In This Episode
Death row prisoners granted clemency under Biden now brace as the Trump administration rolls out retaliatory prison policies. Podcast influencers who made millions glamorizing “wild births” are now tied to infant deaths across the globe, as investigations reveal a deadly pipeline of anti-medical radicalization. And Gen Z’s viral “quarter-zip movement” signals a generation rewriting the rules of professionalism.
News
Death Row Prisoners Granted Clemency by Biden Brace for “Living Hell” Under Trump
Gen Z’s ‘Quarter-Zip’ Movement Is About More Than Fashion
Follow @PodSaveThePeople on Instagram.
TRANSCRIPT
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay, and welcome to Pod Save the People. It is the last month of 2025. This really has gone by crazily quickly. It’s me, Myles and Sharhonda back to talk about the unreported news with regard to race, justice, and equity. And don’t forget to follow our Instagram at Pod Save the People. Here we go. [music break] Another week where the country is still standing barely. This is DeRay @deray on Twitter.
Myles E. Johnson: This is Myles E. Johnson at @pharaohrapture on Instagram.
Sharhonda Bossier: And this is Sharhonda Bossier at @BossierSha on Instagram and at @BossierS on Spill.
DeRay Mckesson: So this is super random, but I wanted to say it because she is a hometown hero. But do y’all remember Dominique Dawes?
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh, yeah, of course.
DeRay Mckesson: What a great gymnast. But Dominique Dawes is about to open up a gym in Silver Spring, Maryland in mid February. And I just, Dominique Dawes was the first Olympian that I actually sort of like had any affinity for as a kid. I because she’s from the Baltimore region. And I just I don’t have anything deep to say about it besides like, don’t forget Dominique Dawes. You know, people know Simone and they know all the the young women today. But Dominique Dawes, and do you remember when she had that Tommy Hilfiger collab? It was just epic. I’m like, Dominique Dawes was that girl.
Myles E. Johnson: Shout out to her.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, glad to hear her name back in the news. Yeah. And doing something back at home. Cause I think a lot of people hit, you know, international fame and like don’t ever return home. So shout out to that too.
DeRay Mckesson: [?] Dominique. And that was the only positive news I had because you know, the piece of news that I missed was the National Guard members getting shot in DC. I missed it. I don’t I didn’t get an alert about it. I really I don’t know. I I completely missed this. And it looks like one of the National Guard’s people has since passed. Did you all see this in real time? Like I I just missed this story. I’m I mean it’s very sad they got shot. Why is the National Guard still out on the street in DC? I don’t it it makes no sense. But I’d love to know what you all have to say about it, because I missed this one.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I saw it unfolding in real time. And I think the thing that, you know, I’m most concerned about is that the accused shooter is someone who apparently worked with the CIA in Afghanistan and immigrated here uh as as part of, you know, the the process of bringing people who had supported the US and its efforts in Afghanistan. And in a moment when the current administration is subjecting every immigrant, whatever pathway they availed themselves of to get here to additional scrutiny and is threatening to send those people home. I’m deeply concerned about what this means for um people who are from that part of the world and people who immigrated to the US even after risking their lives to help advance US goals abroad.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, definitely bad timing. If there was ever a good time to, you know–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: –commit domestic terrorism. But I think also it’s just about how these moments are just engineered to do to do conservative um political lifting. And from my perspective, there is not too much of a gap between what he did and what we are seeing, what we saw earlier this year and and last year, and probably the year before that, but you see these army men doing um setting themselves on fire, blowing up cars, uh uh the when they were blowing up the Elon trucks, I don’t forgot the cyber trucks and stuff. And I think that there’s something to um these young men going into the cult of the army and then feeling a range of guilt, feeling a range of different political illumination. And because they’re already trained to kill and devastate, they find it easy to do the same thing where they’re supposed to be either free or to the to their ally once they’re um I don’t even want to say once they’re once they have political enlightenment, but but once their maybe political worldview expands or gets crooked, and that’s what this kind of feels like. It feels like just like those other cases, like somebody who is trying to like almost like write something that they feel like was wrong, like that that feels like a common like narrative inside of these domestic terrorism cases around service people is that they are trying to even the the balance of what they did while enlisted.
DeRay Mckesson: I do appreciate that the public conversation seems to very quickly sort of understand how Trump exploits these things to make macro statements and moments. Whereas before I think that people I don’t know, people fed into it, I felt like more, whereas now people are like, Okay, Trump, like this is not our reason to make this claim or to do this thing. So that is good. But it back to Trump is do you remember the Trump phone that was announced in June? It was a $500 phone. The plan was 47 something a month because he’s the 47th president. It came with all these features, and people were promised a phone in October. There is no phone. There is no update on when the phone is coming out. And it was a gold phone, because you know Trump is all into–
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh course–
DeRay Mckesson: –gold things. But what a grift. He’s so good at grifting people. You’re like, why would you ever buy a Trump phone on a Trump mobile network, which you know doesn’t exist this is not a real thing?
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, I don’t think people knows it wasn’t a real thing. Yeah. I think um I think I think uh what I’ve been sitting in specifically, I don’t know what it was about this Thanksgiving weekend. It’s just it just it was a it was a good Thanksgiving week. But I was like, wow, most people are really idiots. Like that’s like that’s what that’s where we’re we’re at. And I think I’ve always thought about it in the back of my mind. But I think just really sitting in it, I’m like, oh wow, you can really be a shiesty scammer from Queens. And if you if you just stick with it, you can just keep on hitting licks and hitting licks and hitting licks and hitting licks. Just get a cricket if you want to go cheaper.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I think similar to Myles, a lot of people probably didn’t realize that it was a scam. Probably thought he was branding some government initiative after himself, right? And assumed that he had access to the like, you know, manufacturing capacity to like make it happen. Um. Or it was I don’t know. Um. I also think that there are people who feel like they want their name to be on the roles of Trump supporters, however they have the capacity or access to do that. And so for some people, that might be buying a ticket–
DeRay Mckesson: Mmm that’s interesting.
Sharhonda Bossier: –to a White House event. But for other people, it’s like, I might lose this $500, but I want the president to know, should I ever need him to know my name, right? That I supported something he did because they’re seeing how it pays off for people. And I think there’s this sense that like we’re all on some sort of watch list. And if we’re racking up points, I want most of the points that I rack up to be in the pro Trump column, however, that is accessible to me. And most of that and most of the pathways to that are financial.
DeRay Mckesson: Those people are getting deported too. That’s a that’s an interesting thing. Myles, what were you saying? ‘Cause that’s what some of that’s what some other groups thought too, and he rounding up people up.
