Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam fergot So. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Hey everyone, thank you for being here today.
Speaker 1: I am joined by Brittany pack Nick Cunningham. She's an activist, educator,
Speaker 1: and writer whose new podcast is called Undistracted. It's a
Speaker 1: show focused on news, culture, and politics told through the
Speaker 1: lens of intersectional feminism. Aim is to create a more
Speaker 1: just world that will work for all of us. As
Speaker 1: you'll hear in our talk, that fight for justice is
Speaker 1: a battle she started waging as a child growing up
Speaker 1: in Saint Louis, Missouri in the eighties and nineties, But
Speaker 1: it wasn't until thirty years later that you perhaps became
Speaker 1: familiar with Brittany. On August ninth, twenty fourteen, Michael Brown,
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old, unarmed black man, was shot down
Speaker 1: by officer Darren Wilson and Ferguson. You know this story
Speaker 1: by now. The shooting occurred only twelve minutes away from
Speaker 1: Brittany's house, twelve minutes and about eight miles of separation
Speaker 1: between her and him. In the aftermath of Brown's death,
Speaker 1: Brittany became a leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement.
Speaker 1: She worked as a teacher for Teach for America, a
Speaker 1: member of President Barack Obama's Task Force on twenty first
Speaker 1: Century Policing, and now a regular NBC contributor. But today
Speaker 1: she's here with us to work through the moment we
Speaker 1: find ourselves in the fatigue that I know we're all
Speaker 1: trying to combat, the grief of watching guilty people being acquitted,
Speaker 1: rioters vindicated, a political system in repair. Brittany has worked
Speaker 1: tirelessly over the past seven years. You may be familiar
Speaker 1: with some of her work, you may not be. My
Speaker 1: hope is that you leave this conversation with not just
Speaker 1: a renewed sense of purpose in this fight for racial equality,
Speaker 1: but also an understanding of the toll it takes to
Speaker 1: keep fighting and to do the very real work we
Speaker 1: have ahead. This is Brittany pat Nick Cunningham, and thanks
Speaker 1: for being here. Brittany, Hi, Hi, how are you doing.
Speaker 1: I am I'm a little tired. Always a good way
Speaker 1: to start a podcast, yeah, always. But you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: I've been really public about my own mental health journey
Speaker 1: and my deep belief in the power of therapists, and
Speaker 1: in multiple conversations with my own therapist over the last
Speaker 1: few weeks, I realized that the latest bout of insomnia
Speaker 1: that I have been dealing with, which I've been dealing
Speaker 1: with off and on frankly since the pandemic hit, but
Speaker 1: it has gotten very, very bad in the last few weeks,
Speaker 1: that actually what probably triggered it was the insurrection. I
Speaker 1: only live about ten minutes from the Capitol, so I
Speaker 1: try to leave my house that day and my husband
Speaker 1: and I ended up coming fully into to like the
Speaker 1: edge of it, and so we saw, you know, police
Speaker 1: that were Metro police that were staging. We rode past
Speaker 1: this kind of caravan of Trump trucks with like the
Speaker 1: flags and that don't tread on me stuff on there,
Speaker 1: and I was like, we were like four or five
Speaker 1: blocks from our home. And I think, because of everything
Speaker 1: that I've been through in my life and the kind
Speaker 1: of work that I do, I did not expect it
Speaker 1: to have as much of an effect on me emotionally
Speaker 1: and psychologically as it has until I talked with my
Speaker 1: therapist and realized I probably haven't dealt with all of
Speaker 1: the other stuff either, right, Like all this stuff, the
Speaker 1: ways we were treated in protest, the tear gassing and
Speaker 1: the pepper spray and the running for our lives and
Speaker 1: not knowing if your friends are going to make it,
Speaker 1: and having your friends arrested for you know, being audacious
Speaker 1: and black and honest, like all of these things. I
Speaker 1: probably just kept moving through. And there's something about this
Speaker 1: moment of the pandemic that is causing stillness. It is
Speaker 1: forcing stillness in ways that are making us confront all
Speaker 1: this stuff. Our bodies are catching up with the traumas
Speaker 1: we haven't healed. Our minds are catching up with the
Speaker 1: fears we have left unarticulated. Our hearts are catching up
Speaker 1: with the despair of the last four years that we
Speaker 1: previously were able. I previously was able to just catch
Speaker 1: a flight and move on to the next thing, and
Speaker 1: I can't do that anymore. And yet I am just
Speaker 1: really clear on what this leaves the door open too.
