Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fergo, so welcome
Speaker 1: to the show today. I am joined by social activists
Speaker 1: and author Genea future Khn. You may remember them from
Speaker 1: their first appearance on this program AM back in December
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty. It was last year when Jenea, a
Speaker 1: transactivist born and raised in Toronto, Ontario, became a leading
Speaker 1: voice in the Black Lives Matter movement. As the tragedies
Speaker 1: continued to unfold, from the murders of Brianna Taylor to
Speaker 1: George Floyd, parts of our country participated in what many
Speaker 1: have called a racial reckoning, a painfully overdue public conversation
Speaker 1: around how the police actually police and the innumerable racial
Speaker 1: inequalities built into the very fabric of American democracy. Of course,
Speaker 1: that conversation was insufficient and also incomplete, and in shaping
Speaker 1: that public discourse, Jenea created a weekly Sunday sermon on
Speaker 1: their Instagram, viewed by millions. The sermons often consisted of
Speaker 1: them in their home, sitting in front of a camera,
Speaker 1: just talking about what was happening in this country. As
Speaker 1: a black, queer, gender nonconforming and experience activists, they offered
Speaker 1: a more studied and nuanced perspective to the unending noise
Speaker 1: of social media, a way of engaging with the news
Speaker 1: beyond the headlines. Today, as we marked the one year
Speaker 1: anniversary of the twenty twenty election, we try to do
Speaker 1: the same, a sort of state of the Union. We
Speaker 1: discuss the ongoing infrastructure bill, the rise of big tech,
Speaker 1: the state of the Democratic Party, the future of Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter, the Netflix walk out, Dave Chappelle's special, and
Speaker 1: what it means to the trans community. So, without further ado,
Speaker 1: here is genea future Gene. Yes, thank you for being here. Sam,
Speaker 1: You know I love being here. This is your first
Speaker 1: time in Highland Park, second time on the show. I'm
Speaker 1: one of the special few, one of the special few.
Speaker 1: One year ago we had an election in this country,
Speaker 1: and as we're in this anniversary, I'm not sure it's
Speaker 1: worth celebrating, but it's worth reflecting on. I want to
Speaker 1: know how does it land with you right now? I
Speaker 1: am frustrated. You know, these things happen in waves, and
Speaker 1: my job is always to look at the entire body
Speaker 1: of water, and sometimes it gets so frustrating when you
Speaker 1: can see where we're headed. It's like we're all in
Speaker 1: a car together barreling towards a cliff, and instead of
Speaker 1: getting out of the car, we're arguing over who the
Speaker 1: driver is. Meanwhile, the thing is hardling towards the cliff,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't matter who the driver is at that point.
Speaker 1: There's just a certain point where there is no veering.
Speaker 1: We're all just headed to the same place again and again.
Speaker 1: I keep reading. You know, we do a research and
Speaker 1: we read and we you know, it's liberals or the
Speaker 1: week link Liberals, Liberals. They're saying in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies, there's a way that reducing something into the
Speaker 1: most simplistic terms, when it's like this massive political beast
Speaker 1: is not the answer. And yet I can't help but
Speaker 1: be frustrated at the tepidness this like toothless infrastructure bill,
Speaker 1: the fact that everything that we moved people for moved
Speaker 1: people to do, they did it not in the numbers
Speaker 1: that we would have liked. But we saw two massive
Speaker 1: belief systems going head to head. Seventy plus million people
Speaker 1: said they wanted Biden, seventy plus million people said they
Speaker 1: wanted Trump. We needed a majority. We got the majority,
Speaker 1: and a lot of promises were made because of that,
Speaker 1: and I'm embarrassed and how little this government is offering people.
Speaker 1: I'm embarrassed that this is what so many people put
Speaker 1: their whole heart and soul into. We're seeing these massive
Speaker 1: titans that normally Silicon Valley, and we're going to see
Speaker 1: more of that in Texas. But we're seeing the erosion
Speaker 1: of congressional power in the light of big tech, and
Speaker 1: how these antiquated systems are simply not equipped to deal
Speaker 1: with these titans, these behemoth, these giants that are doing
Speaker 1: more to inform everyday people I should say misinform everyday
Speaker 1: people here and around the world. And so I'm focused
Speaker 1: on two major issues right now. That is big tech
Speaker 1: and that is climate justice. Those are the two things
Speaker 1: that are going to be informing what happens next at
Speaker 1: a scale that I think we're only just beginning to
Speaker 1: see the realities of You said you're embarrassed by this administration.
Speaker 1: Are you surprised? No. I will never take for granted
Speaker 1: the fact that I ask people to care, and that
Speaker 1: they gave their time and their energy. That time and
Speaker 1: that energy is a fleeting thing. The world moves, people move,
Speaker 1: They have all these things that are demanding their any
Speaker 1: given time, we stop, we pause, we say, hey, we
Speaker 1: all have to do this thing together. And it's supposed
Speaker 1: to mean this. By this, you mean activism change. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean we're not even talking about like the kind
Speaker 1: of change we actually want. Paid family leave, something as
Speaker 1: simple as that. The only bipart is an issue that's
Speaker 1: left at this point, and even that can't be agreed
Speaker 1: upon are pharmaceuticals and drug prices. That's true across the board.
Speaker 1: Eighty seven percent across Republicans, ninety two I think percent
Speaker 1: across Democrats all agree that this is something that matters.
Speaker 1: And even then, it's one or two people that just
Speaker 1: stop a bill from happening. And it's embarrassing. And you know,
Speaker 1: I know people will say, oh, well, it's nobody's fault
Speaker 1: and you shouldn't take that on. That's not what I mean.
Speaker 1: I mean. We are here in this time, and we
Speaker 1: have every possible thing we could ever need to live
Speaker 1: a good life, and we deny that to people, and
Speaker 1: we deny a future, and we deny power. I'm offered
Speaker 1: so little in exchange, and as a human being, as
Speaker 1: a human, I'm embarrassed by how far we've sunk. And
Speaker 1: I say that even as I still feel hope, even
Speaker 1: as I know that my responsibility is to find people
Speaker 1: again and ask them to join me, I will join
Speaker 1: people who are doing the fight because part of living
Speaker 1: a good life is trying. It's trying, and it's such
Speaker 1: a difficult thing to be living in the time in
Speaker 1: the last death cries of an antiquated, crumbling system. It
Speaker 1: is a very painful thing to experience, and I think
Speaker 1: that is something that we can all agree on. We
Speaker 1: are all living in a kind of pain and numbness,
Speaker 1: the difficulty of trying. You've emphasized that before. I think
Speaker 1: it's something everyone is feeling right now, at least the
Speaker 1: people in my life. When you talk with them, ask
Speaker 1: what do you care about politically or what do you
Speaker 1: care about socially? There is this kind of inertia that
Speaker 1: we're trying to fight back against your ability to keep trying.
Speaker 1: Just maybe a silly question, but do you think it
Speaker 1: is replicable amongst people who have not devoted their life
Speaker 1: to trying? Absolutely, every day people get up and do
Speaker 1: the best they can. We are all our experts in trying.
Speaker 1: I think the hard part is the imagination. That's the
Speaker 1: first thing that's taken away from everyone. We all have
Speaker 1: this incredible ability to try, and our job, I think,
Speaker 1: is to bring the movement to people. I think there's
Speaker 1: an idea that you're supposed to have a movement. People
Speaker 1: are supposed if you build it, they will come. Good movie,
Speaker 1: but doesn't translate in real life because you feel the
Speaker 1: dreams is okay, yeah, I can't imagine you like that movie.
Speaker 1: I grew up in the time of cost Now what
Speaker 1: can I say? I love Kevin Gosar go On. Our
Speaker 1: job is really to take the movement to people, and
Speaker 1: I think we need actionable goals. Let's talk about the
Speaker 1: actionable goals. What are thinking about. I mean, look, we
Speaker 1: have this huge climate conference that's happening. We no longer
Speaker 1: really have a Green New Deal, not really. I think
Speaker 1: that we are long past the point of people looking
Speaker 1: at their own individual carbon footprint to stop the cataclysmic
Speaker 1: changes that will happen, that will kill crops, cause more drought,
Speaker 1: entire towns being submerged, hurricanes, And I think that's too
Speaker 1: big of a thing to just bring to people's door.