Myles E. Johnson: That is really interesting. When you were talking, it just reminded me of the the text messages that I I would get from the Democratic Party. And then because I don’t respond to those, they turn into Trump messages. So and just how um I think so many of those moments to just to your point, I think so many of those moments of selling product is to really I’m gonna go into conspiratorial land a little bit, but like yeah, it just it does seem like data analysis. It does feel like that. It does feel like somebody’s counting and seeing which citizens, what areas, support. It will be interesting to see, let’s say, for instance, if these phones sold more in I don’t know, let’s be serious typical Tennessee. It would be interesting to see if there were things that happened there’s ’cause now you see there are people who are willing to support with money for products. Does it make sense? Like I wonder how they’re gonna build on top of that.
DeRay Mckesson: And we don’t know how many of the phones were sold. We just know that um he did sell them, and the phones don’t exist because Trump is a scammer. But did you see the Zohran and Trump conversation that happened? Fascinating. Remember, Zohran requested the meeting. It happened. People thought that Trump was gonna chew him up, or it was, you know, he Trump has played everybody else who’s gone to the White House. And it seems, you know, it was a very different outcome than what people thought. Now, people have had a million takes. People are like, it’s it’s that this is the setup. Trump is playing him cool because if Trump respects anything, he understands that like who the media listens to is the news. And he even sort of said it like he’s like, I had the president of da-da-da here, and they didn’t care, but Zohran came and everybody paid attention. So he understands celebrity if he understands nothing else. So some people are like, well, he was just he knew to play the cards right because this guy is just so popular and can be a real foil to him. Other people said that it it allowed Trump to do what even the Democrats will not do, which is embrace Zohran. So Schumer did not do it, Jeffries did not do it. And then you get the president of the United States saying the the most positive thing that we’ve heard an elected official say that was not an early supporter like AOC or Bernie, with which is sort of an awkward position. And then you get Zohran saying, we agree about a lot of things. And you know, Zohran brilliantly was like, for all the Trump supporters in New York City who voted for him, like da-da-da-da. Like that was I was like, that’s a slick line, that’s a good line. So, you know, I I’m interested in what you all think about how the meeting went. Do you think this was a setup? Do you think Trump actually respects him? It definitely threw off the right. People were thinking that they were gonna leave the meeting and bash him and with Trump’s full support. And then all of a sudden Trump did not say anything. But you know, that interesting moment where they’re like, do you think Trump is still a fascist? And Zohran just you know starts to talk and Trump’s like, oh yeah, tell ’em I’m a fascist. It’s okay.
Sharhonda Bossier: [laughing] I don’t care.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, he’s like, it doesn’t matter to me. And you know, Zohran’s press afterwards, people have asked him and Zohran’s like everything I said about him, I I believe, you know, like so what do you all make of this?
Sharhonda Bossier: I had first heard about the meeting reported um on I I listen to a lot of news. And so I needed to actually go back and see the visuals because I was like, I know that did not happen how these people said it happened. And it did. Like Trump is looking at him like glowingly, like there’s an you know, a sparkle in his eye. And I do think that probably above all else, Trump is trying to figure out how to capture some of that momentum, some of that um popularity, because his shine is is fading. And there’s no one else really who has it in that moment. I mean, even people who lived outside of in of New York were people who were like super excited about what this campaign represented, what his election represented. And I think the closest that we’ve had to that feeling on the left is sort of encapsulated in Mamdani. And so I think Trump is like fascinated by that feeling, that spirit, that energy, that momentum. He wants to be proximate to it. And I don’t I sometimes am still trying to figure out if Trump believes the things that he says, or if he’s just like, these are the things that help keep me in the spotlight and in power. Um. In some ways, he feels like a vessel that um if the left had gotten to, he he might have also been movable on some of those things too, right? Like I don’t know what his real compass and North Star are other than enriching himself and he was willing to take whatever pathway he needed to get there. And like being proximate to Mamdani is like, oh, I can again remain in the spotlight, you know, stand in some of that glow, some of that shine, and continue to do the thing, which is pretend to be an outsider of, you know, political power and the political establishment by embracing this man.
Myles E. Johnson: To your point, the left were like the the the neo liberal left definitely embraced Trump. That’s how come Trump exists with um you know, with the NBC show and stuff like that. And I think that’s why he’s he gags so many people. Even post the the exonerated five and like kind of all these kind of like white supremacist moments he had, he was really existing specifically in the early 2000s as a liberal figure, um kind of absorbed into that kind of liberal mainstream nothingness that like, you know, but you kind of think, oh, he doesn’t have a problem with gay people. Oh, he he likes Blacks or whatever. Blacks used on purpose.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: I think in order to be Trump, in order to be in the positions, you have to kind of not believe anything. You have to be okay with being like an empty vessel and have a consistent belief in power and be able to shift things. And I think that’s how come he has a weird coalition of people because he kind of like believes it, but he doesn’t believe it. And that’s a he gives just enough to people. But as far as Zohran, I thought it was really masterful. And speaking of um like sociopaths, I think that you kind of need a little bit of that. And I think Zohran has that. Like when I see the the, you know, him smiling at everything and how he kind of flips sentences and his ability to be in certain rooms. I just think that, like, oh yeah, he definitely has that kind of like American psycho American sociopath element that I think you need in order to be good at politics, especially today. But I am wondering how long these kind of little neoliberal concessions that you have to make in order to do well. I’m wondering how long that is gonna happen until until he has like a backlash. Like I’m more curious about like what he’s gonna do once maybe the people who really liked him who are just like really to the maybe to the left of him, are kind of over the the playing nice and or the over these kind of um cause like not firing the the Zionist, not maybe walking back things that he said about Netanyahu. I’m I’m wondering how long until that kind of implodes on him and then what he’s gonna do next. But he is creating an interesting coalition and to me that unique coalition is because the Democrats’ failure to endorse him. So he’s actually able to create this weird pathway that I think we we just haven’t seen. So I’m I’m I’m curious as to where it’s gonna land.
DeRay Mckesson: And what happened, you know, who will sabotage him or work alongside him? Because as much power as the mayor of New York City has, he does not have absolute power. And the woman who was really progressive is not gonna win to be the next speaker of the New York City Council. There’s a more moderate Democrat who who has who has won that. And she is not fully on board with everything Zohran has said. So like that’ll be interesting. And with the free daycare, the child care stuff, all that, they will have to pass some sort of tax to make it happen. And he will need the governor to do that. So trying to figure out how he like threads this needle and even the rent freeze, you know, it looks like Adams on his final days is gonna try and appoint his people to be on the rent guideline board to be there for all of Zohran’s tenure. Because the the majority of voting members of the um the rent board are by the mayor. Adams is trying to do a runaround, so Zohran won’t be able to put his people on it. So, you know, when Zohran says he’s gonna do a rent freeze, people won’t I I’m worried that people won’t have sympathy, like, oh, you actually just didn’t get what every other mayor got, which is to put all your people on it. You will be stuck with the Adams people. So you really might not get a rent freeze because your people won’t be on it. So I’m hoping that he’s not sabotaged to death, but I like Zohran and we’ll see.