Speaker 1: And so I think some of some of the bracing
Speaker 1: that my psyche is doing without even my knowledge is
Speaker 1: because we know what happens when treasonous seditionists, white supremacists
Speaker 1: are not held accountable. And let's talk about those rioters
Speaker 1: for a second. As I know you've seen, the press
Speaker 1: has tried to offer answers as to why this storming
Speaker 1: of the capital happened. Now. Many have pointed to the
Speaker 1: financial inequities of these rioters as a way of solving
Speaker 1: the mystery of January six, as if the why and
Speaker 1: the how isn't clear by now. But you wrote something
Speaker 1: I like this past week. You said, white supremacy is
Speaker 1: not a mystery, and if financial inequities turn people into insurrectionists,
Speaker 1: don't you think black and brown folks who are systemically
Speaker 1: and disproportionately in low income circumstances would have rated the
Speaker 1: capital long before. Stop this, stop the economic anxiety talk.
Speaker 1: If these folks had real economic anxiety, they wouldn't keep
Speaker 1: picking the party of the one percent. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: white supremacy is not a mystery, especially not in a
Speaker 1: country where the founding experiment was white supremacy. It justified
Speaker 1: in their minds the genocide of indigenous people and the
Speaker 1: thieving of their land. It justified in their mind the
Speaker 1: thieving of bodies and labor from enslaved Africans. It has
Speaker 1: continued to justify in a lot of people's minds, the
Speaker 1: closing of borders that were open to their own European
Speaker 1: ancestors but should be closed to people from the Global South.
Speaker 1: In their mind, it's the same thing that has justified
Speaker 1: Islamophobia and anti Semitism and the retort that all lives
Speaker 1: matter when someone would dare say black lives matter. White
Speaker 1: supremacy is not a mystery. It is the organizing principle
Speaker 1: of the United States of America. So to act like
Speaker 1: we don't know what it looks like when it rams
Speaker 1: 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 way 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 office,
Speaker 1: failed to do, which is to tell the truth of
Speaker 1: what has happened and to do our level best to
Speaker 1: make sure that nobody ever forgets it, especially as an
Speaker 1: election year comes up, especially as people set policies in
Speaker 1: their hometowns and in their states, and especially as we
Speaker 1: do our best not to repeat the aftermath of the
Speaker 1: Civil War when Andrew Johnson pardoned all of the Confederate
Speaker 1: soldiers and pardon Jefferson Davis and you know Davis. The
Speaker 1: supporters said they didn't want a trial because they wanted
Speaker 1: the country to heal. I mean, it is almost verbatim
Speaker 1: what we are hearing people say now in their justification
Speaker 1: for not convicting this man. And so much of the
Speaker 1: evil that continued after the Civil War is due in
Speaker 1: part because no one was all accountable. And so I
Speaker 1: just we have to be doing our job to make
Speaker 1: sure that history doesn't get repeated, because clearly Senate Republicans
Speaker 1: weren't willing to do their job. I think, to better
Speaker 1: understand your entry point into this fight, I want to
Speaker 1: go to nineteen ninety four 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 at 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
Speaker 1: about of all things, I think the Santa Clauses yep,
Speaker 1: at the mall. Yeah, walk me through this moment. So
Speaker 1: you have to understand about the house that I was
Speaker 1: raised in, is that two things were always going to
Speaker 1: be true, that we were going to worship Jesus and
Speaker 1: that we were going to celebrate being black. And that
Speaker 1: was all the time, every day, NonStop, in the best ways,
Speaker 1: in ways that made me feel affirmed as a young person,
Speaker 1: in ways that really helped me straighten my back when
Speaker 1: I would enter predominantly white spaces which I was being
Speaker 1: educated in to know my value both in the context
Speaker 1: of my faith and the context of my personhood. And
Speaker 1: so what that means is that the role models that
Speaker 1: I was raised with, including let me be very clear,
Speaker 1: Jesus 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: that we're 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 is always black.
Speaker 1: Cassanta is like my dad or you know, Deacon so
Speaker 1: and so who's playing Santa. 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 ask 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 Santa.
