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Trump ally Charlie Kirk shot dead on a Utah campus, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro gets 27 years for his coup dreams, and Utah makes headlines again with the launch of a new Black-owned bank. Kaya Henderson interviews Dr. John B. King, Jr., Chancellor of the State University of New York and former U.S. Secretary of Education (Obama Administration), about his new book Teacher by Teacher: The People Who Change Our Lives.

 

News

Charlie Kirk in his own words: ‘prowling Blacks’ and ‘the great replacement strategy’

In Utah, here’s what a new Black-owned bank will offer customers

Bolsonaro Sentenced to 27 Years in Prison for Plotting Coup in Brazil

 

Follow @PodSaveThePeople on Instagram.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

DeRay Mckesson: This is DeRay, and welcome to Pod Save the People. On this episode, it’s me, Myles and Sharhonda, talking about the news that you might not have heard in the past week, or frankly, the news that you did hear about, but might not have heard about from a lens of race, justice, and equity. And then our former co-host, Kaya, is back to chat with former U.S. Secretary of Education Dr. John B. King, Jr. about his new book, Teacher by Teacher, The People Who Changed Our Lives. Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at Pod Save The People. Lets go. 

 

[AD BREAK]

 

DeRay Mckesson: This feels like a crazier week than a lot of weeks, and it’s been a crazy week every week. But here we are. This is DeRay at @deray on Twitter. 

 

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

 

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

 

DeRay Mckesson: So let’s just talk about the news of the last week is the killing of Charlie Kirk. I will tell you, I saw the video on Twitter. I did not really know anything happened. I’m scrolling. I see the video. I see somebody say something about, did you see the video? I’m like, what’s going on? I see it. I’m, like, wow, this is very graphic. And I can’t tell if, like I don’t know if it’s real yet. Cause it, it just all happened very quick. And then I see a million angles and I want to hear what you all have to say about it. So I’ll end my comments about Charlie Kirk. But one of the things that this moment typifies is I saw this video, and I don’t know if you saw it, there was a guy standing behind the tent. And he’s making content. He’s like play by play, like, oh, my God, I’m in it. They even suggest that he goes after they remove Charlie’s body. He goes and gets some blood soaked um things so he can sell them online. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Wow. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And I’m like, what a? Like, that is the moment. Like, this is like this moment is this weird sort of everything is content and sold, I was, I saw his video I was like, this is, you know, there are a lot of crazy things that happened with all this. This is also crazy. And I don’t know if you all knew that there was no ambulance on site. Um. So they had to put Charlie’s body in the SUV. So. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Oh wow. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Oh wow.

 

DeRay Mckesson: Even if he, there was very little chance he was gonna make it anyway because there was no ambulance, there were no medics right there and they had to transport him in the back of an SUV. But how did you all come to see it happened and then tell me what you think, tell us what you think?

 

Myles E. Johnson: You can go first Sharhonda, I’m still, I’m using every second I can to think.

 

Sharhonda Bossier: It’s a process. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Mm-hmm. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Um, you know, I am not on Twitter. I have not gotten back on Twitter and so, um, actually have not seen the footage at all, um and, um. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Good. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Don’t actually desire to see the footage. Um, I know lots of people have seen it. You know, a friend said, like, she saw it scrolling again, similar to you DeRay didn’t really know what had happened and was like, what did I just watch, right? Um, and separate and apart from Charlie Kirk, who I will get to in a second. I do think about how much everything has become content and how triggering for some people, like seeing something like that is, could be, um and honestly probably should be, right? Um. And so I do wish that like, you know, auto-play wasn’t a thing. And I also wish that people thought twice, three times before uploading that kind of thing to the internet. Um. I, you now, I was in a meeting, came out of the meeting, saw the news, and I had to check in with myself. I was talking to one of my sisters, uh and I was like, I don’t feel an ounce of empathy for this man, like none. I was, like, he would wear blackface and tap dance on my grave, and so I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about the fact that he was killed. And, you know, what does that mean about my ability to like be in touch with my own humanity, which is a conversation I was having with my sister, right, who was like, I still, you know, feel bad for his family. And I think that’s really important. We can’t let these people take our sense of humanity from us. That’s like the last thing we have. And I just was like I’m tired of playing the moral superiority game. Like, I just don’t think I get anything meaningful for it. And I am unmoved. And you know people have brought up like his children, et cetera. And I’m like, we had kids like get gunned down in pews right like just the week before this. And you know as the news of his shooting was breaking, we had news of another school shooting. Right. And he is someone who has said that that is the price we have to pay for people to have access to, quote unquote, their Second Amendment rights. And um I, you know, people are, I’ve been listening to all of these historians and people who are studying, you know the rise or you know another spike in political violence in the US. And I have also found myself immediately dismissing anyone who will not talk about the US’s legacy of political violence outside of just this moment, right? And who won’t talk about it as just like a right versus left thing. And who won’t do this sort of false equivalency between what Republicans have said and what they think people on the left are doing, right? You know, we’re recording this at a moment where a suspect has been named, you know, so supposedly his father turned him in. We’re supposed to believe that he holds a leftist politic and doesn’t like Kirk, right. All of this, you now, will evolve over the coming days, but you just cannot convince me that these two things are one and the same. I just won’t be convinced of that. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I think, so to answer your first question, um like Sharhonda, because of my social media diet, whatever, however I’ve been changing it, found out it through the news. So I don’t have this kind of um, I never, I didn’t see the video. Uh. No, I did see the videos, but it was like blurred out. So like I saw the moment happen, but it was blurred out, so. Um. But I didn’t see the the video and that was something that I started doing years ago, when when people were kind of like, when the series of Black deaths started going viral, um and even with the stuff going on in Gaza, I know that part of me keeping that warmth is me not just becoming numb to seeing people die. I think that this, so I talked about this a couple of times in around like compassion and me making my goal, um compassion for this year, just both in my personal life, but in my political life, my entire life. And I think what has made me sad, maybe even surprising to me if I’m being honest, is how Charlie Kirk was a minstrel. He was this invented, um, caricacture that was made in order for him to be competitive in the capitalist marketplace. So he created himself. He said the most extreme things. He made sure that his brand was just as consistent as Coca-Cola. And then somebody doesn’t no longer sees you. It’s kind of like when you are a company, you go public. And then all of a sudden, when you go public as a company your company name gets flat ended so it can fit on the ticker. You have to do that same thing to one’s soul and one’s personality and who one person is. And it was in that moment of a really real life consequence of what happens when somebody engages in politics in America and engages with white supremacy in America, when somebody gets a real life result of it. Then you start seeing, oh, somebody was bigger than that ticker on the Wall Street ticker. Somebody did have children, somebody did have all these different things, but you still played in these um violent currents. And of course, I can’t muster a certain type of um, I can’t, I can’t muster a certain type of rhetoric because I feel as though his rhetoric was violent towards me. I feel like he wanted to he was saying things in order to initiate other people to feel like it’s okay to be violent towards, me either literally, physically, or through systemic or rhetoric or societal changes. So um we are not comrades in that. But I do have this kind of compassion for people. And the last thing I’ll say, too, is I don’t care. I don’t, it’s not separate to me than Taylor Lorenz’s dark money story. So my main concern is that there’s a whole lot of people, because we do not have regular income, because we don’t have health insurance, because we’re in this capitalist hellscape, there’s lot of of people finding their ways to get money through the internet and through this extreme rhetoric and through um and through manipulating themselves to say what the government wants them to say. And that has real consequences. And you see what the right did to Charlie Kirk, two seconds before they did it, they maneuvered, they turned him from minstrel to pawn in 2.5 seconds and he didn’t get to be a man. So to me, that is where my compassion and my reflections are rooted from right now. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: That is a really interesting because he was such a, he was used as a tool of the right and a very effective tool. You know, somebody said to me, DeRay, he was like such a great organizer. I’m like, well, anybody would be able to organize kids on college campuses if they had $10 million a year to do it by rich donors. The, you know, they’re like, well, he had all these chapters. You’re like well, yeah, heavily funded. That’s how the podcast comes. Like they created him and then used him. And what I didn’t know until he was killed, um is that he was the moderate of the MAGAs. I didn’t realize that the hardcore people thought he was soft. They thought he like a sellout. That Laura Loomer, Nick Fuentes, all those people hated him. And they called him a fascist and him weak and soft. And I’m sure that that’s what this shooter is gonna turn out to have been one of the acolytes of the even further– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I was just speaking of what you were just about to say. Um. Of course, everybody’s like theorizing about what’s going on. But one of the things that go on on the far right specifically um is this idea of accelerating. So um when you see what happened to President Donald Trump, when you see um maybe some of the conditions that happened with Luigi, we don’t know. Um. We don’t if Luigi did it, allegedly, allegedly allegedly. But then also what happened with Trump’s assassination. I think it kind of tripped people out to see people who may be associated with the right do these things. But their idea is that this will accelerate this. And again, it will accelerate their plans of white national um dominance. And this is not new. When it came to Charles Manson and the murder of Sharon Tate and and and everything that was happening. That was too racially motivated and that was also racially-motivated to start a race crime. So again, we’re in this repeated history that we can pretend it’s new for the news cycle, but we have to one day review that this is not new this is a part of like the fabric that’s making us us right now. 