Myles E. Johnson: I think I maybe said this the last um podcast too. But I do also think because of how he did his digital media campaign and how where his connection is. And I know that it’s like not typical or like “the right thing to do,” quote unquote. But I do think if he’s getting complications because of a moderate conservative politicians or government, I think that he should tell on them. I think he needs to be a tattletale.
DeRay Mckesson: Oh yeah, you said that last time.
Myles E. Johnson: I think he needs to be a tattletale. I think he’s in a unique position because of his um ability to show that he can build coalitions, because of his ability to show that he can work across lines to say, you know, this is not happening or this is happening slower or this is not happening at the maximum that we want in that and that I promised because these people are corporatist Democrats and they need to make the spot hot for them. We see that the Republicans are retiring. And I’m not saying they retiring because they getting they getting death threats. So I ain’t saying that, but I’m saying we can make it hot. So I think if if he makes it hot and and is transparent around things, I think that that can help things too. [music break]
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: I remember when we talked about white supremacy a decade ago. It was sort of like, okay, you’re being a little dramatic with your language. And I know racism is bad. That was sort of like the tone people had when we said things like white supremacy or white nationalist, or like it was like, okay, we hear you, but like that’s a little dramatic. I got on Twitter today and I’m seeing some people being like, this white nationalist rhetoric. I’m like, okay, okay, this is interesting. Like people are, it was around the green card thing. I remember how fraught these conversations around race were. Like people just thought we were crazy for being like, no, I think the strategy is like, like, get rid of everybody not white. People were like, you’re being dramatic. And um people now are like, oh no, that is the strategy. And I appreciate how hard everybody worked to normalize the reality of that. Um. I don’t know if you have anything to say about that, but I’ve seen it and I am like, thank God we moved that needle.
Myles E. Johnson: Shout out to um Bell Hooks, right? Because we we talk a lot about intersectionality. We talk a lot about those type of things and a lot of those words, and she critiqued those words while she was living. The lot of those um take out the thunder of what we’re dealing with. Um. It can often um kind of go into the marketplace of ideas that’s not that bad. Um. But when she says white supremacist, imperialist, patriarchy, you have to deal with each component of it in a way that these other words don’t do it. My only thing about it, and you know how I feel about slowness and incrementalism. And 10 years ago, you saying I’m crazy, and now you have illumination. Now it’s too late. Now you have Nick Fuentes and you have a whole lot of people. Shout out to the Groypers movement. That’s not a real shout out. But like but like but like when we talk about Nick Fuentes and the Groypers movement, now even though you’re saying, oh, this is a white nationalist thing, now you have a whole cohort of people on the right who are like, yeah, we call ourselves that. We’re white nationalists. And and now he’s um we have a a a group of white supremacists who are so okay with certain languages that used to be able to separate us, and now it’s just a part of the atmosphere, you know. It’s it’s like, yeah, I’m a white nationalist. I don’t know if y’all got to see the video of Nick Fuentes that um or any video of Nick Fuentes, but I think he’s really um interesting because of that, because he’s using terms like white nationalism and saying, you know, everybody’s playing identity politics. And now because everybody’s playing identity politics, white people need to play identity politics, and just like those Jewish people have Israel, we have America, and it’s okay. And and so now that language that you waited 10 years to be right about, 10 years to catch up to, 10 years to be educated on, now it’s too late because it’s already been absorbed into our politics. And now um you know, we’re probably gonna have our first white nationalist president soon.
Sharhonda Bossier: Soon. I thought we already had one. But is– [indistinct banter]
DeRay Mckesson: You know is that a joke Myles? You think Myles that he’s a fair weather president?
Myles E. Johnson: Not not even just that. I think that there’s a lot of um dancing around that Trump has to do, even to this day, even with how evil he is. And I think that we’re going to a point where there’s not gonna be no dancing around. It’s just gonna be the horror of somebody saying, I’m not playing this game that y’all played. People like Nick Fuentes, there’s another group of conservatives who think that Trump is just how I feel like neoliberals and and Democratic politicians are going too soft and they’re not doing enough. There there is another wing of people who feel the same thing. And now they’re coming into power now that Trump is kind of dissolving.
Sharhonda Bossier: Is part of your point too that you feel like those folks embracing the term white nationalist, white nationalism is also defanging the term a little bit. Like, what does it mean for someone to embrace it? Like, does it sort of decrease the power of the term to convey the real, to use your other term, horror of what they believe and want to enact?
Myles E. Johnson: I think all language, once you speak it specifically inside of these social media spaces and give it to marketplace, I think all of it’s defanging. I think we see that with feminisms, we see that with Black feminisms, we see that with so many different things. So yes, I do think that’s happened. To answer your question, yes, I do think part of it is that it it defangs it. But I think the other part of it is just the fact that we have a new group of white supremacists who were already looking for opportunity to for those languages not to be weaponized with for um uh to them. And they’ve have been looking for ways to say, Yeah, you’re not gonna scare me with that. You’re not gonna call me a fascist or a Nazi, and that’s gonna shut me up. So I’m actually gonna embrace some of this language. So you can’t shut me up because I already called myself that. So what’s what’s next? Because yeah, I’m a white nationalist and now I’m going to put this into policy or I’m going to galvanate people behind it. And we’re not ashamed of that because we don’t feel like that is a um uh a a bad word anymore.
DeRay Mckesson: That’s interesting. That’s like the flip side. I still think it is important that our side is using it and like acknowledge like people who weren’t using it and shout out to Bell Hooks because I remember reading Bell Hooks in college and I was like, this feels like a lot, Bell. I’m like, right supremacist capitalist da da da and now I’m like, maybe you should have added a couple more words, Bell, and I know better. Um. But but Myles, I hadn’t thought about um that side of it. Like what happens when people sort of make it a challenge now? They’re like, Yeah, I got that, like this is who I am and you know, the next thing is gonna be.
Myles E. Johnson: So just to put a button on what what I was um thinking. So I think the next thing now that you are okay with white nationalists, I think that these white male podcasters who are okay with using and the the ones in the air. Um. I think the next journey up is to actually use the full language. So don’t just take the Black feminist rhetoric when it’s it’s really comfortable, now be a futurist and say, you know what I need to say right now? I need to say white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy, imperialism. I need to actually map out these words today and start um getting people comfortable with them so we can actually examine them and talk and talk about them and name and name these things and not wait for them to be co-opted into something that is defanged and be able to use for pure evil, you know?