Speaker 1: And I think it's deeper than them using solar panels.
Speaker 1: Whenever I want to know how a movement needs to
Speaker 1: shift or what it needs to look to. I actually
Speaker 1: look to black freedom struggles and I study them because
Speaker 1: if we're looking at the heart of the matter. Sometimes
Speaker 1: when I'm in rooms with people, what I'm feeling from
Speaker 1: them their confusion is if what you say happened to
Speaker 1: you really happened to you, how is it that you
Speaker 1: could be here right now? When we think about anti
Speaker 1: black racism. So there is a way that the black
Speaker 1: liberation theory and black liberation work is about disbelief. It's
Speaker 1: the suspension of it. And so I go back and
Speaker 1: I'm like, how do we build power under impossible circumstances?
Speaker 1: And it really does happen with different narrative strategies. It
Speaker 1: happens with door knocking, being in space with actual people,
Speaker 1: and we have been denied that for a while. I
Speaker 1: think that sort of normalcy that we've experienced with gathering
Speaker 1: is going to be changed forever because this is the
Speaker 1: first of many pandemics that we will experience during our lifetime.
Speaker 1: And I can say that unequivocally as true because that
Speaker 1: is what science is telling us that when we were
Speaker 1: I don't know when I was like running around and
Speaker 1: then nineties or something, and scientists were worrying about superbugs,
Speaker 1: and everybody laughed in the way that they laughed when
Speaker 1: the world would end in why two K we're here.
Speaker 1: It looks like critical connections versus critical mass. Critical mass
Speaker 1: has been the thing, hasn't it? You know? Sam think
Speaker 1: Occupy Right. I did this list the last time I
Speaker 1: was here. It's my favorite occupy. Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock,
Speaker 1: the Women's March, No Muslim band, families belong together, Parkland
Speaker 1: me to stop Asian hate. We're just going to see
Speaker 1: more and more quick mass mobilizations then gone. If only
Speaker 1: a few people, a couple of people stick around a
Speaker 1: little bit longer, I believe we find each other and
Speaker 1: you keep it moving. I worry about activism because here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Everything is changing so quickly. I'm noticing a
Speaker 1: trend now where a child is chosen by corporate structures
Speaker 1: in a way that we've never seen before. I think
Speaker 1: of Sachin. Little Feather came out, got on the camera
Speaker 1: in place of Marlon Brando at the Academy Awards and said,
Speaker 1: I spoke on behalf of Marlon Brando and her people,
Speaker 1: Indigenous people and Native people, said we don't accept this award.
Speaker 1: I thought about what would happen if that took place today,
Speaker 1: and we would see her everywhere, her entire career would
Speaker 1: be made, and I don't. I think there's power and
Speaker 1: representation for sure, but I wonder what the lines are.
Speaker 1: Lines are being blurred in the way that right now
Speaker 1: there's a trans movement that's based in netflix and again,
Speaker 1: all power to workers, right, but that's not really the conversation.
Speaker 1: It's very much based in identity and is housed in
Speaker 1: a corporation. I'm looking at what the trajectory of these
Speaker 1: kinds of activations are, and you have to ask yourself
Speaker 1: certain questions when it comes to representation. Did it change
Speaker 1: tangibly any of the current things threatening that particular population
Speaker 1: of people? Did it build power for that particular population
Speaker 1: of people? Words don't mean what they used to mean now.
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't agree, for example, on a word
Speaker 1: that used to be really simple rich. When we said
Speaker 1: rich back in the day, we knew what that meant.
Speaker 1: There were the halves and the half not The wealth
Speaker 1: disparity has become so great that we don't understand who
Speaker 1: is considered rich. If it's someone who makes a hundred
Speaker 1: and something thousand dollars a year, or if it's a billionaire,
Speaker 1: what do we mean when we say eat the rich
Speaker 1: when the one percent can be counted in the very,
Speaker 1: very extremely low six figures all the way up to
Speaker 1: billions and billions of dollars. There was a big debate
Speaker 1: around AOC whether she was rich or not for making
Speaker 1: what a congress person makes. And I could not help
Speaker 1: but wonder again at how reductive that conversation was. And
Speaker 1: so I know that part of my work, part of
Speaker 1: my job is to bring meaning back into words, coupled
Speaker 1: with a power analysis that goes deeper than the instant
Speaker 1: coffee politics that I have seen, which are a byproduct
Speaker 1: of infinite information and finite attention. The instant coffee politics
Speaker 1: around Dave Chappelle and is a new special. It's something
Speaker 1: that has been written about. You're smiling suddenly, I am smiling, Sam.
Speaker 1: Now to frame it, we're talking after the walkout has
Speaker 1: happened at Netflix. We're talking after Dif Chapelle has given
Speaker 1: his addendum of a response which he said he was
Speaker 1: not going to do. What are we missing in this dialogue?
Speaker 1: You know I did said no something special. If you
Speaker 1: will It worked very hard to zoom thirty thousand feet
Speaker 1: up and talk about what happens when a movement or
Speaker 1: moment is sparked around an individual. And the language was
Speaker 1: so blurry that even as organizers and I would hesitate
Speaker 1: to call them organizers, but even as people organizing this
Speaker 1: particular thing said it's bigger than Chapelle, he was still
Speaker 1: very much part of the discourse. Remove all his images,
Speaker 1: remove this and that and the other. Do you make
Speaker 1: a mountain out of man? It becomes your hail to climb,
Speaker 1: a beacon for other people to rally around, and your
Speaker 1: hill to climb. And using Jordan Peterson as an example,
Speaker 1: now explain for people why you're bringing Jordan Peterson into
Speaker 1: this Chappelle conversation. Once upon a time, Jordan Peterson was
Speaker 1: a professor at UFT that no one had ever heard of,
Speaker 1: and a bill, I believe it was Bill C sixteen
Speaker 1: to the Canadian Parliament that makes gender discrimination and misogyn etc.
Speaker 1: A kind of hate crime. And he goes off and
Speaker 1: makes a video and he says, I will never say
Speaker 1: pronouns that is an impingement on my free speech. I
Speaker 1: will never respect people's pronouns and student organizers in Toronto
Speaker 1: chose to make Peterson the target, which, again, these are
Speaker 1: very normal responses. It's not even like shame on you.
Speaker 1: These are people who are grappling with how to build power.
Speaker 1: So the grad to Jordan Peterson, who then mulishly digs
Speaker 1: his heels and refuses to look at the language of
Speaker 1: the actual bill and goes after the students. And what
Speaker 1: happens is he gets national media attention, and then he
Speaker 1: gets picked up across the right and he becomes a
Speaker 1: free speech hero. Before you know it, Jordan Peterson is
Speaker 1: one of the most recognizable names around the world. Do
Speaker 1: we know a single name of the students at all?
Speaker 1: Where did they go, what happened to them? And does
Speaker 1: he has he been changed? Does he say he pronouns now? No?
Speaker 1: Did he get fired? Absolutely not. And it's not to
Speaker 1: say this is you know, you're bad. It's to say
Speaker 1: we should be looking at these experiences and learning from them.
Speaker 1: And I want to be clear that Chappelle and Peterson
Speaker 1: are not the same person. And I have a much
Speaker 1: more nuanced take personally than I gave in the sermon,
Speaker 1: because timing matters. What's up? I wondered if I would
Speaker 1: get into this with you, and to what extent, Let's
Speaker 1: get into it to me, and this is me in
Speaker 1: all my glory and all my multiple identities. The thing
Speaker 1: that offended me the most about that special was that
Speaker 1: we didn't write those jokes. That's it. Those are our
Speaker 1: jokes to write. I'm never gonna say you cannot this
Speaker 1: is not your experience. You cannot speak on this. I
Speaker 1: want a full range of artistic expression, even when it
Speaker 1: pisses people off. I mean, look, I'm a non binary person.