 

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

 

[AD BREAK]

 

DeRay Mckesson: I do want to read some of Charlie Kirk’s uh quotes just so we can remember both what he said and the ideology that he proposed. One of the first quotes I’d ever actually seen myself from him was, if I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified. Another one from May 2023, happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to target white people. That’s a fact. It’s happening more and more. Um. He also did not believe in empathy. He thought that was a made up word on the left. So when people are like, they have no empathy, it’s like, he didn’t believe in empathy. He said, we need to have a Nuremberg style trial for every gender affirming clinic doctor. We need it immediately. And it just is interesting because he was so vocally hateful about a huge swath of the country. And in his own words, he said the great replacement strategy, which is well underway every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different. At the actual event where he was killed, somebody asked about mass shootings. And he said when you factor in gang violence, and then he didn’t get to finish the sentence because he was shot, but he has made this point before, this idea that like gangs, Black gangs are actually the mass shootings in the country. That when people talk about the young white men going into you know elementary schools and high schools, that that is not the problem, that it actually is Black people and gangs. And you’re like, wow, this ideology. So I am the first person to say that like, I don’t, you know, the idea that vigilantes should kill people, I think is just generally a bad idea. Like I don’t, that stresses me out as an idea to support. And let me tell you that if I was as vocally hateful as him, I would just assume somebody was coming for me. I just would, there’s no way you would catch me at a open anything. I would be behind a, like, you know, me talking about the police is enough. You know, I just, I would, to be that vocally hateful to a huge part of the country, you just would not catch me, you wouldn’t catch me outside. My father called me after he was killed, being like, DeRay, I want you to like, chill out. I want you to like not go out, like not, don’t do panels. And I’m like, daddy, you know, I can’t not do panels, you know he was all freaked out about it. Um. And I am sort of, you know, like the world, it is what it is. But Charlie says some really hateful things about a lot of people. You would have me behind plexiglass at every single event known to man. Cause that is its a lot. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: But don’t you think he assumed he was protected by the state, right? Like, don’t you think he like–

 

DeRay Mckesson: Or whiteness. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: He just assumed he was safe be– or whiteness, right, because he was, and by the State, I literally mean like, when you are the mouthpiece for the President of the United States, right. Like don’t you just, you’re like, they got me, I’m I’m good out here. And I think there was probably an illusion of security for him, but also of accessibility for people who wanted to be proximate to him, you know. Um. I don’t do as much public speaking as you do DeRay, but I do quite a bit of it, right? Um. In fact, tomorrow I’ll be on a college campus, right. Um. And so does the thought occur to me that somebody won’t like something I’ve said or won’t who I am and like, you know, absolutely. You know what I mean? But I also feel like these people wouldn’t have no sympathy or empathy for me or anyone who cared for me. And so I’m like, if I’m thinking about my empathy as a finite resource, it’s going to young people who are inheriting a country um that for all intents and purposes has you know extracted everything we can from their futures and from their potential and trying to figure out how to right that wrong. And I’m watching so many people on the left, you can’t see my air quotes, or who are Democrats, fall over themselves to say nice and kind things about Charlie Kirk and that is also really disappointing because I think you can denounce the political violence while also recognizing who he was and what he stood for. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: And they didn’t have S-H-I-T to say when those two lawmakers in Minnesota got ran up on by Trump people and assassinated. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: At all. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: The assassination attempts. I will say it’s also like a really interesting thing to see like Trump had flags at half mast, like the secretary of defense had a moment of silence. Did you see the NFL and the Yankees did a moment of silence for Charlie? Are you like, what is going on? But today in an interview um at the White House, a reporter said to Trump, my condolences on the loss of your friend Charlie Kirk. How are you holding up? 

 

[clip of unnamed news reporter] How are you holding up for the last three and a half days? 

 

[clip of President Donald Trump] I think very good. And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks. They’ve just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House, which is something they’ve been trying to get, as you know, for about 150 years. And it’s going to be a beauty. It’ll be an absolutely magnificent structure. And I just see all of the trucks, we just started. So it’ll get done very nicely, and it’ll be one of the best anywhere in the world actually. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: In true Trump fashion, he replies, I think very good. And by the way, you see all the trucks? They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: They were just using this boy’s death. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I was going to say it’s a little sociopathic. Yeah. Oh oh, I was just kind of like chewing on what Sharhonda had said about empathy and compassion because that’s been such a conversation that I’ve heard happen on the internet. And I think I see empathy and compassion a little bit different. I think that you tap into it and like um uh, you tapping into it. Uh, expands it. I don’t think that it’s, I don’t think think that it is like oil. I think, I think it, I think it is like something a little bit more energetic or like magical than, than that. And I also think that helps you arrive at, um, further instruction, if I’m being honest, because my big thing with this Charlie Kirk thing is I hope that people of all political backgrounds, but specifically on people on the left aren’t just saying, hey, look at what your guy did, look what your guy did. I hope that we’re seeing the climate in general. And I hope that we’re that now there are different fractions of political beliefs that are willing to use public people as pawns. They’re usually use uh people as ways to express their political ideology because we’ve been so disconnected from others. I hope that people understand that um if you’re on the internet talking about politics and smiling in your camera or telling people where to shop, you are a part of a bigger American menstrual exploitive um process and like, so for instance, the last thing that I’ll say, so do you remember when Dylan um did the Budweiser stuff? And then when Dylan, did the Budweiser stuff, Kid Rock took the guns and shot the Budweisers. And you kind of feel that chill of what’s happening. But then you also see here, certain types of rhetoric that is just normalized. Um. I guess my big discomfort with everything is that we think that it’s a left, right, Black, white issue. And we see everywhere. I don’t care if you’re talking about Aidos. And yeah, I don’t care if you’re talking about people, I don’t care who you’re talkin’ about. There is, there are people who are living in 1926 or 1936 and we’re doing politics like it’s 2006 and people are responding like it like it’s 1866. Am I making sense? Like we’re all in different realities and it’s not a game to a lot of people. So a lot people, for you it’s your Budweiser, but we’re a nation of consumers, we’re nation of non-culture. So Budweiser, for some people, is their crucifix. And if you put a trans Jesus on their crucifix, they take it personally and they will do stuff. And that is the kind of absurdity we’re dealing with, but also the kind of extremities that we’re dealin’ with. And that’s just where my heart’s at right now when it comes to this situation. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I mean, look, I hope to live a very long life. I hope, to pass peacefully in my sleep surrounded by my loved ones, okay? If I don’t. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Absolutely. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I want you to politicize the shit out of my death.