DeRay Mckesson: Well, that goes into what I I said all this to lead into the conversation about green cards. Trump made this statement that he’s gonna re-examine green cards in 19 countries, but the real takeaway is a reexamined citizenship status is that what he’s talking about is the process of denaturalization. And to denaturalize somebody is to remove their citizenship status after they’ve already gained citizenship. It is a necessarily and importantly hard process to undergo, to do. And what he is signaling is that he will make it an easier process to undergo. He’s also signaled to the embassies in those nineteen countries to stop issuing the documentation to make it easier for people to go through the green card process. Um. And he said he was like the Biden people letting 20 million people do the green card thing, and they just did it sloppily, and we’re gonna clamp down on it. Um. So I don’t want people to to miss that the that what he’s talking about is denaturalization and the process of removing people’s citizenship status who were not born in the country is what he’s trying to do. Which is crazy, but I wanted to bring it here.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I mean, my best friend is married to a naturalized citizen and we’ve been and they have two kids and we’ve been having a conversation and she’s just like, I want you to know, like, if he’s denaturalized, if he’s if he’s deported, we’re going back with him. And there’s a whole bunch of like political and and policy things I could say, right? But like this woman has walked with me through life since I was 11 years old, and we’re having very real conversations about her having to leave the country of her birth because she married and had children with someone who wasn’t born here. I don’t really have anything to say other than like, what the [bleep]. [laugh]
Myles E. Johnson: I really hope that like these kind of moments like wake people up because like I don’t want to like every single time I’m on here talk about the Democratic Party. But I it’s just wild to me that like there’s not better ways to like kind of create propaganda and then you have like an opponent who just lies, and you have an opponent who just makes things up and creates content and creates things, and there’s just no um there there’s no attempt of painting the world the the the world that these white supremacists want. There’s a lot of anti-Trump stuff, but there is a deeply xenophobic sentiment in America across race. And like, and that to me is what scares me. The what’s kind of scares me is that I do not see the care or the political concern around immigrants outside of the internet. Like if I’m being real, or in very very liberal liberal spaces. And I know where I am, so I know that’s easy to do, but I’m also around really normal Black people who are not necessarily deeply politicized, but they are political enough to have deeply xenophobic ideas.
DeRay Mckesson: So you’re saying we haven’t done enough to organize with people? We’re not having propaganda to counter the crazy propaganda.
Myles E. Johnson: And you know, I’d stay away from like the organizing languages, but I don’t stay away from education languages. Like there’s not a connection of like, you know what? Immigrants for Black people, and this is my experience, and this and from what I’ve studied and stuff, I see that immigrants being um in America has helped soften the white supremacist blows that Black people get. Because immigrants hire Black people. Immigrants don’t aren’t always entrenched in the same type of Americanized anti-Blackness as everybody else. And there we’ve been able to create coalitions. And if we have less and less people who are not white leaving this country or being, or or there being hostility, or even if so, if you’re in this country, you’re scared, so you’re not gonna do anything, that makes Black Americans an easier target. And I feel like all of these things that Trump is doing, but also just what the Republican Party is doing in general, is to get these immigrants out, get these people out, get these people out, get these people out so then they can handle the original sin, which is free Black Americans. And once they’re in a position to handle that original sin, it will be too late. And I it makes me sad to hear Black Americans who are joined in the forces of xenophobia right now because of the job market, because they see Mexican Americans working more, or because they see immigrants getting job titles that are saved for Black people, but you’re from Nigeria and where are the Black American people, all that kind of stuff that is really economically fueled, it it it saddens me.
Sharhonda Bossier: Though this growing sense among Black Americans that they were experiencing particularly acute anti-Black American sentiment at the hands of immigrants, right? Who, for a host of reasons, we can all talk about, right, are likely to be the shop owners where we shop, right? Um. Everything from like beauty supplies to swap meats, right? Or the owners of the nail salons where we get our nails done, et cetera, et cetera. And I do think that to your point, Myles, while you know, thinking of the enslavement of Black people as one of the US’s original sins, one of the US’s–
Myles E. Johnson: Oh I didn’t say that. To America of the white and supremacist capitalist patriarchy, the–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
Myles E. Johnson: –freeing and integrating of Black Americans.
Sharhonda Bossier: I see.
Myles E. Johnson: –into American free society is the original sin.
Sharhonda Bossier: Is the original sin.
Myles E. Johnson: Yes.
Sharhonda Bossier: Like we should have never done that. We should have sent we should have sent all y’all back to Liberia if we was gonna let y’all free, right?
Myles E. Johnson: Or never granted you full citizenship.
Sharhonda Bossier: Right. I think my challenge there though, and like the way that you sometimes have described the dynamic between, you know, US-born black Americans and other immigrant communities is like one of the US’s chief exports is also anti-Blackness. So a lot of people engage with those ideas and internalize those ideas before they even meet Black Americans, right? And like come here and then like the first thing is like, you can be whatever you want in this country. We work so hard to get you here. The only thing you can’t be is like them. Right. And so I I think like, yes, some of the things are economically motivated, but I think also some of them are just based off like the way people talk to us when we in the grocery store, you know? And I’m not making excuses. I’m just saying like I think part of the reason that organizing language is at least helpful to me is because it does get at hearts and minds in a way that sometimes educator language does not.
DeRay Mckesson: The question I have for every organizer and activist is could you do this in a community center? Like could you land the argument? Could you win it? Could you sell it in a room of non-activists? Like, can you get people across the finish line in a room of people who don’t identify as organizers and activists? And I’d say in most rooms I’m in, it’d be hard. Like you wouldn’t be able to get them to from point A to point B. The other side is very good at getting people from point A to point B. It might be racist, crazy, bigoted, wrong, lying, but they can get you there. And I do like if I, if I I need no more work to do, but if I had another initiative, it would be like a comms division, just helping people like talk to aunts and uncles to get people from A to B. Cause they’re right. Like the analysis is right. The like da da but you’re and I think you’re right, Myles, when I think about the xenophobia and da-da-da. I think the people are movable, but I don’t think we have this the skills on our side struggle a little bit.
