In This Episode
A wave of layoffs hit Corporate America as the federal shutdown drags on, a drug bribery sting in Mississippi exposes 14 police officers among the 20 arrested, Trump’s White House denounces a Drexciya-inspired Smithsonian exhibit, and new research shows foodborne UTIs disproportionately impact low-income communities. DeRay interviews the team behind the new HBO Max documentary The Alabama Solution: directors Andrew Jarecki & Charlotte Kaufman, and producer Beth Shelburne.
News
Fourteen police officers among 20 arrested in Mississippi drug bribery sting
Trump’s White House denounces Drexciya-inspired Smithsonian exhibit
Urinary tract infections linked to contaminated meat in new study
Know Your Rights – Immigration Resources
Follow @PodSaveThePeople on Instagram.
TRANSCRIPT
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay, and welcome to Pod Save the People. In this episode, it’s me, Myles and Sharhonda, back to talk about the underreported news with regard to race, justice, culture, and equity. And then I sat down with the team behind the new incredible HBO Max documentary, The Alabama Solution. Directors, Charlotte Kaufman and Andrew Jarecki, and producer, Beth Shelburne. I’m excited for y’all to hear this one. You have to watch this incredible documentary. And again, make sure you follow us on Instagram at Pod Save The People to stay up to date with all things PSTP. Here we go. [music break]
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: Another week in the first term of the Trump presidency. This is DeRay at @deray on Twitter.
Myles E. Johnson: I’m Myles E. Johnson at @pharaohrapture on Instagram. Oh, and YouTube, and Youtube.
Sharhonda Bossier: Oooh.
Myles E. Johnson: Now.
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, YouTube.
Sharhonda Bossier: You might be the first person I subscribe to. I’m Sharhonda–
Myles E. Johnson: Yup.
Sharhonda Bossier: –Bossier. [laughing] You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Spill at @BossierS and on Instagram at @BossierSha.
DeRay Mckesson: Woop woop, well, there’s no shortage of things happening. We can just take that clip of my audio and just play it every week, because I feel like I say it every single week. I want to start with um with the layoffs. I have been fascinated by two things with the layoffs. One is just the sheer number of people being laid off. So UPS, 48,000 people, Amazon, up to 30,000, people, Intel, 24,000 people, Nestle, 16,000 people, Accenture 11,000, Ford 11,000, Microsoft 7,000. Pricewaterhouse, Cooper, PwC, 5,600. And the news is just reporting them as like in the numbers. They’re like, UPS, laying off this many people, Amazon, 12,000 people to date, up to 20,000 and all I think about is like, I don’t know even five people who could get laid off like suddenly and everything’s okay. That like they have enough money in the bank or enough da da da to like walk into work on Monday and at noon get laid off and it does not completely upend their life. So when I see 30,000 people in one company, you just came into work and I have a friend um who was tweeting about it. He’s like, I went into work. They said we had a mandatory meeting. They didn’t even lay us off in person. We had a recorded message that told us we were laid off and then it was a screen.
Myles E. Johnson: Not that we’re scared one of y’all are going to turn into a Luigi. They said, here you go, girl.
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh, wow.
DeRay Mckesson: I’m like, so I just wanted to bring the layoffs to talk about because I’m, like, this feels really wild and it feels like the media now owned by all the billionaires is making it sound like another day in the park.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, the numbers are spectacular and um and really sad, but I think the thing that I’m uh, talk about repeating phrases, I feel like I’m always saying what I’m interested in, what I’m interested in, what I am interested, but what I am really anticipating is a revolt from the citizens. So if there are people getting laid off and there are are people who are being forced into a prison uh poverty slave class, I feel like it’s not truly news until those people do something. So it’s kind of like, yeah, America’s getting worse, it’s sinking, and um the only lifeboat that we have left is some type of um revolt against the government that is oppressing us.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. I mean, I’m thinking about this obviously against the backdrop of the government shutdown, the further erosion of the safety net programs that have existed, which I know we’ll talk about. Um. I’m also thinking about, even before the conversations around AI and its disruption of the workplace, you know a lot of people who were proponents of universal basic income were talking about the fact that the future of work was going to look very different very soon. And part of being proponents of the universal basic income was that, you know, our economy was going to shift in a way that meant that we, in some instances, really didn’t need as many people to be working some of the jobs that they’re working, even if it were not accelerated through greed and through um whatever other you know sort of cover people are using. And so I also hope to Myles’s point, there’s more opportunity to talk about rebuilding our safety net and more opportunity to talk about establishing a floor underneath people um in this country so that folks are not falling into the abyss of poverty.
Myles E. Johnson: What you just mentioned made me remember this week. I saw this post um from, I don’t know if it was from China, but like essentially China had um created these AI jobs and a lot of people are now not working. And then the people, the Americans, and they were like, so what are the people doing? They’re like, oh, China is now, like those people are not homeless now. Those people are just not working and um.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: And living. And it was funny to see all the Americans kind of um be illuminated that there’s other ways of existing in this world than the ways that we’ve–
Sharhonda Bossier: Right.
Myles E. Johnson: –been offered. Um. And again, I think I said on the podcast like a couple of weeks ago that I was like, no, China has won. Like–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: We’re just kind of catching up to that victory and we’re kind of seeing the aftermath of it, but that that that China has ate the cake, you know, I–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: I literally know two people um, moving there, but they already had relationships with Chinese, but I know two Black people who are going, um.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: To China now, so it was wild.
DeRay Mckesson: It is wild too, as we talk about this, to think about the cliff that will have happened by the time this episode comes out of food stamps. That, you know, as you, as we talked about before, the federal government fully funds food stamps that go to actual people. The states incur the cost of administering food stamps, so like filling out the applications, all that stuff, which is a small fee, but the lion’s share of the budgeting for food stamps comes from the federal government. And Trump and the Republicans are holding it hostage, hoping that the Democrats cave so that they can gut healthcare. And both of these things are crazy to me, because so many people are gonna lose in the healthcare fight. Like this is, healthcare is already, I mean, we’ve talked about this before, we, me and Sharhonda both lead organizations, and it is, we pay out the behind for these plans at the org level, and they still aren’t great. You’re like, we’re paying a ton of money. The employees are paying a lot of money, and they’re still not great plans, you’re like, worse plans feels crazy for a lot of people. But then the food stamp thing, it’s like, this will be the first time it’s ever, we’ve ever not paid food stamps during a shutdown ever. And it’s gonna be a lot hungry people. So I guess, Myles, all I can say is like, you know it maybe this will lead to the revolt. And you know they just tried to put this to a vote and we cannot get both houses of Congress to override Trump’s refusal in Congress to to extend food stamps. And the crazy thing about food stamps is that it’s still not, it’s not a lot of money anyway, but it does keep people a lot, like it keeps people fed. And you’re like, when this safety net goes out all at once, that feels like a real cliff.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah and I think all the other stories that are coming around the food stamps story that people don’t think about that are, you know, sad stories, but thinking about people who um, I was watching a couple of videos this morning. Um. Thinking back on, I probably should have watched that after meditation, probably is answering why I’m a little depressed this morning, but but it was um a whole bunch of people surrendering their pets, because uh when you when you have food stamps, uh you, even though you can’t buy pet food, that budget goes towards, you know, your pets and people having to surrender their pets. And that was just an angle that I didn’t necessarily consider. Um. And the other thing is the Republicans, if they wanted to, could fund it. [?] like, you can tell how the government shut down and they can still fund it, so it’s it’s it’s, to them, a necessary evil that they’re doing. And to the point around the health care is if Democrats let go of this. You know, I’m seeing so many kind of mutual aid and communal projects and just digital projects coming to help people who are who are suffering with food, which I don’t mean to sound like crass, but it’s like a easier task. There are not enough GoFundMe’s alive to really help people when those medical bills get to them, you know? And I was watching the um a video around how the price of um medical care going up, how it trickles up. Like the last people to let it go are the people who need it. So if you get a diagnosis and you know you need this premium, it’s good. But eventually, those people let it go to. That is what it’s designed to do. And um I don’t think we’re going to be able to mutual aid from impoverished community class like people’s medical care.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, in addition to my full-time work, I serve on the board of the L.A. USD Education Foundation, and we, the superintendent here, hosted a press event yesterday to talk about what the district was going to do to try and stand in the gap for families in this moment, including um uh serving dinner at about 600 schools in the city, um and anyone who is 18 or younger, no questions asked, enrolled at that site or not, will have an opportunity to have dinner at that school, right? Um. And that is, that’s important, but I and the district has some resources, right, but school districts are also facing fiscal clips because the feds have pulled back a lot of funding, particularly a district like LAUSD that serves a high number of immigrant students, a high number of English language learners, and a high number of undocumented students, you know? And so while the district is trying to stand in the gap, it’s also being squeezed by all of these other federal cuts. So to your point, Myles, even if people are like trying to lean into some of the mutual aid that they can do, we’re all capacity and resource constrained in this moment.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: I didn’t plan to talk about this, but what you just said reminded me of it. I don’t know if you saw that the um that the governor of Illinois had asked the Department of Homeland Security to lay off on Halloween, to like stop having ICE be crazy during Halloween. And Kristi Noem said, no. She said, we will be out there while they trick or treat and we will make sure that we get everybody. This is just a wild thing going on. [music break] Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: Switching topics, another thing that happened in the news, that just broke yesterday. We’re recording on Friday was that the DOJ, the AP reported that the DOJ is investigating a set of groups related to Black Lives Matter and has issued one search warrant. It looks like they’re starting with the Black Lives Matter Global Network, which is one of the groups in the movement space, and I am going to keep my commentary short, but uh I you know it would be irresponsible for us not to at least talk about it, so I’m interested to see what both of you have to say.
