Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fergo, So welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Today we were visiting our conversation with
Speaker 1: writer and activist Brittany Packnant Cunningham. She's the host of
Speaker 1: the podcast Undistracted. She's also an MSNBC analyst and a
Speaker 1: former member of both President Obama's twenty first Century Policing
Speaker 1: Task Force in the Ferguson Commission. It was there in
Speaker 1: Ferguson in Missouri that you may have first learned of
Speaker 1: Brittany's work. In the aftermath of the unjust killing of
Speaker 1: Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson, Brittany became a
Speaker 1: leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement. We sat
Speaker 1: down last year about a month after the insurrection. She
Speaker 1: actually lives four or five blocks away from the Capitol
Speaker 1: and remembers the day in painstaking detail. Now I wanted
Speaker 1: to replay this talk with Brittany not only because of
Speaker 1: the one year anniversary of that fateful day, but because
Speaker 1: she offers something that I feel is missing right now, perspective.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but everyone in my life
Speaker 1: right now is anxious, angry, underslept, and overworked. People want
Speaker 1: life to return to the way it was. They want
Speaker 1: schools to reopen safely. They want the unvaccinated to get vaccinated.
Speaker 1: They want to stop spending so much time on their
Speaker 1: phones and on the Internet, but can't seem to wit either,
Speaker 1: especially as human contact becomes increasingly fraught. If you're listening
Speaker 1: and feel the same, you're not alone. I feel it too,
Speaker 1: and not just because I'm recording this intro inside a
Speaker 1: small closet in my apartment, although that's not helping. But perspective,
Speaker 1: which I think Brittany offers in this talk is what
Speaker 1: gets us out of bed. It's what gets us through
Speaker 1: to the other side of this moment, this pandemic. Her perspective,
Speaker 1: especially around the insurrection, racial justice activism, imperfect allies, is
Speaker 1: one I really needed to hear when we sat down
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one. But in relistening, I don't know
Speaker 1: something happened. It felt even more urgent and inspiring today
Speaker 1: than it did then. Brittany's work is plenty inspiring, but
Speaker 1: I'm more curious about what she inspires in you and
Speaker 1: I away from this conversation. We're going to get through this,
Speaker 1: not with anxiety and anger, but action. Until then, please
Speaker 1: take care of yourself. I know these are trying times.
Speaker 1: Be kind to others when and where you can. We'll
Speaker 1: be back next week with new episodes of Talk Easy.
Speaker 1: For today, here is Brittany Pact Nick Cut again. Brittany, Hi, Hi,
Speaker 1: how are you doing. I am I'm a little tired.
Speaker 1: Always a good way to start a podcast, yeah, always.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's interesting. I've been really public about
Speaker 1: my own mental health journey and my deep belief in
Speaker 1: the power of therapists, and in multiple conversations with my
Speaker 1: own therapist over the last few weeks, I realized that
Speaker 1: the latest bout of insomnia that I have been dealing with,
Speaker 1: which I've been dealing with off and on frankly since
Speaker 1: the pandemic hit, but it has gotten very, very bad
Speaker 1: in the last few weeks. That actually what probably triggered
Speaker 1: it was the insurrection. I only live about ten minutes
Speaker 1: from the Capitol, so I try to leave my house
Speaker 1: that day and my husband and I ended up coming
Speaker 1: fully into the edge of it, and so we saw,
Speaker 1: you know, police that were Metro police that were staging.
Speaker 1: We rode past this kind of caravan of Trump trucks
Speaker 1: with like the flags and that don't tread on me
Speaker 1: stuff on there, and I was like, we were like
Speaker 1: four or five blocks from our home. And I think
Speaker 1: because of everything that I've been through in my life
Speaker 1: in the kind of work that I do, I did
Speaker 1: not expect it to have as much of an effect
Speaker 1: on me emotionally and psychologically as it has until I
Speaker 1: talked with my therapist and realized I probably haven't dealt
Speaker 1: with all of the other stuff either, right, like all
Speaker 1: the style, the ways we were treated in protest, the
Speaker 1: tear gassing and the pepper spray, and the running for
Speaker 1: our lives and not knowing if your friends are going
Speaker 1: to make it, and having your friends arrested for you know,
Speaker 1: being audacious and black and honest, like all of these things,
Speaker 1: I probably just kept moving through. And so I think
Speaker 1: some of my some of the bracing that my psyche
Speaker 1: is doing without even my knowledge, is because we know
Speaker 1: what happens when treasonous seditionists, white supremacists are not held accountable.
Speaker 1: And let's talk about those rioters for a second. As
Speaker 1: I know you've seen, the press has tried to offer
Speaker 1: answers as to why this storming of the capital happened.
Speaker 1: Now many have pointed to the financial inequities of these
Speaker 1: rioters as a way of solving the mystery of January six,
Speaker 1: as if the why and the how isn't clear by now.
Speaker 1: But you wrote something I like this past week. You said,
Speaker 1: white supremacy is not a mystery, and if financial inequities
Speaker 1: turn people into insurrectionists, don't you think black and brown
Speaker 1: folks who are systemically and disproportionately in low income circumstances
Speaker 1: would have rated the capital long before. Stop this, stop
Speaker 1: the economic anxiety talk. If these folks had real economic anxiety,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't keep picking the party of the one percent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, white supremacy is not a mystery, especially not
Speaker 1: in a country where the founding experiment was white supremacy.
Speaker 1: It justified in their minds the genocide of indigenous people
Speaker 1: and the thieving of their land. It justified in their
Speaker 1: mind the thieving of bodies and from enslaved Africans. It
Speaker 1: has continued to justify in a lot of people's minds,
Speaker 1: the closing of borders that were open to their own
Speaker 1: European ancestors but should be closed to people from the
Speaker 1: global South. In their mind, it's the same thing that
Speaker 1: has justified Islamophobia and anti Semitism, and the retort that
Speaker 1: all lives matter when someone would dare say black lives matter.
Speaker 1: White supremacy is not a mystery. It is the organizing
Speaker 1: principle of the United States of America. So to act
Speaker 1: like we don't know what it looks like when it
Speaker 1: rams the door of a federal building is not only asinine,
Speaker 1: it's dangerous because then it leaves space for people to
Speaker 1: be surprised about tales that are hundreds of years old.
Speaker 1: And when people are surprised about things that are hundreds
Speaker 1: of years old, they will take their sweet time fixing it.