Myles E. Johnson: And just what I was saying earlier around the organizing languages, I was I was just saying that I don’t want to use it because I’m not an organizer. So I don’t want to tell people.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah yeah yeah. Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: So I wasn’t saying that it would I wasn’t trying to like paint the picture that it wasn’t useful. I just I don’t didn’t want to get into that because I’m not an organizer or a activist. It’s a philosophical feeling journey that people need to go on that needs to be couched by education. But it’s really people need to understand that no matter what, utilizing um and wielding fascism through your votes or through through cultural sentiment is never a good idea. But people think it’s a good idea. So people think, oh, I’m just gonna get them um I’m just gonna get this conservative person to take them out, or I’m gonna join in on this, or I’m gonna wear even with to me, you know, fashion culture, those are all places of what you what you wear, what signs you got, even in the gay community. It is very um common to see people utilize and weaponize fascism and conservatism in our culture when we don’t like somebody because of interpersonal ideas and things. So I get that those Jamaican people at your restaurant are rude and slow. Yes. I promise you the way to correct it is not letting a white supremacist or white supremacist ideals or white supremacist culture find a home on your tongue in your vote or or in your fashions. Like that, and I think those things can only be argued out through feelings and philosophy. It’s not it’s ’cause it’s not rational. [music break]
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
Sharhonda Bossier: I’m really fascinated by like, can you land the argument in a community center? And like some of those things need to be argued out because I had this experience last night at dinner with my best friend and her family and one of her other friends. And we were talking about um all the reporting around flu season in in Southern California is expected to be really bad this year. And um one of her other friends owns and operates a daycare. And we started talking about like, you know, what vaccines she requires for the kids and her staff and which ones she doesn’t. And then she proceeds to tell me about like the diffusers she uses and the eucalyptus oils and like the the citrus that the kids have to eat and all of this other stuff, right? All of this to like dance around a conversation of like, are you getting the flu shot or nah? Right. And I I raised that because, you know, my news this week is about a growing movement of people who are trying to move away from what they see as medical intervention. And we’re seeing this movement happen on both the left and the right. And I know sort of the like the RFK anti-vaccine people have gotten a lot of air time, but there’s been a growing movement over nearly the last decade around what people are calling free birth. And it’s really started by these two women who were both ex doulas who launched a podcast in 2017 um to talk about um what they call um radical responsibility and free birth. Um. And sort of the underlying ethos or sentiment is quote, “our bodies do not grow babies that we cannot birth.” And it’s a really popular movement. So they, you know, this reporter has a forensic accountant go through all of the publicly available financial data related to this podcast, its courses, it’s, you know, YouTube channel, et cetera. And they estimate that these two women have generated revenue exceeding $13 million since 2018, which is a lot of money, right? Um. And they this article details a couple of women who, again, for a host of reasons do not trust traditional medicine in this country and are looking for something that they feel will make their birth easier and will ensure that they are not sent to a hospital or that they get unnecessary medical intervention. Um. And has resulted in, unfortunately, like some mothers experiencing loss. And I’m bringing it here because I want us to talk about this. I think, especially as a Black woman who has chosen not to give birth for a host of reasons, given what I know about Black maternal health outcomes in this country, reading this and watching these two white women, right? Grow this movement of people who are so distrustful of medicine that they are actually putting themselves and their children at risks. Like, how do we talk about that? Right? How do we say, like, yes, giving birth in this country is riskier than it should be for all of us? It’s particularly risky for a certain subgroup of us, right? But like the answer to that is not to forego expertise altogether. It is not to not have a doula. It is not to not have a midwife. It is not to have a hospital plan in the event that something should go wrong. And these people are scammers and they’re scamming you, right? And so I it’s a really well-reported article. I hope that people who are listening actually take the time to read it. But again, I think it’s raising for me some of the questions that we were just grappling with, which is like, there’s the evidence-based argument around why this is a bad move. And then there is the work of actually getting people to understand and feel in their gut that we can and should reimagine birth in this country, but this is probably not the way to do it.
DeRay Mckesson: Sharhonda, I just gotta say, it I feel like I’ve seen a lot of things. I feel like I see most things on Twitter. This blew my mind. I I didn’t know, I certainly didn’t know people were foregoing medicine as like a trend. I definitely knew people didn’t want like epidurals. Like I like that I understand and get it da da da. I just had no clue. I also struggle when people call everything a movement now after the protests. It really bothers me, but whatever. But I didn’t know there was a this whole push to be like just do it yourself. And when you’re like, well, babies die, that makes total sense to me. I’m like, well, what did you think was gonna happen? The only reason a whole set of babies are alive right now is because we have things like the NICU and we have modern medicine to treat things that were killing kids a hundred years ago that were killing moms, tested. We couldn’t figure out what was going on with your heart rate or your sugar, and da-da-da.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: So I think the most surprising thing for me though was the podcast. Like I don’t–.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: In my mind, there would be like a center that started this and people, like I don’t know. Like that was what so when I so when I saw it, I was like, okay, cool. I’m like, this is crazy. And then I’m like, not a podcast has convinced–
Sharhonda Bossier: A podcast.
DeRay Mckesson: –all these people. And I actually have a really good friend, young Black gay man who um is an OBGYN. And he, we’ve talked a lot, and he’s like DeRay, and it this all makes sense. He’s like, the stuff people come in having heard somewhere, and they’re like literally telling me what what I can and can’t do. And he’s like, I’m trying to save this baby. Like, I really, you gotta like work with me on this. And they’re like, no, no, no, I read this, I heard that da-da-da. And he’s like, he’s like, I know, I get it, I’m with you. Like, I believe it too. But and he’s like, but I really want to save this kid. And he, you know, he’s talked about the challenge that he’s had to, and it’s like, he’s like, it’s not even medical advice. It’s not like another doctor told them. He’s like, literally, they’ll be like, I heard that the if the baby’s sideways, it’s okay. And da da and he’s like–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: What is happening? And he’s like–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: We actually do have a real problem in maternal health, and this isn’t helping it. And I was like, Oh, well, he said that. But then when I read your article, I was like, oh, this is a bigger problem than I got so I have no solutions here. I have nothing deep to say besides blew my mind. And, you know, for good and bad. If you want to start a podcast, Lord knows you’ve changed people’s lives for better or for worse. Because that is nuts.
Sharhonda Bossier: The one thing I want to say about the point of it being like not doctors is that these women, because they don’t want to be sued, are smart enough to go to great pains to let you know that they’re not medical professionals, right? They’re like, we’re not medical professionals, but based on our experience and the hundreds of children that we’ve helped birth. And there is something about trying to tap into the knowledge of women who came before us that I think is a good thing, right? Um. But even like one of the women in the article, right, Emilee Saldaya, that’s not her birth name. We’re not really clear how she came by that surname. And some of it feels like trying to signal a connection to a culture other than white American culture that she thinks will give her also some additional credibility in these spaces, right? Because we’re also supposed to trust the quote unquote “Indigenous knowledge of the people who were here first.” And I think she’s trying to take advantage of some of that too.