Sharhonda Bossier: Before we get to commentary, DeRay, I think what would be helpful for people is um for you to kind of give an overview of like the difference between the hashtag, the movement and organizations. I know this is something like for the past decade, people have been trying to make clear, but I still think um in a lot of people’s minds, even if not malicious, right? All three of those things are conflated. And so I think it would be help just to give people a framework for understanding what we’re talking about in this moment.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah. So when people say the Black Lives Matter movement, that is a constellation of groups, just like the civil rights movement wasn’t one organization or two organizations, it was a range of people and organizations. But there is a group that named themselves Black Lives matter. And that is the Black lives matter global network. They have a foundation. They tell the story about three women who started a started a thing that is the global, the global network, I’ve never had any relationship with those people. And then the hashtag was started by a professor um a long time ago, but there was a group of people who sort of took ownership of it in the moment following um following Mike Brown being killed in Ferguson. So there is a lot of conflation. We’ve all sort of been a part of it, but now with the DOJ investigating groups, it is gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. And it just broke yesterday. It was like five o’clock yesterday, the AP reported it. So we will see. But I’d love to know what you all, I don’t know what y’all think about this. So. I’m ready.
Sharhonda Bossier: I’m like, what hat do I want to wear as I respond to that? So, um one, thank you for like that framework. I do think it’s important. Um. I will say kind of more generally and not specific to the organizations under investigation, we do know that this is a tool that the federal government has used many times to undermine the credibility of um movement leaders and movement organizations. Um, and I think we should all um wait until we see what these investigations unearth, if anything, because sometimes being targeted or named in an investigation seems to be enough to undermine people’s credibility. Um. And I would just push us to to think about that particularly in this moment and particularly with this DOJ. That said, um you know I also serve on the board of a movement organization. Um, and part of the work that we have done in that capacity was really try to ensure that we were building an organization that could withstand pretty harsh external scrutiny and often people don’t think about what it takes to run a nonprofit organization, right? You got to have a fiduciary board. You have to have officers on that board. They have legal responsibilities, right, as fiduciaries of that organization. And of public assets and trust. And if you are not um aware of that, and if you don’t do that with any degree of real fidelity or integrity, you can find yourself in trouble. And it doesn’t even have to be because you’re out here scamming people, right? So my push to people, especially those of us who are doing work that this administration um wants to target and undermine, is to really get your governance ducks in a row. Right? Understand that like people are going to look at everything that you have done. They’re going to look at comp packages. They are going look at board meeting minutes, all of those things that they’re able to request. And even if, again, you were doing your best and think you were doing the right thing, it is worth every ounce of prevention to talk to tax attorneys, to talk to auditors, to talk people who know nonprofit governance. So that in the event that people come looking, there’s nothing for them to find in the in the least bit. So um that’s a lot of work. It’s not fun work uh in pushing to do some of that work, I got called very publicly everything but a child of God by a couple of people who didn’t like some of the systems and structures and accountability we were putting in place. But what I will say is so far that movement organization isn’t under investigation. So.
Myles E. Johnson: I think the weirdest thing is that we’re in a point now that BLM and I think kind of the public celebrity activist class of people who people see feel so disassociated from Black people that I don’t think this will generate any reaction from Black people to do anything in the street. So it’s like, I think that there’s just as much disdain for that kind of generation of activists as there’s ever been um with Black folks. So I don’t think that we’ll see a whole bunch of Black people um in the streets resisting and maybe putting up their bodies to get arrested by Trump or brutalized by the police. The last thing I was thinking was, which does um concern me. At the same time, you know what I mean? That like we could we should be looking at those class of people and that generation of people as leaders. And I’m sure some of us still do, but like a lot of people do not. And it’s a little scary to be in that position where people who seem to have put their whole lives for the social and political empowerment of Black people are not received that way. And if um they get ate by the system, some people either don’t care in the best circumstance, but are even celebratory. So we’re in a weird Twilight Zone-y place.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, it is weird. Um. I don’t know, we’ll see. Myles, I’ll ask you to help explain this because I saw it as a news headline and I was waiting for the podcast so you could add some context to it, but the hip hop list, the Hot 100, something going on, hip hop’s not there. You tell us. You know I only know the Hot 100 because I know the top songs. I don’t really know. I didn’t even know it was broken up by genre or like the genres was tagged in it, but what happened with the Hot-100?
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, so ever since, um, Biz Markie, who’s a, who I’m related to if you didn’t, so that’s some deep lore.
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh.
Myles E. Johnson: He used to come, he’d come to our house um when we lived on Long Island for holidays. But anyway, Biz Markie with, um uh, just a friend, started Black folks, or excuse me, not Black folks but hip hop artists always being in the top 40. So since that year, I think this is, I think the article says 35 years ago or or something like that, something close to that. Um up to now we’ve always been in the top 40 until this week there is no hip-hop artists no rappers in the top-40. So the reason why this is interesting well A, it’s interesting because obviously billboard is is is um participating in a type of narrative of Black culture being over. Um of around Black fatigue so there’s a lot of people, a lot of influencers, a lot of publications who have seen the trend of people saying that, oh, Black culture’s dead, it’s over, white culture’s back. And um using this and spinning the absence of hip hop artists from the billboard is a good way to kind of feed that narrative and generate viewership. First half of my assessment critique analysis. The second half is also, I do think they on to something. [laughing] But I don’t I do think that um Black people are the first consumer product in America. We went from being shovels and mops and brooms, and we turned to minstrels, and we turned to this other type of um object. So if we were the best pet you can have when we were in chattel slavery, we became the best flesh television you can have, you know, that you can have. And I think that we’re in a moment because of the political climate, because of maybe the absurdist um nature of, of, of a lot of the popular hip hop. And then also just because of um, I think I already said the political cultural kind of contrast that’s happening. You’re seeing like this, people are calling it fatigue, but uh you’re seeing this kind of divestment of Black culture and this challenge of the importance of Black culture and Black figures. And um yeah, I do think the marketplace is for the moment kind of done with us. This is kind of twofold. I think that article is written for white supremacist, racist narrative reasons, but I do think that there is still something there.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, super fascinating for a host of reasons. I think the point that you were making, Myles, I first heard made in the context of the Kardashians changing their bodies again, and going from this very sort of augmented, you know, curvy, you know Black-inspired esthetic, right?