 

Myles E. Johnson: Absolutely. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I actually, I do. I do whatever use me to advance things that you know I care about because that is how I live and that is how I want to be remembered. So you have my permission to do that. 

 

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

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Sharhonda Bossier: My news this week is actually a story coming to us out of Brazil. Brazil’s Supreme Court this week convicted former president Jair Bolsonaro of overseeing a failed um coup to overturn the results of the 2022 Brazilian election. His plan was to empower the military, disband the courts and assassinate the president-elect. This might sound kind of familiar. I’m bringing it to the pod because, you know, we’ve seen, yes, in the U.S., but in a lot of countries around the world, this sort of rise of a violent fascist right-wing, um and this is something that was also happening in Brazil. In fact, supporters of Bolsonaro who have been protesting this week have been waving the American flag um as their symbol of sort of resistance to the Supreme Court in Brazil and support of Bolsonaro. Trump has chimed in on both the trial before that and the conviction, um and has, you know, before the trial, he demanded that Brazil drop the charges against Bolsonaro, saying that they were being politically persecuted, that it was part of this global conspiracy to silence conservative voices. And that the election was rigged. And as a way of forcing Brazil to drop the charges, Trump imposed really steep tariffs, initiated a trade investigation, and went after one of the most vocal Supreme Court justices personally, and sort of levied some uh, punishments against him or like, you know, like you can’t come to the U.S., all of that other kind of stuff, right? Which is usually reserved for people who have committed human rights abuses or war crimes, right. Uh, so Trump is pulling out all of the stops in favor of, um, and in support of his friend. Um, but I really feel like what we are seeing is people abroad looking at Trump and the right wing in the U.S. and seeing success. And wanting to sort of imitate that success and figuring out how to take a page out of our playbook. So Bolsonaro, similar to Trump and his supporters, right? Um. They openly spread misinformation about voter fraud. They had their highway patrols stopping voters on their way to polling places in districts that have been historically left leaning. And a week after the election results, right, he was like, this was a fraudulent election. They’re trying to stop your voices and we’re going to overturn the results and we’re gonna disband the courts and kill the president elect, which feels wild to me. So I’m bringing it to the pod both because I think the conviction of Bolsonaro and two of his co-conspirators is really important and demonstrative of something that I hope we actually see more of. And I think that U.S. has been reluctant to do because I think there’s been this perception that for this to happen in a country, that country must be some sort of lawless banana republic. Right? And like admitting that something similar could happen in the U.S. is one of the reasons why we’ve never really gone after people who’ve tried to overturn previous elections or you know cheated in previous elections. I’m thinking about the 2000 election as another example here. Um. And because I do think that part of what people are doing in the US, yes, has an impact here, but also people across the world are taking pages out of our playbook. So wanted to bring that to the pod for discussion. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So, not to tie in Charlie Kirk. Um.

 

Sharhonda Bossier: But do yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: But one of the but one of the videos that I saw was a person who was really upset, this um man who looked like he was about in his 40s or 50s, white man who was um who was like really visibly upset about the passing of Charlie Kirk. And one of the things that he said was, that was gonna be our next president, you know, which– 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Mm-hmm. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –was positive to him, but was kind of chilling to me because I’ve been on this podcast saying, like, listen, I think the most dangerous thing that we’ve done was is make Trump seem like this like magical magician or make him seem especially talented, where I don’t think that he’s especially talented. I think that’s he’s especially willing. I think that he’s especially willing to be morphed and turned into do things. And I think that he’s especially willing to sit in his conservative paradoxes and say yes to these people, and yes to those people even though those things contradict, I think that is the talent. Not anything about how he talks or him being especially funny or anything like that. I don’t think that his charm is what’s getting him to the presidency. Um. And I think that moments like this, we have to take it really seriously because again, I’m not super afraid about today. I’m really afraid about 10 years and 20 years from now, and not even afraid. I think that is what we should be really prepared for because that is the goal. And if you have people along globally who are who are united in their conservative um uh fascist views and are willing to make us all live under that tyranny, we’re gonna be dealing with a problem that we have not seen before. And we’re going to have to have uh answers and get results and do things that we have not done before. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And I think that we’re in this position now where if we get it together, but like if we get it together we can actually um shift it and I guess like what I what I’m continuously thinking about is how irresponsible the the media is. Like how every like and how irresponsible um how we deal with politics are, and we talk about this stuff. And because there’s just not this air of seriousness, and because so many people want to play in the mud, and not enough people wanna to walk over it, it’s like we, we would really be united if we had a picture of what 20 years from now was going to look like, and if more people understood that. But we’re not, we’re playing these weird cultural games. These stories, even though this is the New York Times, these stories kind of just fly over and we’re not able to connect the dots because we’re maybe talking about things that, to me, are stupid or things that are only indicative of a bigger, bigger, bigger systemic problem and wave that’s coming towards us. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: You know, I want to say something about your note that this is covered in the Times is, you know, for me, my wondering is how the Times would cover it if it happened in a European nation, right? I think there’s a willingness. And part of the point I was trying to make is I think there’s a willingness to tell the story and there’s a willingness to talk about what Bolsonaro was trying to do and the violence he was willing to employ in order to get what he wanted. Because we see Brazil as this violent and somehow like backwards place, right? And I don’t know that the Times or to your point, many other outlets would be willing to cover it in the same way or at least frame it in same way, right, if it were happening in a nation that we considered our peer nation because they’ve certainly not demonstrated a willingness to frame it truthfully and clearly when it’s happened here. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, I mean, I’m sure, yes, I think that you’re absolutely right. And I guess just me being a culture person, me being a creative artist person who’s looking at this, I’m also like, so where’s the myth that we’re building off of this? Where is the fable, where is the myth that we are using to web all of these stories together to show you what’s happening in the future? Because they have their myth. It’s alive, but it’s working. So where where what are we doing to like actually show people, this is the future of, this is what’s happening, and this is the future of what’s going on. Does it, am I making sense? Like that–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson:  That to me is like the most frustrating part of it is that we we aren’t using our light imagination to show what a utopia can look like consistently and putting that propaganda out. And we’re also not using our imagination to create myths around the dystopia and showing, oh, this what this is gonna look like. We kind of just breadcrumb and react. That’s how come, you know. Now that it’s looking like people have retrieved Charlie Kirk’s um uh assassin, they it almost doesn’t matter because they already decided the myth that that was gonna go. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Right. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: It’s like, it was like before the body was cold, they said, trans leftist. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yes. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And they had to do it, but it’s not because they believe it. It’s not, because they know that’s what happened. It’s because they understand the importance of owning the story and owning the myth that they create. And now that myth that created for a lot of people is gonna be true because by the time the truth comes out, people will be exhausted by the story. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And nobody’s gonna care about what happened, so luckily it happened within 48 hours, so hopefully that will dispel some of that. But that is the routine and that is that is the strategy and it works and it works and it works. And I wish that because so many things that are happening to me that feel um– 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Connected. Yup. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Feel connected and feel like impending doom. I wish people, I wish that we created just as much myth making around what we see coming towards us. That’s not just a 10 second, 15 second social media clips. I wish we, you know, here I am again. Just, just, just. I want proper left media. Like a robust, thick left media because there’s these stories that we could do something with to me. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: The closest that I have seen or heard is people wondering if Trump, you know, ups the tariffs on Brazil, what that will mean for the price of our coffee. [laughing] I’m sort of laughing because it’s ridiculous, but that’s the extent of it, right, is like people are focused on the tariffs part and like, but to your point, they’re not focused on the fact that all of these right leaning feet, uh figures are building a coalition where they are amplifying and, you know, repeating each other’s talking points, right? Where Trump is saying this is part of a global conspiracy to silence conservative voices, right? We also know that anytime someone says global underneath that is a degree of antisemitism, right. So like they’re all of these things that these sort of dog whistles that he’s hitting time and time again and they’re being repeated in multiple languages and multiple regions across multiple outlets and no one is parsing that for folks. No one’s connecting the dots for people to your point um to say like, hey, the entire sort of quote unquote, “Western world” is moving in this direction. And those of us, which is the entire world, given the current power infrastructure, right, are gonna pay the price for that. Yeah.

