In This Episode
Candace Owens barred from entry into several countries, Gavin Newsom caught slipping by Van Lathan and reparations leaders, while videos of Charlie Kirk’s murder remain online by design. PSTP hosts debate on mass movements in America and honor the life and legacy of Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a Stonewall veteran and legendary trans activist.
News
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Stonewall Veteran and Legendary Trans Activist, Has Died at 78
Candace Owens denied visa to Australia by country’s highest court
Videos of Charlie Kirk’s Murder Are Still on Social Media. That’s No Accident.
Reparations leaders ‘deeply disappointed’ as Newsom vetoes university bill
America Needs a Mass Movement — Now
Follow @PodSavethePeople on Instagram.
Correction: An earlier version of this episode incorrectly stated the jurisdiction of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE has national jurisdiction to enforce federal immigration laws anywhere in the US, including making arrests and patrolling. The episode audio has been updated to remove the error.
TRANSCRIPT
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay, and welcome to Pod Save the People. In this episode, it’s me, Myles, and Sharhonda back to cover the underreported news with regard to race, justice, culture, and equity. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at Pod Save the People. Here we go. [music break]
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: Well, we are back with another eventful week in the glorious month of October. Winter is here on the East Coast, at least. This is DeRay at @deray on Twitter.
Myles E. Johnson: This is Myles E. Johnson at @pharaohrapture on Instagram.
Sharhonda Bossier: And I’m Sharhonda Bossier at @BossierS on Spill, at @BossierSha on Instagram, or you can find me on LinkedIn.
DeRay Mckesson: Well, a lot happened in this past week. Let’s start off with the saddest part of the week, which was the passing of D’Angelo. It’s sad, but also such great music. And it was beautiful to hear all of the music resurface in chunks as the news of his passing from pancreatic cancer broke. Um. So shout out to D’Angelo and rest in peace, D’Angelo.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, 51 is so young. Um. And you know, I am one of those people who uh has everything that you might consider sort of neo soul on heavy rotation and on repeat. Um. I remember Brown Sugar dropping when I was 11 and it not sounding like anything I had ever heard, and my older cousins playing it and it being a whole bunch of cussing in that record, and somehow my grandparents not tripping about it. And then in 2000, when he dropped Voodoo, one of my homeboys had to drive me to go get it because I didn’t have my license yet. [laugh] And we went to like, you know, Best Buy, picked up the Voodoo album. And then I remember watching the, you know, how does it feel video, which I know he later had a complicated relationship with, and my grandfather coming into the room and being like, What the is on this TV? Right. Um. And then, you know, just thinking about some of his collaborations with like Sadiq and other people that I really love. Um. He just was such a super talented musician and so different from anything else. And a thing, um one of my friends, if you follow Amber Abundance, um said on Instagram this week is that you never had any doubt that D’Angelo was singing about loving Black women. And it’s just beautiful to feel seen and held and loved um in that way, and through someone’s art. So what a loss.
Myles E. Johnson: What a loss and you know, what an ancestral gain. Trying to grieve somebody is just always like very feels very selfish, like, you know, like and kind of like self-centered, it always makes me feel uncomfortable, specifically with somebody like D’Angelo because he was so like private. But um you know, when you’re in Rome, do as the Romans. And I think, and I think that what I’ve been most reflecting on is how influential that late ’90s, early 2000’s era of revitalization of soul in Black music was and is, you know. And I think about, you know, we don’t really show visually where we’re at all the time, but to see any part of my apartment is to see that it’s drenched in the recalling of like Afrocentricity and stuff like that. And that was so a part of my world via D’Angelo and Erica Badu and The Roots and um and Gill Scott and and and um Def Poetry Jam by the disgraced Russell Simmons. And I would watch artists like Sunni Patterson uh speak, and I was like, this is the type of Black adult I aspire to be. So it’s really um interesting to like be in a space where one of my like just heroes growing up passing away. And again, I think I said this last podcast, but um even since I’ve moved within this year, it’s Roy Ayers has passed away. Um. Frankie Beverly has passed away, and I definitely think that like D’Angelo is a part of that patheon of Black men who definitely sung to Black people and to Black women to your point, but also centered spirit inside of their music in a way that was unapologetic and was um sometimes even not legible to um the mainstream white audience. And yeah, I think that to really respect him is to carry on that tradition. And I love D’Angelo so much. Voo– I could just we need a–
Sharhonda Bossier: –Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: D’Angelo episode, y’all.
Sharhonda Bossier: The Voodoo concerts uh footage always feels like being transported to a different place and time. Um. You know, speaking of people who’ve passed since you’ve been in the Midwest, it’s like, you know, Angie Stone also passed earlier this year, and people have pointed out that.
Myles E. Johnson: Yes.
Sharhonda Bossier: You know, she and D’Angelo share a child, and that child has now lost, I mean, you know, both of his parents within the span of a year. And so, you know, if you’re a praying person, keep their son and D’Angelo’s other children, but in your in your thoughts and prayers for sure. It’s an unimaginable loss.
DeRay Mckesson: I just I remembered recently that Black Messiah came out during the protests. It was that winter. It you know, protests started in August and Black Messiah came out in–
Myles E. Johnson: You have his lyric for your thing, right?
DeRay Mckesson: Is there a Black Lives Matter lyric?
Myles E. Johnson: No, I think you have a D’Angelo lyric in your bios. That’s what–
DeRay Mckesson: Oh yes.
Myles E. Johnson: Since I’ve since I’ve known you. Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Yes yes.
Sharhonda Bossier: I won’t ever betery my yeah. I won’t ever betray my heart.
DeRay Mckesson: Yes, yes from yeah, from that moment. Um. Yeah. That was, I’m like, oh, the I completely the protests are such a blur to me. And then I’m like, wow, I completely forgot this came out in the middle. We were like in the street when this happened, which is so, which is so wild. Um. And it reminds me of that whole era, like you were talking about, Myles. I always put Lauryn Hill in this era because Lauryn reminds me of what it was like–
Myles E. Johnson: Oh yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: To be just so tapped in. You know, like they were so like when people talk about D’Angelo as a recluse or introverted, I’m like, no, he just was not plugged into the 24 hour news cycle. Da da. Like you, they just had space and time to think. And I was recently watching and uh one of those, you know, when Lauryn used to talk, and she was just so clear to herself. Like you would talk, she would talk and you’re like, God came and told this woman what she was supposed to do on this earth. And that’s what you also felt when D’Angelo sang. And that whole moment was just so they were so clear. They, if anything, D’Angelo has actually pushed me to disconnect a little bit more to try and tap back into um something else that’s not the 24-hour news cycle. Um. Switching topics dramatically, I was intrigued that Candace Owens is being blocked from going into countries, Australia being the most recent country that she has been banned because they said that she might like incite things. And you know, I don’t know, I’m fascinated by that. Like what it means that you that people think your ideas are so bad, racist, misogynistic, bigoted, that they don’t even want you in the country is fascinating to me.