Myles E. Johnson: Mm-hmm.
Sharhonda Bossier: To the sort of heroine chic, uh you know, looking more like Calvin Klein model esthetic, right? Thin, all of that. And people saying like, if the Kardashians who, however you feel about them, are cultural bellwethers in a lot of ways, seem to be divesting from the esthetics of Blackness, what does that mean? Because for women, especially who are naturally shaped that way, you can’t just change your body shape like that. You know what I mean? And now your body shape is no longer in vogue, right? They’re dissolving their fillers, right. Your full lips are no longer in vogue, right? And so that was sort of the first set of conversations that were really making the point that you’re trying to make here. That came on my radar.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. And and like what you made me think of like, you electrocuted me a little bit with that because like the because other thing that it makes me think is how we’ve never, so Black culture has always invaded the mainstream by the means of an underground, right? So we’re, so in this generation, so I would say like millennials and Gen Z, we’re the first people to inherit a Black mainstream.
Sharhonda Bossier: Mmhm.
Myles E. Johnson: So we so we feel ill-prepared for this moment because we do not have an underground to hold us culturally, I should say, once um once that is done. Not saying that there’s not underground culture or counter culture that involves Black people or what Black people are supporting. Of course, I’m not saying that, but–
Sharhonda Bossier: Sure.
Myles E. Johnson: There is no there is not a sturdy underground hip hop culture like there had to be in the 70s and 80s because it was an underground art form. And it’s kind of weird to be in a position where I kind of can see it because I was annoyed pre-Target boycott with going into Target and seeing kente cloths, indie slogans, and all this bull [bleep] on the aisles, even though we’re still living in the aftermath of the exploitation of my ancestors, but here you go some Juneteenth [bleep]. I was getting tired of hashtag Black girl magic and Black boy joy when there’s really nothing magical about what’s really going on to most Black Americans when we look at the wealth. And there’s really not a lot of joy that we need to be projecting onto Black boys to have if we know that they’re inheriting most likely misery when we looked at it statistically. So I was kind of getting annoyed by that kind of flattening mainstream bull [bleep] that we were seeing. Um. But that is me as a, like critical thinker and a Black person who still loves Black people. I can only imagine how what happens to the casual consumer who’s not thinking that deeply around it or who’s not even of that race and who’s like, oh, I’m so tired of hearing this. And then you get on the internet. And the last thing I’ll say is then you get on to the internet, which is another marketplace of ideas. And the ideas that get the most traction and get the most attention are the ones based around race and gender. And if you could do both, you’ll get even more outrage from it. And then you have the gender wars. So you kind of, I totally see how we got to this point of like exhaustion and worked at the era of like Black culture slop. Just like we’re in the era of like all slop. Everybody’s doing slop. I’m just interested in the Black one because I’m Black.
Sharhonda Bossier: Well, maybe Michelle Obama’s style book will, you know.
Myles E. Johnson: I’m sure that’s gonna cure it all. [laughter] I’m sure it’s gonna cure it all.
DeRay Mckesson: Rude, rude, um I do think, I’m obsessed with this idea. I was just talking to Professor Brandon Terry, who will be on one of our episodes soon. Um. And one of the things that he was he had talked to me about, not on the episode, but when I saw him in real life was about what it means that Black culture became a global culture and from the underground, right? And Myles, I love this idea of like, what happens when you are the generation that inherits a Black like a mainstream Black culture in a way that the underground is like a foreign, is a thing you have heard about, but you literally didn’t you didn’t live through it. That wasn’t like a thing. Is fascinating to me. I also think about like, what happens when culture is mediated by things like the algorithm in a way that, you know, when we first started getting on the internet, it just seemed way more sort of it is what it is, the blogging era, da-da-da. But now there’s groups of kids who literally only see one version of the world. They like, they didn’t.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: They came up only seeing an algorithmed reality. And that also is just very different. I think about our generation, where like, we know a whole life before the internet, a whole world before the Internet. The Internet was something we chose to participate in and we were like begging to get online with dial-up and da da. There are my niece and nephew don’t know a world before the Internet, they only know Roblox and the algorithm and that sort of stuff, which is a very different way to to be in culture with people. The last thing I’d say about this is um, this question of like who who become the arbiters, like I think there will always be gatekeepers for better or for worse about like, and I think the internet is is one of them, but Arsenio Hall, TV shows matter and da da da and like, what happens when you know its there’s not like 106 and par– the places where Black culture used to rise or get introed or da da da. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know what they um what they look like now, what that means or how it plays. And I don’t think Twitch is it um at least for a generation.
Myles E. Johnson: So what you’ve made me think of, because I’ve been thinking a lot this week around like environment, like how you know how they say like your environment shapes like who you are and stuff. And I was having a moment that made me feel very young, which is good, which I love, but I was like, oh, wait, so there’s this ’90s interview that of people who are part of the Gen X class, and this is from the ’90s. And they’re talking about how one of the things that makes Gen X special is that they’re the first generation to have all seen the same type of pop culture and the same type of movies. So if you say something, and you reference Scooby Doo, there’s like this common language that Gen X speaks, right? And obviously, this is during that time. And I was looking at it and I was like, wow, here’s a generation that literally identifies parts of their personality, creation, how they see themselves in the world by the media that they consume. And now, because this is the algorithm. And because of where we are now, the media is a part of, you know, we think about what neighborhood you live in, who your mom and dad is, what school you go to, but also how many computers there are, how much time you’re on the computer, and what your algorithm says has to be involved with your environment. So you talking about your um your little nieces made me also think about how, if those various forms of Black identity are not shown like through the algorithm, then they just don’t exist. And the algorithm does not show complex identities. The algorithm does not show um nuanced identities or um identities that are still successful, but maybe aren’t um the ones that are commercially fit right now. And I think part of what I see in critique around kind of of the Black generation we find ourselves in has to do with so many people having these limited identities that I think are partially created by the media that we’ve consumed and the media that we consume, because the media that we consumed in our childhood, no matter if we’re talking about [?], or Bill Cosby Show, was still very flat, oppressive media. Cosby show was still a beautiful, conservative piece of piece of media that was given to us. Um. And if you’re gonna be an artist, you better be like Lisa Bonet and go to school and be light-skinned, and you know what I mean? Like, [?] this is how you get alternatives. Same thing I was thinking when you were talking about, um I worked at Afro-Punk. So it was just funny to think about how you have some things that are seen as mainstream, and Afro Punk was seen as the counter cultural mainstream. But then when you when you open the door, Target’s sponsoring both. [laugh]
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: So, so, so yeah. Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Boom. Well, onto the news. My news is actually relatively simple. It’s about the good old police. Uh. Let me tell you what happened and why I’m bringing it. The headline is 14 police officers among 20 arrested in Mississippi drug sting. 14 current and former law enforcement officers were among the 20 people charged in Mississippi and Tennessee for accepting bribes from drug traffickers for police protection. It was a two-year investigation by federal agents who posed as dealers. Two of the defendants were Mississippi sheriffs and the bribery network extended beyond the Delta, the Mississippi Delta into Memphis and Miami. And interestingly, the original complaints that began the investigation were from the drug dealers themselves. I love everything about this story. Shout out to shout out to justice. But I love this because it is a reminder that the drug economy, all of this only works because the police enable it, encourage it, participate in it, benefit from it, uphold it. And what I love about this story is that it’s in black and white, so it’s not like, oh, he hate the police, da-da-da. You’re like, no, it got so bad the drug dealers went to the feds and said, please come get these corrupt cops. But you’re like you know I am from Baltimore. There’s the addiction capital of the United States. There is not one Black person I know growing cocaine in the city of Baltimore. It’s not happening.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: It’s, it’s not happening. And you wonder how these things, how they persist for so long when we all know that they’re not growing cocaine in Baltimore or certainly the Mississippi Delta. It is because the police are a part of the game and the game is the game. So shout out to the Feds for but it’s cra– 14 of the 20 people is crazy. Now now they just need to get a real penalty. You know I, we don’t need to put people in cages, but some people need to go to cages just so we remember that they ain’t right.