 

Myles E. Johnson: To most people who read on a third or eighth grade level. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yes. Yes. Yes. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So that’s it too. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So it’s like, so if we’re being real. Sharhonda, we are class-privileged people. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: You know? Even as much as, you know, I can cry boohoo, but in the grand scheme of Black queer people in America. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I’m at the top of the pyramid, and there are people who are not at the top of the pyramid, in my both in my social community group, but outside of that, who should really be terrified. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And should be uh and it should be illuminated, but also I don’t know if we’re dealing with people who have the cognitive capacity to actually comprehend what’s being what’s being done. And I do feel like it becomes our responsibility, but I think that we’re just in like you know, academic infographic land. I feel like [?]– [laughing]

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Fair. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Um. And then I’m not talking about any like–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Anybody. I’m just saying like, just the culture of the left, of like, we’re gonna make this go viral, and that’s what’s gonna do it. And it’s like, no, we, the like, propaganda has to really do with the cartoons. It has to do with television shows. It has do with um the collaborations too, so. This also highlights when you were talking about the um the anti-semitism and the global like and how that’s like a dog whistle of anti-semitism. Therein highlights Trump’s actual superpower, which is not his charm, which is not his fame. His superpower is I’m having dinner with Netanyahu, and I’m [?] dog whistling anti-Semitism at the same time. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, that’s actually what I was going to say is I was like people aren’t connecting the great replacement theory with the stepped up deportations with the impact on agriculture and the impact on manufacturing, right? Like those Korean workers who were in Georgia, setting up that plant that was supposed to be about bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US, right. Like reporters have been like for US workers to gain the skills and expertise needed to do that, they’d have to spend two or three years in Korea learning those jobs. That’s why we had those people here, right? And so to your point of like Trump being able to talk out of both sides of his mouth, right, he can both say we’re getting immigrants out of here and we’re bringing jobs back to the US even when those two things are in direct conflict with one another. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: By the time those chickens really come home to roost, he’ll have already, he’ll already have left the presidency. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Oh I was gonna say–

 

Myles E. Johnson: So it’s such a two year six month– 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: And gone the glory. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So yeah, well listen. But like, it was like, it’s only like a two-year, like two- year like presidency. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: You know what I mean? I’m, you know, people live for a long time when they get into politics. I don’t know what they, so I’m like, just cause their age and our age is not the same. So I’m like, we might be dealing with Trump until he’s 115. Don’t play. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Touché. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Don’t do not, do not play. So what’s interesting about this um this article that I found in the Salt Lake Tribune, let me tell you what the article is about. The article is a about a Black bank in Utah becoming open. And when I put the headline, the article in the group chat, it generates the picture, the hero picture, the hero image that they will put with that with that headline. And it’s two white couples. And um DeRay uh laughed at me or laughed at the article and the headline mismatch or whatever. But A, I thought it was smart because I thought, I don’t know if you wanna be in Utah and be the Black face of the first Black bank. If I’m being honest with you, um not because you did anything wrong, but because then you put yourself into what the public marketplace and you become symbol. And that means once you become symbol, that means you um, people being taking pictures with you gets them a lot of likes. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Because you did that. And also somebody taking you out gives them a lot of likes because people don’t like that. So you become pawn once you’ve become public. Um. So I thought them using two white, a white couple was really interesting. But then also I thought what was really uh interesting about the about the full article and I’ll read some of the articles soon was that I think when people hear Black bank they think Black peoples exclusively benefit and what this article shows is when you hear Black bank and you hear a bank that is centered around um, or is interested in helping Black people or being funded by Black people and whatever whatever the case is, is that people who are in the classhood associated with Blackness, AKA poverty, benefit. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Benefit yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So you have these stories from these white folk who were not able to get help from other banks, but were able to get help from the Black-owned bank because that Black-own bank already had the infrastructure and already had the ethos to help people who are poor. Holiday Bank is now officially Redemption Bank. The first Black-owned financial institution in the Rockies. Redemption will continue to be flexible when it comes to approving loans for Utah’s small businesses, said Wes Martin, its chief credit officer, as it expands its lending, transforms its digital presence and reaches out to minority communities that have not had access to or felt comfortable with financial services. Um. They go on to talk about Ashley Bell, who’s the chairman CEO of Redemption um Holding Company. Um, a Black owned holding company formed to purchase Holiday bank and trust. Um, this is, this is, this is an aside Ashley Bell. I looked, I said, well, hold on. What is in the water in Utah? I say, I say I said hold on, but, um, but again, I I struggle because I know what gets a lot of people excited are these things that I might call these kind of like neoliberal check marks and things and representation and stuff like that. But also I think that there are things to do in the middle, you know, so you know there’s the time you realize you’re oppressed and then there’s the moment of revolution and there’s time in between that. And what do you do in the time between that? And then also I just love the story because of, like I said before, I think so many people hear Black owned, hear DEI, hear women led and think that it excludes them. I am a assigned male at birth, Black, queer, non-binary person. And I promise you my life would not be possible if it were not for the freedoms given to women and specifically Black women. Because um more often than not, my career transcendency opportunities came through Black women and it’s interconnected. So I understand that as living in a gendered world, and I wish people understood that, living in a gendered and raced world, that when Black people do good, more often than not, Black people help everybody around them, and they also understand the language of poverty that you might be speaking of just needing the opportunity, and they will set you up for success. So I love this as a story, as a change of narrative, and you can guess it, if I were the Rush, what’s his name, the Rupert Murdoch of the left? This would be a story that I would propagandize and show how Black wealth means American wealth for all people. Black wealth turns to red, white, black, and blue wealth. I would say something real quippy like. [laugh] Please steal it, please make it go viral, put your money behind it. Because we have to change that. We just have to change that narrative. We have to change the narrative of people of something benefiting one identify of people and that’s it because that’s not how it works. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I was excited to see this, um I you know, the sort of practical application to my life was in thinking about my full-time work. Um. You know, I am a Black woman but I do not lead a Black organization. Um. And more times than not, right, um I am having to attest to my commitment to supporting the leadership and career advancement of other people of color, right, who are who are not Black. Um. Because people are like, well, if there’s a Black woman in the seat, right. And I succeeded a Latina, right? So there’s is she really committed to my success? Will she will she invest in me in the same way? Um. And sort of my shorthand for that is like same, same, but different. Right. To your point is like, I understand what it is like to have people the moment you walk in a room. Right. Question your readiness to be there, question your ability to think strategically, et cetera. Like a lot of the experiences that people of color, other people of color and women have in leadership um are experiences I’ve had, right? And experiences I’ve had I’ve had to figure out how to navigate. Um. And you know, I think there’s also a ton of research that shows that when you give opportunities to people who are from the most oppressed and marginalized communities, wherever that is in the world, those people take a much more community-oriented approach to reinvesting those resources, right? Uh. That all of us, particularly those of us who are always in precarious financial and social situations understand that none of us enjoy any safety or success solo. That many of us got to where we were because someone you know paved the road for us, right, and and we are always trying to figure out how to pay that forward. And so, you know, I hope the establishment of this bank, to your point, Myles, demonstrates that it will pay dividends, no pun intended, for people beyond Black folks who might be customers or clients of the bank, and that hopefully it provides a model for talking about the importance of investing in Black-led institutions, but also the communal and universal benefits of those investments. So shout out to Ashley Bell and his team. 