Myles E. Johnson: There’s so much here in the article. Um, I think the first thing is is it shows you how powerful intimate media is. It’s the most powerful thing ever. So I think sometimes in a post-Oprah world, we get fascinated because Oprah was on the the network, but and Oprah was on the big stage and she had the name. But the thing that made her so powerful was because she was an intimate person in your living room having conversations with you hourly. And now that um we have the podcast marketplace, everybody can um kind of create that. And that is more powerful than what institution you get verified for, what doctors, what you got there, the human mind and heart combination, it’s it’s it’s it’s tricky. And I think this is a good um example of that. But I think it’s just where we’re at too. I think that you’re so many people because of where healthcare is, because of like kind of like the failure of Obamacare and now the gutting of Obamacare, like so many people are going to make those choices. When I was looking at the price range for some of these things, and I’m and I’m I’m trying not to spill nobody’s tea. I’m hotep adjacent. So I know and I and I’m and I’m I’m Bohemian adjacent. So I know some people who have been quite clear of being like, listen, if I have to spend 500 or a thousand dollars on a premium or 500 or a thousand dollars on these vitamins or this program or this person who I trust or this therapist or this spiritual thing that I trust, I’m here to make that choice. And I guess my thing is because America manufactured poverty and made an industry out of health, I feel really bad for the women involved. I feel really bad for um the children involved. And I also don’t feel bad for the host like that, but I also understand the desperation of needing to find like a marketplace in order to get more money. Like we kind of we just create such desperate, absurd circumstances through capitalism that are not necessary. And if everybody just had healthcare, and if everybody um uh just had here here I am being a propagandist, everybody just had basic income, all these absurd um stories wouldn’t feel so necessary to exist. But I I I I it just makes me sad um that these tragic Jerry Springer stories are just the blossom of capitalism.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. And I I’m not surprised that we see the distrust in in lots of other spaces related to modern medicine, to be honest with you. I am surprised to see it in situations that are truly life and death. You know what I mean? Like no one carries a pregnancy to term and doesn’t want to do everything to ensure that that delivery goes smoothly. You know what I mean? So I know that a lot of these people are reaching out from a place of desperation and fear, right? But then it’s like they’re listening to these women who say things like, I don’t believe in gravity, or I’m no longer quote unquote “round earth committed.” And I’m like, y’all gotta find someone else. Like that’s that’s the thing. It’s like the the absurdity of like the other things that these people believe, you know. So there is a little bit of like a fine, find your alternative pathway, but there are alternative pathways that are trained midwives, right? Who are trained to intervene, who aren’t saying things like you signed up for and believe in this philosophy of radical responsibility. And therefore I’m absolved of any responsibility to make sure that you have a smooth birth and that your child survives, you know?
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, but to the beginning of this conversation, and I’m saying this as gently as possible with this with this word, but like idiot, like stupid, like not educated, easily manipulated. If you are somebody who is Machiavellian or who has a gift of gab or who has the gift of scam, this is a really fruitful era for you right now because you have a fearful and ignorant population. And for us, people who are um educated, it those things are laughable and stuff, but to somebody else, it’s not laughable. Or when you it and we kind of just assisted, not to totally tie it back into the Democratic Party, but it’s like also like, okay, well, these people won’t talk about the babies being blown up in Gaza, so how am I gonna trust them? And then these people kill Black women, and then these people think that the earth might be flat, might be round, they’re not committed. And to some people.
Sharhonda Bossier: Touché.
Myles E. Johnson: It’s all a little flat. And it’s–
Sharhonda Bossier: Touché.
Myles E. Johnson: Oh and and and when you that’s the marketplace of who to who to trust, I just mourn these choices that people have.
DeRay Mckesson: It also is interesting, um because you you remember that you actually don’t need a ton of people. You just need a couple people to help seed it, and then you know, a thing becomes a thing, becomes a thing. And it this is how people think Tylenol caused autism, right? Like you you actually don’t need we have we have been confused by what it how many people it takes for an idea to take hold. And this to me was this was my case study. I’m like, not this crazy podcast that I’ve never heard anybody mention about has killed people. That is crazy. [music break] Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
Myles E. Johnson: Y’all, so I dug into my big Black library of films and books and found a classic. It’s called Chameleon Street. It’s directed by Wendell B. Harris Jr. And it came out in 1990. So this is a film um that predates, you know, I heard you heard me say 1990. So this is a film that predates Catch Me if You Can, but has a very similar um storyline. But when I tell you the camera work, the cinematography, the avant-garde use of camera work is really good. So if you’re a film geek, this is definitely the thing to just go watch. And if you’re a Black history or Black culture fanatic like I am, it’s something to watch, but it it it’s it’s just so good, just first of all, as a film. But what made me um interested in giving it to us as a news story is because the theme in the film is around this man who goes from different careers, scams himself into different careers, and kind of goes up the class ladder through these different lies and these different um in in these different scams. And in my head, after I was done watching the movie, I instantaneously connected it to the quarter zip trend. And, you know, at first I was connecting the quarter zip trend to Paris is burning because I was I was thinking, well, here is the idea of realness showing up again. Here’s the idea of Black men um through tomfoolery and in digital play showing that the only gap for real between me and respectability is performance. And me as a queer person, me as a RuPaul fan, um you’re born and everything else is drag. I really like that idea. Of course, it doesn’t it it kind of stops. So I I I hate that from the conversations that I’ve seen, the the quarter zip trend has become, oh, you’re going from non-respectable to respectable, where I wish the conversation went, oh wait, me as a person is a blank canvas, and all of this performance and societal performance is fake, and I can don and move between whatever I want to go between. Like I I wish that that’s what we were talking about. I wish that’s where the conversation went, but it didn’t. But either way, I wanted to bring this to the podcast because I thought um A, I wanted to bring this kind of like historical Black film that didn’t get a lot of shine. This was his only feature film. He was actually the director was kind of barred out of um film because he was so good. The people were threat like people were threatened. So when you go and look at the New Yorker article that um I got this news from, you’ll see that he was kind of systemically like shut out of the of of the film industry. But also um I just thought it was such a cool connective tissue of class performance and and Black people thinking about it and and examining it and telling stories about it. And I think that we’re still doing that, even when we don’t know it through TikTok trends and Instagram trends, we’re still examining and talking about performance of self and respectability. Yeah, so I I wanted to bring that to the podcast to A, give y’all a new movie to watch and then also hear your takes on the quarter zip trend, respectability, and the performances that we don in order to survive in this world.