Speaker 1: I end up on the transmax side. I too, have
Speaker 1: tried to work out the physics of a urinal It
Speaker 1: just is a lot like it's really it's angles, It's
Speaker 1: like where my hips are. It's like, you know, it
Speaker 1: was a pant legfully removed halfway off my body, like
Speaker 1: like very messy. Would not recommend it for anyone, And
Speaker 1: I want to be clear about something. I think again
Speaker 1: always looking back at where we were trans people were
Speaker 1: in a very specific moment. That is frustrating for me
Speaker 1: because as a black person, I know where we need
Speaker 1: to get to. So I'll explain. In black liberation movements
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties and seventies, the discourse. You had
Speaker 1: a radical wang, of course, but the discourse was a
Speaker 1: some lationist we are just like you, and right now
Speaker 1: today that is where trans people. The discourse around transnist
Speaker 1: is we are just like you, but we're not. We
Speaker 1: go through different experiences. I have no idea with this
Speaker 1: long with these long braids or not, whether we're we're
Speaker 1: in color or not, whether I'm a mask and or
Speaker 1: I have no idea how I'm going to be gendered
Speaker 1: at a particular time, because the rules of that change
Speaker 1: for people. If you look at my size and my
Speaker 1: very fine bone structure, spectacular, right, I would never, in
Speaker 1: my opinion, I should never be seen as male. I
Speaker 1: get sered constantly. I have no idea when that's going
Speaker 1: to happen. Or is it if I drop my voice
Speaker 1: a little bit? Is it if I'm frowning, I get
Speaker 1: sered and mammed Equally to moving goalposts. If people are
Speaker 1: looking for Adam samples and large hands, I'm not the one.
Speaker 1: If you are looking around me energetically and chest I
Speaker 1: am the one. It's a moving goal post, right, because
Speaker 1: gender is a constructor where that race is a construct
Speaker 1: there fake as hell and have very real life tangible
Speaker 1: consequences that we all live within. So the ass assimilationist
Speaker 1: discourse that we are just the same as you doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense. As black people inside, same with transpeople, we
Speaker 1: are the same as everybody else. We're all the same
Speaker 1: on the inside. We all have the same dreams, the
Speaker 1: same desires, the same hopes, the same longings, the same
Speaker 1: kinds of pain, although they might be experienced and shaped
Speaker 1: by those constructs. I need for us to hurry up
Speaker 1: and get past the point of we are just like you,
Speaker 1: because we're not. And what a wonderful thing now that
Speaker 1: we're seeing a sort of renaissance on art that in
Speaker 1: black art, that of course is very much connected to
Speaker 1: the black liberation movement that we've seen in our time
Speaker 1: in these last few years, and now we're getting stories
Speaker 1: that are centered in blackness and the way that Tony
Speaker 1: Morrison intended, right, which is that there is a universalness
Speaker 1: and the experience of black people, Well, there's a universalness
Speaker 1: in the experience of trans people too. Trans women are women, right,
Speaker 1: trans people trans men are men right. These things are
Speaker 1: conclusions that I agree with absolutely. How do we get there?
Speaker 1: When I say a black liberation, there are going to
Speaker 1: be people who do not agree. So we have to
Speaker 1: decide what the work is. Because I can tell you
Speaker 1: that the work for me is very clear. My job
Speaker 1: is to look at what those obstacles are and remove them.
Speaker 1: Because I have been indoctrinated by the system. I know
Speaker 1: what it's like to be indoctrinated by a set of
Speaker 1: beliefs that I had no hand in constructing. Constructing we
Speaker 1: all do, so I have to meet people where they're at.
Speaker 1: I understand that this is a painful moment. I don't
Speaker 1: want to come across as crass. I know for anyone,
Speaker 1: any group of people that have been given so little
Speaker 1: to see a space be occupied by someone who does
Speaker 1: not appear to read or do a lot of research himself. Chapelle, No,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about Chappelle. Yeah, it's hard. I was having
Speaker 1: a really good talk with a friend of mine and
Speaker 1: we both impressed each other. I impressed her when I
Speaker 1: historicized it and said this was these are assimilationist theories
Speaker 1: that we actually have to move past. And she impressed
Speaker 1: me when she said, we also have to make a
Speaker 1: distinction between transphobia and trans misogyny. If you ask me
Speaker 1: whether or not the conversation on stage was transphobic? My
Speaker 1: answer is no, I don't believe what I saw was transphobic.
Speaker 1: I'll give an example, and I know we're getting into
Speaker 1: touching stuff. I'm going to bring up some sexual explicit thing.
Speaker 1: But if you ask me about rape jokes, unequivocally I
Speaker 1: am against them. How can you be against rape jokes
Speaker 1: but not trans jokes? Rape jokes are one hundred percent
Speaker 1: about normalizing a specific kind of violence against a specific
Speaker 1: population of people. Rape jokes are meant to normalize violence
Speaker 1: against women, primarily. It would be very difficult for anyone
Speaker 1: to point to a specific joke and tell me that
Speaker 1: it was about normalizing violence against trans people. It would
Speaker 1: be very, very difficult. It is a very difficult thing.
Speaker 1: A useless endeavor to try to prove somebody's transphobic. It's
Speaker 1: as useless as me trying to prove that somebody is racist.
Speaker 1: It makes no sense in terms of building power. And
Speaker 1: if we're really about building power, then I am like,
Speaker 1: how do we direct attention to that bill that was
Speaker 1: referenced in his special? Because here's the truth. There are
Speaker 1: two things that I really didn't like about it, you know,
Speaker 1: evoking of turf Although I understand it was like very cheeky.
Speaker 1: It wasn't you know, I'm a turret. From the way
Speaker 1: that he referred himself as transphobic, also very cheeky, not literal.
Speaker 1: And so he's engaging in a kind of fiction on
Speaker 1: stage and what he's doing and is repeating things that
Speaker 1: people the vast majority of America believes. When he talks
Speaker 1: about JK. Rowling, I'm not concerned about the term turf.
Speaker 1: I get it they're annoying, but again, if we're talking
Speaker 1: about is about normalizing violence against trans people. Turfs are
Speaker 1: not murdering trans women. They're literally not the ones. Of course,
Speaker 1: there is an ideological and psychological violence, sure, but that's
Speaker 1: not what we're talking about here. I don't believe that
Speaker 1: that Chapelle has the ability to streamline the mainstreaming of
Speaker 1: turf ism and jkre only. The other thing that he
Speaker 1: said that was really boring was gender is a fact.
Speaker 1: Gender is a fact, Okay, whatever, Sure, but that's because
Speaker 1: I understand the majority of people across America believe that
Speaker 1: they conflate gender and sex and sexuality. Why because education
Speaker 1: sucks and we're informed by an imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist
Speaker 1: Christian hetero patriarchy, so no one's getting the kind of
Speaker 1: education that they deserve. I'll end here because I'm sure
Speaker 1: you have some follow up questions. But the thing is this,
Speaker 1: What I saw, more than anything, and what I believe
Speaker 1: we deserve, is a grappling in real time, in real
Speaker 1: life with the existence of trans people. And we need
Speaker 1: to be doing more of that because we don't even
Speaker 1: understand what the hell is going on half the time.
Speaker 1: We have no language to explain some of the things
Speaker 1: that literally shape our lives because so much of this
Speaker 1: is new. Circling back to that first thing, I said,
Speaker 1: the most offensive thing to me about it was that
Speaker 1: those are our jokes to write. So how do we
Speaker 1: make sure that we get up there and we move
Speaker 1: past this assimilationist theorizing into we are absolutely different and
Speaker 1: our lives are ridiculous and absurd and deep and meaningful
Speaker 1: and beautiful and hard like everybody else, like everybody else.