Sharhonda Bossier: I do think it’s interesting that they’re choosing to single her out, right? Like as as sort of the Black woman, but also she very clearly uh goes to those places or wants to go to those places to wreak havoc, right? And she’s tried to, you know, appeal, et cetera, et cetera. No luck. Um. But [sigh] yeah, I couldn’t imagine being that hateful that places are like we have our own homegrown white supremacists. We don’t need to import any, thank you. Um. I mean, the US does this to people all the time, but I do think it’s interesting. It also is interesting to me that it’s news because I am always shocked by her reach, you know? And I’m always like, oh uh, like even when we were talking about, you know, her going after the Macron’s, right? And in in France, you’re just like, oh, they really feel the need to like respond to this. Um. And so yeah, I’m always shocked by that too.
Myles E. Johnson: I watch her. I was almost about to say I’m a fan. I’m not I know I’m not a fan of Candace Owens, but I I do watch her regularly. She’s definitely part of my diet. And just to see the numbers, I mean, you ain’t really talking about numbers until you’re doing something and within the hour you have a million views, you know. Um. Kind of I seen some of her stuff like live kind of compete with some network numbers, you know. To me, I’m like once you get into the millions and millions of people are watching you live, that’s really, really impressive. I and of course I think thousands of thousands of people is impressive, but um millions is like, whoa. Um. Yeah, I think I kind of call [bleep] on on Australia doing doing this, because A, there are so many white supremacists coming out of America. Why did you pick her to be this person? And to your point, why is it getting press? Why now that she’s on this trail of talking about Israel, talking about Zionism, talking about Charlie Kirk? Why is it now press that she can’t come into Australia? What is this smear campaign? Um. Like you already mentioned before, Australia is not a stranger to hatred and bigotry. You can look up some stuff that they were doing for neo-Nazis. So it’s interesting because obviously I don’t care about or like Candace Owens’ politics, but I also recognize that there is a direct smear campaign happening towards her because she has offended the greater powers that be on the right by um her kind of anti Zionistic rhea rhetoric. So it it makes it hard for me to just say, that’s what you get, girl, because you’re Uncle Tom with with with a [?] that’s nappy, even though she’s all those things, you know, like so. It’s like it’s like hmm.
DeRay Mckesson: I don’t know. I would probably ban her. I I do think that she is unique in the panopoly of um white supremacists because she is a Black woman. Like she is an unlikely I think if she was a white man, you’re sort of like, well, this is run of the mill. There are a million of them. But I think as a Black woman, she is sort of a she does it it carries a different sort of weight when she comes in and says all this bigoted, racist, hateful stuff. Not that she should that I don’t know if that’s a justification for her being banned from the country, but I don’t think it is the same as the sort of run of the mill white supremacy. And um you know, I didn’t know what was she a thing before Kanye? I literally had never heard of her before Kanye was her champion. Like I had never even knew she existed.
Sharhonda Bossier: Ooh.
Myles E. Johnson: Absolutely.
Sharhonda Bossier: I had a a lot of Black men in my orbit were sharing like clips of her because you know, a broken clock is right twice a day, right? And so she got into and in front of a lot of Black men, um around a lot of her kind of more conservative values related to family, familial structure, et cetera, et cetera.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, I don’t know if the unique ways that, you know, internalized white supremacy or is misogyny manifests in a person is enough to ban them from a country. And again, um because I am a regular uh viewer of of Candace Owens and I’ve been seeing her comments section. I’ve been seeing the conversations she’s been having, I’ve been seeing her anti-Trump rhetoric that’s been happening since um since Kirk’s since the since this war. I’ve I just saw yesterday her say that the Gaza, um the Gaza real estate mission is a cursed mission and that anybody who should who goes to the Gaza real estate mission should uh should know that they are on they’re gonna be on cursed land and her taking such an oppositional stance towards um Trump and and Zionists. It feels a little like a shallow reading to say it’s because she says some bad things on the internet. It’s like there’s so many other people saying that, you know, can Steve Bannon, Steve Bannon can go to can go to Australia can’t he?
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, but it sounds like Steve Bannon doesn’t have her reach, which is, you know.
DeRay Mckesson: And is not an unlikely bigot.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. All that feels weird. Even thinking of a Black woman, if we’re really talking about going to a space of equality, thinking of a Black woman as, oh, because you’re an unlikely bigot, you’re especially banned that like what? [laugh] Like.
DeRay Mckesson: I don’t know, we can’t we are just–
Myles E. Johnson: What?
DeRay Mckesson: We’ll agree to disagree on this one. Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There’s more to come. [music break]
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: We can talk about another amazing person that you have been a fan of for a long time, Myles, and that is Gavin Newsom. [laugh] He was your evil guy on the left who is gonna come and uh carry us home. I don’t know if you still feel that same way after his interview with Van Lathan.
[clip of Van Lathan] AIPAC. I will not vote for a candidate that takes one dollar from AIPAC.
[clip of Gavin Newsom] It’s interesting. I mean it’s it’s interesting. I haven’t thought about AIPAC. And it’s interesting you’re like the first to bring up AIPAC in yours, which is interesting. Why did I say that? Not not relevant to the my day to day life.
[clip of Van Lathan] Okay.
[clip of Gavin Newsom] Which is just interesting.
[clip of Van Lathan] Listen.
[clip of Gavin Newsom] It’s interesting you say that. JPAC, perhaps more, but AIPAC less and less.
[clip of Van Lathan] Okay. Fair enough.
[clip of Gavin Newsom] Which is just interesting.
[clip of Van Lathan] What’s interesting about it?
[clip of Gavin Newsom] That it’s just interesting as you bring up AIPAC that it hasn’t been part of I was I’m just reflecting quite openly and honestly, it hasn’t been part of the day to day.
Myles E. Johnson: I guess I was a little bit more neutral on Steve on Gavin Newsom, right? Like I think, I think all of the um Democrats kind of come off this same corporatist zombie-like way. And get, but Gavin Newsom felt like he had um skin in the game. And again, this is pre-Zohran, this is pre um this this Southern man who they got now who’s talking to everybody, who’s getting people excited for for Maine. I I forgot his name. Um. But Gavin always seemed really slimy. That’s why I compared him to American psycho. But I think it’s um important to not to disempower him. Like I think the fact that he vetoed the reparations bill, the fact that um he uh lied so he lied in a way to Van that shows me that you think that Black people are stupid, which is which is always uh which is always letting me know something. Because I always, because I always know when somebody says instead of reparations, we’re going to, we’re gonna start a class. We gonna, we’re gonna get some people together to talk about it.