Speaker 1: We don't have any time to waste. I mean, doctor
Speaker 1: King was saying that weight almost always means never what
Speaker 1: sixty years ago almost you know, LBJ in the same
Speaker 1: era was talking about the fact that if you tell
Speaker 1: poor white people that there is no lot worse than
Speaker 1: being black than, to use his words, you can pick
Speaker 1: their pockets and they won't care. They won't even notice.
Speaker 1: This is a tale as old as time, and I
Speaker 1: think that, especially in media spaces which you and I
Speaker 1: both occupy, we have to be relentless in doing what
Speaker 1: the United States Senate and to be specific, the incredibly
Speaker 1: cowardly pack of Republicans that currently sit in federal elected
Speaker 1: office failed to do, which is to tell the truth
Speaker 1: of what has happened and to do our level best
Speaker 1: to make sure that nobody ever forgets it, especially as
Speaker 1: an election year comes up, especially as people set policies
Speaker 1: in their hometowns and in their states, and especially as
Speaker 1: we do our best not to repeat the aftermath of
Speaker 1: the Civil War when Andrew Johnson pardoned all of the
Speaker 1: Confederate soldiers and pardon Jefferson Davis and you know Davis.
Speaker 1: The supporters said they didn't want a trial because they
Speaker 1: wanted the country to heal. I mean, it is almost
Speaker 1: verbatim what we are hearing people say now in their
Speaker 1: justification for not convicting this man. And so much of
Speaker 1: the evil that continued after this Civil War is due
Speaker 1: in part because no one was all accountable. And so
Speaker 1: I just we have to be doing our job to
Speaker 1: make sure that history doesn't get repeated, because clearly Senate
Speaker 1: Republicans weren't willing to do their job. I think to
Speaker 1: better understand your entry point and to this fight, I
Speaker 1: want to go to nineteen for a moment. I know,
Speaker 1: is that Okay, yeah, absolutely. I'm like, you're taking me back,
Speaker 1: I said, nineteen ninety four, and you went, oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's only because I'm thirty six now, and the older
Speaker 1: I get, the more I realized in nineteen ninety four
Speaker 1: the year two thousand was not like ten years ago,
Speaker 1: so it's all just quite stunning. But continue. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, you find yourself with your father at a mall.
Speaker 1: Your father at the time and until his passing in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety six, was a pastor of Central Baptist Church
Speaker 1: originally called the Second African Baptist Church in Saint Louis,
Speaker 1: which was founded in eighteen forty six by twenty three
Speaker 1: enslaved and free black folks. And in ninety four, you
Speaker 1: are ten years old and you're at a mall with
Speaker 1: your dad, and your dad has called one of his
Speaker 1: contacts at a local news station to do a story about,
Speaker 1: of all things, I think the Santa Clauses yep at
Speaker 1: them all. Yeah, walk me through this moment. So you
Speaker 1: have to understand about the house that I was raised
Speaker 1: in is that two things were always going to be true.
Speaker 1: That we were going to worship Jesus and that we
Speaker 1: were going to celebrate being black, and that was all
Speaker 1: the time, everyday, NonStop, in the best ways, in ways
Speaker 1: that made me feel affirmed as a young person, in
Speaker 1: ways that really helped me straighten my back when I
Speaker 1: would enter predominantly white spaces which I was being educated
Speaker 1: in to know my value both in the context of
Speaker 1: my faith and the context of my personhood. And so
Speaker 1: what that means is that the role models that I
Speaker 1: was raised with, including let me be very clear, Jesus
Speaker 1: the Christ, were people with dark skin, with black skin,
Speaker 1: with brown skin. I genuinely did not recognize a white
Speaker 1: Jesus the first time I had seen him, because my
Speaker 1: parents were so deliberate to only show myself and later
Speaker 1: my brother depictions of Christ that were biblically accurate, right,
Speaker 1: which is wooly hair and bronze skin, and of course
Speaker 1: they were accurate to the geography at the time. So
Speaker 1: I'm walking into nineteen ninety four as a ten year
Speaker 1: old with like a fully afrocentric view of the world
Speaker 1: that was built very intentionally. So when I enter spaces
Speaker 1: where I do not see black people, even at ten
Speaker 1: years old, I have a level of curiosity that causes
Speaker 1: me to critically question it, and I am deeply grateful
Speaker 1: to my parents for raising me that way. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't really understand Causanta at church as always black
Speaker 1: Cassanna is like my dad or you know, Deacon so
Speaker 1: and so who's playing sin. I know Christmas is about Jesus,
Speaker 1: but I also, you know, I want to take a
Speaker 1: picture with Santa too, And I'm confused as to why
Speaker 1: Santa is always this old white dude. Like I really
Speaker 1: genuinely don't get it. And yeah, people can talk about
Speaker 1: the origins of Santa Claus and Da Da Dada, but
Speaker 1: we all know that culture takes on many forms, you know,
Speaker 1: a much iconography throughout history has morphed and changed and
Speaker 1: evolved to meet the moment of evermore diverse societies. And
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four in Saint Louis, yes, there were
Speaker 1: black and brown people living in this city too, So
Speaker 1: we had that conversation and it was kind of like, well,
Speaker 1: what do you know, what are we going to do
Speaker 1: about it? And I'm glad that I was raised by
Speaker 1: people who always asked that question, what are we going
Speaker 1: to do about it? And so yeah, we demanded black
Speaker 1: Santa's at them all. We did some many protesting in there.