Speaker 1: You know. I rewatched a special last night, and I
Speaker 1: also appreciated his attempts at engagement, But I want to
Speaker 1: stick with something. Before we finished talking about Chapelle. In
Speaker 1: that Sunday sermon you mentioned, you also said the position
Speaker 1: of trans women are women needs to be evolved and
Speaker 1: developed because woman itself in the twenty first century is
Speaker 1: not understood. That is a conclusion. One thing that I
Speaker 1: know is true is that there are things we trans
Speaker 1: people simply will not talk about, even amongst each other.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what happens when you're treated like
Speaker 1: nothing for so long. So I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: what are those things not discussed in public? Bodies are
Speaker 1: very intimate things. Authenticity is very intimate. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you another kind of historicization. Why I think
Speaker 1: this is the right moment. I want to say, in
Speaker 1: the nineties, the feminist movement of the time was no
Speaker 1: more ellipstick, no more bras. It's about embracing who we
Speaker 1: are as we are, you know, embracing your natural state.
Speaker 1: Can trans people do that? At the same time that
Speaker 1: that was happening in queer and punk spaces, it was
Speaker 1: about body modification. That was freedom, tattoos, piercings, tongue splittings,
Speaker 1: everything that you could think of. People were getting horns
Speaker 1: in their head like cool, weird shit. Whatever happens in
Speaker 1: the margins eventually moves in and becomes the mainstream, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't even know who's queer anymore. Like, literally all
Speaker 1: queer people had was haircuts and feelings. Now everyone's got
Speaker 1: a lot of feelings and a lot of good haircuts.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. We don't know anyway. So it
Speaker 1: started on the margins, it came in body modification, eventually
Speaker 1: turned into what body positivity, which is where we are today.
Speaker 1: Body positivity is about your authentic self. However, that is
Speaker 1: whether it's natural or modified. Right, So, now we're at
Speaker 1: the place in time where the icons of the moment
Speaker 1: all have work done. We all know who their surgeons are.
Speaker 1: Everybody looks good at a scale that wasn't possible before.
Speaker 1: Not only not possible before, but still not possible for
Speaker 1: most people. Accessibility is something else. It is not an accessible,
Speaker 1: attainable thing. But this the theory of body positivity has
Speaker 1: expanded because it's coalesced with capitalism and all these other things.
Speaker 1: So what becomes sort of radical moves into the center,
Speaker 1: and then it becomes a weird mishmash thing just like
Speaker 1: most of us. And people are being more open. But
Speaker 1: we're in the Internet age where people are can literally
Speaker 1: say you used to look like that, right at the
Speaker 1: same time, still mostly on the margins, you have trans
Speaker 1: folks who are also modifying and have always been modifying
Speaker 1: to reach our authentic self. And that authentic self is
Speaker 1: actually to try to just kind of look like everybody
Speaker 1: else in the way that you imagined it. And that's
Speaker 1: not actually an accessible, attainable thing for most people, and
Speaker 1: most trans people, and when you transition really matters with passability,
Speaker 1: and not all trans people are trying to pass. That's
Speaker 1: not actually a goal for every trans or non binary person.
Speaker 1: We're sort of building the plane as we're flying it.
Speaker 1: In terms of discourse, and this is a time when
Speaker 1: I say there are things that we won't even talk about.
Speaker 1: I couldn't just walk up to any trans person and
Speaker 1: ask who their surgeon was. That's weird and personal. It's
Speaker 1: making an assumption that I know something about the body
Speaker 1: that maybe I shouldn't know, even though I might know.
Speaker 1: We don't have words for sis straight men who have
Speaker 1: a preference for a transman. We don't have words for me.
Speaker 1: You know. I'm like, hey, t you girls, what's up
Speaker 1: on the sky? I'm a good top, Hey what's up?
Speaker 1: I don't know where they are. When I say there
Speaker 1: are things that we won't even talk about with each other.
Speaker 1: Part of it is that we just haven't had the
Speaker 1: chance to have those discussions and to be in spaces together.
Speaker 1: We've been spread out, we've been living in secret, we
Speaker 1: haven't been able to access the hormones and gender affirmation surgeries.
Speaker 1: And I mean, is it the same thing, Like let's say, okay,
Speaker 1: I don't even know the full weight between what is okay?
Speaker 1: What is an adjustment? If I got a chin filler
Speaker 1: or something on my johnline to look more masculine, is
Speaker 1: that cosmetic thing or is it gender affirmation? We need
Speaker 1: to figure that stuff out. That takes time, and the
Speaker 1: nuances of that language matter, and there will come a
Speaker 1: point where it actually doesn't matter that much, or we'll
Speaker 1: find another way to talk about it. But that's what
Speaker 1: I mean when I say there are things that we
Speaker 1: don't even talk about amongst ourselves because we don't know
Speaker 1: how to yet. But it's something that you can feel
Speaker 1: or that you feel out when you're in space is together.
Speaker 1: And now trans people have become something of a spectacle
Speaker 1: and a bit of a lightning rod population in the
Speaker 1: way that blackness is a bit of a lightning rod population.
Speaker 1: And at different moments in time. We can say that
Speaker 1: women native folks here have always been a lightning rod issue,
Speaker 1: but trans people particularly because there is a way that
Speaker 1: there isn't a historical movement that you can point to.
Speaker 1: Sure we have Stonewall that wasn't a trends specific movement.
Speaker 1: Transpole have been a part of every single movement that
Speaker 1: you can think of, have helped to inform and shape it,
Speaker 1: but haven't really had the opportunity of activating on their
Speaker 1: own terms. There's been something very underground about us, secret
Speaker 1: if you think about it. So we have been underground
Speaker 1: and now we're suddenly not and we're one of the
Speaker 1: most hot button issues. And now trans children are a
Speaker 1: lightning rod issue. Trans women are a lightning rod issue.
Speaker 1: And there's so much pressure, I think with every single
Speaker 1: thing that's done to sort of get it right. So
Speaker 1: I really want us if I could be like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's skip a step. It's the assimilationist theory. It doesn't work,
Speaker 1: It is not a useful endeavor. But it might just
Speaker 1: be a growing pain that we have to go through
Speaker 1: and it might just take time, and it's tough. I
Speaker 1: feel like I can see the end goal here and
Speaker 1: I worry about there's a reactiveness that I'm very concerned about,
Speaker 1: very concerned about because of that lack of historical movement.
Speaker 1: And I saw it around this thing. And if you
Speaker 1: ask me if it built transpower, and I'm just being objective,
Speaker 1: my responses, no, it did not. It was not attached
Speaker 1: to a call to action. The calls to action were
Speaker 1: very specific. They were around Dave Chappelle and they were
Speaker 1: around Netflix hiring specific people. And that's all right. I
Speaker 1: want to be really clear about something. That's all right.
Speaker 1: But my job I'm talking about, My job specifically is
Speaker 1: and to look at and to elevate and move people
Speaker 1: towards as does it build power, does it change and
Speaker 1: advance the discourse in the way that it's needed And
Speaker 1: at the moment, I haven't seen that. Now. Part of
Speaker 1: my job also is to not sit there and say me, memamma,
Speaker 1: and this wasn't no. To take the moment that we've
Speaker 1: got and move it. And I've been thinking and working
Speaker 1: out how to a timing because saying this now in
Speaker 1: the wrong moment puts me directly in opposition to so
Speaker 1: many trans people and they're hurting, and I understand, and
Speaker 1: because of my particular plane. I feel a lot of
Speaker 1: responsibility around that. The only thing I know for a
Speaker 1: fact is trends issues are very difficult to get people
Speaker 1: mobilized around, and that attention in that care is very limited.