Speaker 1: And I know we're talking about this twenty seven years later. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but to me, it seems not at all about Santa,
Speaker 1: that's right, It's about everything else. Yeah, because it's never
Speaker 1: just about Santa, right it when you I never thought
Speaker 1: 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 principles 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: legis f 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 microways when I would be at a pool party
Speaker 1: 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 Santa. So now what do you have
Speaker 1: to say. There's there's nothing you can tell me. We
Speaker 1: won so you know, go back to your worksheet, leave
Speaker 1: me alone. But basically what you're saying is, even at
Speaker 1: that age, you knew you had to be excellent. Yep.
Speaker 1: And I wonder did that and does that like where
Speaker 1: at you? I think that addiction to perfectionism is something
Speaker 1: a lot of us have to unlearn. I think it
Speaker 1: is a particularly Western an americanized ideal that we are
Speaker 1: highly individualistic and therefore we're not supposed to need anyone else,
Speaker 1: and in that individualism, that we are supposed to be
Speaker 1: excellent and perfect at all times. And I think that
Speaker 1: that has been weaponized in particular ways against folks from
Speaker 1: marginalized communities. So, you know, it's funny a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, when Scandal was all the rage, and really
Speaker 1: the only time at that time I was using Twitter
Speaker 1: was to like live tweet Scandal, there was an episode
Speaker 1: where Olivia Pope's father says to her, you know, I
Speaker 1: always told you that you had to be two three
Speaker 1: times as good to get half as far. And I
Speaker 1: had all of these white people on my feet and
Speaker 1: in my life who were like, oh my god, I've
Speaker 1: never heard this, what a relationship. This is awful. Da
Speaker 1: da da da, And all the black folks I knew
Speaker 1: were like, uh, yeah, duh, this is what. Where is
Speaker 1: the mystery here? I mean, I'm confused. Why you're confused, because,
Speaker 1: of course this is the way it has been. And
Speaker 1: I had to have some upfront conversations with white people
Speaker 1: in my life to say like, here are some of
Speaker 1: the ways that you had perpetuated that and didn't even
Speaker 1: realize it. Here are some of the ways that I
Speaker 1: have perpetuated that with other black people because I have
Speaker 1: internalized that idea and I didn't even realize it. So
Speaker 1: there are things that I need to unlearn and undo,
Speaker 1: just there are things that white folks need to unlearn
Speaker 1: and undo because of the way that I've internalized that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, of course it can be exhausting. I do
Speaker 1: think that the power of the conversations we're having more
Speaker 1: broadly now can help us undo our addiction to business
Speaker 1: and to perfection. So on my podcast and Undistracted a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago, I talked to Tricia Hersey, who founded
Speaker 1: the NAP Ministry, and she calls herself the nap Bishop,
Speaker 1: and she says two things consistently. One that rest is
Speaker 1: everyone's divine right. So this idea that we have to
Speaker 1: be busy all the time because we owe capitalism something
Speaker 1: is a lie that we've all gotten sold. But also
Speaker 1: on top of that that rest is a form of
Speaker 1: resistance to white supremacy. So when I choose to not
Speaker 1: be all things to all people, when I choose to
Speaker 1: be a black woman not concerned with saving democracy for everybody,
Speaker 1: but saving democracy for the most marginalized, knowing that it
Speaker 1: will benefit everybody, that that is an act of resistance.
Speaker 1: And I do think that there is something beautiful about
Speaker 1: how the people who love me and have raised me
Speaker 1: have helped me redefine what excellence looks like. That, especially
Speaker 1: for black folks, we recognize that our love and our
Speaker 1: families and our community is wealth, and so going and
Speaker 1: chasing these external forms of wealth are Actually that's not
Speaker 1: the gift, that's not the prize. The prize are all
Speaker 1: of the people and places that I can occupy that
Speaker 1: respect my rest, that want my rest, that help me rest,
Speaker 1: And that is redefining excellence in ways that elevate how
Speaker 1: I treat other people and how I allow other people
Speaker 1: to treat me, and how I show up in love,
Speaker 1: and how I welcome other people when they show up
Speaker 1: in love for me. That is a journey that I'm
Speaker 1: still on, but I am grateful for it being a
Speaker 1: cultural marker that I think Reade finds how excellence has
Speaker 1: been weaponized against us. Your job is that of constant
Speaker 1: engagement on your podcast, on network television, on the streets
Speaker 1: and protest. But I think also part of that engagement
Speaker 1: is this public processing that you do of events that
Speaker 1: most of us sit within private, in our homes and
Speaker 1: our apartments. A police shooting, a capital riot, platent exercises
Speaker 1: of racism and racial inequity. These are things most people
Speaker 1: sit with by themselves or with their friends or their family.