Sharhonda Bossier: Financial literacry.
Myles E. Johnson: Or whatever. Cut the check.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Cut the check. Like, we don’t need no more labs on reparations. You did it, and you are, and we are owed. That is the that is the beginning of the question, and that is the answer. Now figure out how to cut the check. Just like you figured out how to cut the check for Israel. There’s no other way to talk about reparations. And I’m leading more and more towards as I get older that Black people should totally um uh just keep their vote until that is something that’s going on, specifically because it’s so unpopular with the populace, that I feel like the only way that we can push it is by losing our vote. So I say all that to say is Gavin totally played into that, oh, I’m gonna talk to some people about it. I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it. And then they he gets the bill. The bill is uh backed by so much intellectual uh intellectual work, it’s backed by so much activation, and he still vetoes it knowing good and well he wants to be the president of the United States. So he vetoes it now in 2026 or in 2025 in hopes that nobody remembers in 2028 or that Trump is so bad that people are like, even though this is a white supremacist who won’t employ um reparations, I’d rather have this than Trump. That’s the game plan. And I hate that being the game plan. And I think that him doing that showed a piece of manipulation, and then that Van Lathan clip around AIPAC. And him keep on saying interesting show manipulation. And then maybe twenty-four hours later it leaked that although AIPAC is not necessarily funding him, JPAC is funding him, which is the state answer to AIPAC. So the reason why you were over here squirming and melting and your Botox was melting out of your eyes was because was beause you knew that JPAC is uh the is the state answer to it, and you are in bed with them and you do get money from them. And I’m just happy to see a lot of people, more people than I feel like any of us even maybe even six months ago before Trump was elected would have thought. Um. Oh, it’s been more than six months that Trump was elected. But anyway, there the more people that I think that we thought where are being activated by um our politicians colluding with Israel and are putting that as a a line in the sand. And I think this time last year, um I was getting a lot of pushback about it not mattering, and it seems like more and more people think that is that it does matter, and it seems to be something that politicians have to move around now, and I like it.
Sharhonda Bossier: I, uh as a native Californian am always surprised when people think that California is like this liberal bastion or haven. You know what I mean? We gave y’all Ronald Reagan, you know. You’re welcome.
Myles E. Johnson: And Hollywood.
Sharhonda Bossier: Well, yeah, which is a machine for, you know, pumping out a lot of propaganda. Um. But we also were like one of the first states that allowed people to opt out of vaccines for reasons other than religious reasons, right? Um. We also were one of the first states to end affirmative action in uh in higher education. Like this is not some some play yeah, in the mid ’90s, dog. Like we were like, no more of this. Um. And so I think people forget that California is well, you know, there’s likely to be a Democrat at the top of, you know, sorry, in the top office, like, you know, those Democrats have to walk a pretty fine line and they’re pretty, they’re pretty right of center on a lot of issues, right? In order to sort of win statewide office here. I mean, look at our longest serving senators, right? I say all of that to say Gavin Newsom was never gonna be our sort of hyper liberal savior, right? He was gonna position himself as like, you know, the the answer to Trump, but the reason he was able to position himself as the answer to Trump um is because he’s a moderate at best, right? And reparations is still seen as, and it doesn’t matter what research you put out, you know, how many people read that Ta-Nehisi Coates piece from a few years ago, right? Like it’s just not gonna happen. And, you know, I think in rap lyrics, so my my first thought was like Nipsey Hussle’s line from dedication, where he’s like, I need some real nigga reparations for our run up in your bank for recreation. And I think if you just think about the state of Black people in California right now, we’re leaving the like we’re at the bottom of every quality of life indicator. You know what I mean? Um. And we are a declining, a fast declining portion of the population here. This would be such an easy thing to do to preserve Black California, our history, our legacy. We think about the unique experiences, and I’m saying unique as a euphemism that Black homeowners are having in Altadena post the fires, right? Their ability to go back home to rebuild, et cetera, would have been a pretty solidly middle class Black enclave. And like it’s like, yeah, you know, and and then you think about the fact that Black voters often are the backbone of the Democratic Party too. Like there’s just so many things that feel interconnected here. And I think Gavin Newsom is saying he doesn’t have the political courage to do right by the state’s most vulnerable citizens.
DeRay Mckesson: Van is just such a good interviewer and was so sort of like chill. And you’re like, there is no way Van is the only person to ask you about AIPAC. That is–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Like the fact that you even suggested that is such a weird. That was weird. The fact that you didn’t anticipate this question was weird. The interesting, interesting thing was weird. You’re like, you know, you up here laughing at Kamala, and you are getting smoked on this podcast that you know was you probably went into thinking was friendly fire. Mind you, you did a podcast with Charlie Kirk. So.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yup.
DeRay Mckesson: That was not good. What made me sad about the interview is I’m like, gosh darn it, who do we have on our side? Because it is slim pickings over on the left right now at the national level. It’s like we, you know, Kamala’s probably gonna run again. We got AOC and Bernie. Bernie’s, you know, old. Pete’s not you know, I don’t know. So like, you know, you knock Gavin out, and then we we gotta go find some people. So that made me a little nervous, but yeah, Gavin. I I will always hold it against Gavin when he personally felt like he needed to go tear up those the homeless people’s tents. Like when he did that–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: I was like, oh, this man will do anything to like try and muster up some stuff, and that was bad to me. Myles, you were gonna say something?
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, I was just reflecting on what Sharhonda was saying. And A, I think that reparations has to be something that we see. I think that, like, literally, like it’s it’s it’s it’s a cartoonish figure to think that the the the collective Black wealth is going to be negative within our generation. Like we like there’s really no other policy saving grace. There’s no healthcare system, there’s no trickle down, there’s none of that [bleep] is going to really move us down because we are still suffering from that original wound. And I and I would venture to say a lot of the white bigotry we’re experiencing is because of a because of that that original wound too. And because uh there’s been no wealth pumped into those spaces and the Black people who are there, they don’t got it either. And so I just think that like it it just can’t be something that we don’t um think about. And then again, I’m thinking about Ta-Nehisi Coates’ essay and how he brilliantly threaded events that have happened since chattel slavery. Um. That that were case for reparation. And now Altadena can find itself a part of one of those things.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yup.