Speaker 1: For me, I feel an incredible sense of responsibility. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you can hear that I am conflicted, which is rare
Speaker 1: but a human thing. Yeah, And I think in his
Speaker 1: own way, Chappelle is clearly conflicted. I suppose we're wondering aloud,
Speaker 1: are we better off with his kind of engagement? Would
Speaker 1: we not have it without him? Would we not get
Speaker 1: to this place of potential power that you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe it would come along anyway, maybe
Speaker 1: something else would provoke the conversation. But I think what
Speaker 1: I'm hearing from you is you, Geneia, the optimist, trying
Speaker 1: to turn some archaic views on his end into something
Speaker 1: actionable on our. Is it archaic when everybody believes it
Speaker 1: that he is the most, in his own way, much
Speaker 1: more accessible than I am, And that humanizing that can
Speaker 1: only happen when you are storytelling to me is a
Speaker 1: good thing. And I know that's hard, But me the person,
Speaker 1: I believe it is a good thing. I also believe
Speaker 1: that we would get there no matter what. The more
Speaker 1: time goes by, the more reinfiltrate every kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You know, it's transpopulation is not huge. It's a huge
Speaker 1: population of people, it's relatively small. Building power takes a
Speaker 1: lot of time, and what power we're building we have
Speaker 1: to fight about. We have to figure that out. We've
Speaker 1: we've been in everything, and we've been everywhere, and I
Speaker 1: think what we're struggling with now is what are roots
Speaker 1: look like for us? I think Dave Chappelle is very
Speaker 1: clear about what he wants to do, and for him
Speaker 1: it's true, and I don't think trans people are very
Speaker 1: clear on what we want to do. I want to
Speaker 1: be in conversation. I care about discourse. I care about
Speaker 1: the language. I care about history and philosophy, and I
Speaker 1: care about where we're going. And I know that this
Speaker 1: moment we can get there. And I believe firmly in
Speaker 1: my heart that Dave Chappelle will come with us. I
Speaker 1: really do. But you're talking about conversation, and yet you
Speaker 1: and I both know when this ends, both of us
Speaker 1: are going to go home and think, I hope this
Speaker 1: has taken the right way. I felt it in your voice.
Speaker 1: I felt the trepidation, I felt the nerves about going
Speaker 1: to a place that you are not charted publicly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you hear it in mind? Now, how do we hold that?
Speaker 1: If I needed to be comfortable with everything I did,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be having this conversation. And I think this
Speaker 1: is a good container to have that conversation and field
Speaker 1: because efficacy matters to me more than anything. And if
Speaker 1: I say all these things and it's not effective in
Speaker 1: broadening minds and opening hearts because it was wrong timing.
Speaker 1: Because I'll tell you this, I believe firmly one hundred
Speaker 1: percent in everything that I have said, and I've got
Speaker 1: a sense of humor about it because i am truly
Speaker 1: so upset because was it one day or many days?
Speaker 1: Is clearly my joke to write. The problem is how
Speaker 1: do we become prolific enough that one of ours gets
Speaker 1: to say that too? When you get on stage, you
Speaker 1: engage in a kind of fiction to make a kind
Speaker 1: of statement, and it sucks, I know, when you know
Speaker 1: there's so much attention and it feels so painful when
Speaker 1: you are not in charge of your own story. We
Speaker 1: all know what that feels. Like, but I'm telling you that,
Speaker 1: you know, as someone who has been engaging in comedy myself,
Speaker 1: I have found language black people. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: about black people for a moment. If we're talking about
Speaker 1: when I say we need to look at the black
Speaker 1: freedom struggle as emblematic of freedom struggles all over the world,
Speaker 1: you will not find a population of people that love
Speaker 1: to laugh more than black people. There are literal, entire stories,
Speaker 1: bodies of work dedicated to breaking down and understanding, historicize
Speaker 1: and black humor. It is a tradition. It is part
Speaker 1: of how we grapple with pain. I know many populations
Speaker 1: have done it, but there's a specific kind of humor here.
Speaker 1: And when I think of it from that vantage point,
Speaker 1: from that perspective, all I see here is a world
Speaker 1: of possibility because if we look at the tradition of
Speaker 1: rhetorical production, and that's what we're doing. When I say
Speaker 1: we have to make discourse, we have to make language words,
Speaker 1: it literally is looking at rhetorical production. And there are
Speaker 1: two kinds of tradition. In the Western philosophical tradition that's
Speaker 1: like Socrates, Aristotle, Plato. What they do is they talk
Speaker 1: at people, they ask a question, and they answer it
Speaker 1: and they give people answers. They ask questions, they answers.
Speaker 1: That is that Western philosophical tradition. That was Trump. He
Speaker 1: just gave people a bunch of it. These are things
Speaker 1: that we actually see replicated across institutions. The African American
Speaker 1: rhetorical tradition is of call in response. It actually asks
Speaker 1: a question and requires the audience to engage, and it's
Speaker 1: back and forth. So what you come out with is
Speaker 1: something far more nuanced and funny and mighty. And that
Speaker 1: is the tradition that I am invested in. You've talked
Speaker 1: about the pernicious power of outraged culture. We're avoiding cancel
Speaker 1: culture in this conversation in some way, but we're talking
Speaker 1: about it. What you're pushing for is to have public debate. Well,
Speaker 1: you're pushing for is to exchange ideas freely. And I
Speaker 1: just want to sit with that together. Why is it
Speaker 1: so hard right now? What are we so afraid of?
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but notice that around all this stuff
Speaker 1: with our favorite comedian, you know, around Chapelle, that there
Speaker 1: was a definitive silence around people who have particularly trans people,
Speaker 1: black trans people that were organizers. I didn't hear a
Speaker 1: lot from them. I didn't see a lot from them.
Speaker 1: And a friend of mine, the same friend that I
Speaker 1: was grappling with these ideas, she was in a room
Speaker 1: full of black trends people and the conversation came up
Speaker 1: around Chappelle and they had a very nuanced take that
Speaker 1: was kind of like, you know, aired on the side
Speaker 1: of free speech, and I want to see more that
Speaker 1: this was something that we could take and make something with,
Speaker 1: including the people who believe it, like I learned, I mean,
Speaker 1: not necessarily anything new, but I was reminded about how
Speaker 1: prolific some of these ideas are and what happens when
Speaker 1: you read half an article and think you know something.
Speaker 1: That was the activism that I learned. It was only
Speaker 1: when I started organizing that I realized that social capital
Speaker 1: trading words oppressions, but it was nonsense. It was like
Speaker 1: Pokemon without the fun. I'm like collecting, you know, people's dignity,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this can't be it, This cannot
Speaker 1: be it. And part of the problem political education is
Speaker 1: a very difficult thing because people are galvanized in a moment,
Speaker 1: there's a situation happens, It's awful everybody rushes to do
Speaker 1: something about it. Not everybody's desires are noble, and they
Speaker 1: don't need to be all. My job is as an
Speaker 1: organizers be a container for people's hurt, rage, possibility, hope
Speaker 1: and direct it in a way that I hope is useful.
Speaker 1: The goals that are about building power. So when I
Speaker 1: see this thing around, you know one thing I know
Speaker 1: I don't you know? Cancel culture is such a useless
Speaker 1: term at this point. It really always has been. But
Speaker 1: we don't have a word for how punitive we are
Speaker 1: across the left to each other, how high the stakes
Speaker 1: are for saying something anything, how quick we are to banish,
Speaker 1: to burn, to sever, to cut off. And the hard
Speaker 1: part is now on the internet, we have all these
Speaker 1: activations and nowhere to go. Where are we supposed to go?
Speaker 1: What movement sticks around? When you learn something that's going
Speaker 1: on in Tennessee and I'm all the way here on
Speaker 1: the West coast, what do I do? I have a
Speaker 1: bunch of feelings and nowhere to put them. And how
Speaker 1: do we have mass mobilizations? So the answer is not
Speaker 1: in mass mobilizations. I actually don't think they're useful anymore.
Speaker 1: I think that twenty first century models of organizing need
Speaker 1: to look at and to be futurist in nature. And
Speaker 1: I'm working on what that looks like. And I know
Speaker 1: other people are working out what that looks like. And
Speaker 1: I'm so mad that I don't know how to code.