Speaker 1: And yet for many years now you have been processing
Speaker 1: these traumas, this pain in public. How do you manage that?
Speaker 1: That is a fantastic question, and I appreciate the way
Speaker 1: that it honors the labor that is very intensive about
Speaker 1: learning in public. As I always say, engaging in public
Speaker 1: about really challenging things. One of the things I have
Speaker 1: learned better. I'm not perfect at it, but one of
Speaker 1: the things I've learned better especially over the last few years,
Speaker 1: is to be very judicious and picky about what I
Speaker 1: engage with, and it can look like I'm engaging all
Speaker 1: the time, but I'm actually not. I will tell you
Speaker 1: I got an invitation just yesterday to be on Michael
Speaker 1: Cohen's podcast, Michael Cohen being, of course, the former Trump lawyer,
Speaker 1: and now I had no idea until I got this
Speaker 1: outreach that he's got a podcast that is literally I
Speaker 1: Kick You, not called maya Culpa, and he spends all
Speaker 1: of his time trashing Donald Trump and Trump is um,
Speaker 1: which is a monster that he helped build. So I declined,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, because it is actually not worth
Speaker 1: my time to process with Michael Cohen. It is not
Speaker 1: worth me giving him the gift of my credibility. In
Speaker 1: the spaces where I have credibility, I'm not lending that
Speaker 1: to him. He can do his Maya culpas on his time,
Speaker 1: not 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
Speaker 1: time and B because if I say yes to that,
Speaker 1: I am a firming the idea that systemic racism is
Speaker 1: debatable and it is not up for debate. In learning
Speaker 1: to become more in control of it, that's how I
Speaker 1: deal with it. Yeah, it is. It is an ever
Speaker 1: evolving process as to how I do that kind of
Speaker 1: engage in. But I am always keeping a mind to
Speaker 1: the purpose that I owe myself and others to live
Speaker 1: out the values that I try to have in public
Speaker 1: and in private and the safety of myself and you know,
Speaker 1: the people in communities that I care about. You have
Speaker 1: been a source of inspiration for many many people over
Speaker 1: the years. I appreciate that you've also been a source
Speaker 1: of inspiration for a lot of white people, which is
Speaker 1: somewhat surprising to me all the time, but not always
Speaker 1: the way I said it almost sounds like a derogatory comments.
Speaker 1: I didn't take it that way. I'm not like you
Speaker 1: inspired white people. This is a bad thing. No. What
Speaker 1: I mean by that is there are a lot of
Speaker 1: white folks 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 and imperfect rather you know, able body, person, etc.
Speaker 1: That grace and accountability have to meet at an intersection.
Speaker 1: And I am not Jesus the Christ. Therefore my grace
Speaker 1: is not sufficient and unending. Right in kise anyone was
Speaker 1: confused you or not Jesus, definitely not. My grace is
Speaker 1: limited right as a human being, and I try my
Speaker 1: best to show as much grace to other people as
Speaker 1: I would once shown to me. But I also recognize
Speaker 1: that the best apology has changed behavior, and that when
Speaker 1: people give you feedback, even if it is painful, if
Speaker 1: it can contribute to your growth, then it is a
Speaker 1: gift and treating it that way can help us. Right,
Speaker 1: when we get gifts, we don't just toss them aside.
Speaker 1: We don't get defensive at the person who gives them
Speaker 1: to us. We don't say how dare you give me
Speaker 1: this thing that can help me live a better life. No,
Speaker 1: we say thank you, and we just what we're going
Speaker 1: to do with it, because the gift is useful, because
Speaker 1: the gift came from a place of humanity. I have
Speaker 1: had gracious, thoughtful, sweet, kind, considerate feedback given to me,
Speaker 1: and I've had really harsh feedback given to me, and
Speaker 1: instead of me getting defensive, I've had to push myself
Speaker 1: to say, let's take a step in the person's shoes
Speaker 1: who's offering me that feedback, because maybe they're tired of
Speaker 1: having to give people like me that feedback. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: tired of having to keep pressing up against systems that
Speaker 1: don't want to listen to their feedback. So maybe instead
Speaker 1: of policing their tone or their communication, I can receive
Speaker 1: it as the gift that it is, offer my apology,
Speaker 1: recognize that they can take it or not take it.