 

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

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Kaya Henderson: Today, I want to welcome um a national education treasure and my very good friend, Dr. John B. King. Dr. King, thank you for joining us on Pod Save the People. 

 

Dr. John B. King: Thanks for having me. It’s great to see you. 

 

Kaya Henderson: I’m thrilled to have you here for those people who don’t know, John is the Chancellor of the State University of New York. He’s the former Secretary of Education. He’s one of the co-founders of Uncommon Schools. And he is my friend and partner in this fight for educational equity. And I’m super excited to talk with him today about his new book, Teacher by Teacher, which is a tribute to the educators who shaped his life. John, why was now the moment to share these stories? 

 

Dr. John B. King: Yeah, you know, it’s, it’s interesting. I started this project, you know, five years ago. So you know it took a long time to actually write it and put it all together. But it’s turned out to be, I think really well matched to the moment because we have this, you know, this really attack on public education that we’re seeing on multiple levels and this book is really a story about how teachers and public schools are at the foundation of the health of our society and quite literally saved my life as a kid. And so I’m glad that it’s now in the conversation of this moment because I think it is hopefully a source of hope and reassurance for teachers and people who care about public education. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yup. Um. Let’s start at the individual story, right, um you as a young Afro-Latino male growing up in New York City and you literally say that teachers saved your life. Share with our audience a little bit about what that means. 

 

Dr. John B. King: Yeah. So, you know, I grew up in Brooklyn. Both my parents were New York City public school educators, but they both passed away when I was a kid. I was eight and with my dad it was 12. And in the period when it was just my dad and me, my dad was struggling with Alzheimer’s. And so home was incredibly difficult and scary and unstable. And the thing that saved me was school. School was the one place in my life in that period, that was um safe, supportive, engaging, nurturing, interesting, challenging, um and you know as my father got more and more sick, it was the only place I could be a kid because at home I was figuring out how to get food in our house, how to keep our household going, you know some nights my father would be angry, some nights sad, some nights violent, and school was this place of real stability and I was blessed to have teachers at PS276 and Canarsie and Mark Twain Junior High School in Coney Island, who gave me a sense of hope and purpose. I had a teacher in fourth grade who actually looped with us, which is very unusual in New York City public schools at the time. He stayed with us in fourth, fifth, sixth grade. And that was so important because he really took on this incredibly powerful role in my life. I remember the things we did in class, like it was yesterday, from reading the New York Times every day to doing a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare in elementary school, these amazing field trips to the ballet and to the Museum of Natural History. And he just opened this whole world to us beyond Canarsie, Brooklyn. And that made all the difference for me. 

 

Kaya Henderson: I mean, I think a lot of times when we think about teachers, we think about academic rigor. And I don’t think that we, I mean I think we tangentially acknowledge that teachers do way more than just teach reading, writing and math, but I mean say a little bit more about what this teacher brought to you beyond the academics and even the extracurriculars. 

 

Dr. John B. King: Yeah, you know, it was so powerful that he communicated to us a genuine curiosity about what we thought about the world. Like he wanted to know what a nine-year-old thought about the Cold War. You know, he he when you came to him with a book that you’d finish, he’d talk to you about the book and then talk to you about what book you might choose next, you know? And his investment in us was just palpable in the classroom. Uh. Also, his enthusiasm about sharing himself with us. You know I remember he and his wife would collect shells on beaches all around the world, these very elaborate shells. And he would bring them into class to show them to us. And it was sort of him sharing with us what he was passionate about. And that was an invitation for us to share what we were excited about, what we cared about. Um. And that relationship was so important for me and he didn’t even know, you know, it wasn’t until years later that he understood what I was going through outside of school, but he just knew to make school a place, yes, of academic rigor, but also of these powerfully important relationships. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yeah, I think um that is actually the joy of teaching, right? People talk about watching the light bulb go off in kids’ eyes, but far too often, especially in low-income communities like where I taught and where you taught, we don’t expect eight-year-olds to have a perspective about the Cold War, right. We don’t think they are sophisticated enough. And the simple fact that he’s engaging you in these kinds of topics. Communicates to you that you are worthy, that you’re smart. 

 

Dr. John B. King: Yes. 

 

Kaya Henderson: That your opinion matters. And maybe that is even more important educationally than what is in the textbook or the workbook that people put in front of you. 

 

Dr. John B. King: That’s exactly right. And you know one of the great blessings of my life was being able to have Mr. Osterweil, this amazing teacher, come to my swearing-in as Secretary of Education. 

 

Kaya Henderson: My gosh. 

 

Dr. John B. King: And he was really the like guest of honor at that event because that was made possible by who he was in my life as a teacher. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Uh-huh. So you’ve carried these lessons from the individual classrooms that you were in. Um. Actually, let’s let’s stop for a minute. I was gonna say to the highest levels of leadership, we’re gonna get there, but I wanna stop for a moment at the uncommon schools moment in your principal leadership. How did what you experienced shape your leadership as a school leader? 

