And so cloaking it in religion allowed, I would imagine in some ways, for more free expression than she might have otherwise had. Um. And as a you know Black woman born 84 years after she was, I experienced the religious space as a space of like stifling my fullness, right? Of preventing me from living into my creativity. And so I’m actually, that’s the part that I’m interested in, which is like the how did she find freedom of expression in this religious space, which is a space that I have often found to be very um restrictive for me. So, yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. And the last thing before I close out my little news section is that this is like so I think there’s a difference between religious space and spiritual space. And I think the religious space, right? And when we look at hoodoo, voodoo, hoodoo is the practice of African traditions, but using Christianity and the Bible as either a collaborator or also as a mask. Um. Voodoo definitely uses saints and to worship luwals, what you would call it, in Haiti. And I think that when we even think about the Negro spiritual, like that is a, that was us using religion and and ideas that happened in the Bible to also say something. So I think that that kind of dance has always been a part of Black people. You have to listen hard. And the last thing that I’ll say about this, too, is when it comes to Sister Gertrude and then Bill Traylor um, who I talked to, Billy Trayler, who I talked um about who was the enslaved, the person enslaved um person born into slavery who was a painter as well. Um. There is a direct lineage to them in Jean-Michel Basquiat and like that type of expressionism that we see. So I feel like these stories have also illuminated a kind of um solar system of a type of art that I did not necessarily consider because now I see not Jean-Michel Basquiat as this one individual person in the eighties but coming from a lineage which um I think the art critics of the eightiest tried to make him seem like a one-off Black genius where he comes from this kind of um ecosystem of Black genius as well.
DeRay Mckesson: Well, that’s it. Thanks so much for tuning in to Pod Save the People this week. And don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save the People and Crooked Media on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. And if you enjoyed this episode of Pod Save the People, consider dropping us a review on your favorite podcast app. And we will see you next week. Pod Save The People is a production of Crooked Media. It’s produced by AJ Moultrié and mixed by Charlotte Landes, executive produced by me, and special thanks to our weekly contributors, Myles E. Johnson and Sharhonda Bossier. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]