Sharhonda Bossier: I always love when we bump up against the edges of our abolitionist politic on this podcast. Myles is like, George Santos? Jail. DeRay is like corrupt cops? Jail. Um. It’s just its, anyway, it’s funny to me. Glad it’s you know out in in the open. The article you shared, DeRay, like there are no head there are no mugshots, excuse me, of like anyone who was arrested, right? And then you know when the gambling stuff broke a couple weeks ago about professional NBA players, right? Chauncey Billups’ face was everywhere, you know? And so even in this moment, these cops are being granted a degree of protection and anonymity that I think we should also call out.
Myles E. Johnson: Maybe something that I’ll be returning to because it’s just what’s in my mind. It’s like, what are we gonna do about it? Like, um there’s so much, obviously, corruption going on, but the police are still popular with a lot of people. Um.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Even um Zohran, when it comes to his, like, kind of really like utilizing more leftist and far left language than um than any candidate dare to do. Um. He still had to kind of um publicly apologize to the NYPD and kind of backtrack some of the really kind of righteous things that he said earlier in his career critiquing the um the police. So it just seems as though we’re still on the plantation and we still find utility in the overseers. And I think until something breaks in the American psyche around that. There’s really nothing to say about it. And the break in the American psyche doesn’t, it can’t come from Black people because, I’m sorry, I’m about to be an Afro pessimist for three seconds. But like Black people just don’t have that kind of um that kind power or identity in an American society to actually effect that change. So it has to be white people caring. That’s what I was about to say was actually more provocative than that. But like, yes, it has to be about white people caring.
Sharhonda Bossier: Actually, one more thing that came up for me is, you know, the first place I traveled outside of the U.S. was Mexico. And Mexico had a reputation, particularly if you were like on the roads of Baja California, right, of having like corrupt police officers who would pull you over. People are always like, just have a little cash and give them a little cash, and then you’ll be fine. Right. And I think what’s interesting is like how true that is in the U.S. Also. You know what I mean? It’s just like, just have a little cash, give them a little cash, you’ll be fine.
Myles E. Johnson: But you can’t have a little cash. That’s the difference between them. They say, you can’t carry what we need in pesos, girl, in your purse. Need you to clear that 401K.
Sharhonda Bossier: But it’s still it feels very similar, right, which is like the the pay for protection. And then the last thing I’ll say is, you know, last week I joked that I had wondered what the mafia was up to, but now I guess I’m wondering a little less because this also feels like what the Mafia would do, right. Extorting you for protection money. So the mafia is wearing gold stars and badges in the Delta.
Myles E. Johnson: So I kind of want to say what I was going to say.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: But I think I found a better way to say it that won’t get me censored. Um. I think that we have to arrive at a place where the most privileged of white people, and maybe not even the most privileged of white people, but white people in general, kind of see that America is this violent amalgamation of of a lot of violent things, and they have to be okay with saying, you know what, the likelihood of my demise violently happening in America, it’s high, because it’s America, and I’d rather it not come through the means of white supremacy. Like like, yes, we’re all gonna die, but how it means something, I think that that is kind of the thought shift that I think white people have to have, at least leftist white people, white people who find themselves, call themselves leftists anyway.
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There’s more to come.
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Sharhonda Bossier: My news this week has me back on my health sciences beat uh and it is some new research out of Southern California that shows that some urinary tract infections, UTIs can be traced to E. Coli in contaminated meat. Um. And I’m bringing that to the pod because the research also shows that people who live in low-income communities face a significantly higher risk of contracting the foodborne UTIs compared with those who live in more affluent neighborhoods um to the tune of like a 60% higher risk of infections, right? So I think, you know, people often think about women and older people having UTIs, it’s sort of seen as like a personal hygiene issue. But this connection between like the US food system, the meat that is often sold in grocery stores and low income communities, and UTI’s was like a really interesting connection for me. Um, I feel like every time we bring a story here you’re like and [bleep] another thing that being poor makes you disproportionately at risk for. So just wanted to bring it so people were aware of it, um especially if you, you know, if you’re me, and you’re getting your ham hocks at the food for less on the east side, because that’s the only place you can get your hamhocks, which you gonna get for your greens, because turkey legs do not do the same thing. I don’t care what y’all say, right? You are at risk disproportionately of contracting a UTI because of where you get your Ham Hocks. So yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay, I totally support that, um, ham hock message. [laughter] Um, so you bring up personal hygiene. This is, like, something else that I kind of, it’s weird that, like y’all are saying things that were buzzing around my head all this week. It’s a little odd. Um, but I was thinking about how food and the choice of food and what, like capitalism has kind of done to food, uh has made food up like kind of a personal hygiene thing. Like like like, if you can afford the USD thing and the vegan thing and the grass-fed, it kind of makes it like, oh, you’re not doing food right enough. So not only did you get the money, get to the store, do all these different things, but now you need to have enough money to get the food that’s not dirty enough to kill you. Like it’s a weird spot that we’re in right now. And what you said about that made me think about it. The only other thing I would say too, and sorry for kind of going everywhere, but Billie Eilish had just um–
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Announced that she was giving that large sum of money and she was kind of talking about billionaires and Billie Eilish is worth $50 million, and I think she gave like $11 million, which is around 22% of her net worth, which is just such a gross term. But anyway, like her, but gave 22% percent of her net worth to a cause, the cause loses me. I wanted to bring that up because I know that I’ve said that the, if you’re a millionaire, like you and specifically if you’re a millionaire outside of the one to three million zone, and then you and then you’re going into a billionaire, high millionaire status, like those are political identities too, and that you can’t escape that being a political identity. So there’s also so many things around food that actually could be solved with the elimination of greed. There are so many things around housing, specifically if I get it that it’s not supposed to be our job, it’s supposed to be the government, but obviously it’s either going to go really slow. Democrats, or it’s or it’s going to go in reverse Republicans. So a lot of us have to start thinking about our privileges, not just as these things to talk about on the internet or to know about or to read about or discuss, but also things to actually really leverage. And I think housing and food are like the perfect places to begin with that. Because I do think, I mean, like color me naive, right? If you have enough money to have a third house, couldn’t that house just go to somebody else? If you have enough money to go on a private jet or to have a yacht or to go on yachts, couldn’t that go to a community having fresh chickens and eggs and making sure no hormones are touching those things? Like we can be problem solvers in this, but we have to stop being. I think we’re all, whether you’re rich, poor, whatever you are, I think we’re also interested in the spectacle of having a good life and a good time. And you’re here and you’re having a good time and look, Instagram and TikTok is really going to love this. And we get sucked into that consumerist cycle and we don’t actually produce anything that matters. And um I think us having so many millionaires and billionaires and these being our problems in this country is indicative of that.
DeRay Mckesson: Sharhonda, this was fascinating to me. I was trying to figure out the link to poverty. I just like couldn’t figure out what was going on. And it is so interesting that they were talking about in the poorest neighborhoods, some of this is a packaging issue.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: And I thought that was–
Sharhonda Bossier: And a storage issue. Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: –fascinating that like they’re poorly packaged, bloated with saline, and that was how it was being contaminating things because they’re leaking. And I’m like, who even, like of all the, like I that was not what I thought was gonna be the link, but I’m, like, oh, this is actually how poverty manifests, because you know, if they start doing that at Whole Foods, people like, yeah.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Shut this whole thing down. We got leaky, like it’s a whole different vibe in a high-income neighborhood, but I just want to say that that’s what stuck out to me from this.
Sharhonda Bossier: Well, the thing about that is I’m also thinking about when people can’t buy food, how much longer they’re going to hold on to food that is likely going to expose them to other bacteria. You know what I mean? Or how much low you’re like, oh, this package looks a little open. It’s fine. Right? It’s they’ve discounted it. They’ve put it in the bargain bin. You know?