Myles E. Johnson: Because now we know that that was a white supremacist targeted attack. It was not a random fire that happened in a Black middle class community. That was a fire that was targeted towards Black people. So we don’t gotta go all the way to Tulsa no more. It’s still happening today, and you still vetoed it. Ooh, Gavin, you are going to hell.
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: In terms of the news, I wanted to bring up this essay by David Brooks, who you all might know because he used to be a columnist for the New York Times. He is now writing in The Atlantic, and the essay is called America Needs a Mass Movement Now. And I’ll tell you, I had to go lay down after reading this because it made me so angry. [laugh from Sharhonda] I was like [makes a frustrated sound], and it made me angry for three core reasons. One is I’m always as somebody who like spent who rearranged my life to fight in the street and like quit my job, did all those things. I am always frustrated by people who have done none of those things telling us how to do movement work. Like it just drives me like a little bit nuts. David Brooks is one of the most privileged people in this country. And he really is saying, y’all need to go in the street. Cause there’s not a point in this where he he identifies himself as one of the people who needs to be fighting anybody, but he very much is like, y’all need to go put all the stuff on the line because the world’s falling apart. But the second thing that I thought was so interesting, that I actually saw a Black woman who I like do recently, is this article has no mention of the protests of the past decade. They didn’t happen to him. It just they are not, it literally is not there. You’re like the whole conversation about movements at all come from 2014. Like this is that language, everything’s a movement, people in the street, this is all derivative in this moment from 2014. And it is just absent. Like it didn’t, Black people didn’t do anything. The police, like, there is no no organizing happened to him in this last decade. The organizing he cites is from 40 years ago, 50 years ago. And and he sort of makes his claim about Trump. But I there was a panel recently that my friend attended, and he texted me, and the person on the panel said something like, you know, my book came out in 2018 before all that protest stuff happened. As in before George Floyd got killed, but that was not before 2014. And I am fascinated by the way people benefit from the protests. Like this person’s book wouldn’t exist if not for the all of the things that the protests birthed. And they literally are like, didn’t happen, wasn’t important. Like, I’m like that drives me so crazy. And the third thing about this essay, and he, I, you know, I think his point, yeah, we need more movements. Like, yes, yes, yes. But the third thing that I see him do in this and that most people do is that um they don’t actually support the protests when they happen. I can’t tell you the number of rooms I’m in now where people are asking me for advice. And I’m like, you know, I remember when we were in the street and you told us this is the wrong way to do it. And now you are, as a privileged person being like, y’all need to shut that thing down. DeRay, why are we not doing a boycott? And I’m like, why when when everybody was ready and people were like on it, you were one of the people who, you know, was not with it. And I get that people come to this work on their own time. Like, I get it. We need to have space for people. Like all those things are true. But why would you think people will continue to sacrifice so much when when they do it, people don’t support them or don’t support them afterwards? I I I struggle with that a lot as somebody who um was willing and did give up a lot. So I this annoyed me. His article really annoyed me. And I’m still annoyed. And I’m annoyed by all the people who sort of do this thing that he’s doing right now without any skin in the game. Because what happens, and y’all know this, it’ll be poor people who are willing to risk it all who–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yup.
DeRay Mckesson: –actually do the hardest work. They will put their bodies on the line. It’ll be people who are willing to sacrifice everything they have to do it. And it’s not the David Brooks’ of the world. He is gonna write this essay and go to sleep.
Myles E. Johnson: [laugh] So here’s my thing. I think that what Mr. Brooks did in this article um really exposed the the the the very obvious racism in white supremacy that is that is a part of most people’s thinking. People do not see the work that Black people were doing 10 years ago as real work because he’s talking about America. And that was not American work. That was Black work. That was something that has nothing to do with him, right? So there’s no connection between again, reparations, police brutality, and then also what we’re seeing, even though as we as we speak, we see that police officers um and and and young Republicans uh in their text messages, they all share a common hatred of Black, but we don’t want to talk about anti-Blackness. We do not want to use our the Atlantic platform or or New York Times platform to protect the critical race theory and the Black feminist thought because you just see that as just as as race as race work, right? Just like um rock and roll was race music. That’s just that’s just race work. And–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Where are we gonna get to the real work? Um. It’s this kind of reminded me of that that that famous moment with Toni Morrison when she was asked when are you gonna start writing about real characters, meaning white characters. The idea is when you’re gonna start doing real work and talk about poor white people and rich white people getting along again.
Sharhonda Bossier: Mm-hmm.
Myles E. Johnson: And what I say to you is that’s never gonna happen because A, you made these poor white people worship into um compliance, this like kind of like celebrity culture monster. And also, the only way that there is to make those two classes work together is repairing what you did to Black people. That is the whole work. That is the thing to do. That is the people to activate, that is the thing to satisfy. If you’re not satisfying them, then it’s never going to happen. And it just feels it disgusted me to read somebody continuously trying to um figure out every which way to make this nightmare go away, but the right thing. Like, like, like we gotta get people in the street. We gotta do this, we gotta do this, we gotta do this. You have to center Black Americans because this whole anti-Black American system relies on uh the subjugation of Black Americans. So if we do not fix that, then this country is rotting. And Martin Luther King said that before he died years and years and decades ago. And now you’re in a this dying corpse and you’re scared and you’re like, well, damn, maybe we can get give this cancer patient some NyQuil and it’ll be better. You can’t do it. So either you do some some real chemotherapy, which means be okay with the white racist populace being upset with you and change the conversation to, oh, it needs to be about reparations, it needs to be about why is the this this debt happening, why is police brutality happening? Why are all these things happening? And that needs to be everybody’s focused work, or it’s not gonna happen. So to me, it’s always about race, it’s always about black and white, and either you’re gonna be on the Black side or the white side. But if you’re on the gray side, like Mr. Brooks, you’re still on the white side, and you’re still gonna and then you’re still gonna see this uh this this nightmare unfold. So it [sings Twilight Zone music] like. [laughing]
Sharhonda Bossier: You’re like we’re in the Twilight Zone!
DeRay Mckesson: Crazy.
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh my brain is really firing in funny ways today. But Myles mentioned MLK. And I don’t know if you all saw the um statement that–
DeRay Mckesson: Open AI.