Speaker 1: That is perfectly within their right, but that I owe
Speaker 1: it to myself and the communities that I say I
Speaker 1: care about to change my behavior. So yeah, we can
Speaker 1: accept imperfect allies as long as they are constantly improving out,
Speaker 1: as long as they are constantly evolving allies. Allies who
Speaker 1: were in stasis are no allies at all. Can I
Speaker 1: go to a moment where I think you exhibited some
Speaker 1: grace in your pasture again, to go back to the nineties,
Speaker 1: our favorite era. Here in nineteen ninety eight, you are
Speaker 1: going to this midwestern high school again in Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: You created at the age of fifteen, the first diversity
Speaker 1: organization in your high school co created. We should say
Speaker 1: they're about a dozen of us. Yeah, you co created
Speaker 1: the first diversity organization. My apologies to your co creators.
Speaker 1: At the time, it was met with praise from professors,
Speaker 1: many classmates galvanized, supported and appreciated the work you and
Speaker 1: your co collaborators created. There was, however, one student who
Speaker 1: saw your work, as you say, an existential threat to
Speaker 1: his way of life and inflated ego. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't just an existential threat. He turned it into a
Speaker 1: physical one and retaliated when one day at school, near
Speaker 1: the women's locker room, he's spat on you. And I
Speaker 1: know it is a painful moment to revisit, But how
Speaker 1: do you think of that moment now, all these years removed.
Speaker 1: I think of both of us as products of our environment.
Speaker 1: It just so happens that the environment was built for
Speaker 1: him and it wasn't built for me. So there were
Speaker 1: many differences between the two of us. He was white,
Speaker 1: I am not. He is male, I am not. He
Speaker 1: came from great Wealth, I do not. His father was
Speaker 1: on the board of trustees. My mother was not. She
Speaker 1: was a widow at the time. He came from a
Speaker 1: family who could have forward to pay the thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars intuition that it cost to go to this private
Speaker 1: school every year, and I did not. My mother made
Speaker 1: a great living and worked very hard and is very
Speaker 1: well educated. But we went from a two income household
Speaker 1: to a one income household when my dad passed when
Speaker 1: I was in the seventh grade, And so we also
Speaker 1: had scholarships, and so we were both the products of
Speaker 1: our environment. And our environment was far more hostile to
Speaker 1: me and far more supportive of him. So there is
Speaker 1: this world in which he stands out in the context
Speaker 1: of our school. In a lot of people's minds, is
Speaker 1: an extreme right that no one would have taken to
Speaker 1: the extremes of spitting at me as he did, of
Speaker 1: harassing me as he did, of showing no rewards for
Speaker 1: it as he did both then and now. And I
Speaker 1: also know that the seeds of what he believed were
Speaker 1: nurtured in an environment that did its best by diversity
Speaker 1: and equity and inclusion. But literally most schools across this
Speaker 1: country have yet to divorce themselves from the culture of
Speaker 1: white supremacy, and so there was no time when he
Speaker 1: got dismissed as anything more than like that really annoying guy.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to understands that at no point
Speaker 1: before this incident where he spits it me had there
Speaker 1: been any accountability for a bunch of the bigoted things
Speaker 1: that he had said and done to around our school.
Speaker 1: So why is he going to believe that this overt
Speaker 1: act of racism, this overt assault, is going to be
Speaker 1: any more or less punishable than any of the other
Speaker 1: things he did. And it turns out he was one
Speaker 1: hundred percent right. It wasn't punishable. There was no expulsion,
Speaker 1: there was no suspension, there was a clenched mouth apology,
Speaker 1: and everybody went on about their business. I think of
Speaker 1: myself at the time as somebody who, as the product
Speaker 1: of the same environment, was trying to make sense of
Speaker 1: what it meant to experience backlash for using your voice, because,
Speaker 1: as I said, I had grown up in a very
Speaker 1: affirming environment, and my elementary school, even though it was
Speaker 1: predominantly white, i'd say, was more advanced in the conversation
Speaker 1: about diversity and equity than most schools in the nineties.