Myles E. Johnson: And the thing that what DeRay said that I wanted to remind people of is that poor people are on Amazon, y’all, like so a lot of, a lot of these choices are making sure that the local places that one would go to or the places that your teenagers will go work at do no longer exist or no longer feel safe because a lot of people, cause let’s think about like Amazon prime for food. I think it’s $10. And so once you do that, it’s taking EBT now. It’s taking um DoorDash is taking EBT. Um. If you already are paying for Amazon Prime, which a lot of people, no matter what your socioeconomic class is, we all love entertainment. We’re all doing those things. So a lot this is just making sure that our money funnels to the billionaires that are dominating us. So I think that’s what these moments produce more than just a lot of people getting sick. Obviously it’s producing a lot of people being sick.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
Myles E. Johnson: But I think it produces a lot of money funneling into the very hands we’re trying to slow that money from going into, unless they pay their fair share in taxes. So my story comes out of the Smithsonian. Um. So as y’all probably know, Trump is the biggest hater yet thus far, and anything that looks like Black, he’s saying, it gotta go, it got to go, got to got to go. We need to do segregation and that is um not excluding the Smithsonian. One of the reasons why I wanted to bring this to the podcast wasn’t necessarily the news of him doing it because I actually think that um it should be a badge of honor if your work is seen as provocative enough or rooted in Black American or Black history or ideas enough that it feels like a threat to a fascist government. I think that that is like a mark of um of good work, but I did want to bring this in because I think what he censored a lot of people don’t know about, which is Drexciya. So I’m gonna read a little bit um from the article. Titled, From the Deep in the Wake of Drexciya with Ayana V. Vixen [note: Jackson], the exhibit explored James Stinson and Gerald Donald’s Afrofuturist vision of Drexciya, an underwater kingdom populated by the children of pregnant women who had been thrown overboard or jumped into the ocean during the Middle Passage. It ran from March 2023 through April 2024 and featured original artworks by New Jersey based Jackson, as well as collaborations with costume designers from Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana and Angola. A few things that are coming to my mind about this that like A, uh Drexciya is a really interesting um project. It combines like kind of Detroit techno and Afrofuturism. And again, if you listen to that narrative and that idea about um these kind of meditations on the afterlife of of of slavery and how they how they might sit in the future, and how they sit with our present. And I think that kind of mythologizing our narrative is very necessary now, specifically since we live in like a post-truth, post-information, post fact era. And a lot of people, whether they want to literally say it or not, the trends are showing that a lot people are just not interested in um facts anymore. People are interested in opinions. People are interesting in myths. More than any of those things. And I think Drexciya in the Smithsonian centering this was really um a good idea. So that is my smiley face critique. Now, the other half of my critique, the frowny face is I was kind of, I feel like I mentioned this on the pod before, but I am a little bit scared of the ADOS, FBA movement, right? As a Black American, as somebody who comes from folks of chattel slavery. And I get scared because I think by the time a group organizes and shows disdain and xenophobia in the way that FBA and ADOS does. That means that they are kind of harnessing an energy that maybe hasn’t arrived in most people as full thrown xenophobia or hate, but they are trying, they are articulating something, right? And when I had to investigate how I felt about the list of people who are participating in these different kind of like Black American institutions and these kind of Black American led projects. My first inclination is yes, Pan-Africa, Black, everybody who’s involved. Let’s tell the story about how we’re all globally powerful and we’re all connected as African people. But then I do think about how whether my friends are in acting or they’re in media, so many of my friends who are Black American, their job security or insecurity has been born through the hiring of other people. How um it is seen to being specifically Black American does have a specific connotation. So if you fail assimilation in any type of way, you can be a person who is Black, but from another country can be chosen over you. And then when we get spaces that are supposed to center Black American ideas and Black American um invention, sometimes seeing people from other places folded into those things feels like, okay, we’re now kind of giving up something else in order to be seen as the friendliest people of diaspora, which is the title that we are losing by the way, like Black Americans are their most xenophobic right now. But but but it yeah, it just was an interesting thing, and it made me think of that Essence Festival moment where there was so much xenophobia, but so much kind of um disdain around people who are not Black American, kind of taking hold of Black American artifacts and Black American opportunities. And, you know. We’re on a podcast, I kind of pretend I’m speaking into the void when I’m on this podcast. But I just think that if you’re a thinker, if you are an artist, if you’re a opportunity maker, that is something to consider. Like don’t just say you’re getting Black people, but say, are you a Black American? Does your did your great great grandmother come from chattel slavery? Because your lived reality is probably different than somebody who’s first generation. Um you know, from anywhere else. I don’t want to name like one specific place because it’s not about that, but one specific please. And I do think that is something to consider when we’re um when we’re interacting with each other as a Black community or when you’re an outsider, a white person given opportunities. And I think that’s how comes some of it, some of it last thing I’ll say is so proliferated is because I think a lot of white people just see, oh, you Black, we see your skin and they don’t have any nuance around it. And I think that um, that kind of overlooking has birthed the bigotry that I’ve been seeing too. So again, I didn’t want to kind of um privilege the bigotry and give it any kind of um validity in the way, because I think all Black people are um beautiful and deserve space, but I did want to look at it a little bit closer and be real about what I’m seeing and how it feels as a Black American person sometimes and maybe ways to best strategize so we’re not excluding people who are already um systemically excluded.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I think I’ve said to you, Myles, before that I’ve come to really appreciate what has become kind of your segment on the pod because it gets me to look at things that I would not have otherwise and things that would not have been on my radar. And this is certainly one of those things. I think what’s I think sticking with me most is also something we’ve talked about over the past few years or Jesus, years. It feels like years over the past few weeks and episodes. Um, and even a little bit about what we were talking about today with respect to hip hop and Black music, right? Which is like, where are our created and curated spaces? Um, and how are we thinking about being more intentional in those in the design of those spaces and the inclusion of different perspectives and voices. And my living room curation series is starting to come together up here.
Myles E. Johnson: You need to do it.
Sharhonda Bossier: You know? Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: That’s gonna be so good. And just, cause I don’t want anybody to misinterpret this, hip hop is a thing that could not exist without Black immigrants. So I–
Sharhonda Bossier: Right.
Myles E. Johnson: -don’t think its as–
Sharhonda Bossier: Right.
Myles E. Johnson: So I think that it takes a nuanced, complicated view of things, but uh to be able to do it, but understand that anti-Black American sentiment, the welfare queen sentiment, all the thug sentiments, a lot of those things are specific Black American tropes that um get absorbed.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
Myles E. Johnson: So yeah, again, I think that Black immigrants have given so much to American culture too, and Black American culture, so I don’t want to make it seem like I’m erasing any of that. And you mentioned hip hop.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, I was just gonna say, this makes me think about um the hip hop story because one of the things I think is really interesting that the Trump people are doing very quickly is that they understand that culture Black culture is power, which is why they are trying to just remove everything that they possibly can so that there will be a generation of kids who come and know even less. So, you know, you could destroy stuff in the museum and we’ll remember it, we know it. Like we might not know all the details, but we will, there’s a part of history we grew up with the Black History Month, great Blacks era. That was us, so we know the names, whether we see the monuments, but my niece and nephew did not. And you start taking stuff out of the museum and they’re like, who’s Mary McLeod Bethune? And we you know–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: We all know, like that, we just, we had to know these names because we learned them every year and like there’s a generation not. So I think about this piece as like, it was a piece of art that I didn’t know anything about. But what happens when you just start removing all of the art and all of the cultural things so that the only way people start to think about their culture is the Hot 100 list. And you’re like, hot 100 List is interesting, but that can’t be the totality of the way we memorialize the Black past or the legacy of Black people’s um influence in this country. And they are running full steam ahead with this idea of like, this just isn’t history. And I think that people, [?] I spend a lot of time around academics recently and my push to them is I’m like, y’all keep writing essays about this ish and what are you gonna do? It’s happening, you know, you’re like its–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: You know we don’t need another essay on the disappearance of Black culture. We need y’all to figure, y’all gotta put some skin in the game too, and to your point, Myles, about like, what are people gonna do? I do think there’s been a reliance about a small set of activists who like are gonna fight and fight and fight, but now this is just a bigger thing than any small group will be able to manage and try to figure out like what comes after that. Before you go, I wanna clarify a point we made in last week’s episode about the jurisdiction of immigration and customs enforcement, also known as ICE. Now ICE has national jurisdiction and they can enforce federal immigration laws anywhere in the US, including making arrests and patrolling. Last week’s episode, there was a conflation between border patrol and ICE. Border patrol has the authority to operate within a hundred miles of the American border. And two in three Americans live within a 100 miles of the America border. That was the point that we made. But there was some confusion between ICE and border patrol. The episode audio has been updated to reflect this. Make sure to check the description below for a Know Your Rights Guide and family preparedness resources. We got this. [music break] Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.