 

Dr. John B. King: I think I understood from my own experience as a kid how important it was for school to be a place of stability, consistency, and joy in learning. And really tried as a middle school principal and then leading a network of schools to think about how do we create structures that help teachers deliver that for kids? And we spent a lot of time on just planning what makes a great lesson, what makes a great unit, what makes for an amazing academic experience for students over the course of a year. So we would have teachers come back you know three and a half weeks before the school year would begin just to spend that time together doing professional development, doing planning, um you know figuring out how do we help students make connections between English and history, between math and science. And we all spent a lot of time thinking about school culture. And you know we’d have these weekly community meetings, which was an opportunity to celebrate students, celebrate their academic achievements, but also celebrate their their commitment to community. You know so we would celebrate the students who tutored their peers, the students who uh you know, would stay after class to clean up after the lab, right, students who exhibited that commitment to community. And so everything we did was really about trying to send a message to students. As you said, that they’re valued, that they’re seen, that we believe in them and their potential. And all of that was really trying to create for kids what Mr. Osterweil and teachers that I had at Mark Twain junior high school as well had created for me as a kid. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yeah. The classroom and the schoolhouse right now are perhaps the most embattled location in the United States, and principals are trying to navigate this.

 

Dr. John B. King: Mm hmm. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Um, all of the flack and chaos and whatnot of, you know, funding uncertainty and chronic absenteeism and all of the things that are happening at the same time and trying to create a safe space, a stable space for young people, a place for community to gather the, you know, an academically rigorous environment. What advice do you have for school leaders in this particular moment? 

 

Dr. John B. King: Mm. Maybe two things, one is uh you know to keep the center teachers and students and their relationship and the work they’re engaged in, right? To always have that as the focus. So there are a lot of things we can’t control that are going on outside of school, whether it’s in kids’ lives or in our broader political context. But what we can definitely do is make sure that sixth grade science is amazing. That that young person is getting off the school bus or the city bus at the end of the day, And they’re saying to their mom, like, today was amazing. We did this science experiment in Ms. Henderson’s class and we poured these two liquids together and they changed color and here’s why. And right like that level of enthusiasm and joy and learning, that we can deliver. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yeah. 

 

Dr. John B. King: And so we have to we have to make sure that we do that even with all these things that are going on around us. The second thing I would say is you have to be clear on who we are as educators and what our values are, you know and I, I feel a lot of sympathy for teachers around the country who are being forced into these very difficult ethical dilemmas. But you have to decide for you, where are your lines? What are your boundaries? You know and for me, as a high school social studies teacher, like we’re talking about slavery. I know there are folks who wanna ban that conversation, want to take things out of the Smithsonian about that institution. But that’s the reality. That was part of America’s history. It has shaped many things about our present. We have to be truthful about that. We have to be truthful about the Civil War and why it was fought. And it was fought over that institution of slavery. And that there was this period of reconstruction. And then there was this period of dismantling reconstruction. We have to tell that story because it happened. And again, it shaped so much of our present. And so when people say, well, we’re not allowed to do that, like then I cant that’s not an environment I could function in. And I get that that’s a very difficult question that educators around the country are forced to grapple with. You know, even the question of, like, can I teach Toni Morrison here? And again, for me as an educator, I couldn’t I couldn’t be true to myself and my students if we couldn’t have those conversations in our classroom. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Mm hmm. And this is not just about our classrooms. There’s a very personal, there’s a personal connection for you from the impact of slavery on your family personally to our history and the Tuskegee Airmen and those kinds of things. Say a word about how like the truth in history has actually played out for you and your family. 

 

Dr. John B. King: Yeah. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Like people think people think this stuff is stuff that they’ve read in history books and it doesn’t really matter now and whatnot, but it is actually shaping you as a leader because you’re confronting these things firsthand. 

 

Dr. John B. King: 100%. So when I was secretary, I was asked to give the commencement address at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, it’s at HBCU, where my grandmother graduated in 1894. And to prepare for the speech, I decided to do this family research project to try to better understand her story and our family story. And I worked with a genealogist who worked at the Schomburg, the part of the New York Public Library that focuses on African-American history. And I get this email from her one night that says, I found the place where your great grandfather was enslaved. Now think about that. There’s somebody who’s being babysat right now by their great grandfather. That is not a very far distance, right? I found the place where your great-grandfather was enslaved and by the way, the cabin that he lived in as an enslaved person with his family is still standing on the property. And by the way, the property is still owned by the family that are direct line descendants of the family that enslaved your family. And it’s 25 miles from your house. So, you know, then we had this whole family conversation, what do you do with that information? Right? Do you call ahead? Do you send an email? How do you open this conversation? And you know I tell this story in the book of the relationship we’ve built with the family, the Becker family who own the property, who are descendants of the people who enslaved my family. It’s a complicated history, obviously, that we share. But it’s been really powerful for me and for my daughters to stand inside of that cabin, to be in the place where our family was enslaved. To realize that cabin is maybe 30 feet from the main house. So these were two families living in the same space, one owning the other, right? Sometimes people think about slavery and lose the reality that it was an incredibly cruel institution and an incredibly intimate institution. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes. Yes. 

 

Dr. John B. King: But the other thing that we think about when we’re standing inside of that cabin is how profound it is that in my family, we went in three generations from enslaved in that cabin to serving in the cabinet of the first Black president. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Come on. That’s what I’m talking about.

 

Dr. John B. King: Right? And that’s, that’s a powerful story about who we are as Americans too. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes. 

 

Dr. John B. King: Right. And you know, what, what my grandfather and grandmother, the life that they had, my grandmother being one of the first graduates of an HBCU, my father and his generation. You know, my father was the first Black principal in Brooklyn. Uh. One of my uncles was a Tuskegee Airman, one of the first Black pilots in the U.S. Military. Another one of my uncle’s was one of the first Black players in integrated professional basketball, uh the precursor of today’s NBA. And like, I have a deep appreciation for what they had to overcome. And so it gives me perspective, both about the importance of this history, but also our collective responsibility to persevere through this moment because the folks who came before us, you know, they went through worse. And and we’re here because they survived that because they persevered. And so now we have a responsibility to keep pushing forward ourselves. 

 

Kaya Henderson: I think about the impact that that has on your daughters and on other descendants of enslaved people to hear of the stories, to not just understand the cruelty and the terror of enslavement, but to track what has happened since then and to appreciate our our ingenuity and our resilience and our, you know, whatever, all of the things that have gotten us from the slave cabin to the president’s cabinet, right? Um. It says something to young people who are descended from slavery about what is possible in a short amount of time. But I want to also take a minute to talk about the Beckers and you know I think for a lot of white families and communities, confronting their part in slavery is not pleasant, um but it does not have to be catastrophic. And so talk to me a little bit about what that reconciliation or at least joint acknowledgement look like. I mean, first of all, it had to be there had to be some positivity in it, otherwise y’all would have been the Hatfields and the McCoys fighting in the cabin. So something happened that was positive out of this. And I’m asking that because I don’t want people to be afraid of confronting the harsh brutality of our history. And there is a way forward from that. 

 

Dr. John B. King: Yeah. And, you know, one, I want to say I appreciate their openness to the conversation because some folks would not have been open to that. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes. 

 

Dr. John B. King: My cousin literally knocked on the door, said, I’m Jan King Robinson. My people were enslaved here. And you know some people would have just closed the door back up. But but they were open to the conversation. It’s caused them, I think, to reflect a lot on their family’s history in a way that maybe they didn’t as kids. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yeah. 

 

Dr. John B. King: You know they’d describe uh playing in the area of their property that is the unmarked burial ground of my ancestors. As kids thinking of it like you know in a place of ghosts, but without a realization of what it meant that this burial ground was not marked. And so now coming to know us building this relationship with us, they are actually working with some folks to identify where the grave sites were so they can be marked. So their way of thinking about our shared history on the property has evolved through their relationship with us. They were using the cabin as a storage shed. Basically, they called it the quarters. So there was this kind of implicit understanding of what it was. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yup. Or maybe not, right? 