Sharhonda Bossier: –Open AI put out mm hmm about the use of MLK’s images and and the restricting of uses of historical figures. Um. Anyway, different story. You know, I when when this article came through, I was like, I know that ain’t who I think it is. You know what I mean? Because I’ve read a lot of David Brooks as a New York Times subscriber. I know y’all, I know. Um. I’ve seen him at, you know, Aspen, all sorts of things. And I remember at the height of the protest, him calling BLM activists radicals, you know. And um him saying things like the radicals are out of control. Those of us who are like sensible and who are moderate are actually going to be the ones to like chart the path forward, right? And I Myles just want to underscore your point about everyone, I think, seeing what was happening in 2014 as like a Black problem. And I think what was really scary to people about 2020 was that you had a whole lot of non Black people out in support of the protest, right? But it part of it was because they were starting to feel the squeeze of the system that David Brooks is now starting to talk about, right? It was the height of the pandemic. People were out of work. They realized government that there was no [bleep] safety net for them, right? And so, yes, they were out because they were finally starting to connect some of those dots for themselves. They were like, oh, I see it now. And that was actually a really scary moment for powerful people in this country because I think there was a growing sense of cross-racial solidarity. I think there was a growing sense of cross-class solidarity. And the moment that they were able to again make a boogeyman out of immigrants and you know, kind of, you know like, start to pull us apart again. We find ourselves where we are right now. But I think Black people and Black activists have been saying this for a long time. It’s us today, it’s y’all tomorrow. And I just think that people don’t believe that. And David Brooks is a prime example of that. And that man has too big a platform. Hire somebody else, y’all.
DeRay Mckesson: I was shocked, Myles?
Myles E. Johnson: And then also to your point too, I think pop cultural moments, or not even pop cultural moments, but um I would say pop moments, because there was a time where you saw everybody with and or so many more people with Bell Hooks All About Love, right?
Sharhonda Bossier: Yes.
Myles E. Johnson: And the gateway into ideas that Bell Hooks held were through love because so many people were like, girl, the dating pool got pee in it. Let me read this book in order to do it. But in that text, you figure out that A, you don’t make white supremacy about people, you all you begin to understand systems. So now um within that text, you have so many more people understanding that white supremacy and imperialism and capitalism and patriarchy all swim together. And I think that um that also attributes to the the illumination. And the um other thing that which your response made me think of Sharhonda is how I’ve been reflecting on Black folks and and and and specifically Black folks’ reaction to this this particular um political moment and whatever, like Black women saying we’re gonna rest or Black people saying we mind our business and stuff like that. And I don’t mean to well, I’m about to do it, so I’m about to psychoanalyze a people. But like whatever. You could say you have your own individual reasons why you arrived at that. But I do think the collective thing that Black people are thinking to themselves and we’re seeing that manifest is does this country that has not done good to me deserve to exist? Now I know that my dramas are here. I know that my love stories are here, I know that my big mama’s here. I know that my cousin needs um this this treatment or is going to this college or whatever. So I understand that the destruction of this country would not be good um for the us in our lifetime. But I think that you have to have a um clear vision that this country is capable of repairing what it did wrong. And now we’re seeing a lot of people be relaxed on it because they do not think that this country is capable of changing because we have not seen change. We have not seen um measurable change in our in our lifetimes or in our folks’ lifetimes. Like I think and and and without that Black activation, because Black people tend to be our moral political compass, without that Black activation, you don’t see those mass movements that Mr. Brooks is um begging for.
Sharhonda Bossier: Well, Black people seem to be our moral compass unless we are talking about the CBC and them being bought by a special interest group, uh and losing their status, at least in the eyes of most of us as the their conscious of Congress, you know?
DeRay Mckesson: Oh, the CBC. Sharhonda, I think you’re right. What what does it mean to be a moral compass? And Myles, I think you’re right that like we have always been the moral compass, certainly around issues of justice and organizing. And you know, the the civil rights movement um has a long shadow in the world when it thinks about movements because of this moral claim that you know that that it held. And then you get the CBC and the short version is the CBC has been taking money from AIPAC, which uh what there’s a beautiful article about it in the Nation, I believe. Sharhonda lead us.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I mean, I think what, you know, we were talking about was um the fact that we have many of us have been very disappointed in uh lots of high profile and like people who were in positions of real power, like Hakeem Jeffries, right? Um. Not saying anything about the genocide happening in Palestine, not standing up for Palestinian human rights, not calling out the human rights atrocities and crimes committed by Israel, and then realizing that a lot of that is because they have taken money from AIPAC and AIPAC has drawn a pretty bright red line around those things. Um. And so wondering what it means to be part of a group of people, right, who have inherited a legacy again, talking about themselves calling themselves the conscience of Congress, um understanding that for many Black radicals from Angela Davis to, you know um, I mean, hell, even Vic Mensa these days, right? Like any anybody who has positioned themselves as like a Black intellectual, right, um has has said that what is happening in Palestine is a genocide and is an atrocity. And to not have Black congressional leaders um feel like they can say that because of um just the nature of big money in politics, um has been, I think, really disheartening and disappointing to a lot of us. Um. And I I also just want to say something else as as someone who has done a lot of you know, other organizing. I think the last couple of years in particular have been, I’ll just say really confusing for those of us who have come to think of, you know, white Jewish people in the US as liberal and progressive and who have supported so many other causes that we care about, like abortion rights, et cetera, et cetera, for this to be a place where there has been so much friction and so much tension between and among our communities. Um. You know, Jewish American, white Jewish Americans have a long history of like standing up for civil rights, right? Like if you think about them getting on, you know, bus rides during Freedom Summer. Um. And a lot of that also extend extends back to the fact that when lots of white Jewish people immigrated here from Europe and couldn’t get hired, HBCUs hired them as professors, right? Like we just have such a like a relationship where we have walked arm in arm, hand in hand on so many issues. And this moment feels like a moment of fracturing and a forming of new and different coalitions, except for at the congressional level. Where people are not speaking up on something because they care more about being reelected and their ability to fundraise than they seem to care about being on the right side of history and humanity.
DeRay Mckesson: I will say, shout out to the activists. Obviously I I focused on police, prisons, and jails. I learned about AIPAC as like you know, I heard about AIPAC, but I learned alongside people amplifying this online. And I’m like, I love that when people said y’all were crazy for talking about AIPAC and you know, AIPAC has more money than anybody and da-da-da-da-da. People were not deterred and like kept the fight going. Because now you see this backlash to AIPAC on the left, at least in some places, which I think people would have never imagined. My father has a perspective on Israel and Palestine in a way that he frankly had never even thought about Palestine or Israel before. But it was a set a small group of people, like a relentless group of people who were unwilling to let this be something that went by the wayside. And I just think about that moral compass that we talk about, is you know, there’s a part where the these points where you know what right is and you are just unwilling to let it go. And, you know, shout out to the activists. Like you probably saw the uh the person running for Congress who returned all the AIPAC money publicly.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Was like, I’m giving it back. That would have been unheard of before because you know, you need all the money you can get. So, oh, and then we didn’t talk about Cory Booker. Oh, Cory.