Speaker 1: In some ways, I had this very advanced elementary school experience.
Speaker 1: Both of my parents are living and they are augmenting
Speaker 1: all of the afrocentricity that I don't receive at school.
Speaker 1: They're doing that at home. And by the time he
Speaker 1: spits at me, I've got a single mother who is
Speaker 1: now a widow, who is trying to raise two children
Speaker 1: and now a much more confusing environment. And I'm now
Speaker 1: at a school where the same kind of progressivism, if
Speaker 1: you will, around issues of diversity and equity are just
Speaker 1: not present. So it's not that I was always supported
Speaker 1: and everything that I fought for. Like you said, I
Speaker 1: got plenty of questions of it's just saying clause, but
Speaker 1: this was certainly the most extreme case I had ever experienced.
Speaker 1: So I'm like an I'm a teenager trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what it means to say. I believe in raising
Speaker 1: my voice. I believe in standing up for what matters.
Speaker 1: I believe in always asking myself that question that my
Speaker 1: parents have always asked me, what are we going to
Speaker 1: do about it? And I now need to understand that
Speaker 1: the backlash that comes in return will sometimes be real
Speaker 1: and swift and dangerous, and in some really sick way.
Speaker 1: It prepared me for a lot of what I have
Speaker 1: endured over the last few years. You're describing someone who
Speaker 1: committed other offenses. Yeah, and did this knowing correctly that
Speaker 1: he wouldn't be punished. Yeah. And you're describing a fifteen
Speaker 1: year old acne face boy. I'm assuming he is ane.
Speaker 1: I'm giving him ane in my retelling. He is acne.
Speaker 1: And you're describing what happened in the last two weeks
Speaker 1: in this country. Yeah. Because those people grow up and
Speaker 1: they join the Proud Boys, and they become seditionists, and
Speaker 1: they run for president and they fund people like Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and they write for Bright Bart and they work for
Speaker 1: Fox Dudes like this guy does. Right. Like, there is
Speaker 1: a clear and direct line between that kind of behavior
Speaker 1: then and white supremacy now. And woe to all of
Speaker 1: us who have any contact with young people, especially young
Speaker 1: people of any kind of privilege, who do not teach
Speaker 1: them early on that the world does not belong to them,
Speaker 1: that we are not going to orbit around your whiteness
Speaker 1: or your manhood, or your straightness, or your sister genderness,
Speaker 1: or your Christianity. That actually the way the world should
Speaker 1: function is that all of us are able to thrive
Speaker 1: and not simply survive in the face of your selfishness.
Speaker 1: That story you just recounted, you wouldn't say it aloud
Speaker 1: for many years. Yeah, I didn't. I kind of swallowed
Speaker 1: it up. Yeah. It wasn't until fourteen years later, at
Speaker 1: the age of twenty nine that you're asked by your
Speaker 1: high school to speak at the assembly hall. And you
Speaker 1: stood there at twenty nine in a kind of odd
Speaker 1: full circle moment, and I wonder, now, what did you
Speaker 1: say to those kids? It's so interesting because I've been
Speaker 1: speaking publicly for a long time, Like when you when
Speaker 1: your parents are preachers, you let's say, grow up in
Speaker 1: an oratory tradition. That was a polite way of saying it, right,
Speaker 1: Like yeah, yeah, but I mean like listen, I got
Speaker 1: I heard good preaching every Sunday. Sometimes I got preached
Speaker 1: at when my room wasn't clean every Monday. Right, So
Speaker 1: I mean this is and I come from a tradition
Speaker 1: of just rich storytelling, right, that is, that is African
Speaker 1: Arian culture. So like making speeches for me at this
Speaker 1: point at twenty nine, when I'm standing in this assembly
Speaker 1: hall is old hat, not just because of the way
Speaker 1: I've been raised, but because I used to make speeches
Speaker 1: in high school, at that same assembly hall, at that
Speaker 1: same podium about the issues of diversity that he then
Speaker 1: spatted me over. Right, it is full circle in all
Speaker 1: of the ways, in part because I tried three different
Speaker 1: times to write remarks and I couldn't get any of
Speaker 1: them out. And my mentor, who's still at the school,
Speaker 1: who was the person who encouraged me to actually say
Speaker 1: something to the head of school when this originally occurred,
Speaker 1: he was the one who had asked me back to
Speaker 1: assembly and hit him up that morning, and I was like,
Speaker 1: Coach Harris, I have no idea what to say. Coach
Speaker 1: Harris and I both come from the same faith background. Actually,
Speaker 1: my dad was one of his professors of Black church history,
Speaker 1: and so he was like, look, God's got it. Whatever
Speaker 1: is supposed to come up will come up, and it'll
Speaker 1: come out. You're more than prepared. Just come on. It
Speaker 1: was simply because at this point it's like, if I
Speaker 1: sit down and write anything, I'll be late, I'll miss
Speaker 1: the whole speed. So I get up there and the
Speaker 1: thing that comes out of my mouth is this story.