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DeRay Mckesson: On today’s show, I’m talking with the team behind the HBO Max documentary, The Alabama Solution, director Charlotte Kaufman and Andrew Jarecki and producer Beth Shelburne. Now, this documentary exposes a national mass incarceration crisis using Alabama’s prison system as the clearest example of cruel and unusual punishment in America today. We discuss how this team made a film that relies heavily on cell phone footage recorded by people incarcerated inside the prison themselves and how that access shifts what we think we know. Here we go. It is truly an honor to be here today with you all because I thought The Alabama Solution was just beautiful and one of the few things around criminal justice that I think everybody should have to watch. But can we start with introductions about who you are and how you got to the work?
Andrew Jarecki: I was interested obviously in criminal justice issues and I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about them and making films in and around that system. And I was always concerned and curious about the carceral system because we don’t do it very well and around the time that, I guess my daughter was around 14 years old and she was reading a book by a guy named Anthony Ray Hinton who was wrongfully convicted in Alabama. And spent a lot of time in that prison system and she said, you know, I know you’re interested in this stuff, you oughta maybe read this. So we ended up reading his book together and then we decided to take a road trip to Montgomery. And that’s when we met um some people who had access to the prisons and did revival meetings and you know there are church groups and people that go in and it uh seemed like an opportunity to volunteer in the prison and in one of the prisons and just sort of see what we would learn and then you can see in the film as we sort of found our way in it it turned out to be a a much darker picture than we even thought knowing what we knew about the problems in the state prison system and then um, you know Charlotte and I went back down to alabama and managed to get access to one of the prisons um with a camera which was kind of unheard of and then when we started hearing from the men what was really going on and that there were so many areas of the prison we were not allowed to see we were in the yard We were allowed to see a special dorm called the honor dorm. But we were not allow to see 95% of the present and the men started whispering to us that there were real problems there. We decided that you know, we had to look into it further and that’s when we met Beth because Beth had been covering the prison system in Alabama for far longer and uh and sort of shouting at everybody who would listen. And uh you know we decided if we teamed up, maybe we could get the people to listen a little more closely.
Beth Shelburne: I’m Beth Shelburne. I’m an independent journalist and writer based in Birmingham. And um as Andrew mentioned, I had been covering the Alabama Department of Corrections for a long time, starting in 2012, when I was still working in traditional media. I began reporting on the women’s prison, which was a mess back then. There was a federal complaint filed alleging that women were being raped by correctional officers. The feds came in, they put the women’s system under a agreement to remedy these issues. And after that, I wrote a lot about the men’s prisons and the horrific violence overcrowding these long running systemic issues. And it’s a real uphill battle in a state like Alabama to get people to care about this, unless they have a loved one who’s locked up. If they don’t have somebody that’s in the system, a lot of people, frankly, people that look like me, feel like they don’t have to care abut it. And so when Andrew and Charlotte reached out to me in 2019 and they were interested in this, I knew their incredible record of work. Um. I thought this would be a really good opportunity to amplify this issue and really immerse ourselves in what’s a very complex story and have it reach a huge audience in a way that is very hard to do with written work that’s just published on the local level. So it was a very easy yes for me to join them in this project.
DeRay Mckesson: Let’s start at the end in some ways. Uh. When this came out on HBO, I didn’t see it the first day and one of my friends called me and was like, did you see The Alabama solution? I’m like, I haven’t seen it yet. And then another friend was like have you seen The Alabama solution? And you know it got to me, not even through the normal activist channels, it was people that just sort of know the work that I care about. And I know so many people who’ve been moved by this. How has the reception been for you all that you put this out in the world, it’s on HBO, what has it been like to see people grapple with this project?
Charlotte Kaufman: Yeah. So I’m Charlotte Kaufman. I’m the co-director of The Alabama Solution. I think the most meaningful opportunities to experience the reception of the film has been on the ground in Alabama. Yes, it’s on HBO now and it is reaching a national audience. And the film isn’t just about Alabama. The film is about prisons throughout America. Just that Alabama is the lens through which we were able to examine the situation. But in addition to being on HBO, we’ve been holding a series of screenings on the ground in Alabama at churches and community centers in partnership with the families that participated in the film, um and seeing the impact not only you know on lawmakers who seem to you know be waking up to the issues, but also on the family members and communities where Beth and I were just at a church showing the film and we afterwards discussed it as like a catharsis. Just giving people the permission to sort of share their own stories and what you usually expect a Q&A to be like after a movie, you know, where you answer questions about the film actually turns into a sharing circle with like the entire audience and you’re just reminded of the scope of this crisis because so many people in the audience, so many people throughout the state see their story reflected in this and you know, it ends up being an opportunity where sort of truth attracts truth and people in the audiences will say, yes, I am Sandy Ray. Like my son was also incarcerated and I didn’t know whether he was alive or not. And I found out through a Facebook message that he wasn’t. Um and I think around that a community is building um and a community has been building in Alabama for a while. There’s a really incredible activism you know, movement both inside the facilities as well as outside. But I think having this narrative tool to bring people together, you know in community once again has been pretty incredible to see. And I bet Beth and Andrew can talk about, you know, what the impact has been on the local level in terms of politics.
Andrew Jarecki: I mean, I can say just one thing that was very encouraging to us to see was that right after the film came out and right after the premiere of the film in Montgomery, because they don’t premiere a lot of films in Montgomery and this was one that, you know, made a lot sense to put there. A lot of people in the community started to sort of rise up and there was a protest outside one of the prisons where Rod Gadson, the corrections officer is, and people were sort of demanding that he be fired. They haven’t done that yet, but there are not just Gadson, but other murderous officers who are employed there. And then there’s a kind of sleepy meeting of something called the prison oversight committee, which nobody ever shows up at, or very few people show up at because it’s just, you know, there’s no public comment most of the time. So it’s really a little bit of a pro forma meeting, but this time there were more than a hundred people that showed up. They had to move to a bigger room and people really demanding that others respond to this. And a really brilliant local legislator named Chris England was there and said, you know, can we talk about this film? This film just came out. Are we forgetting to mention the film and let’s talk about what it shows and lets figure out how we’re going to have an answer to this because we’ve got a problem that is not going away. So seeing that, that kind of protest, seeing people show up with signs and the individual responsibility that people are taking for this population, which is, you know, even in the state of Alabama, it’s 20,000 people in the prisons and maybe another, at least that many in the jails and they’re quite forgotten because you know these prisons are sort of off to the side of a highway somewhere and you drive by and you know you sort of probably think or many members of the public think, well, that’s not my problem. But you know, as you know, in America right now, I think it’s 45% of the population has either been incarcerated or had a relative incarcerated. This is our problem. And so it’s really important to see people taking responsibility for that and saying they can have a voice and they can really speak up and they’ll be someone will pay attention to them.