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh. Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Baby. They got Cory Booker in that interview.
Myles E. Johnson: I think all of this stuff is so interesting because well, I sound like Gavin, it makes my brain fire off in multiple ways. Because first thing that I think about is I’m a little bit excited. Because I do think that one of the reasons why Black people, and my first care is definitely Black people, have been so stagnant to the point of again, negative wealth. When we when we see things happen to Black people, it’s because we’ve had these type of leaders and we have never had a moment where we really got to be confrontational about those leaders and also exposing them. So although this particular moment is painful for a lot of people and scary for a lot of people, I do think it’s extremely necessary. And, you know, I feel like weekly it might be like a little annoying to some of the listeners, and I apologize, but I feel like weekly I come on here and talk about how a lot of these institutions that have made money in assimilation their priority are bleeding political and cultural power because they can’t seem to get around something that is actually unifying. I know that you were talking about AIPAC money on the left, but that is a unifying force on the right, too. Some of the unifying force is uh also juiced by anti-Semitism. They’re like, you giving our–
Sharhonda Bossier: Oh 100%.
Myles E. Johnson: –tax money to Jews?
Sharhonda Bossier: A hundred percent. A hundred percent.
Myles E. Johnson: But either but either way, that is a un that is a unifying thing that still most politicians won’t say. And even that when you talk about that politician, he still had to do so much uh talking about Israel’s right to exist and da-da-da-da-da-da, that I just don’t think really resonates with most people who find this to be um to to find this be a problem. I really hope that this the Eric Adams, the Cuomo, the the the Cory Bookers, the Hakeem Jeffries, I really hope the Kamala Harrises, I really I re– I really, I really hope that this moment uh kind of cracks them and makes new leadership that is actually actually left, actually radical come through. And um yeah, that that that I think that’s like my biggest hope for for this moment.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. Um. We’ve been all over the place around the world and back again today. [laughing] Um. You know, speaking of sort of, you know, being the conscience of something, right? Um. I want to talk a little bit about um some of the pushes that started on the left around the importance of content moderation on the internet, right? To rein in hate speech and speech that people saw as potentially promoting violence. And as you’ll recall, like a few years ago, you can think back to um you know, the number of times we’ve seen a Black person die at the hands of police on social media, right? Or at the top of a news organization’s webpage, right? Uh. You can think about the push from people on the right to ensure that people who got kicked off like YouTube or Twitter because of, you know, election lies or COVID misinformation, right? That they were like, those people are exercising their first amendment rights, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But what’s happening right now in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder is that you have people on the right who are pushing tech companies to pull down the video because the video is still available online if you want to look for it. Um. And it’s interesting that the very people who gutted at the sort of content moderation capacity of these tech companies are now calling on these tech companies to exercise a power and capacity that they fought to weaken, right? Um. And defang. And so it’s I I’m I’m bringing it here because we’ve been talking a lot about the sort of consolidation of like oversight and ownership of like traditional and social media places and spaces by people on the right. And I just think it’s really interesting, given especially how they’re trying to sort of lionize Charlie Kirk, that this is now the place where the right is trying to leverage uh what they won’t call censorship, but they will call content moderation, right? To further their ends. And I just I just wanted to bring it here for discussion because again, I feel like y’all always see something or connect a dot that I don’t see or can’t quite connect.
Myles E. Johnson: Well, I loved your analysis. I didn’t you know love the article, but I loved your analysis of the article. Um. I think what so here here’s what’s interesting. And because again, that young Republican um text message thread bounce back, and and you know, my personal belief is that that is the culture and those ideas are the energizing battery of what we’re seeing for the right. Um. That’s how come when people say, Oh, I’m just voting for Donald Trump, um and it’s because of eggs, I’m I’m calling bullshit because I see what it’s about growing being a being a kid who grew up in suburban rural Georgia. So I see so I see what it’s really about. You can’t really trick me like that. Um. I think what’s interesting about this moment is if we were a a non-racist society, we wouldn’t have to uh protest that this Charlie Kirk video get off the air because we would have done it when we saw we would have done it when we saw Black people it happened to the Black people, right? But when it happened to Black people, it was um some parts of the dark web dark web, it was made fun of. It was used um uh as as entertainment. And now that it’s something that is happening, because DeRay probably gonna bleep this out, but you know, Charlie Kirk got taken out like a nigga. So now that you’ve seen somebody get take out like like some like a boys in the hood scene.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yup.
Myles E. Johnson: Um. Now that is too offensive and we need to get it taken off. But if we just only saw all human life as sacred, we wouldn’t have to do this because we already have remedied this. And if we’re being for real, when we talk about um this is reminding me of what you were saying about Jewish people and and the change with Jewish people, what we’re seeing with Jewish people is Jewish people get more centered and more um and and more situated in their whiteness outside of Jewishness. So we already know what whiteness calls for. We already know that whiteness produced the lynching postcard. So now that we’re seeing um a lot of white supremacist figures being cannibalized by the very culture that they created, um now there’s calls for censorship and and moderation and stuff like that. But when it was happening to Black people, no matter what area you want to call it in, whether it’s Rodney King, whether it was 2020 or whether it’s lynching postcards, that wasn’t a problem. It’s only a problem now that you know those chickens have come home to roost. And and you’re seeing your white savior get Black demises that that now it’s a problem.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, though, with this article and your analysis, Sharhonda, I missed this. I did not see this online. I didn’t see like there was I just didn’t see this. But I have seen 8,000 versions of that video. I’ve seen every angle of the video. I’ve seen the aftermath of the video. I’ve seen people take stuff off the table in the video. And uh you know, what happens when you delete all the safety and hate moderation teams and all of a sudden it’s used against like it doesn’t benefit your side. And you know.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yup.
DeRay Mckesson: We’ve all said this before, people have said this before is that like what who is the evil genius on our side using these things against them? Or in the movement world, malicious compliance.
Sharhonda Bossier: Mm-hmm.
DeRay Mckesson: Right. When you like when you comply with the rules so intensely that it breaks the system. I love that. That’s like one of my favorite. Like, I love when people go to talks, all stand up and turn their back at the speaker. Like, what a brilliant, brilliant way to do it. Um. Or like we shut down the police department in St. Louis. Everybody came in to fill out forms. And that was how we got in the door. Everybody was like, Oh, I need to like change my address. I need to do it like, that’s how we get 20 people in the lobby, and then we all sit down and the police are losing their mind, right? It’s just like brilliant brilliant organizing. Um. I I am interested though. You saw you probably have seen like TikTok now is owned by the American billionaires, and they seem to be heavily–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yup.