Speaker 1: And I remember hearing the audible gasp of young people
Speaker 1: aged seventh grade through twelfth grade. I remember hearing the
Speaker 1: gasp of the head of school, who wasn't the head
Speaker 1: of school when this happened, but is now, and you
Speaker 1: know he and I have a relationship because he was
Speaker 1: my twelfth grade principal. I'm hearing the gasps of faculty
Speaker 1: members that taught me when I went to school there.
Speaker 1: And in one way I was relieved because I didn't
Speaker 1: realize how heavy this thing was until I let it go.
Speaker 1: And in other ways, I was frustrated with myself that
Speaker 1: I had held onto the story for so long, because
Speaker 1: every year that I held on to that story was
Speaker 1: another year that people could think that it could never
Speaker 1: happen there, like it was another a year that added
Speaker 1: 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 a
Speaker 1: week or two later, saying that suddenly more students of color,
Speaker 1: black students in particular, we're talking about some of their
Speaker 1: experiences at the school, they were writing about them in
Speaker 1: the student newspaper, and so in some ways it was
Speaker 1: a real moment of freedom for me, and I am
Speaker 1: grateful that the moment of freedom for me became a
Speaker 1: little bit of freedom for other people, both black students
Speaker 1: and students of color who had been suffering silently as
Speaker 1: I had for so many years, and for white faculty
Speaker 1: and school leadership and students who needed to be free
Speaker 1: from the myth of their own perfection. So for me,
Speaker 1: the victory really laid in what I was freeing up
Speaker 1: other people to do. I think that when we are
Speaker 1: our full sells, 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 sells. 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 important 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. H 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 so we, to your point, named
Speaker 1: our 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 tick 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 the What if we actually
Speaker 1: built a podcast that gave people the space to do
Speaker 1: that in really tangible, informative, activating ways, Like, just what
Speaker 1: could that do in the world right, whether there are
Speaker 1: ten listeners or one hundred thousand, what can that do
Speaker 1: in the world to try to build a coalition of
Speaker 1: undistracted people? And what I really appreciate about Tony Morrison
Speaker 1: is that she understood that there is no need to
Speaker 1: prove anything because being alive is proof enough. Being alive
Speaker 1: and in black skin and living and loving and learning
Speaker 1: and doing all of the things that people do is
Speaker 1: more than enough. That that actually doesn't require explanation or justification,
Speaker 1: despite how the centeredness of whiteness would like us to
Speaker 1: think that it does. Right. This is what I meant
Speaker 1: earlier when I said the organizing principle of America is
Speaker 1: a white supremacy that declares white supremacy to be the default,
Speaker 1: the center that we're all supposed to orbit a run
Speaker 1: that what if we all retracted our tacit approval of
Speaker 1: said system and said, actually, no, I don't. When I
Speaker 1: think of all that Tony Morrison gave us, and it
Speaker 1: was many, many, many things, that for me is one
Speaker 1: of the most profound because it pushes me every single
Speaker 1: day to live in and act out of my divinity,
Speaker 1: which we all have, instead of out of some desire
Speaker 1: to prove that I am human enough to people who
Speaker 1: are never going to believe it. At the beginning of
Speaker 1: this conversation, you said, I'm bracing myself for the door
Speaker 1: that has been opened by the Biden Harris administration, a
Speaker 1: door that I think we can all describe as one
Speaker 1: that we had to jam ourselves through. It's still only
Speaker 1: slightly ajar and as someone who is helping shape that's fine,
Speaker 1: where do you see us going? So you know, for
Speaker 1: the last four years, we've had somebody that like unified
Speaker 1: a lot of us out of our shared hatred of
Speaker 1: the things and the horrors and the injustices that we're
Speaker 1: being perpetuated by this administration. Right, it's really easy to
Speaker 1: publicly critique and go off on Trump and associates. It
Speaker 1: is harder to say to a party that you may
Speaker 1: be part of, to say to people that you may
Speaker 1: 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: Frank Kayley 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 settled
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 collective we can't stand. I'm hoping that we
Speaker 1: learn the kind of discipline and nuance and long term
Speaker 1: organizing and engagement that it will require to get the
Speaker 1: things that we want and that we deserve, even from
Speaker 1: the people who agree with us more often than not.