Beth Shelburne: And there’s been a lot of new people joining the discussion. I think um faith leaders who haven’t really felt comfortable speaking out against the system, because many of them um do prison ministry work, and they’re worried about losing their access if they’re critical of the system. They’re starting to come together. There’s been some screenings just for them. Members of the media have been saying we’ve got to do a better job of covering this and holding our government accountable. And it’s been really remarkable to see the understanding in the public start to shift where you’ve got this real hard-nosed sense of justice down here. This is just baked into the dna, do the crime do the time. Prison should be hard it’s not a country club you know that whole mindset I’ve seen and heard from people who have said, I knew it was bad, it should be hard, but not that, not what we’re doing. I had no idea it was that bad. And I think the thing that’s really hitting Alabamians is the total lack of accountability from the state government and the fact that this agency is being run like a criminal enterprise at this point with the number of abusive officers that are being protected by the system and sometimes rewarded by being promoted and the large-scale drug trafficking that just continues day in and day out with fatal overdoses at record levels and no end in sight. So I think all of that is really hitting people in a new way by watching the film, because they’re actually seeing it happen now. And that’s very different than reading a news story.
Charlotte Kaufman: In 2019, the Department of Justice came in and released investigative findings about the Alabama Department of Corrections. And if you read that document, it’s a thrilling read. I mean their investigation was so deep and described so many avenues of failure, but as Beth was saying, it is one thing to read about these things versus seeing it. And I think what because of the bravery of the men and who have been collecting this footage and who gave us their time in interviews. And I think that to be in the shoes of all of these various people is creating a different level of understanding that previously I don’t think was possible. We’re so grateful to all of the brilliant people that um that participated and collaborated on this.
Andrew Jarecki: One of the co-producers along with Beth is Alex Duran, who was incarcerated at Sing Sing for 12 years and is just an extraordinary guy who got involved with the Bard Prison Initiative, and that’s sort of what he credits as giving him an education and gotten him to be able to get out of that system. And he says that it’s been very difficult for him throughout his life because he went to prison when his son was very, very young, to be able to share with his family, with his mother, with his family members, what he experienced. And in the New York state prison system, and that when he started seeing footage from the film, it made him realize that there was an opportunity for them to really understand firsthand, just how, just how disturbing and terrible his experience was. And that since the film has been completed, he wanted to do a screening, which he did not long ago for his family. And he said it just changed their entire perception of what he had gone through. And also the other thing that it does that I think is so important is we have this attitude in America that you know they’re like two kinds of people, that the people that do the bad things and then the other people that didn’t do the bad things, but we ignore the fact that you know, Alec Karakatsanis points out in the usual cruelty and other publications that, you know, there are guys that steal $100 million from the IRS and don’t have any consequences or they get a $5 million fine, which is a pretty good trade. And then, you know we’ve been in jails where there are women there who are there because they they stole baby formula. So, the crimes that we choose to prosecute are such a huge part of this picture and I think for somebody to be able to see, for Alex’s family, for example, to be able see this shame that is sort of shrouded over people who have been incarcerated is really unfair and quite backwards often. And so we’re seeing a lot of people who have suffered with either being incarcerated or having a loved one incarcerated. And when they see the film, they realize they’re not alone. They realize that the level of brutality that they’ve experienced in understanding what their loved one was going through is not something that they should be ashamed of, that it’s something they should really be outraged by.
DeRay Mckesson: Let’s talk about the footage. The thing that makes this so incredible and wild, and I hadn’t read anything about it before I watched it, I was like, whoa, this is a lot of first-person footage. Did you always know that was gonna be a part of the film? Was it as hard as it looks like it? You know I’m, it’s so much footage from inside, like from people’s phones, and I was, like, you know, did you include everything? Were there things you didn’t include that you wanted to include? It just was such an incredible way to get people to to see inside of a prison. And I, like you all, have probably been to many prisons around the world, and so few people have ever been inside, and so they only see the pictures, and they read the thing. And you’re like, no, if you went there, you would be like, this is, we, you might be okay with the consequence, but caging adults, caging people is like such a wild thing that you don’t appreciate until you see it. But yeah, talk to us about the first-person footage, which is just such a game changer in this film.
Charlotte Kaufman: You meet three men specifically in the film, Robert Earl Council, Melvin Ray, and Raul Poole, who um tell their story and who record footage, but they’re only three of many men inside Alabama’s prison system that have been using phones to document their circumstances. And in fact, that was really important to Melvin and Kinetic, was to make sure that we established in the film that it wasn’t just them and that we gave credit to this network of people across all 14 facilities. Because in terms of how hard it is to get the footage, for us, it poses some challenges that just regular shooting wouldn’t. But the real difficulty is for the people who are capturing this footage inside. I mean, to have your phone out at the right moment, to be able to do it, you know, discreetly and but still get the angle when something’s happening to coordinate how you’re charging it, at what times. It is an incredible um operation and bravery and sort of diligence to do that. Basically, since cell phones first came into the facilities around 2013, there were people who recognized what a powerful tool this was to combat the secrecy and surveillance that often comes with all prisons in America. And I think that’s one of the messages we really want to convey in this film, that transparency is mandatory. If you ever have people, one group of people in control of another in an institution, there must be transparency. And even with the cell phones, there still is not full transparency. We still there are still corners of the prison that we don’t know we’re not able to see. So um even though the cell phone footage is so remarkable, there’s need for further investigation and uncovering.
Andrew Jarecki: We were shocked that there are cell phones in the prisons in Alabama. You know, people have seen the film oh are people allowed to have cell phones? People are not allowed to have cell phones in prisons in America. And they’re mostly breaking the law or rules for sure. But, but often the law in having them and ehen people talk about cell phones, they describe them as sort of contraband, like the prisoners are doing something to smuggle them in. The reality is the vast majority of those cell phones are being brought in by officers, and it’s the same way with the enormous number of drugs that are coming in. The officers have found, and some of them are really struggling themselves with being in these institutions that they never, that was not a job that they hoped to have. Um. But clearly, if they’re making $36,000 a year or $40,000 a year without the cell phone income and revenue, and then they can double that by offering cell phones. And because the system is sort of in free fall, because the system is so poorly managed, there’s not even a healthy number of guards to be there protecting the men or creating a safe environment. And so it’s sort of ironic that our tear in the fabric of secrecy that we were allowed to get in through these cell phones um is the same thing that the prison authorities are saying, oh, we’re working so hard to defeat the cell phones. It’s one of the topsy-turvy upside down elements of this whole system.
DeRay Mckesson: The first time I was ever in Montgomery was around an anniversary of Selma. I was downtown and I actually saw some guys from the DOC in the white jumpsuits, like delivering stuff around Montgomery. And I’m like, I’m like what? This is I’m like this is such a bizarre thing to see at one o’clock in the afternoon in Montgomery, just like delivering stuff it was that was surreal. But I’d be interested to know, uh did what you learned new about the system, or was there anything about like structural change that you were like, oh, I didn’t I knew this was bad going into it, I didn’t know this, or I knew this was you know sort of screwy in one way, but we actually need to think about funding differently. One of the things the film does really well, and this is a thing across the country, is the the game of building new prisons. It just, I thought the film does a really good job of showing the gamey way that happens, because people support it and you’re like, they don’t need a new prison. This is just a game to give money to people and da da da. But I’d love to know like, were there learnings for you or was there a learning for you in particular in the process?
Charlotte Kaufman: You know, obviously, we understood the relationship between free labor and incarceration and, you know, the lineage of slavery through to incarceration, but I think studying it through the people we were talking to and through their everyday lives and seeing that it really is coerced and forced labor through the threat of violence um was very chilling and eye-opening. Um, and what I mean by that is there are work centers all over Alabama, where people are moved from the maximum security facilities to these work centers and that’s where they’re deployed every day to go work out in the communities or go work for private corporations. And, uh, that’s the ones that you mentioned seen out on the street. And by the way, like we would have to drive around wanting to capture footage of these folks. And when we would set out to for those shooting days, we’d think, oh, this is gonna be really difficult. And it’s unfortunately not that difficult. You go to certain counties and people every, you know, on on so many corners, people are mowing the lawn, they’re doing the maintenance for the town. There its just part of everyday life and it’s almost people are blind to it. But back to the point about there are these work release centers that you’re allowed to go live in. Um. If you’ve been deemed safe enough to work in the community. If you decide that you do not want to work or you get injured or you decide that your working conditions are dangerous, you are being threatened to be sent back to the main maximum security prisons which are extremely violent and where you are facing death every day. And you know that it’s possible that they could put you in solitary confinement. You know that its possible that now you’re going to have a disciplinary report. That’s gonna make it really difficult for you to get parole. So the way that the violence and the abuse that’s happening in the maximum security prisons is a tool and a coercion tool to force people to work is a link that I don’t think I had really appreciated until we sort of saw it on the ground. And it is slavery, it is forced labor.