DeRay Mckesson: I’m sort of like, who decided this was a trend? Like what at what point does it become a thing that people are like this is happening all across the country? I don’t know, I don’t know, you know. Shout out to a quarter zip, but I’m a vest guy and you know, shout out to the the vests. So. [laughter]
Myles E. Johnson: You ain’t never beating those Patagonia allegations.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah.
Sharhonda Bossier: And that–
DeRay Mckesson: I have a great. I have some great quarter zips so like shout out to the quarter zips. Like they are they are a vibe, right? It made me think too of do you remember and Myles, we’re not the same age, Sharhonda, you definitely remember this. Do you remember when we wore formal clothes to go out to the club?
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
DeRay Mckesson: Or like just to–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes. Yes.
DeRay Mckesson: Like that was like an era. Do you know what I mean?
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
DeRay Mckesson: And this feels like the old is new again. Like that’s what the quarter zip feels like to me. It’s like a it’s the cooler version of when we used to wear ties and sweater vests and–
Sharhonda Bossier: Mm-hmm.
DeRay Mckesson: Dress slacks going out. You know what I mean?
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Like that was what what an era that was.
Myles E. Johnson: There was two Black dudes from New York who started the quarter zip trend as as as kind of like a joke and as a mocking of of kind of like white financial district culture. Um. And I was trying to get their names to um to to put it in and then just went into like a more serious thing. But I’m not that much younger than you and when we were hitting the club, we we were still we were still doing um.
Sharhonda Bossier: Now you’re not.
Myles E. Johnson: We were doing business. Oh I’m saying we were still doing business casual, but also you we were in the recession. So again, this is a recession indicator. Black people when you think about when Classic Man came out and how that was on the edge of a a a a a a kind of conservative wave after Obama. Um. If you literally look at the trends of Black people, we actually always fold ourselves um uh into some types of conservatism when things get conservative nationally. So I think this is just another iteration of that too.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I think my immediate reaction to the quarter zip trend, I thought of a few things. I thought about like the late nineties adoption of like preppy clothes. So like Tommy Hilfiger, Nautica, right? Like um Ralph Lauren, as like what Black celebrities were adopting and wearing, even if we wore them slightly oversized, right? The like trying to be associated with those brands, that level of like Americana and leisure and wealth. The other was the to DeRay’s point, like the early oughts trend. Like I’m thinking Kanye West and his Louis Vuitton backpack era, right? Also like sort of a connection to luxury and um respectability. I definitely had a J. Crew and Sperry boat shoes phase. You know what I mean? Like in the in the early oughts.
DeRay Mckesson: Come on J Crew.
Sharhonda Bossier: I a hundred percent was spending my money in J. Crew all the time. And, you know, as somebody who clubbed, right? Like to DeRay’s point, I was wearing the same pants to the club as I was wearing to work as a high school teacher because clubs literally wouldn’t let us in otherwise, you know. Um. I also want to take this opportunity to go on the record against Diesel, the footwear designer, because they had these shoes in like 2003 to 2005 that I absolutely hated. And every man and masc person wore them to the club. And I just want to tell you they were terrible shoes. If you still have them in your closet, they’re never coming back, throw them away. Um. But the quarter zip thing.
DeRay Mckesson: Did you have jellies Sharhonda?
Sharhonda Bossier: As a kid, yeah, for sure.
DeRay Mckesson: Shout out to the jellies.
Sharhonda Bossier: And the other thing about this quarter zip thing, I think, Myles, to your point about the the recession, right? Is it’s also interesting that it’s coming up in this moment where we’re seeing wealthy white people adopt what people are have have started calling quiet luxury, right? Which is like not out name outward name brands, not big logos, just like a if you know, you know thing. And the quarter zip movement seems to be exactly seems to be kind of mimicking some of that too, right? Which is the like your quarter zip is never gonna have a big logo on it. The question now is gonna be how do I know that your quarter zip is a is a nice one or an expensive one versus like one you got at Burlington Coat Factory, you know?
Myles E. Johnson: And creating um binary between because a lot of its like oh I’m not a necky tech person I’m a quarter zip person. So creating this kind of like binary inside of the Black community, remember earlier this year we already saw the Ralph Lauren um as that like kind of um romanticized these kind of like Black elites who go to Martha Martha Vineyard and and who do who don’t have the problems of white supremacy on their minds and who have figured out how to transcend those things and not get fat. And I think it’s also a name because I think the the pop feminism moment so took the non-respectable uh don’t be respectable, don’t be respectable thing to such a a I don’t know to me it feels a little extreme. Goodbye, my maybe I’m just old, but I’m just like it feels a little extreme. So you kind of can feel that swing back. The last example I wanna give too is my favorite one, is that Cheryl Lynn, who made Encore, you know, the the the singer Cheryl Lynn.
Sharhonda Bossier: Your love.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay. Come one.
Sharhonda Bossier: So good.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay.
Sharhonda Bossier: Deserves an encore. Y’all can’t see my weave, but–
DeRay Mckesson: Get it, get it.
Sharhonda Bossier: It was made for that song. [laughing]
DeRay Mckesson: If y’all could see this wig girl, this wig has a name, baby. The wig got a name.
Myles E. Johnson: So good. So good. So that album that came out um during the Reagan era was called preppy. And people don’t quite remember that part of her whole–
Sharhonda Bossier: Turned up collar.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, a part of her whole brand was being seen as preppy. So again, this is all cycle and trends, but um we seem to see a see a pattern of when Black people want to button it up, and it’s usually when the state buttons up.