Speaker 1: There was news coverage. My dad wrote columns about it.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of my first memories of being
Speaker 1: on the news. So I did a news interview about it,
Speaker 1: and we got black Sainists at the mall end this story. No,
Speaker 1: it's not the end of the story. There's something else
Speaker 1: that happens that I think directly ties to this kind
Speaker 1: of curiosity we've been hearing in the news about these
Speaker 1: white insurrectionists, people who are saying, yeah, well, maybe they
Speaker 1: had financial troubles, maybe the poverty, Maybe the poverty led
Speaker 1: them to these decisions. And I bring them up again
Speaker 1: because I think they are inextricably linked to your classmates
Speaker 1: at that age, because you went back to school that
Speaker 1: next week, Yeah, after you did the protest, and some
Speaker 1: of your friends, many of whom were white at this school,
Speaker 1: said to you, I don't understand it's Santa. It's just yeah, Santa,
Speaker 1: Because it's never just about Santa. Right when I never
Speaker 1: thought you and I would say these Santa sentences me either,
Speaker 1: and here we are. You know, it's never just about
Speaker 1: the precipitating factor. It's never just about the thing that
Speaker 1: provoked you in that moment to action. It is always
Speaker 1: about the systems and structures and institutions that made it
Speaker 1: this way. So what we were really protesting is this
Speaker 1: idea that white is the default and that everyone else
Speaker 1: should adjust to it. And you see whiteness as the
Speaker 1: default in everything for a long time and still in
Speaker 1: many places. You see it when you go to buy
Speaker 1: a band aid, you see it when you study history,
Speaker 1: you see it when you think about your own archetypes
Speaker 1: of who should be in charge, which is why Kamala
Speaker 1: Devi Harris and Barack Obama were the only people to
Speaker 1: change the singular color scheme of American executives, and they
Speaker 1: both happened in our lifetime. What we were really protesting
Speaker 1: is the idea that whiteness is the norm, that everything
Speaker 1: should orbit that, and that everyone should adjust to it.
Speaker 1: That is not the organizing principle of my life. It
Speaker 1: certainly shouldn't be the organizing principle of anybody's life, because
Speaker 1: the organizing principle should be justice at all times, whether
Speaker 1: it is in something that looks small to you like
Speaker 1: Santa Claus or a band aid, or in something as
Speaker 1: major as who occupies the White House? What experiences and
Speaker 1: ideas they bring with them, and most importantly, who they
Speaker 1: legislate for. So yeah, it was never just about Santa.
Speaker 1: The idea was always that if I live here and
Speaker 1: I am a human being just like you, and I'm
Speaker 1: your friend and your neighboring, your classmate, then I should
Speaker 1: see myself everywhere just like you do. How did it
Speaker 1: make you feel at age ten when your friends are saying,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the big deal is? I mean,
Speaker 1: it is invalidating, right. This is part of how oppression
Speaker 1: manifests itself. It's becoming more part of the common lexicon.
Speaker 1: We talk about microaggressions, right, and this is one of
Speaker 1: those microaggressions. It's a micro invalidation. Other micro invalidations include
Speaker 1: seeing someone who quote unquote looks foreign to you and
Speaker 1: asking them where they are from, or hearing someone with
Speaker 1: an accent and asking them how they learn to speak English.
Speaker 1: So well, it is these things that invalidate your personhood
Speaker 1: and the things that matter to you and minimizes and
Speaker 1: diminishes them. I got invalidated like that, you know, in
Speaker 1: those micro ways when I would be at a pool
Speaker 1: party with my friends and I couldn't get my hair wet,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, it's just hair, and I'm like, no, baby,
Speaker 1: it's not. This hairstyle has to last all week. And
Speaker 1: if I come to school looking anything but perfectly cought
Speaker 1: about the hair, if my hair isn't straight or neat
Speaker 1: or professional as you would define it, and if my
Speaker 1: hair shrivels and shrinks in this water and I am
Speaker 1: forced to deal with that, you are going to start
Speaker 1: looking at me a different way. So it's actually not
Speaker 1: just water. It's not just a pool party. Right, These
Speaker 1: were not new feelings. What I will say was a formative.
Speaker 1: A more formative feeling in that moment, though, was just
Speaker 1: the feeling of power. Right. It was like, we said
Speaker 1: we wanted black Santa Clauses. That was my first experience,
Speaker 1: one of my first experiences organizing for something outside of
Speaker 1: my own school and winning. At that point, I was like,
Speaker 1: it ain't really nothing you can tell me because we
Speaker 1: got the Black Santus. So now what do you have
Speaker 1: to say? There's nothing you can tell me. We won,
Speaker 1: so you know, go back to your worksheet, leave me alone.
Speaker 1: But basically what you're saying is, even at that age,
Speaker 1: you knew you had to be excellent, yep, And I
Speaker 1: wonder did that and does that like where at you?
Speaker 1: I think that addiction to perfectionism is something a lot
Speaker 1: of us have to unlearn. I think it is a
Speaker 1: particularly Western an americanized ideal that we are highly individualistic
Speaker 1: and therefore we're not supposed to need anyone else, and
Speaker 1: in that individualism, that we are supposed to be excellent
Speaker 1: and perfect at all times. And I think that that
Speaker 1: has been weaponized in particular ways against folks from marginalized communities. So,
Speaker 1: you know, it's funny a couple years ago, when Scandal
Speaker 1: was all the rage, and really the only time at
Speaker 1: that time I was using Twitter was to like live
Speaker 1: tweet Scandal, there was an episode where Olivia Pope's father
Speaker 1: says to her, you know, I always told you that
Speaker 1: you had to be two three times as good to
Speaker 1: get half as far. And I had all of these
Speaker 1: white people on my feet in my life who were like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I've never heard this, what a revelation.
Speaker 1: This is awful. Da da da da, And all the
Speaker 1: black folks I knew were like, uh, yeah, duh, this
Speaker 1: is what. Where is the mystery here? I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: confused why you're confused, because of course this is the
Speaker 1: way it has been. And I had to have some
Speaker 1: upfront conversations with white people in my life to say, like,
Speaker 1: here are some of the ways that you have perpetuated
Speaker 1: that and didn't even realize it. Here are some of
Speaker 1: the ways that I have perpetuated that with other black
Speaker 1: people because I have internalized that idea and I didn't
Speaker 1: even realize it. So there are things that I need
Speaker 1: to unlearn and undo, just like there are things that
Speaker 1: white folks need to unlearn and undo because of the
Speaker 1: way that I've internalized that. So yeah, of course it
Speaker 1: can be exhausting. I do think that the power of
Speaker 1: the conversations we're having more broadly now can help us
Speaker 1: undo our addiction to business and to perfection. So on
Speaker 1: my podcast and Undistracted a few weeks ago, I talked
Speaker 1: to Trisha Percy, who founded the NAP Ministry, and she
Speaker 1: calls herself the NAP Bishop, and she says two things consistently.