Beth Shelburne: Yeah, I think working on this project, I knew the argument that Brian Stevenson and others have made that mass incarceration is built on the legacy of slavery, of convict leasing, this is slavery by another name, but really immersing in this the way that we did and interacting with people on the inside during the making of the film, all of that went from abstract to very real and present for me, and I um was able to kind of take all that in, in a new way that I think has changed my thinking, maybe radicalized me even more.
DeRay Mckesson: Woop woop woop woop.
Beth Shelburne: I think also being down here as a journalist focused on mass incarceration has been somewhat lonely at times. There’s a lot more reporters covering the system, especially after the DOJ came in, than there was when I started. But having Andrew and Charlotte and other folks on our team immersed in this the way that I had been, where we could all sort of be outraged together and also work on, you know, sussing out these stories and this crisis and making it into a documentary film for other people to understand has been really gratifying and I feel less insane now because I know that there’s other people that are just as outraged as me.
Andrew Jarecki: You know DeRay, one of the things about the forced labor that Charlotte’s talking about is that the numbers are incredibly high financially, right? The same way that they make money from building the prisons, sometimes we call it the Alabama Department of Construction because they only really make the big money for the organizations and construction companies and all the people that lobby for the prisons. You know the same way they make money from that they also make an enormous amount of money and save an enormous money through free labor. And that’s an addiction. You know anybody that runs a business, if you looked at your business plan and you zeroed out the cost of those pesky employees, the business starts to look a lot better. And the whole state of Alabama really likes what that looks like, or certainly a lot of the corporations. And so the men are leased out essentially not just doing the work inside the prison, which people say, well, you know they should be sweeping up or they should be taking care of the prison. But also they’re sent out to work in the governor’s mansion. They’re sent out to work at the state fair. They’re send out to work for employers like McDonald’s and Burger King and KFC and you know the Hyundai parts plant. And that’s something I think people are fairly shocked by, to understand that that’s such an enormous industry that we can’t ignore, and it’s one of the reasons why it’s so hard to unplug everybody from the addiction of this incarceration. And the last thing I’ll say about that is that the one of the statistics that I don’t think anybody in Alabama tracks, um but was really chilling, especially when you realize that guys who are sent out on work release naturally assume that they are on their way to getting paroled because they’ve had no disciplinaries, they’re obviously. But that we learned that um in the period of time that we looked at, if you were considered safe enough to work in the community, to be among people, to be interacting with children and adults all over the state, if you’re safe enough to work in the community you’re statistically less likely to be paroled than people at the next highest custody level.
DeRay Mckesson: Crazy.
Beth Shelburne: You could be kept inside state-run, taxpayer-funded institutions completely incommunicado. And I think that’s something that is not part of a democracy. And I really had no appreciation for that. And I think seeing people that we spoke to you know every day for a period of time over the six years all of a sudden be unreachable, not just to us, but to their family members and not knowing if they were safe, If they were alive, if they were okay. Um. And feeling like there’s no authority to turn to, is kind of like going through the looking glass. Um. And I think it’s what makes this not just about prisons, because we’re seeing it now with what’s happening with immigration. Um. We see it in our jails. I mean, I you know you’re hearing stories every day of people who get picked up by ICE, who you know they don’t know what facilities the family member has been taken to. I think, it’s something that we all have to wake up to. That our government has the practice, and has been doing it for a long time, of being able to hold people in secret, relative secrecy.
DeRay Mckesson: As we close out, um I’d love to know what you want people to take away from the project.
Andrew Jarecki: Well, I mean, one thing that I think is optimistic in a way, right, is that is the reaction to the film has been so strong and people are starting to feel their own power. And that means families that have incarcerated loved ones. It means the men inside who are, I think, very energized. Um. They’ve been taking these risks by or for a long, long time taking real risk of bodily harm um and have been retaliated against. And so the opportunity to see the heroism in these men, who probably the public doesn’t, they think, is sort of unlikely heroes. And yet, here they are for decades, um undertaking a non-violent protest movement. And of course, their actions are always met. Their nonviolent actions are always met with violence by the authorities. Um. But their resilience in the face of this incredible authoritarian power that other people have over them is really inspiring. Um, so we hope people are inspired by that. We hope that people, um, there are a lot of concrete things that can be done. So a lot of people, thousands of people are putting their email addresses into thealabamasolution.com and you can go in there and see the results of the fuller investigation of all 1300 plus deaths, but when people put their information in there, uh, then that sort of impact campaign is able to reach out to them and say, look, you guys are not alone, we need your help. And so we think just increasing transparency, forcing Alabama to do some things, small things like getting rid of a murderous officer um in the film or bigger things like figuring out how to increase the parole rate and figuring out how to let people out of these prisons in a reasonable amount of time and in a condition that means that they’re not so traumatized that they actually can rejoin society and they can get skills you know.
Beth Shelburne: I think that it’s been really remarkable to see this film kind of breaking the stigma that so many people and families feel that are affected by incarceration. If you go on TikTok and search the Alabama solution, there’s all these people talking about their own experiences. I think that um there’s power in that. There’s power in breaking stigma. There’s power in telling the truth about what goes on inside jails and prisons, and brutality in our justice system is a choice. As Andrew mentioned, the main state prison system decided to do it differently, and it is different there. They have virtually no violence inside their facilities. Um. So, we don’t have to choose that. And I hope that people will continue reacting to the film, using it as a jumping off point to think about these issues, to talk about their own experiences. And that’s actually where the solutions to this will come from. It will come from the people. It’s not going to come from our government or politicians. It’s going to come from people forcing those in power to make change. And I want the film to keep driving that conversation.
Charlotte Kaufman: Yeah, I mean, I think we all probably on this call agree like in the short term, the institutions that exist right now need to be run more humanely. But in the long term, we have to imagine other ways of handling justice, as Kinetic says at the end of the film, you know, um we think that prisons make us safe. But I think when you actually get to see inside them and get to that they’re perpetuating the same cycles of harm and abuse and addiction and mental health that drove people to prison in the first place, that’s not helping us, that’s not making us safer. So I think you know looking at how to get people rehabilitated, more people out of the system, and then also less people in the system that has to be a priority too. And for you know us to come up with alternative means to take care of our communities. Um. But I hope you know one thing that comes out of this film is that you know there are more people like Beth. And more people you know that are going to really push and ask the hard questions despite how difficult it is on a local level, um despite how difficulty it is to report on prisons because of the secrecy. And I hope that you know more people make the effort to reach out and talk to people in facilities. I mean, it’s wonderful that we’re on your podcast today and we’re so grateful for that, but that’s because it’s easy to speak to us. But it’s not easy to speak to the people who are living in the systems that are um living it every day and who have the most, you know, potent knowledge about what’s happening and what could possibly solve it. And we had the privilege of having these extended conversations over years. But that that window of opportunity is closing. The FCC just passed new regulations that are going to make it easier to use cell phone blockers um and our ability to communicate freely with the inside and understand what’s happening is going to diminish. And so I hope that there is that one of the things that comes out of this is that there’s a push to by the public to be able to communicate with the people incarcerated and to really know what’s happening inside all of the carceral institutions in our country um because we can’t solve a problem if we can’t see it and we haven’t been able to see the full scope of mass incarceration in America. For basically the history of it.
DeRay Mckesson: Well, we consider you friends of the pod. I can’t wait to have you back with your next project and everybody, if you’ve not already seen The Alabama Solution, please go watch it and tell a friend. [music break] 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 of the People is a production of Crooked Media. It’s produced by AJ Moultrié and mixed by Charlotte Landes, executive produced by me and special thanks to our weekly contributors, Myles E. Johnson and Sharhonda Bossier. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]
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