DeRay Mckesson: My news is actually about supermax prisons, sort of, but really about death row. So as you know, this is a a big schism between left and right. The left doesn’t generally believe in in the death penalty. The right does. And even the people on the left who don’t believe in the death penalty aren’t defending the crimes that led to a death sentence, but are highlighting that Black people are disproportionately convicted incorrectly and sentenced to death. Also, this is not my news, but just to remind people that somebody just got killed in a state death um row by a firing squad. I all of it is inhumane, but the fact that we still have a state that has a firing squad that like straps people to a chair and shoots them is just crazy. Like I’m like that is a that’s happening. It is real. It just happened not not even a month ago. Because Trump has publicly called for bringing not only bringing back the death penalty, but people convicted of drug crimes to sentence them to death. That was a campaign proposal. What Biden did was he commuted all of the death sentence federal cases. So a commutation means that they now will serve life, but they will not get the death penalty. He commuted their sentences, they will not get the death penalty. So they would just stay wherever they were in prison. But Trump said, you know what? That’s not good enough. You will now go to the most secure facility we have in the country. Whether you’re a threat to anybody or not, you are going there. And this facility is in Colorado. It is called the United States Penitentiary Florence Administrative Maximum Facility, better known as ADX, and has been named the Alcatraz of the Rockies. And in this place, the people incarcerated spend 22 to 24 hours locked every day inside concrete cells that are smaller than a standard parking space. There is almost no contact with other people. There’s almost no programming. And if there is programming, it is broadcast over TVs that are in the cells. You essentially get no belongings. You can’t hang photographs or drawings on the wall. Every time that you’re out of a cell for exercise, you can only walk a few paces in each direction. The people are given virtual reality goggles to simulate outdoors. A former warden called ADX a quote, “clean version of hell,” that quote, “was far much worse than death.” I say this to say that there is no reason why the Bureau of Prison should be placing people here. There is a law that says that they should be placed within 500 miles of their home. But Trump and his team have been like, screw that law, and they’re just doing whatever they want. So they are now going to um to ADX. And it just is another way A, it is wild because why do we even have a facility that is like this? It is also they got commuted, they should be able to stay where they are. If they, you know, they should be able to stay where they are. And then the third is, you know, Trump has just done this full frontal assault on the just the rule of law. Like the law says one thing, his team’s like, we’ll do whatever you want. You’ll spend 20 years litigating it. And then by then the people will be dead, right? Like he just is sort of like, what does it mean? And for the the constitutionalists, the da-da-da, all the people who are like, well, the rule of law, rule of law. It’s like it’s not y’all don’t really believe in the rule of law when it says something that you don’t believe in. And I do wish that our side was a little more gangster about violating all the laws when it could help people or stuff like that. If we’re if we’re gonna pick and choose, let’s just pick and choose and be real crazy with everybody. But I brought this here because this is something that I hadn’t seen anybody talk about. I didn’t even remember that Biden commuted the death row people’s sentences, and I didn’t know that of all the million things Trump has done, I didn’t know that Trump had done this.
Sharhonda Bossier: I certainly didn’t know what he had done either. And I’ve told you all that I am someone who consumes a lot of true crime content. I’m still working on that. Um. But part of the reason I sort of even knew the name of the prison was because my understanding was that it was like reserved for like the worst of the worst, right? And obviously, like moving this group of people there signals to your point, right? That this is about excessive punishment, even as I’m like working to actually truly and more meaningfully embrace my emerging abolitionist politic. And I think what’s interesting to me here is I’m starting to question like if I think there’s anything anyone can do to deserve a life like that, you know? And I know that we don’t think that these people are capable of being, you know, rehabilitated. There’s no plan in most of these instances, given the length of their sentences and the crimes for which they were convicted, that they will ever, you know, see the light of day again. But it just feels like there’s gotta be a better way to do this than this. You know what I mean? And some of it also seems like who ends up here is about which cases got kind of the most media spotlight too, right? So it’s like also about like proving a point when you’re like, you know, y’all got mobsters here, right? And not to not to, again, no one is defending the crimes, right? But we are saying like a lot of this is about trying to perform that you are tough on crime.
Myles E. Johnson: So it’s just this is an interesting thing to be talking about today. But I was just watching the Briahna Joy podcast. She was interviewing Matt Stoller and Alec Karakatsanis. Karakatsanis. I know I didn’t say his name right, but I apologize. But they were talking about Defund the Police. And inside of that conversation, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to watch it. Cause inside of that conversation, they were also talking about prison abolition. And they were talking about um of course, one person was saying how like defund the police was like stupid and it was bad messaging. Another person was saying that, you know, prison abolition is more than like this kind of like logo and and motto. And as I was like watching all three of them debate around this and me kind of knowing clearly that like in our hearts we need to like fight for a society with like without prison and without police, and like even if that’s not something that we will ever see in our lifetimes. Hear these stories and and get kind of reminded about how much we love the theater of other people’s torture and love knowing about other people’s torture, that Trump is not just doing this because he truly cares that bad people get bad punishments. It’s not truly even about that. It’s really because there is a thirst and there is an appetite for people to get punished to get punished in brutal ways or in ways that are um you know, sociopathic or ways that create sociopaths and psychopaths, or if you already are that, it only makes it worse. And I get scared in air quotes, because. I think a lot of the public disagrees. And that that to me is what always is chilling is that as much as there are people who think this shouldn’t happen, da da da, there’s so many people who think this is exactly what should happen, who are warmed by this happening. And I don’t know necessarily how you penetrate those type of ideals around another human life, specifically where the start where that person’s has done something heinous, you know? That’s all I got for this story.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, but like we have a former Mexican government official who is there because he supposedly took money from a cartel, right, to protect shipments of drugs into the United States. And that is being punished in the same way as someone who tried to blow up a subway. You know, I don’t know. Maybe I’m struggling because I do feel differently about someone who like smuggled drugs versus someone who tried to blow up a subway. You know what I mean? Like, I don’t know.
Myles E. Johnson: I think under white supremacy any affront to white life is good enough to get punished.
DeRay Mckesson: Punishable by death.
Myles E. Johnson: Absolutely. So I think that if you are giving us fentanyl and you’re the reason why Meemaw is crying at the funeral, I’m being so anti-white. But if you’re the reason why Meemaw is crying [laughing] crying at the funeral you deserve it. And if you’re somebody who blew up a subway, you deserve it. And I think that is a part of white nationalism and white supremacy totally being absorbed into our politics. So it’s not really about these um these details and these minutias and this scenario and this scenario and this scenario. It is if you are doing something to offend or to um destroy this white male personhood, you deserve to be punished. And we don’t care how you got there, we don’t care what you did, we don’t care if it was soft or hard how how how you did it, you deserve to get um punished. And I think that is the new normal, at least in ideas that they’re trying to spread. Because I think the morals, if even again, if you look listen to the right, they’re trying to get away from morals. They’re trying to get away from you being able to call me a bad person. They’re like, we don’t care. That’s what they really want to say, even about Israel. They want to say that we do not care about these Brown kids getting blown up. We need this oil, we need this friend in the Middle East, and we’ll do whatever we gotta do about it. And you can’t guilt us out of destroying um these people. That’s not a good enough reason to stop this warfare. And I think that this is this feels like an extension of that. It’s kind of like a little bit of a minority report soft launch. Like, no, so many things should be punishable underneath death to them and brutality to them. [music break]
DeRay Mckesson: Well, that’s it. Thanks so much for tuning in to Pod Save the People this week. And don’t forget to follow us at Pod Save the People and Crooked Media on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. And if you enjoyed this episode of Pod Save the People, consider dropping us a review on your favorite podcast app. And we will see you next week. Pod Save the People is a production of Crooked Media. It’s produced by AJ 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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