Speaker 1: One that rest is everyone's divine right. So this idea
Speaker 1: that we have to be busy all the time because
Speaker 1: we owe capitalism something is a lie that we've all
Speaker 1: gotten sold. But also on top of that that rest
Speaker 1: is a form of resistance to white supremacy. So when
Speaker 1: I choose to not be all things to all people,
Speaker 1: when I choose to be a black woman not concerned
Speaker 1: with saving democracy for everybody, but saving democracy for the
Speaker 1: most marginalized, knowing that it will benefit everybody, that that
Speaker 1: is an act of resistance. And I do think that
Speaker 1: there is something beautiful about how the people who love
Speaker 1: me and have raised me have helped me redefine what
Speaker 1: excellence looks like that, especially for black folks, we recognize
Speaker 1: that our love and our families and our community is wealth,
Speaker 1: and so going and chasing these external forms of wealth
Speaker 1: are Actually that's not the gift. That's not the prize.
Speaker 1: The prize are all of the people and places that
Speaker 1: I can occupy that respect my rest, that want my rest,
Speaker 1: that help me rest, And that is redefining excellence in
Speaker 1: ways that elevate how I treat other people and how
Speaker 1: I allow other people to treat me, and how I
Speaker 1: show up in love and how I welcome other people
Speaker 1: when they show up in love For me. That is
Speaker 1: a journey that I'm still on, but I'm grateful for
Speaker 1: it being a cultural marker that I think redefines how
Speaker 1: excellence has been weaponized against us. Your job is that
Speaker 1: of constant engagement on your podcast, on network television, on
Speaker 1: the streets, and protests. But I think also part of
Speaker 1: that engagement is this public processing that you do of
Speaker 1: events that most of us sit within private, in our
Speaker 1: homes and our apartments. A police shooting, a capital riot,
Speaker 1: blatant exercises of racism and racial and equity. These are
Speaker 1: things most people sit with by themselves or with their
Speaker 1: friends or their family. Yeah, and yet for many years
Speaker 1: now you have been processing these traumas, this pain in public.
Speaker 1: How do you manage that? That is a fantastic question,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate the way that it honors the labor
Speaker 1: that is very intensive about learning in public. As I
Speaker 1: always say, engage in public about really challenging things. One
Speaker 1: of the things I have learned better. I'm not perfect
Speaker 1: at it, but one of the things I've learned better,
Speaker 1: especially over the last few years, is to be very
Speaker 1: judicious and picky about what I engage with. And it
Speaker 1: can look like I'm engaging all the time, but I'm
Speaker 1: actually not. I will tell you I got an invitation
Speaker 1: just yesterday to be on Michael Cohen's podcast, Michael Cohen being,
Speaker 1: of course, the former Trump lawyer, and now I had
Speaker 1: no idea until I got this outreach that he's got
Speaker 1: a podcast that is literally I Kick You, not called
Speaker 1: maya culpa, and he spends all of his time trashing
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and Trump is um, which is a monster
Speaker 1: that he helped build. So I declined, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: because it is actually not worth my time to process
Speaker 1: with Michael Cohen. It is not worth me giving him
Speaker 1: the gift of my credibility in the space this is
Speaker 1: where I have credibility. I'm not lending that to him.
Speaker 1: He can do his mea culpas on his time, not
Speaker 1: on mine. So I'm actually really choosy about this stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't comment on everything that is trending. I don't
Speaker 1: feel like I have to answer to every controversy that
Speaker 1: people are talking about. And it took me a long
Speaker 1: time to get there because for a long time I
Speaker 1: felt like I owed people that, And what I realized
Speaker 1: is what I actually owed people was living out my purpose.
Speaker 1: And I believe that my purpose is to speak and
Speaker 1: teach truth that moves people to action, not just to outrage,
Speaker 1: not just to retweets and not just to follows, but
Speaker 1: to action. That requires me to be really responsible with
Speaker 1: how I use my platforms, with what I spend my
Speaker 1: time on, and with what I don't spend my time on.
Speaker 1: So I've had people ask me to debate black conservatives
Speaker 1: and I'm like, no, A because that's not worth my time,
Speaker 1: and B because if I'd say yes to that, I
Speaker 1: am affirming the idea that at systemic racism is debatable
Speaker 1: and it is not up for debate. In learning to
Speaker 1: become more in control of it, that's how I deal
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, it is. It is an ever evolving
Speaker 1: process as to how I do that kind of engage in.
Speaker 1: But I am always keeping a mind to the purpose
Speaker 1: that I owe myself and others to live out the
Speaker 1: values that I try to have in public and in private,
Speaker 1: and the safety of myself and you know, the people
Speaker 1: in communities that I care about. You have been a
Speaker 1: source of inspiration for many many people over the years.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that you've also been a source of inspiration
Speaker 1: for a lot of white people, which is somewhat surprising
Speaker 1: to me all the time, but not always the way
Speaker 1: I said It almost sounds like a derogatory comments. I
Speaker 1: didn't take it that way. I'm not like you inspired
Speaker 1: white people. This is a bad thing. No. What I
Speaker 1: mean by that is there are a lot of white
Speaker 1: folks who who look to you as a kind of
Speaker 1: guiding light in this fight for racial equality. And as
Speaker 1: is the case when people are learning, people make mistakes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they mistweet, they misquote, they misunderstand, they take things personally.
Speaker 1: And I wonder, in this kind of new era, as
Speaker 1: we shift away from Trump, is it possible for us
Speaker 1: to accept those imperfect allies. Is it possible for us
Speaker 1: to learn and fail in public and then grow in public?
Speaker 1: I mean, I certainly hope so, because I myself am
Speaker 1: an imperfect co conspirator to many communities to which I
Speaker 1: do not belong, but I believe deeply in their freedom.
Speaker 1: But I will say in response to imperfect white people
Speaker 1: what I say to myself and have had other people
Speaker 1: say to me as an imperfect, imperfect cisgender person a
Speaker 1: perfect an imperfect rather you know, able body person, etc.
Speaker 1: That grace and accountability have to meet at an intersection.
Speaker 1: I am not Jesus the Christ. Therefore my grace is
Speaker 1: not sufficient and unending. Right in case anyone was confused
Speaker 1: Hu or not Jesus, definitely not. My grace is limited
Speaker 1: right as a human being, and I try my best
Speaker 1: to show as much grace to other people as I
Speaker 1: would once shown to me. But I also recognize that
Speaker 1: the best apology is changed behavior, and that when people
Speaker 1: give you feedback, even if it is painful, if it
Speaker 1: can contribute to your growth, then it is a gift
Speaker 1: and treating it that way can help us. Right when
Speaker 1: we get gifts, we don't just toss them aside. We
Speaker 1: don't get defensive at the person who gives them to us.