Speaker 1: To bring this full circle, you are a very good
Speaker 1: student in college, but then during the first semester of
Speaker 1: your 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 a whole new world opened up
Speaker 1: for me, and that I opened up myself for the
Speaker 1: first time in a long time, and this idea that
Speaker 1: social justice could be something I made a living at.
Speaker 1: I was reminded of the power of my family's legacy
Speaker 1: and that I could carry on that mantle. That I
Speaker 1: didn't have to wallow in the depths of what I
Speaker 1: was feeling, that I could actually live for something greater
Speaker 1: than myself, and that really helped me pull me out
Speaker 1: of where I was. Yeah, that I didn't have to
Speaker 1: wallow in the depths of what I was feeling. That
Speaker 1: to me, if we are to move forward, has to
Speaker 1: be all of our refrains, It has to be all
Speaker 1: of our refrains and not but we have to we
Speaker 1: have to let ourselves be human in the midst of that.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things I'm learning in choosing
Speaker 1: justice Work as my life's work is that one of
Speaker 1: the greatest things I can do for myself and hopefully
Speaker 1: for other people is to create justice through the fullness
Speaker 1: of our humanity. And to a point you made earlier,
Speaker 1: other 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's year 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, Ricky 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 it should have been having all along.
Speaker 1: So prospective helps, therapy helps, prayer helps, my husband helps,
Speaker 1: and determining for myself that freedom is in living a
Speaker 1: full life and not just in freeing other people. That helps. Well.
Speaker 1: I hope this conversation has helped just a little bit.
Speaker 1: It has. Thank you for such a thoughtful conversation. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it, Brittany pat Nick Cunningham anytime, Thank you,
Speaker 1: be well, and that's our show. Special thanks this week
Speaker 1: to Mark Paskin, tab at the Williams, max Lynsky, Ryann
Speaker 1: and Kates, and the good people at Portland State University Library.
Speaker 1: I'd also like to thank Brittany Packnet Cunningham. Her new
Speaker 1: podcast is called Undistracted and you can find it wherever
Speaker 1: you do your listening. To learn more about Brittany and
Speaker 1: her work, visit our show notes at talk easypod dot com.
Speaker 1: If you're new to the show and would like to
Speaker 1: hear other conversations in this spirit, I recommend our talks
Speaker 1: with doctor Cornell West, g Noam Chomsky, Representative Ilhan Omar
Speaker 1: Better Rourke, Claudia Rankin, and Genea Future Khn. You can
Speaker 1: find all of those and more on our website, Spotify,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, Google podcast and Stitcher. You can also rate,
Speaker 1: review and subscribe on those platforms. If you'd like to
Speaker 1: join our mailing list, drop me a line at talk
Speaker 1: easypod at gmail dot com. You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook,
Speaker 1: and Instagram at talk easy pod and as always, our
Speaker 1: show would not be possible without our incredible team. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Jannick Sobravo. Illustrations by Christia Chenoy. Our
Speaker 1: associate producer is Nicky Spina. Our lead editor is Andre Lynn.
Speaker 1: Our editor for today's episode is Clarice Kivara. Our assistant
Speaker 1: editors are David Harding, Joshua Siegel, and Kevin Corr. Our
Speaker 1: interns are Caitlin Dryden, Claire Hardwick, Jilly Harold, Patrice Lee
Speaker 1: and Grace Perkins. Designed by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzac, o'riyan Huang,
Speaker 1: Ian Jones and Ethan Seneca and the show is produced
Speaker 1: by Caroline Reebuck, I'm Sanfracoso. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: talk easy. Until next time, stay safe and soloooooooooo.