DeRay Mckesson: –moderating the Israel Palestine um content. Is what do you do when you get more of these, not even Charlie Kirk in terms of killing, but when people start posting even misinformation about the right.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
DeRay Mckesson: Right now, we we often deal with the misinformation on the left. We it’s coming from somebody else. But what happens when every the platforms are just like, well, whatever people say is just what they say. You’re like, this is, you know, the first time somebody on our side really nails it, it’s gonna be pure chaos for everybody. Um. So I’m interested to see what that looks like. But Sharhonda, I hadn’t thought about this until you said it. Myles, you look like you’re about to say something.
Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, I was just I was just thinking about what you were just talking about and um how that takes a radical imagination and a reverent imagination. You know I love Mona, @dontcallmeewhitegirl. And as um [?]–
DeRay Mckesson: That’s my girl.
Myles E. Johnson: For as hood as she is, she’s able to talk in a way around stuff that I think is actually really provocative. And and and because the left, specifically the Black neoliberal left has has been wrapped in such respectability and such normalcy and such um institutional ways of thinking, it’s like though other very other radical ways of of of engaging with the internet and with these narratives are almost just blocked out, you know. Again, I’m I’m recalling the the the the the the death of criticism and all these other things. So now we kind of see a defanged um left that can’t actually seize the day when it comes to these things because they’re they’re they’re they’re they’re left out of um being being a part of the political movement, which to me is you know, sad to say the least.
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
Myles E. Johnson: Two reasons why I wanted to say this this next story. A, to pay my respects. And then also because some news that we didn’t get into that I still want to connect with this the way that I’m giving you this news is that NBC um news laid off 150 Black, Latino, Asian American, LGBT diversity teams. So this news is coming from Them magazine. [laughing] For however much critique that I have for them. I’m like, I’m like, keep fighting girls because you one of the only ones left. So my news is about Miss Majors. Um. Miss Majors passed away at 78. If you do not know who she is, she is an activist that um was around during Stonewall. She is one of the activists that had totally just just paved the way for the um transgender and LGBT revolution that we were that we’ve been seeing since the eight since the um ’70s and ’80s, specifically the ’80s, ’90s, and now. And she passed away. Um. Again, when I think about these figures like, you know, with D’Angelo, when I think about uh Nikki Giovanni passing away, and and then when I think about Miss Majors passing away at 78, it’s really hard for me to sit in a certain type of loss around them because I can only imagine, you know, my work here is done, and this is a new cycle of darkness that I don’t necessarily need to be here with. So I get that it is um our human, most of us fear death, idea that we want to be here for 100 years, or we want this person to be here until they’re this age. But what that really calls for sometimes, I think I totally understand when the spirit wants to leave the body and say, you know, I’m gonna go home to glory, and y’all, and y’all can y’all, y’all hold on down here. I want to read a little bit from the article. It reads, it is with profound sadness that the House of GG announces the passing of our beloved leader and revolutionary figure and the TLGBQ Liberation Movement. Miss Majors Griffin, Gracie, the organization wrote in a post noting that the activist had passed on October 13th. Her enduring legacy is a testament to her resilience, activism, and dedication to creating safe spaces for Black trans communities and all trans people. We are eternally grateful for Miss Major’s life. Her contributions and how deeply she poured into into those that she loved, um. Again there is so much anti trans rhetoric going on. There is uh such weaponization of those identities so for us um as a Black queer trans community to lose such a significant elder it means something but I I I am just somebody of faith who does not think that like death and births happen um chaotically. And I think that this is a she leaves room for so many more of us to grow and be inventive and really meet this moment, how she met the moment that she was offered. Because she did her work, right? And I think that we’re in a moment now where we can figure out how do we continue that work but mutate it so it can be a part of uh this new digital internet/physical augmented reality that we’re living in. And again, I also want to talk abou this being on Them magazine. And NBC um gutting so many of their special uh the their special {?]’s and stuff and how that is a trend that I again think is connected to the death of cultural criticism. Um of course a trans the trans panic that we’re seeeing and how important it is if you know a queer trans artist, to suppor them. If you know a queer trans writer, to support them. Um. Because the thoughts that queer trans people create challenge that very imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy that we’re seeing de deconstruct. And if we don’t have those voices willing to push um our society to new levels, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if it comes with backlash, we will stagnate and we will die. So um even though these people are cowering and these people are just thinking about their bottom line, um we have to be people who think about culture and society and how necessary it is for these voices to be heard, no matter how popular or unpopular or profitable or unprofitable they are, because it’s about something bigger than that. It’s about us living in a freer and stranger world than the one that we are in today.
Sharhonda Bossier: I had two immediate thoughts when I got the well, first when I got the news that she had been hospitalized because I was seeing some of my friends share some of her like GoFundMe or, you know. Um. And I just think about how many trans elders we don’t have, right? Um. How many people don’t make it to their 70s. Um. Also she’s got a young child, right? I think she and her partner had a kid a few years ago. Um. And so thinking a lot about her family, just like on a a kind of personal level. Um. But I think the other thing that I’m thinking about is, you know, who our Black trans kind of icons really are right now, um who are not tied to entertainment, right? Because I think to the extent that we have highly visible trans people um that we are looking to, you know, whose work we follow, a lot of them work in entertainment. And like there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not, you know, because entertainment and Hollywood shape our perceptions of so much. But I think, you know, who are the people who are are activists whose activism extends beyond like their creativity. Do you know what I mean? And I know that that like that’s a hard maybe, maybe the distinction I’m trying to draw doesn’t really make sense, right? But like, um you know, Miss Major wasn’t an actor. Like there are, they are just like ways that I think sometimes for queer and trans people being seen as entertainment um in a lot of ways defangs their activism, you know, and like, and I’m I’m thinking a lot about what we consume that’s created by queer and trans people and trans people in particular, um that we sort of remove from that context and and remove from them, and then don’t think about the fact that they’ve been and particularly in this moment, made a cultural boogeyman in a way that is um I think harmful to a lot of people and a lot of things that we care about, right? So, like a good example, you know, everyone’s doing the like clock it thing, right? Um. All the kids and people are like, well, what’s the and you know, Black women are like, what finger is it supposed to be, right? All of that. But we are talking about that removed from the context that it comes from. Right. And and and removed from the people who’ve like developed it, who’ve given us that language, who’ve given us that gesture, et cetera. And then, you know, when I’m getting my hair done and the Black women in the shop want to talk about it, they don’t want to talk about ballroom culture, right? They don’t want to talk about queer people. They don’t want to talk about trans people, but they want to get the gesture right. They want to, you know, and I’m trying to figure out how we how you can see that you can know where it comes from. And then when someone tells you, well, I don’t want a boy playing on my daughter’s soccer team, you don’t connect those two things, you know? And there’s something about a lot of the highly visible trans people in our culture in this moment being seen as entertainment, either because they have official informal jobs in Hollywood that still isn’t doing the work of advancing queer and trans rights. And that’s what I’m trying to figure out. Like, how do we recognize the cultural contributions of queer and trans people and trans people in particular? I I should center there in this conversation, and also understand that it’s incumbent upon us to also protect trans people, you know. Um. And I I I feel like people are comfortable with the the entertainment parts of it, the cultural contribution parts of it. But then when we get to the like, and now that means that kids should be able to use the bathrooms that best coincide with their gender identity, all of it falls apart. Um. And I and and I feel like we are losing some of that in this in this current moment with some of the folks um who are most visible and and out as trans, I should say.