Speaker 1: We don't say, how dare you give me this thing
Speaker 1: that can help me live a better life. No, we
Speaker 1: say thank you, and we decide what we're going to
Speaker 1: do with it because the gift is used, because the
Speaker 1: gift came from a place of humanity. I have had gracious, thoughtful, sweet, kind,
Speaker 1: considerate feedback given to me, and I've had really harsh
Speaker 1: feedback given to me, And instead of me getting defensive,
Speaker 1: I've had to push myself to say, let's take a
Speaker 1: step in the person's shoes who's offering me that feedback,
Speaker 1: because maybe they're tired of having to give people like
Speaker 1: me that feedback. Maybe they're tired of having to keep
Speaker 1: pressing up against systems that don't want to listen to
Speaker 1: their feedback. So maybe instead of policing their tone or
Speaker 1: their communication, I can receive it as the gift that
Speaker 1: it is, offer my apology, recognize that they can take
Speaker 1: it or not take it. That is perfectly within their right,
Speaker 1: but that I owe it to myself and the communities
Speaker 1: that I say I care about to change my behavior. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can accept imperfect allies as long as they are
Speaker 1: constantly improving allies as long as they are constantly evolving allies.
Speaker 1: Allies who were in stasis are no allies at all.
Speaker 1: Can I go to a moment where I think you
Speaker 1: exhibited some grace in your pasture again, to go back
Speaker 1: to the nineties, our favorite era. Here in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: you are going to this midwestern high school again in
Speaker 1: Saint Louism. You created, at the age of fifteen, the
Speaker 1: first diversity organization in your high school. Co created, we
Speaker 1: should say, they are about a dozen of us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you co created the first diversity organization. My apologies to
Speaker 1: your co creators. At the time, it was met with
Speaker 1: praise from professors. Many classmates galvanized, supported and appreciated the
Speaker 1: work you and your co collaborators created. There was, however,
Speaker 1: one student who saw your work as, as you say,
Speaker 1: an existential threat to his way of life and inflated ego. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't just an existential threat. He turned it
Speaker 1: into a physical one and retaliated when one day at school,
Speaker 1: near the women's locker room, he's spat on you. And
Speaker 1: I know it is a painful moment to revisit, But
Speaker 1: how do you think of that moment now, all these
Speaker 1: years removed. I think of both of us as products
Speaker 1: of our environment. It just so happens that the environment
Speaker 1: was built for him and it wasn't built for me.
Speaker 1: So there were many differences between the two of us.
Speaker 1: He was white, I am not. He is male, I
Speaker 1: am not. He came from great wealth. I do not.
Speaker 1: His father was on the board of trustees. My mother
Speaker 1: was not. She was a widow at the time. He
Speaker 1: came from a family who could afford to pay the
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars in tuition that it caused to go
Speaker 1: to this private school every year, and I did not.
Speaker 1: My mother made a great living and worked very hard
Speaker 1: and is very well educated. But we went from a
Speaker 1: two income household to a one income household when my
Speaker 1: dad passed when I was in the seventh grade, and
Speaker 1: so we also had scholarships, and so we were both
Speaker 1: the products of our environment, and our environment was far
Speaker 1: more hostile to me and far more supportive of him.
Speaker 1: So there is this world in which he stands out
Speaker 1: in the context of our school in a lot of
Speaker 1: people's minds as an extreme right that no one would
Speaker 1: have taken to the extremes of spitting at me as
Speaker 1: he did, of harassing me as he did, of showing
Speaker 1: no remorse for it, as he did both then and now.
Speaker 1: And I also know that the seeds of what he
Speaker 1: believed were nurtured in an environment that did its best
Speaker 1: by diversity and equity and inclusion. But literally most schools
Speaker 1: across this country have yet to divorce themselves from the
Speaker 1: culture of white supremacy, and so there was no time
Speaker 1: when he got dismissed as anything more than like that
Speaker 1: really annoying guy. I think it was important to understands
Speaker 1: that at no point before this incident where he spits
Speaker 1: it me, had there been any accountability for a bunch
Speaker 1: of the bigoted things that he had said and done
Speaker 1: to around our school. So why is he going to
Speaker 1: believe that this overt act of racism, this overt assault,
Speaker 1: is going to be any more or less punishable than
Speaker 1: any of the other things he did. And it turns
Speaker 1: out he was one hundred percent right. It wasn't punishable.
Speaker 1: There was no expulsion, there was no suspension, there was
Speaker 1: a clenched mouth apology, and everybody went on about their business.
Speaker 1: I think of myself at the time as somebody who,
Speaker 1: as the product of the same environment, was trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of what it meant to experienced backlash for
Speaker 1: using your voice, because, as I said, I had grown
Speaker 1: up in a very affirming environment, and my elementary school,
Speaker 1: even though it was predominantly white, i'd say, was more
Speaker 1: advanced in the conversation about diversity and equity than most
Speaker 1: schools in the nineties. In some ways, I had this
Speaker 1: very advanced elementary school experience. Both of my parents are
Speaker 1: living and they are augmenting all of the afrocentricity that
Speaker 1: I don't receive at school. They're doing that at home,
Speaker 1: and by the time he spits at me, I've got
Speaker 1: a single mother who is now a widow who is
Speaker 1: trying to raise two children and now a much more
Speaker 1: confusing environment. And I'm now at a school where the
Speaker 1: same kind of progressivism, if you will, around issues of
Speaker 1: diversity and equity are just not present. So it's not
Speaker 1: that I was always supported and everything that I fought for.
Speaker 1: Like you said, I got plenty of questions of it's
Speaker 1: just Santa clause, but this was certainly the most extreme
Speaker 1: case I had ever experienced. So I'm like an I'm
Speaker 1: a teenager trying to figure out what it means to say.
Speaker 1: I believe in raising my voice. I believe in standing
Speaker 1: up for what matters. I believe in always asking myself
Speaker 1: that question that my parents have always asked me, what
Speaker 1: are we going to do about it? And I now
Speaker 1: need to understand that the backlash that comes in return
Speaker 1: will sometimes be real and swift and dangerous, and in
Speaker 1: some really sick way, it prepared me for a lot
Speaker 1: of what I have endured over the last few years.