 

Dr. John B. King: Right. 

 

Kaya Henderson: They might have just always known it as the quarters, not understanding that it meant the slave quarters. 

 

Dr. John B. King: That’s right, that’s right. But now, knowing us, you know they’ve cleaned it out and they now see it as like a, a piece of history to be um maintained and to be used to teach. And so you know I think it’s it’s, but there have been hard moments. You know there was a moment where they said to us, we hope our people were not cruel to your people. And I knew what they meant, right? We hope that our ancestors didn’t torture yours. But in the end, slavery is torture. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yeah. 

 

Dr. John B. King: Owning people is torture. There’s no way to do it that isn’t cruel. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yeah, yeah. 

 

Dr. John B. King: And so that was hard for them to hear in a way because that’s that’s their ancestors, right. And they had to grapple with that. But we really have become friends and it’s been a really powerful journey for both of our families. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Well, and that is the American story, right? That we might have a complicated history, but there is always a way forward. And I think the thing that I know for sure is if you don’t confront that history, there is no way forward, there is no way forward so the push to suppress, to forget, to obscure is actually a threat to our ability to push forward. When South Africa you know came out of apartheid, there was no way to move forward without truth and reconciliation, right? And post Holocaust, there was no way to move forward without truth and reconciliation. And so I’m interested in the role that not just education plays, but like we are knitting together the next chapter of the American story. And I think your personal story, is indicative of what our educational systems and leaders need to be thinking about. Um. And so you write not just about the classroom, um but about moments in public service that shaped you. And one of the stories that stuck out to me is the story about your visit to Saint Paul after the murder of Philando Castile. And for those people who don’t remember, Philando Castile was a school cafeteria worker, right? He worked in schools and the students loved him and you know he was um he was killed at during a police stop. And so I want you to share with us a little bit about what that moment taught you about the intersection of education and justice and community. 

 

Dr. John B. King: You know I went in part to convey President Obama’s condolences and our administration’s commitment to try to address the underlying challenges around race and policing. And I spent time with the community there who were heartbroken. I mean, he you know they called him Mr. Phil. The kids were connected to him. He was he had relationships with the faculty and staff. And and so there was tremendous sadness. And I was sitting with some of the staff, some of the leadership of the school and parents just kind of sharing and reflecting. And one of the powerful things in that conversation and insight for me was just how unaware folks sometimes are about dynamics across lines of race. Because for a lot of folks in Minnesota, they think of Minnesota as a place where people are nice, nice to each other, nice to strangers, welcoming. But in fact, you know, Philando had been stopped by police dozens of times and there was a dynamic in the community of very aggressive policing towards Black folks, particularly as they moved into the suburban communities. And some of the folks, African-American folks who worked there were talking about that. And I could see that some of the white parents weren’t connecting with it, the story of what people were experiencing. But then one of the folks, an administrator, said, was a white woman, said you know, I never interacted with police in this community in my life until I started dating my husband who is Black. And then I had the experience of being stopped multiple times. And I could see that when she said that it moved the conversation in the room to a different place. It was a bridge building moment. But there’s also something frustrating about that, right? Because the Black folks in the room telling the story was not enough to move the conversation. But on the other hand, I left optimistic because it really did change the conversation in the room. And one of the parents stopped me at the end and said, you know, I think the way my kids understand race is that things were bad. Then Martin Luther King came and everything was better. And I know I need to do something different. I need to talk to them about the work we still need to do. And that was very encouraging to me. So it was a very painful experience, but also I could see how if we can find ways for real substantive cross-racial communication, we can make progress. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yeah. And if that parent had not been in that room, right, they would have gone on with their day-to-day lives. And the only place that their kids stood a chance of understanding across lines of difference is in school. 

 

Dr. John B. King: Yes, yes, that’s right, that’s right. 

 

Kaya Henderson: In fact, the only reason that the parent had that epiphany was because there was a community meeting in school, right? 

 

Dr. John B. King: Yes. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Okay, and so um another sort of dimension that I think we don’t talk enough about, and I have to preface this by admitting my reluctance, fear, I have an intense fear of prison. I don’t know if I was incarcerated in a previous lifetime or something like I can’t watch jail movies. I can’t visit people in jail. I like it totally freaks me out. I have nightmares. And I have done a very good job over the course of my life of avoiding anything prison related. I mean, I got cousins and them in prison and I can put some something on their commissary or whatever. I can send you books and magazines, but I cannot come visit. I can not I can take a call, but it is really traumatic for me. I don’t know why. And prisons may be one of the greatest places of possibility in our society. Um. DeRay Mckesson, you know, host of of this very podcast um convinced me to go into uh the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center to do some work with the young people there. And you know John, it literally, this was like me conquering my greatest fear. But I went in and at the end of the day, kids are kids. And it was one of the most transformative experiences I’ve ever had, literally in like the last 60 days this happened. And, and so you have had many more similar and more important instances in in understanding the connection between education and access to education and prisons. And so um you talk a little bit about in your book about the Obama administration’s work to expand higher education in prisons. And there are people who are on this podcast talking about, I don’t know why we’re doing that, or what is that about, or that’s socialist, or you know are we trying to unleash the heathen horde on society? Like, why was that work important to you, and what did you see in those classrooms that affirm the power of education? 

 

Dr. John B. King: We should start with the fact that the vast majority of folks who are incarcerated are coming home, right? So the only question is how, right? And I think part of the challenge in our society is we sometimes think about incarceration as just a place of punishment and we don’t think enough about not a rehabilitation, but the recreation that someone can do of themselves and their life through this experience. So when I was secretary, one of the things that we worked on was an initiative called Second Chance Pell. And it was an outgrowth of President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, which was designed to address some of the challenges faced by boys and young men of color. And one of the things we identified was that a terrible mistake was made in the mid-90s, in the ’94 crime bill, banning access to Pell Grants, which is the primary federal assistance for low-income students to pursue higher education for people who are incarcerated. It was part of the whole like tough on crime, you know just obsession with punishment that was part of that era. In fact, I remember talking to one woman who was incarcerated at the time, who said the guards came, took the books out of the library and said, you won’t need these anymore. Right, it was a period where a punitive role of the criminal justice system was prioritized above all else. Terrible public policy. Because again, folks are coming home. 

 

Kaya Henderson: They’re coming home. 

 

Dr. John B. King: So it is much better if folks have an opportunity to have an education. Um. And we also have tremendous evidence that folks who get an educational experience while incarcerated are dramatically less likely to return to prison. So it’s in everybody’s interest actually for those educational possibilities to be there. So this was a very dumb policy in addition to being wrongheaded, right? So we wanted to correct it. We didn’t think that we could get Congress to move on it. So we used our experimental authority under the Higher Education Act to create a pilot program for 65 colleges and universities to use Pell Grants for folks who are incarcerated. And the result of that was in the years after the Obama administration ended, I was then working at a civil rights organization. We were able to get governors, legislators, members of Congress to visit these programs and ultimately the law changed in 2020 and now Pell Grants are available for incarcerated folks. And at SUNY, SUNY is the largest provider of higher education in prison in New York state. But over the years, I’ve had so many opportunities to go to graduations in prisons. And I would encourage people, and this may be a reason for you to go back into a prison. It is they are traumatic, they are spaces of trauma. Uh, just even going into the prison can feel very traumatizing. But those prison graduations are amazing, because you really see the transformative power of education. And people talk about how changed they are by the opportunity to you know to read Kant or the opportunity to learn about microeconomics. Right. But they also talk about the how different their life will be when they come home because of that education. And at the graduations you get to see their partners, their kids, their parents, their loved ones, seeing how changed they are by the educational experience. It’s really quite a beautiful thing and I remember being at Sing Sing and um a guy who’d been incarcerated and pursued higher education said, because of this pursuit of higher education, it’s the first time I’ve had academic and moral credibility with my family, right? It changed their whole relationship. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yeah. 