Myles E. Johnson: All my heroes are dead. So what do I have to lose? I think that when we talk about minstrelsy, when we talk about the moment that we’re in, it did not skip over the trans community. So how I see it is that Hollywood in of itself is a, and when I’m saying Hollywood, I’m talking about entertainment, American entertainment is a far right apparatus built off of minstrelsy. And in order to participate, there is assimilation and and and um and branding and flattening that has to do to both yourself and your movement in order to succeed in those things. And what we see now is a a legion of of of Black trans and trans people um willingly participating with it because they don’t got no money and they want attention. So if if I’m putting names to it, I’m saying that it’s actually ridiculous to um to be to be seeing that a Hope Giselle is both a thief, that she is um somebody who was colluding with the far right and is now being rewarded by that community. And when there is times like now where we do not have critical thinkers or intellectuals or critic critics to go out, we’re relying on her in order to guide us through the darkness when she is a piece of that darkness because of what she lusts for. And I think that um we’re in a critical moment where the people who are um who who who who are minstrels who want to um who want fame and who have figured out how to talk like intellectuals or talk like people who are confronting culture, have figured out how to infiltrate um that culture and confuse people. And now that we’re in a moment that really needs actual opposition, actual criticism, actual leadership, we are bankrupt in those areas. And I don’t want to single out Hope Giselle, even though it’s like [bleep] it.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: But like, but like, but that that I’m just naming a pattern that I’m seeing, you know, and it has nothing to do with being likable or unlikable. It really has to do with um us being inside of a generation of people who’ve seen activism or seen um communications as a as a pathway to fame in social media, and we’re kind of dealing with the how with how empty and how ill prepared um we are as a community with that. And I think deaths like this highlight that because who do who who who who can we talk to? You know.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: And if if if everybody is really, if everybody can really be muffled by um by a book deal, if everybody can be muffled by a television point, you know, uh Laverne Cox, we’re in this moment right now of of true far right authoritarianism. Come on, come on. But we’re in this real moment, and what she has to offer with to us is that she [bleep] a MAGA cop. That’s what she had to offer to us, that she was with a MAGA cop for three three years. That is people who are ill-prepared for this moment. And again, I don’t think it’s just happening in the trans community.
Sharhonda Bossier: No, for sure.
Myles E. Johnson: But I think it’s happening–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: –in our community collectively. And I think the reduction to us to these moments of, oh, you tap your fingers and that came from ballroom and all this other stuff. I think that those are easy things to create content around that don’t matter because who cares if it’s about ballroom if you can’t pay your rent?
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Who cares what’s going on if they’re at your door talking about you can’t get health care? Who’s what does that matter in the relationship to reparations? That is the work is to figure out how to make the gender abolition movement connected to the greater Black liberation movement and make that clear and clear and clear. It’s not about being being not it’s it’s it’s like because Black people don’t have houses and we don’t have property, we we we we state claim on cultural property and like this is ours, this is ours, it’s ours. It don’t matter if we all in the gas chamber. So what’s next? Like. [laugh]
Sharhonda Bossier: I mean, yeah, I I just I was I was messy and stumbling getting there, but you I think you could see where I was trying to go.
Myles E. Johnson: Oh, I oh I saw it–
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: –sister. [laughter]
DeRay Mckesson: So I didn’t know Miss Major. So thank you for bringing um bringing this forward. I I think both of you, I I agree with both of you differently. Myles, I think, you know, one of the things that happened, right, is that everybody became an activist and nobody had to do activist work. Right. It was like just you could just say it. So it was the people getting tear gassed were the same as the people showing up on the red carpet and it was the same as the people whose saying I was raised by drug addicts.
Myles E. Johnson: Which are the same people who stole one hundred thousand dollars in order to build a closet. Like like like like you know what I mean? Like when we’re talking about what’s really going on. We have to be real about what we’re looking at right now.
DeRay Mckesson: I do think that like being clear about what is what and who is who. I I also look back and I think about how so few people have written in this moment. Like the people doing real work aren’t writing anything, and Lord knows it’s a million books by the people who were hanging out. And you’re like, well, this is sort of interesting. So I even think about people who asked me advice and stuff. And I’m I’m trying to send them things. And the best things I can send them is from the ’70s and ’80s. Those people was writing some stuff and they like did it very well. And I’m like, you know, shout out to you. And then to your point, um to your point, Sharhonda, your first point, I do think about, I think about what Pose did to change sort of middle America’s understanding of the trans community. And how, you know, one show in one moment can’t be the only thing that it can’t be one show, and then people on a red car–, like, you know, we have to think more with more complexity about how we show the range of people’s lives. Um. And I don’t think we’ve nailed that. I think that, you know, I think your call out about like entertainment and and all that stuff is is right. Um. And the third thing I’ll say is that I my perennial wary worry about the left organizers is that we win and don’t protect. So we get a win. We like actually move the needle and don’t anticipate the backlash. So then everybody just goes and does what they want to do. And then when you’re like, well, where the [?] and you’re like, and you’re like, yo, you didn’t protect it. You like thought you thought the win was the protection. The win is never the protection. The protection is a different strategy. And I think that this is um that was certainly true about the work around the police. I look up, I think about how many people were like, police, police, police, police. I look now, none of them here. Nobody’s here. They are all gone. But people were like, oh no, we did it. And you’re like, no, the protect is actually the second part of the win.
Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, our sheriff’s department deputies are still getting matching tattoos, y’all. So. [laughter]
DeRay Mckesson: Shout out to the gangs. The OG gangs.
Sharhonda Bossier: Shout out to the gangs. [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. [music break]
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