Speaker 1: You're describing someone who committed other offenses, yeah, and did
Speaker 1: this knowing correctly that he wouldn't be punished. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: you're describing a fifteen year old acne face boy I'm
Speaker 1: assuming he has I'm giving him acne, and my retelling
Speaker 1: he has acne. And you're describing what happened in the
Speaker 1: last two weeks in this country. Yeah, as those people
Speaker 1: grow up and they join the Proud Boys, and they
Speaker 1: become seditionists, and they run for president and they fund
Speaker 1: people like Donald Trump, and they write for Bright Bart
Speaker 1: and they work for Fox dudes like this guy does. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: there is a clear and direct line between that kind
Speaker 1: of behavior then and white supremacy now. And woe to
Speaker 1: all of us who have any contact with young people,
Speaker 1: especially young people of any kind of privilege, who do
Speaker 1: not teach them early on that the world does not
Speaker 1: belong to them, that we are not going to orbit
Speaker 1: around your whiteness, or your manhood, or your straightness, or
Speaker 1: your sister genderness, or your Christianity. That actually the way
Speaker 1: the world should function is that all of us are
Speaker 1: able to thrive and not simply survive in the face
Speaker 1: of your selfishness. That story you just recounted, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: say it aloud for many years. Yeah, I didn't. I
Speaker 1: kind of swallowed it up. Yeah, it wasn't until fourteen
Speaker 1: years later, at the age of twenty nine, that Ye're
Speaker 1: asked by your high school to speak at the assembly
Speaker 1: hall and you stood there at twenty nine in a
Speaker 1: kind of odd full circle moment, and I wonder, now,
Speaker 1: what did you say to those kids? It's so interesting
Speaker 1: because I've been speaking publicly for a long time, Like
Speaker 1: when you when your parents are preachers, you, let's say,
Speaker 1: grow up in an oratory tradition. That was a polite
Speaker 1: way of saying it, right, Like yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: like listen, I got I heard good preaching every Sunday.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I got preached at when my room wasn't clean
Speaker 1: every Monday. Right, So I mean this is and I
Speaker 1: come from a tradition of just rich storytelling, right, that is,
Speaker 1: that is African American culture. So like making speeches for
Speaker 1: me at this point at twenty nine, when I'm standing
Speaker 1: in this assembly hall is old hat, not just because
Speaker 1: of the way I've been raised, but because I used
Speaker 1: to make speeches in high school at that same assembly hall,
Speaker 1: at that same podium about the issues of diversity that
Speaker 1: he then spatted me over. Right, it is full circle
Speaker 1: in all of the ways, in part because I tried
Speaker 1: three different times to write remarks and I couldn't get
Speaker 1: any of them out. And my mentor, who's still at
Speaker 1: the school, who was the person who encouraged me to
Speaker 1: actually say something to the head of school when this
Speaker 1: originally occurred, he was the one who had asked me
Speaker 1: back to assembly and hit him up that morning, and
Speaker 1: I was like, Coach Harris, I have no idea what
Speaker 1: to say. Coach Harris and I both come from the
Speaker 1: same faith background. Actually, my dad was one of his
Speaker 1: professors of Black church history, and so he was like, look,
Speaker 1: God's got it. Whatever is supposed to come up will
Speaker 1: come up, and it'll come out. You're more than prepared.
Speaker 1: Just come onto assembly. Because at this point it's like,
Speaker 1: if I sit down to write anything, I'll be late,
Speaker 1: I'll miss the whole speed. So I get up there
Speaker 1: and the thing that comes out of my mouth is
Speaker 1: this story. And I remember hearing the audible gasp of
Speaker 1: young people aged seventh grade through twelfth grade. I remember
Speaker 1: hearing the gasp of the head of school, who wasn't
Speaker 1: the head of school when this happened, but is now.
Speaker 1: And you know he and I have a relationship because
Speaker 1: he was my twelfth grade principal. I'm hearing the gasps
Speaker 1: of faculty members that taught me when I went to
Speaker 1: school there. And in one way I was relieved because
Speaker 1: I didn't realize how heavy this thing was until I
Speaker 1: let it go. And in other ways, I was frustrated
Speaker 1: with myself that I had held onto the story for
Speaker 1: so long, because every year that I held on to
Speaker 1: that story was another year that people could think that
Speaker 1: it could never happen there, like it was another year
Speaker 1: that added to that shock and awe. And I'm sitting there, going,
Speaker 1: this is not this should not be shocking to you all.
Speaker 1: If it is shocking to you, I wonder which students
Speaker 1: you've been listening to, which parents you've been hearing from,
Speaker 1: which alumni you've been talking to. And sure enough, after
Speaker 1: that day, Coach Hairs reached back out to me, you know,
Speaker 1: a week or two later, saying that suddenly more students
Speaker 1: of color, black students in particular, were talking about some
Speaker 1: of their experiences at the school. They were writing about
Speaker 1: them in the student newspaper, and so in some ways,
Speaker 1: it was a real moment of freedom for me, and
Speaker 1: I am grateful that the moment of freedom for me
Speaker 1: became a little bit of freedom for other people, both
Speaker 1: black students and students of color who had been suffering
Speaker 1: silently as I had for so many years, and for
Speaker 1: white faculty and school leadership and students who needed to
Speaker 1: be free from the myth of their own perfection. So
Speaker 1: for me, the victory really laid in what I was
Speaker 1: freeing up other people to do. That when we are
Speaker 1: our full selves, we give other people permission to do
Speaker 1: the same. And here was a part of myself that
Speaker 1: I was sitting silent for years, And when I gave
Speaker 1: voice to that pain, that sadness, that frustration, it you know,
Speaker 1: unlocks some things for some other people. So it's not
Speaker 1: the whole win, but I'll take that win. If we
Speaker 1: are our full cells, then we give other people permission
Speaker 1: to be there full selves. Yeah, we give them the permission.
Speaker 1: And in May of nineteen seventy five, Tony Morrison spoke
Speaker 1: on a panel at Portland State where I think anyone
Speaker 1: listening would say she gave her full self. And in turn,
Speaker 1: a passage of this speech has inspired you and your podcast,
Speaker 1: and if you don't mind, I would like to listen
Speaker 1: to some of it. Sure it's worn't therefore, to know
Speaker 1: who the real enemy is and to know the function.