Speaker 1: It's upsetting. It's on my list of things to learn
Speaker 1: after comedy. So you're learning comedy so that you can
Speaker 1: joke about how bad everything will become. I'm learning comedy
Speaker 1: because I needed something new to obsess over. I have
Speaker 1: come to really appreciate because I can be very intense.
Speaker 1: I can be very serious, yea, and I feel lighter
Speaker 1: these days. I've come to appreciate the tradition of laughter
Speaker 1: as a means of organizing. That actually, it's been one
Speaker 1: of my rhetorical devices since I started. I make people laugh.
Speaker 1: I get upon I say, all right, I know a
Speaker 1: lot of you have heard things about Black Lives Matter.
Speaker 1: It's really, you know, really tense stuff, and I just
Speaker 1: I want to just answer the question that you're all
Speaker 1: asking about us, And the answer is, yes, we are
Speaker 1: all this cute and you know, oh, you're a person.
Speaker 1: And it's the same thing when I get on stage
Speaker 1: for the sake of comedy immediately almost every time, if
Speaker 1: you're especially for newer mid level comedians, but almost every
Speaker 1: single comedian on the stage, something about the appearance comes
Speaker 1: up because you are grappling with the projections that people
Speaker 1: put on your body. So there is an immediate confrontation
Speaker 1: with self and society, and we're all there for a
Speaker 1: common goal, and the common goal is laughter. That is
Speaker 1: a kind of organizing. So it doesn't shock me that
Speaker 1: satirists and comedians have become the go to voice for
Speaker 1: people craving political engagement. That is not the weird kind
Speaker 1: of ESPN delivery of CNN or you know, the tilt
Speaker 1: of MSNBC or the paranoia and chaotic insanity of Fox News.
Speaker 1: We are looking to comedians as truth tellers. You've got
Speaker 1: to ask yourself why that is. I have complete faith
Speaker 1: and laughter as a mechanism of organizing, and because when
Speaker 1: I actually sat down a thought about every organizing space
Speaker 1: that I've been in, I certainly have been a, you know,
Speaker 1: the lead in every single one. So most of the
Speaker 1: time I'm going to help. But humor was a part
Speaker 1: of it. Humor has always been a part of it,
Speaker 1: And somehow I never saw that in the fullness of
Speaker 1: what it was, the absurdity, the ridiculousness of being alive,
Speaker 1: Like being alive these days is just fucking embarrassing, Like
Speaker 1: you know, I've just I'm embarrassed, Like I have no
Speaker 1: idea how I'm going to feel at any given moment.
Speaker 1: I'm fine in the morning, I'm weird in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: I get a huge spike of energy at you know,
Speaker 1: twelve thirty am. That's infuriating. Like we all just feel ridiculous.
Speaker 1: We feel like we know more than we ever have,
Speaker 1: and we feel completely inapt. So if I can infiltrate
Speaker 1: those spaces and plan a couple of seeds there, I
Speaker 1: know that I've done some good work. I mean, I
Speaker 1: maybe it took it too literally when my therapist was like,
Speaker 1: you need to have more fun, and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I had this really great debate. I read this book.
Speaker 1: She's like, no, no, no fun, And I took it literally.
Speaker 1: I said fun, What is fun? Fun? Is funny? Laughter?
Speaker 1: And went into I started to get books on comedy.
Speaker 1: I took it from that and I was like, what
Speaker 1: is the tradition of laughter? What is it as it
Speaker 1: relates to like Black liberation, there. I want to know.
Speaker 1: It usually works the opposite way, where people do comedy
Speaker 1: then they have to go to therapy. You know, race
Speaker 1: is a very difficult thing for me to joke about.
Speaker 1: A gender is fucking hilarious. I can immediately get into it,
Speaker 1: and I was like, this feels nice that I can
Speaker 1: engage in a fiction around my body and name things
Speaker 1: that are nameless because it's not real, but the perceptions
Speaker 1: that people have are. And so I step on the
Speaker 1: stage and I can make jokes about my own body
Speaker 1: that I could not make in real life. And there's
Speaker 1: something extremely cathartic about that. Are you're trying to get
Speaker 1: me to ask you to do some of your set? No, No,
Speaker 1: you started thinking about it. I did think about it.
Speaker 1: I want to make one correction. I said, people do comedy,
Speaker 1: then they go to therapy. I want to make one
Speaker 1: addition to that, which is that many people do comedy
Speaker 1: who refuse to go to therapy. So I want to
Speaker 1: just be clear. You talking about doing stand up comedy,
Speaker 1: it's deeply humanizing because most people that know you know
Speaker 1: you for your activism. You're writing and I think some
Speaker 1: people are listening right now and they're thinking, Wow, after
Speaker 1: a decade of this fight, they're pivoting to doing stand up.
Speaker 1: But it does kind of engender this question in me
Speaker 1: that I want to put to you. We started with
Speaker 1: the election, the one year anniversary in twenty twenty, there
Speaker 1: was this expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement, and
Speaker 1: as we move forward, I want to know, as an activist,
Speaker 1: what do we learn? You know why I love sports.
Speaker 1: I love sports, specifically combat sports boxing, and part of
Speaker 1: it is that one punch can change everything. The right timing,
Speaker 1: the right moment, the right belief, the right place. Geography
Speaker 1: matters so much in fighting. Who's rooting for? You know?
Speaker 1: Are you the person that gets the edgeet of being
Speaker 1: booed in a crowd? Or do you falter? You never know,
Speaker 1: and any given night anything could happen, and that can
Speaker 1: be challenging with movements, really big movements. Some of the
Speaker 1: pandemic did was it. I didn't anticipate the circle back.
Speaker 1: I could not haven't diticipated it. I had actually moved
Speaker 1: on from Black Lives Matter A lot of us had.
Speaker 1: It's that every movement and activation has its time, and
Speaker 1: the job is the old power to as much as
Speaker 1: you can and then find specific issue areas to focus on.
Speaker 1: Some went into focusing on das, others went into bail,
Speaker 1: others went into police and abolition theories. And for me,
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, there's more work to do, so
Speaker 1: I need to look at what a national entity looks
Speaker 1: like that is successful. So I went to Color of Change.
Speaker 1: Color of Change, you know, a digital body of primarily
Speaker 1: black folks that are fighting across you know, whether it's
Speaker 1: you know, criminal, criminal justice, Hollywood representation, and writing big
Speaker 1: tech issues and their success. They're good organization, They're a
Speaker 1: successful organization. I wanted to go somewhere and I wanted
Speaker 1: to see what that looked like, what that felt like.
Speaker 1: And I also wanted to get a really like I
Speaker 1: was like, this country is so weird, so I needed
Speaker 1: to go somewhere where I could learn more about it
Speaker 1: very quickly. So I went there for two years. Left
Speaker 1: my job at the beginning of twenty twenty January twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: which is wild, and I was like, Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: this much money. You know, I've got a couple of gigs.
Speaker 1: Do these talks out we find financially and then let's
Speaker 1: see what happens. And then the pandemic happened, and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh why, And I didn't anticipate the circle
Speaker 1: back to this sort of movement that was less a
Speaker 1: movement and more called to action, like you know, Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter. You know, with Black Lives Matter, it has
Speaker 1: influenced our life everywhere from culture to congress. The tangible
Speaker 1: impact is massive, and I'm grateful for it, and I'm
Speaker 1: also still digesting and learning because it was also a
Speaker 1: very painful movement for me, for personal reasons as well
Speaker 1: as political. I don't think people understand that that the
Speaker 1: movement was seven or eight years old by the time
Speaker 1: people circled around to it. You know, we were a
Speaker 1: prious we were untouchable, and it wasn't that people wanted
Speaker 1: to be, you know, a face or something like that.