 

Dr. John B. King: And now that guy who said that to me, he actually works with me at SUNY in our higher education in prison program. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Come on, come on, c’mon ah um I mean, the thing that I love about Pod Save the People is like this is a community of hope. This is a community of possibility. Um. And so, you know, it is only right that we are here talking about this thing at this particular time. Okay, speed round. Um. A couple of quick questions that I need like a one sentence answer to, and then we’re gonna wrap up. You wrote about the Trump administration trying to dismantle education. What should, we have a million listeners, what should they know and what should they do about it? 

 

Dr. John B. King: Yeah. Well, they should know that the threats are very significant. It’s threats to funding uh for K-12, particularly for schools that serve low-income kids, threats to higher education, financial aid, Pell Grant programs, student loans, threats to civil rights enforcement, right? The education department, the federal education department is where you go if you’ve experienced discrimination on the basis of race or sex or disability. But they’re dismantling that whole infrastructure. So there’s no place to go. So the threats are very dangerous. That’s what people should know. What they should do is talk to members of Congress. At the end of the day, Congress decides whether or not there’s an education department. Congress decides how much funding will be appropriated to the Title I program that gets funds to schools serving low-income students. And we need Congress in a bipartisan way to stand up for their constituents. And these didn’t used to be partisan issues. You know Margaret Spellings, who was George Bush’s Secretary of Education, is as horrified about what’s happening now as I am. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Another quick question about representation. So representation in leadership matters. We had seen a lot of progress and we still need courage in some places. So what do you have to say about people thinking about what the issue of representation means? 

 

Dr. John B. King: We need more teachers, principals, superintendents of color in this country. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Why? 

 

Dr. John B. King: Kids need to see folks who look like them who are leading. And I would argue white kids need to see diverse teachers and leaders. You know I have a friend who says, if you have a Black teacher for calculus, it’s a little bit harder to be racist. Not impossible, but a little bit harder, right? And I think that’s, I think that’s real. Like we, all kids need to see a diverse group of adults who are committed to them, committed to education. And to get there, I think each of us has a responsibility to, who are in education, to find folks to not just mentor, but sponsor, right? Folks who we are going to help support their career trajectory, whether it’s a young person who’s thinking about teaching or a young teacher who might be a future school leader, or someone who’s in their first superintendency, wherever they are, if we have the opportunity, we should try to support them. 

 

Kaya Henderson: I would just add to that, that like this is the fight, friends. Like we can’t this we can’t be afraid of this. If you really wanna change the world, you gotta teach, you gotta lead, you have to be a systems leader. Like you cannot shy away from this. It is complicated, it’s whatever. But there are people like us who are here who will support you. And like if you’re not fighting on this front line, I don’t like I don’t know what you’re doing, right? And so people cannot be scared to come into this space and grab it. Speaking of scared, higher education, every college president that I know is like, what does this mean for me and my school? As the chancellor of the State University of New York’s system, what do you say to higher ed leaders in this particular moment? 

 

Dr. John B. King: It’s a very similar to the message to K-12 folks, right? First and foremost, we have to keep the main thing the main thing. We have to do our job. And that means enrolling students, particularly first gen students, low income students, veterans, diverse students, enroll them, support them through to graduation. Because it’s not enough for them to just start. They have to finish with a meaningful degree or credential. That’s the core work, and we can’t let anybody distract us from that core work. But the second thing is, we have to be clear about what our values are. And you know academic freedom is one of those values. We all have to stand up and say, African-American history is still going to be taught on our campuses. The work to make sure that every student feels a sense of belonging, the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion. That isn’t negotiable, that is the that is core to our mission. And we have to stand up to say that even when it’s hard. And one of my frustrations has been, I think a lot of higher ed sector leaders have tried to keep their head down. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes. 

 

Dr. John B. King: And not be clear about what the values are. And I think that is a mistake uh because it leaves people isolated who–

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes. 

 

Dr. John B. King: –become targets of the administratio.n Rather than all of us standing up and saying here’s where our values are. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Yes. I mean, the idea of collective action, the idea of having one another’s back, like, I mean, you know, the people united can never be defeated, divide and conquer. Like these, these are not just sayings, this is real. And in fact, if we can come together, I mean, Mr. Trump is not and his administration, they are not the only people who have a perspective about what education should be in our country. As individuals, as communities, as states, as a country, we actually have some say in this as well. And I think you know what your story reminds me is that you know it doesn’t matter what the news is covering. In fact, most of the most significant actions politically that happen, happen at the local level. And we all have the opportunity to participate in that. We just can’t be scared because the elephants are fighting, right? Like we, I used to say at ECPS all the time, when the elephants, the African proverb says when the elephant’s fight, it’s the grass that gets trampled. And I would always tell my people, we are grass tenders. The children are the grass, right. Let the elephants fight, our job is to make sure that the grass does not get trampled and if we concentrate on what we want for our kids and what we want for our communities, we can win. We can have it all. Um. You know, many of our listeners are educators. Many are not. Um. Leave us with a message of hope for um for the next little while. We’re in the fight. Um. What can regular people be hopeful about? 

 

Dr. John B. King: You know, President Obama would always quote the Dr. King line, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. And then he would always say, we have to be the ones to do the bending. And, you know, I think that’s that’s to me what is hopeful that if you look over the long sweep of American history, we certainly have periods of backsliding. But and we’re in one, but over the long you know sweep of our history, we have made progress in expanding the circle of democracy. But that progress came because folks worked for it, whether we’re talking about the civil rights movement or the suffragettes or the abolitionist movement, like folks worked for it. And so we have to do that work for the sake of future generations. 

 

Kaya Henderson: Um. John, tell us, where can people find the book, teacher by teacher? 

 

Dr. John B. King: Yes, it’s everywhere books are. So you know Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your local bookseller. We have a website, johnbkingjr.com, where you can find out where we’re doing events. And I am on Instagram at @johnbkingjr 

 

Kaya Henderson: I just want to say thank you um for thank you for being a friend of the pod. It’s not your first time on the pod, um but thank you for being part of our community. And I want to say thank you, for for your personal sacrifice. Education leadership is not just about, it’s not a job, it is a vocation. I thank you for being willing to lead. At the most complicated levels of leadership and honestly for keeping it very human and very real. Um. One of the reasons why I am proud to call John my friend is because he’s just a regular, degular guy who is using his experiences to make education better for children, families and communities in the United States. And he always reminds us that education is about changing people’s lives and that’s what we’re here to do. So Dr. John D. King, Chancellor of the State University of New York Higher Education System, the SUNY College System, thank you for sharing with us today. We will have you back every single time. We appreciate you. 

 

Dr. John B. King: Thanks so much and thank you for who you are for kids and communities. It’s an honor to be your friend. 

 

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

 

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