Speaker 1: There is serious function of racism, which is distraction. It
Speaker 1: keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining
Speaker 1: over and over again your reason for being. Somebody says
Speaker 1: you have no language, and so you spend twenty years
Speaker 1: proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn't shape properly,
Speaker 1: so you have scientists working on the fact that it is.
Speaker 1: Somebody says that you have no art, so you dredge
Speaker 1: that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you
Speaker 1: dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will
Speaker 1: always be one more thing. Huh. I love her so much?
Speaker 1: What did that make you think of? I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, it just makes me. It makes me glad
Speaker 1: to know that she is resting peacefully and powerfully because
Speaker 1: she everything she gave us with such a gift, including
Speaker 1: and especially that. So we, to your point, named our
Speaker 1: podcast undistracted from this idea that the point of racism,
Speaker 1: the point of oppression, the point of systemic injustice, is
Speaker 1: to keep us from doing our work. So what if
Speaker 1: we get undistracted, What if we actually remain focused on
Speaker 1: the issues at hand, What if we remain focused on
Speaker 1: our own goodness, on our own glory. But if we
Speaker 1: remain focused not on the people who took us off,
Speaker 1: but the systems that harm us, and not just focus
Speaker 1: on what they're doing to us. Put focus on how
Speaker 1: we can uproot and recreate the things that actually work
Speaker 1: for us, right, focus on how we can imagine and
Speaker 1: dream and build and create that what if we actually
Speaker 1: built a podcast that gave people the space to do
Speaker 1: you that in really tangible, informative, activating ways, Like, just
Speaker 1: what could that do in the world, right, whether there
Speaker 1: are ten listeners or one hundred thousand, what can that
Speaker 1: do in the world to try to build a coalition
Speaker 1: of undistracted people? And what I really appreciate about Tony
Speaker 1: Morrison is that she understood that there is no need
Speaker 1: to prove anything because being alive is proof enough. Right,
Speaker 1: Being alive and in black skin and living and loving
Speaker 1: and learning and doing all of the things that people
Speaker 1: do is more than enough that that actually doesn't require
Speaker 1: explanation or justification, despite how the centeredness of whiteness would
Speaker 1: like us to think that it does. Right, this is
Speaker 1: what I meant earlier when I said the organizing principle
Speaker 1: of America is a white supremacy that declares white supremacy
Speaker 1: to be the default, the center that we're all orbit
Speaker 1: a run that what if we all retracted our tacit
Speaker 1: approval of said system and said, actually, no, I don't.
Speaker 1: When I think of all that Tony Morrison gave us,
Speaker 1: and it was many, many, many things, that for me
Speaker 1: is one of the most profound because it pushes me
Speaker 1: every single day to live in and act out of
Speaker 1: my divinity, which we all have, instead of out of
Speaker 1: some desire to prove that I am human enough to
Speaker 1: people who are never going to believe it. At the
Speaker 1: beginning of this conversation, you said, I'm bracing myself for
Speaker 1: the door that has been opened by the Biden Harris administration,
Speaker 1: a door that I think we can all describe as
Speaker 1: one that we had to jam ourselves through. It's still
Speaker 1: only slightly ajar and as someone who is helping shape
Speaker 1: this fight, where do you see us going? So, you know,
Speaker 1: for the last four years, we've had somebody that like
Speaker 1: unified a lot of us out of our shared hatred
Speaker 1: of the things and the horrors and the injustices that
Speaker 1: we're being perpetuated by this administration. Right, it's really easy
Speaker 1: to publicly critique and go off on Trump and associates.
Speaker 1: It is harder to say to a party that you
Speaker 1: may be part of, to say to people that you
Speaker 1: may have voted for, to say to people that you love,
Speaker 1: this doesn't go as far as we needed to go.
Speaker 1: It is harder to get into the details and the
Speaker 1: weeds to say, okay, we the rhetoric got us across
Speaker 1: the first finish line of the election. So now how
Speaker 1: do we get together in all of our forms and
Speaker 1: actually make the promises come true at all levels, at
Speaker 1: the federal level, at the state level, at the local level.
Speaker 1: That requires organizing. That requires all of us deciding that
Speaker 1: we are going to be active participants in democracy for
Speaker 1: more than you know once every four years. It requires
Speaker 1: that we link up with local or national organizing outlets
Speaker 1: that are pushing on the things that you care about.
Speaker 1: It requires that, yes, we say we can do more.
Speaker 1: So when I look, for example, at the CNN town
Speaker 1: hall that just came out with Joe Biden, and he
Speaker 1: says that he's not going to cancel fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: of student debt, and he's going to means test that
Speaker 1: according to where the student went to school, that students
Speaker 1: for more elite universities you know may not qualify, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: We have to be able to say I voted for you,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad I did. However, I voted for better
Speaker 1: conditions to organize for the things that I want. My
Speaker 1: friend Kyler says that all the time and the conditions
Speaker 1: are such that we've pride the door open a bit,
Speaker 1: and now what I want to see walk through is
Speaker 1: a level of student debt cancelation that is not means
Speaker 1: tested into oblivion, that is not traded in exchange for
Speaker 1: early childhood education. Is if there is not enough money
Speaker 1: for both, because there is, and that actually helps eliminate
Speaker 1: some of the racial wealth gaps that exist for people
Speaker 1: of color, and the wealth gaps that exist for people
Speaker 1: who couldn't even afford to finish college but still have
Speaker 1: this debt, so they don't have the benefit of the degree,
Speaker 1: but they still have the debt saddling them. Right, So
Speaker 1: I don't believe the ten thousand dollars goes enough. I
Speaker 1: believe that that fifty thousand dollar plan is actually the
Speaker 1: right plan. I believe that it is helpful for the economy,
Speaker 1: and even as a person who has paid back all
Speaker 1: of my student loans. I still believe that other people
Speaker 1: shouldn't have to go through this. I believe that people
Speaker 1: should come out of college and actually have a fair
Speaker 1: shot at life, and that requires that they're not saddled
Speaker 1: with so much debt that they're taking any job that
Speaker 1: they can just to be able to pay that back
Speaker 1: for ten, twenty thirty forty years. That kind of critical
Speaker 1: friendship is where I hope we go. That kind of honesty,