Speaker 1: But it was very painful. I think to see the
Speaker 1: different ways that you know, to go from Black Lives
Speaker 1: Man and Standing Rock and the specific kinds of gross
Speaker 1: relationship that America has to Native folks is like very romanticized,
Speaker 1: very much like a mythical people. I'm like, while they're
Speaker 1: still here grappling with the reality of colonialism and trying
Speaker 1: to save the damn planet. But flocks of people supported
Speaker 1: Standing Rock, and we saw slogans come up that were
Speaker 1: like protectors, not protesters, And at the time, protester was
Speaker 1: synonymous with black activists, as if the work that we
Speaker 1: were doing was not as sacred. And I want to
Speaker 1: be clear, it wasn't Native people who were saying that.
Speaker 1: It was the vast majority of left wing people, white folks,
Speaker 1: And there was an embracing that the Women's March, there
Speaker 1: was an embracing of the women behind the Women's March.
Speaker 1: When Parkland happened, there was an embracing of these kids,
Speaker 1: and I didn't see black children get treated like that.
Speaker 1: In Black Lives Matter. We had people lose their jobs
Speaker 1: because of their association with Black Lives Matter, get evicted
Speaker 1: from their apartments, I mean just lose the little bit
Speaker 1: of money that they had. I mean we were self
Speaker 1: funded and self resourced. People had mental breakdowns. There was
Speaker 1: a psychological onslaught of not only doing the thing that
Speaker 1: you're compelled to do because you know in your heart
Speaker 1: that it has to be done. And the movement was
Speaker 1: for everyone, and it came at a great cost for
Speaker 1: the people I think who stuck it through. I don't
Speaker 1: know a single black organizer who has been who was
Speaker 1: active in that time, that isn't deeply scarred, doesn't have
Speaker 1: very serious trust issues. I've been in spaces with literal infiltrators,
Speaker 1: not like I think that this person, this person's weird.
Speaker 1: I've said, do you guys know this person know? Like
Speaker 1: verifiable police infiltrators, people who I knew, you know because
Speaker 1: data came out later on, And these are not things
Speaker 1: that we sort of talk about now and probably won't
Speaker 1: for several years. You know, people read about things that
Speaker 1: decade later, and there are things that we I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think that the Black Panthers knew that they
Speaker 1: were being infiltrated when they were being infiltry? To know
Speaker 1: that came out because of whistleblowers came up decades later,
Speaker 1: after the devastation, after midnight murders. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: we are so much more accessible and reachable now than
Speaker 1: we ever were that we don't actually need to be
Speaker 1: murdered anymore. I can't cross the border without a letter
Speaker 1: from the ACLU, I have a green card. I get
Speaker 1: tracked and pulled out every single time. Not I don't
Speaker 1: go to the normal secondary place that everybody else goes
Speaker 1: to I go somewhere else. There were real consequences, and
Speaker 1: it's you know, And so as much as I'm like
Speaker 1: movements are for everyone, and as much as I want
Speaker 1: people to call themselves organizers and everything else, you need
Speaker 1: years and peers a lot. Some people have years, they
Speaker 1: don't have peers. Some people have peers that don't have years.
Speaker 1: And it's hard not to be very protective of something
Speaker 1: that required so much suffering. I wouldn't be who I
Speaker 1: am without the movement. I don't think I am grateful
Speaker 1: to have been alive in this time. I'm grateful for
Speaker 1: relationships that had to be forged through fire, and I
Speaker 1: am still mourning those that burned, not inspired. But in
Speaker 1: the midst of that painful journey, you're talking about you
Speaker 1: and I sat down at the end of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and towards the end of that conversation, there's a passage
Speaker 1: I want to play for you. Right now. We can
Speaker 1: just sit with it and then we'll talk about it.
Speaker 1: Got you. We are fighting against the beast of bigger
Speaker 1: trades that has existed since the founding of this country
Speaker 1: in so many ways, and there have always been people
Speaker 1: who are fighting it always and we've won. It's nothing
Speaker 1: good has ever been given. It's been one. Yes, it
Speaker 1: took time, but slavery was abolished. I believe that we
Speaker 1: are saying defund the police and saying, maybe we should
Speaker 1: put this in our calendar. Twenty years from now, we
Speaker 1: should meet on this day and I would love for
Speaker 1: us to talk about what's changed, because I promise you
Speaker 1: you police budgets will be slashed. I promise you. I
Speaker 1: promise you because it's one of it. It is an
Speaker 1: inevitable answer for what communities need right now. I promise
Speaker 1: you that it will happen because there will always be
Speaker 1: me to push through it. There will always be people
Speaker 1: like me, there will always be people like you. And
Speaker 1: even if it's taken longer than we hoped, we have one.
Speaker 1: We have one. So we have to keep writing. We
Speaker 1: have to keep chanting. We have to keep yelling, we
Speaker 1: have to keep praying, we have to keep declaring, we
Speaker 1: have to keep demanding, we have to keep fighting. I
Speaker 1: want this to be our challenge because it means that
Speaker 1: I get to choose it every day. And I believe
Speaker 1: that people's lives lives. George and Tazianna Brianna, they deserved it,
Speaker 1: and I don't want another one to happen. Where did
Speaker 1: you go? I really listened, and I could hear where
Speaker 1: I was at that time. It was like in the
Speaker 1: middle of a very serious mobilization. Like I sounded like
Speaker 1: I was on a stage, and I was pretty much
Speaker 1: every other day. It's in the pace has slowed down
Speaker 1: so much for me. I can hear the cadence of
Speaker 1: my voice is different from what it used to be.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I'm like, I believe every word of that,
Speaker 1: and I'm reflective of the fact that, yeah, police budgets
Speaker 1: will be slash, and then we have to ask ourselves
Speaker 1: they get slash because police are no longer as useful,
Speaker 1: what's going to come in its place? What kinds of
Speaker 1: technologies will do the work that will be highly much
Speaker 1: more efficient in their predation. We're a ways from that
Speaker 1: in terms of the rendering police obsolete. Again, if we're
Speaker 1: talking about the great battles of beliefs and it is
Speaker 1: it shocking that police and shocking numbers are resigning instead
Speaker 1: of getting vaccinated, because that it's become a part of
Speaker 1: the ideological discourse around what you believe. We literally are
Speaker 1: in the great battle of beliefs, and it's becoming more
Speaker 1: and more the lines are getting clearer and clearer and clearer.
Speaker 1: And I think that liberals, which are people who kind
Speaker 1: of are in the middle, middle of the road, folks,
Speaker 1: cherry pickers, I think that they're going to have to
Speaker 1: make some choices soon. And I think it's going to
Speaker 1: be really ugly, because that's only what it could be.
Speaker 1: It already is too ugly. Here's the thing, Sam, you know,
Speaker 1: the way I do my thing is this, and I'm
Speaker 1: making a circle here with my hand. I'm at the
Speaker 1: top of the circle right now. George Jackson said, here
Speaker 1: at the highest point in the circle. That's when all
Speaker 1: the mass mobilization happens. And I'm tracing a circle. All
Speaker 1: of this has to happen first. I'm anticipating another Trump
Speaker 1: run and a wave like we've never seen before. When
Speaker 1: that time comes, you will find me in that space again.
Speaker 1: Right now, I'm trying to find a way to consolidate
Speaker 1: power across the left and the left and culture. I've
Speaker 1: really they come to a head because of social media
Speaker 1: in a way that can make things really challenging, you know.
Speaker 1: And I can just hear ultra leftist talking about how
Speaker 1: useless it is to care about presidential elections, and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, I can't, like, I literally cannot deal with
Speaker 1: how reductive things have become online because that is a
Speaker 1: massive and huge threat. I don't know if Biden's going
Speaker 1: to make it. In the event that Kamala Harris runs,
Speaker 1: We've got we've got a lot to deal with. Their
Speaker 1: latent movements activation sorry that people have never heard of.
Speaker 1: That make me sound like I'm wearing a tin hats.
Speaker 1: The pseudo movement run by Russian bots called African Descendants
Speaker 1: of Slaves that actually is not at all run by
Speaker 1: black people. I know I sound wild, but this was
Speaker 1: some of the work that I was doing when I
Speaker 1: was at Color of Change studying this. And they go
Speaker 1: after Kamala Harris and they get activate it, and it's
Speaker 1: all about exploiting black people's pain because they say she's
Speaker 1: not really from here, She's a foreigner, same way that
Speaker 1: Trump used to talk about Barack Obama. But now bots.
Speaker 1: Remember I said, the digitization of our live spots can
Speaker 1: do that work. Our lives online are about manipulating us,
Speaker 1: which is why meta Facebook is such a threat. And
Speaker 1: I say that and actively use Instagram. I like the platform.
Speaker 1: The answer isn't simple boycotts and disengagement, though I disengage
Speaker 1: heavily regularly. We need a government body that can grapple
Speaker 1: with the realities of big tech. You know Native people.
Speaker 1: I remember everyone was talking about going offline, and there
Speaker 1: are some Native folks in this room that I was
Speaker 1: in where we were sort of strategizing, and they said,
Speaker 1: we're still trying to get online. We talk about the
Speaker 1: apocalypse and post apocalyptic realities, and for some people in
Speaker 1: our country, that's already happened. Time is not a linear thing.
Speaker 1: It's not a linear thing. There's a collapse of different
Speaker 1: realities that are happening all the time. I'll to say
Speaker 1: I'm in a sort of point of placement, of incubation
Speaker 1: and of education, trying to build up more tools so
Speaker 1: that when the time comes when people want and need
Speaker 1: more support, more infrastructure, more of a container, that I
Speaker 1: that I can be that for them and that they
Speaker 1: could be that for me. As we close the last
Speaker 1: fifteen to twenty minutes, you've talked about this seven to
Speaker 1: eight year run with Black Lives Matter and the human
Speaker 1: toll that it took on you and yet in thinking
Speaker 1: about the twenty twenty two midterms the twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: presidential election, it sounds to me like, in spite of
Speaker 1: that price that you paid, you're not done. Are you
Speaker 1: going to keep fighting because it's all that you know
Speaker 1: or it's all that you can do. I'm going to
Speaker 1: keep fighting because of everything that I know. Whatever you believe,
Speaker 1: I think we could agree that there's only this. You know,
Speaker 1: you only be in this form once we have this
Speaker 1: one life, and everything that we've been told about ourselves
Speaker 1: about each other has largely been a lie, at least
Speaker 1: by the system. And the thing that makes me the
Speaker 1: most sad the moments that I feel the most defeated,
Speaker 1: is the idea that we could live and die knowing
Speaker 1: nothing else. And for me, if I have a curiosity,
Speaker 1: even a small one, I follow it. I don't want
Speaker 1: to leave a single stone unturned, and the only way
Speaker 1: that I can do that is to go to where
Speaker 1: stones are, and if you move that stone, there's a
Speaker 1: person or I cannot think of a more worthwhile way
Speaker 1: to live than to continue to be on that journey
Speaker 1: because I think I said this to you then, and
Speaker 1: I believe this for everything that I have that I've
Speaker 1: really struggled with people in my whole life and even
Speaker 1: going back and writing, and I'm like, you know, there
Speaker 1: were times I couldn't walk into a room in my
Speaker 1: high contact, couldn't speak. I wasn't an advocate for myself.
Speaker 1: You know, I felt so small, so invisible, so hyper visible.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I know exactly what that obscurity
Speaker 1: feels like, and I know that there are parts of
Speaker 1: me in me that can only be access through other people.
Speaker 1: That I can only become who I am or know
Speaker 1: who I am if I continue to follow those curiosities,
Speaker 1: if I continue to seek people out as much as
Speaker 1: that is a terrifying endeavor, and it is. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many comedy clubs I've been
Speaker 1: to now with neck Beard Metallica wearing nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 1: Carpenter Gens dudes that I shared a laugh with as
Speaker 1: I study the science or the science of this thing
Speaker 1: and whether or not it becomes a major part of
Speaker 1: my life or a small and just the research alone,
Speaker 1: just being in the space together. I mean, the only
Speaker 1: time I'm around people like that is if I'm in
Speaker 1: an airport and everybody's going somewhere else in that space.
Speaker 1: Just like in boxing, we're all there for the shared goal.
Speaker 1: Were they there for the fight or there for the laughter?
Speaker 1: And it's not a coincidence that I'm drawn to those
Speaker 1: two things. There is no end for me in sight.
Speaker 1: I have to finally just fully admit that that's because
Speaker 1: just like in sports, we're human. We are unpredictable, and
Speaker 1: as long as we're unpredictable, disaster is always possible, But
Speaker 1: so is every good thing we can image. And I
Speaker 1: know what's side. I want to live one day the future.
Speaker 1: Con Thank you very much. Oh you know it's my pleasure. Sam.
Speaker 1: I'm obsessed with you. And that's our show. Before the credits,
Speaker 1: a little bit of housekeeping. As some of you have noticed,
Speaker 1: Talk Easy is no longer an independent program after five
Speaker 1: plus years, we have joined Pushkin Industries and iHeart Media.
Speaker 1: This is definitely a cause for celebration. Every episode of
Speaker 1: this show, I think over two hundred and fifty now
Speaker 1: has been an uphill battle, and I am overjoyed to
Speaker 1: have a partner in Pushkin to climb that hill with
Speaker 1: each and every week. Thank you for showing up and
Speaker 1: supporting the work we do here and I've said it before,
Speaker 1: but I'll say it again. We would not have done
Speaker 1: this show for as long as we have since twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen without your love, and I hope you know the
Speaker 1: love is mutual. I appreciate your time and commitment, and
Speaker 1: I am forever indebted to you, especially those of you
Speaker 1: who were here long before anyone had ever heard about
Speaker 1: Talk Easy. I see you, and I thank you. Here's
Speaker 1: the five more years, and I do really believe the
Speaker 1: best is yet to come. As cliche as that is,
Speaker 1: it's true. Special thanks this week to Leah Smiley and
Speaker 1: of course, Jenea future Cohn. You can learn more about
Speaker 1: Jenea's work on their website and Instagram. Find those links
Speaker 1: in our show notes at talk easypod dot com. There
Speaker 1: you'll all find a back catalog of over two hundred
Speaker 1: and forty episodes. If you enjoy today's episode, I'd recommend
Speaker 1: conversations with activists, writers, and politicians including Gloria Steinem, Doctor
Speaker 1: Cornell West, Janelle Monet, Roxanne Gay, Gnome Chomsky, Ilhan Omar
Speaker 1: resma manacum Beto or Rourke, and Brittany Packnet Cunningham. To
Speaker 1: hear those and more Pushkin podcasts listen on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. You
Speaker 1: can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk easypod.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to support the show by purchasing one
Speaker 1: of our mugs, they come in cream or Navy. I'm
Speaker 1: a cream personally, but a lot of people like the Navy.
Speaker 1: You can do so at talk easypod dot com slash shop.
Speaker 1: We also still have a few copies of that vinyl
Speaker 1: record we made but fran Liebowitz. That's also on the
Speaker 1: website at talk easypod dot com slash shop. Of course,
Speaker 1: the show would not be possible without our incredible team.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jennick Sobravo. Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Caitlyn Dryden. Our lead editor is Andre Lynn. Our managing
Speaker 1: editor is Clarice Kavara. Today's episode was edited by Caitlyn
Speaker 1: Dryden and mixed by Ben Tolliday. Illustrations by Krisha Chanoy,
Speaker 1: Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzak, Ian Jones,
Speaker 1: and Ethan Seneca. Special thanks to Patrice Lee, Kylin Ung,
Speaker 1: Shilo Fagan, Nikki Spina, and Callie Syringis. I'd also like
Speaker 1: to give a special thanks to Tim Moore, our engineer
Speaker 1: out of York, recording here in Los Angeles, California. The
Speaker 1: show is produced by Caroline Reebok. I'm San Fragoso. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back
Speaker 1: here next week with actors Vicki Creeps and Melanie Lynsky.
Speaker 1: Until then, stay safe and so long.