Speaker 1: that kind of radical honesty that makes all of us better,
Speaker 1: even if the person in power is not someone that
Speaker 1: we all collectively can't stand. I'm hoping that we learn
Speaker 1: the kind of discipline and nuance and long term organizing
Speaker 1: and engagement that it will require to get the things
Speaker 1: that we want and that we deserve, even from the
Speaker 1: people who agree with us more often than not. To
Speaker 1: bring this full circle, you were a very good student
Speaker 1: in college, but then during the first semester of your
Speaker 1: senior year, you decide to take a leave of absence,
Speaker 1: and in that leave of absence you in turn for
Speaker 1: a Congressman Lacy Clay, and you said, of that time,
Speaker 1: it just felt like whole new world opened up for me,
Speaker 1: and that I opened up myself for the first time
Speaker 1: in a long time, and this idea that social justice
Speaker 1: could be something I made a living at. I was
Speaker 1: reminded of the power of my family's legacy and that
Speaker 1: I could carry on that mantle. That I didn't have
Speaker 1: to wallow in the depths of what I was feeling,
Speaker 1: that I could actually live for something greater than myself,
Speaker 1: and that really helped me pull me out of where
Speaker 1: I was. Yeah, that I didn't have to wallow in
Speaker 1: the depths of what I was feeling. That to me,
Speaker 1: if we are to move forward, has to be all
Speaker 1: of our refrains. It has to be all of our
Speaker 1: refrains and not but we have to we have to
Speaker 1: let ourselves be human in the midst of that. I
Speaker 1: think one of the things I'm learning in choosing justice
Speaker 1: work as my life's work is that one of the
Speaker 1: greatest things I can do for myself and hopefully for
Speaker 1: other people, is to create justice through the fullness of
Speaker 1: our humanity. And to a point you made earlier, other
Speaker 1: people get to deal with the hard stuff in private,
Speaker 1: and I am somebody who in people's private moments of
Speaker 1: dealing with the hard stuff, they will look to to
Speaker 1: help them figure it out. So I have also been
Speaker 1: doing my best, especially as of late, in all of
Speaker 1: these platforms be fully human, like when something is funny
Speaker 1: to laugh, when I feel like I look good, to
Speaker 1: take a picture of it and post it, even if
Speaker 1: it doesn't have some other social justice meaning, right to
Speaker 1: be sad and tired when I'm sad and tired. I
Speaker 1: think the more I let myself do that, the easier
Speaker 1: it is not to wallow because I can actually process it.
Speaker 1: I can actually leave through it instead of trying to
Speaker 1: skip over it. Skipping over it doesn't actually do us
Speaker 1: any favors. But I'm trying to build a world where
Speaker 1: a black girl can be more than a symbol, where
Speaker 1: a black woman can be more than a depository for
Speaker 1: someone's guilt or a source of someone's learning. Where like,
Speaker 1: you can follow me on Instagram and be just as
Speaker 1: excited about this Ivy Park picture as you are about
Speaker 1: whatever thing I said about Ronald Reagan and the lessons
Speaker 1: that it teaches us about white supremacy, right Like, I'm
Speaker 1: trying to create a world where thriving is possible for
Speaker 1: all of us because we can all be and be fully.
Speaker 1: That is justice to me. And it always will be.
Speaker 1: And how do you keep going? I love that laugh.
Speaker 1: That's great. There's the answer right there because some days,
Speaker 1: right because some days I don't know. But you know,
Speaker 1: there are people who are fighting harder and sacrificing more
Speaker 1: than me every day. And I really try to keep
Speaker 1: that perspective, both from generations past and from this generation.
Speaker 1: I try to keep perspective that people may know my
Speaker 1: name because of the Fergus and uprising, but Leslie mcspadden
Speaker 1: and Mike Brown Senior will never be able to hug
Speaker 1: their child again. And that the very thing that may
Speaker 1: have thrust me and dozens of other people into a
Speaker 1: national conversation and reckoning on race seven years ago started
Speaker 1: because parents lost their children, because a life was stolen,
Speaker 1: because a grandmother lost her grandchild, because friends lost their friend.
Speaker 1: And it happened again and again and again and again
Speaker 1: and again. Like people ask me all the time, like
Speaker 1: who founded the movement? I'm like Mike Brown, Sandra Bland,
Speaker 1: Trayvon Martin, Rickie Aboard, Tony McDade. All of these people
Speaker 1: have paid with their literal life to force this country
Speaker 1: into having the conversations that should have been having it
Speaker 1: all along, so prospective helps, therapy helps, prayer helps, my
Speaker 1: husband helps, and determining for myself that freedom is in
Speaker 1: living a full life and not just in freeing other people.
Speaker 1: That helps. Well. I hope this conversation has helped just
Speaker 1: a little bit. It has. Thank thank you for such
Speaker 1: a thoughtful conversation. I really appreciated Brittany Patnick Cunningham anytime.
Speaker 1: Thank you, be well, and that's our show. Special thanks
Speaker 1: this week to Mark Paskin, Tabitha Williams, and of course
Speaker 1: Brittany pact Nick Cunningham. Be sure to check out her
Speaker 1: podcast Undistracted wherever you get your podcasts. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to hear more conversations like the one you just heard,
Speaker 1: I'd recommend our talks with doctor Cornell West Genea, Future
Speaker 1: Khan representative, il hant Omar, Gloria Steinham, Noam Chomsky, and
Speaker 1: Winnie bi Anima. To hear those and more Pushkin programs,
Speaker 1: listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
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Speaker 1: be possible without our incredible team. Talk Easy is produced
Speaker 1: by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Chnick So Bravo.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited
Speaker 1: by Claris Guvara. It was mixed by Andre Lynn and
Speaker 1: Andrew Vastola. Illustrations by Chrishashenoe. Video and graphics by Ian Chang,
Speaker 1: Derek gaberzak Ian Jones and Ethan Seneca. Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Patrice Lee, Kaylin Ung, Shiloh Fagan, Nikki Spina, and Callie Syringis.
Speaker 1: I'd also like to thank the team at Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 1: Justin Richmond Heller, Faine mil LaBelle, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano,
Speaker 1: Maya Kanig, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 1: I'm San Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy.
Speaker 1: We're back next Sunday with a new episode featuring Alana Hiam.
Speaker 1: We're looking forward to sharing that with you until then,
Speaker 1: rest in peace to the late Great Peter Bogdanovitch and
Speaker 1: of course mister Sidney Potier. You both in your own
Speaker 1: singular ways, will be missed and for you at home,
Speaker 1: Stay safe and so long,