Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds.
Speaker 2: Happy Independence Day. We're on vacation with that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: we don't have a great show for you today. Doctor
Speaker 2: Marcus Anthony Hunt Stopspy to talk to us about the Tulsa,
Speaker 2: Oklahoma massacre and the quest honor it. But first we
Speaker 2: have actor Griffin Dunn on his new book The Friday
Speaker 2: Afternoon Club, a family Memoir.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Fast Politics, Griffin Don.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me. Molly.
Speaker 1: I really wanted to talk to you about this book
Speaker 1: because it's not really politics, and Jesse.
Speaker 3: Is always like it's Fast Politics, Molly.
Speaker 1: But I felt like we should talk about it because
Speaker 1: your story is in the intersection of all of these
Speaker 1: different important political moments. It can you talk to us
Speaker 1: about just growing up in LA and a little bit
Speaker 1: about what that looked.
Speaker 4: Like bagging up than just La and the book does
Speaker 4: intersect with many moments and really in history. In order
Speaker 4: to get to my childhood and growing up in Los
Speaker 4: Angeles in my teen years, I had to as this
Speaker 4: was always subtitle in my mind, a family memoir, I
Speaker 4: had to go all the way back to Pancho Villa
Speaker 4: in the Mexican Revolution that you know, drove my mother's
Speaker 4: family to No Gallas, the border town in Mexico and Arizona,
Speaker 4: and the Irish famine. And I was always conscious as
Speaker 4: I was approaching Hollywood, you know, I would be passing
Speaker 4: you know, World War two, how that intersected and my
Speaker 4: mother's side of the family and my father's side of
Speaker 4: the family, my father in particular, who was in fact
Speaker 4: a war hero and fought in Battle of the Bulge.
Speaker 4: So when I was growing up first in New York,
Speaker 4: where my father was in live television and that occupation
Speaker 4: brought him to to Hollywood in nineteen sixty where television
Speaker 4: was you know, still black and white and about to
Speaker 4: maybe go into color. We were in this house that
Speaker 4: my probably my mother bought. She was from a family
Speaker 4: in Chicago. Her father was a Griffin and there was
Speaker 4: a Griffin wheel company and they it was really an empire,
Speaker 4: and all the wheels in America, on train on pullman
Speaker 4: train cars were with Griffin wheels. So my parents were
Speaker 4: very social, my father in particular, and they were married
Speaker 4: and gave parties with you know, some of the greatest
Speaker 4: movie stars, most elegant, glamorous, David Nivid and you know,
Speaker 4: Joseph Cotton, and also great directors of that time. But
Speaker 4: they were all you know, this is now in the
Speaker 4: early sixties about to approach, you know, up to the
Speaker 4: mid sixties, their best films probably were behind them. Dennis Hopper,
Speaker 4: who was also a guest in her home, would in
Speaker 4: just a few years be making easy writer and and
Speaker 4: sort of render these great old stars and directors, you know,
Speaker 4: out of touch, very difficult to get work now. Of course,
Speaker 4: as a child growing up in this house, surrounded by
Speaker 4: all this elegance and extravagance, you know, I didn't know
Speaker 4: these people were as much as you know. They were
Speaker 4: funnier and charming and made me laugh as a kid,
Speaker 4: but I wouldn't know who they were until I looked
Speaker 4: at my father's scrap books, and he'd been divorced, and
Speaker 4: he luckily kept a record of these amazing years and
Speaker 4: in our house and in his life as he traveled,
Speaker 4: you know, to Europe with these people and would visit
Speaker 4: royal families, and social interaction, particularly with you know, wealthy
Speaker 4: and powerful and famous people was at that time his priority.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I think about when I
Speaker 1: think about Dominic was that he had this very interesting
Speaker 1: second act where the murder of your sister ended up
Speaker 1: being the kind of galvanizing force where he became a
Speaker 1: kind of you know, a chronicle of society crime, but also,
Speaker 1: you know, in his own way, a sort of someone
Speaker 1: who was really a person who was trying to change
Speaker 1: how domestic violence and trying to stop that and shine
Speaker 1: a light on it, and also you know, changed the
Speaker 1: way that men were punished for things like that. It
Speaker 1: hasn't really changed, but there was really a quest there,
Speaker 1: I think, a sort of quins oud a quest. So
Speaker 1: can you talk about that, because that is such an
Speaker 1: I always am struck by things like that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you're exactly right. I mean, in the years
Speaker 4: prior to Dominique's murder, my father had gotten sober, he
Speaker 4: had really reassessed his life. Everything had been stripped away
Speaker 4: from him, money, all these social and powerful contacts he had,
Speaker 4: you know, had abandoned him, and he was in exile,
Speaker 4: self exile in a little town in Oregon where it
Speaker 4: was car broke down, and he tried very much to
Speaker 4: be writing. He wanted to write. That was the profession
Speaker 4: he envisioned for himself, and so he would write us
Speaker 4: these letters, Dominique, Alex and I, these single space letters,
Speaker 4: and you could see he was working on his forum,
Speaker 4: trying to find his voice. And he came back to
Speaker 4: New York, and then Dominie, as you said, was attacked
Speaker 4: and it changed at great cost. After the trial of
Speaker 4: her killer, in which we were as a family put
Speaker 4: through the mill of having to listen to the defense.
Speaker 4: A man dragged my sister's name through the mud. It
Speaker 4: was a dirty but common strategy, blaming the victim for
Speaker 4: their own death. This was a textbook case of which
Speaker 4: the jury bought completely and was kept out of watching
Speaker 4: the testimony of a previous girlfriend of the killer, who
Speaker 4: he had put in the hospital twice and hit her
Speaker 4: so hard and just joined at her eye socket and
Speaker 4: her jaw. It beat her senseless twice and put her
Speaker 4: in the hospital twice. The jury was kept out of
Speaker 4: this because it was prejudicial. I guess it's prejudicial to
Speaker 4: have a prior history of violence against women. It speaks
Speaker 4: I all of your character. So they were kept out.
Speaker 4: They were kept out of seeing a tantrum that the
Speaker 4: killer had and the Roman had to be dragged to
Speaker 4: the ground by the bailiff, and then the killer has
Speaker 4: to date served three and a half years for manslaughter.
Speaker 4: They didn't even call it murder. So this changed all
Speaker 4: of our lives. But this is where my father found
Speaker 4: his voice and his cause and his purpose. And so
Speaker 4: whenever he wrote about of which he became a reporter,
Speaker 4: a very high profile reporter for very high profile cases.
Speaker 4: And so when he covered OJ he never lets you
Speaker 4: forget about the Browns or Nicole, and he never lets
Speaker 4: you forget about Lana Clarkson. When who Phil Specter killed
Speaker 4: media called a fourth rate actress's His daughter was an actress.
Speaker 4: My mother, who had MS, was in a wheelchair all
Speaker 4: the way through. We wheeled her into court every day
Speaker 4: in our formation of my brother and I on either
Speaker 4: side of her chair and my father pushing. We thought
Speaker 4: this trial would kill her. It did just the opposite.
Speaker 4: She became an activist as well for victims rights, and
Speaker 4: she started a group called Justice for Victims of Homicide
Speaker 4: in California, and she made laws Marcy's Law that protects
Speaker 4: the right of victims of being notified when the killer
Speaker 4: is out on bail, let out of jail, or prison.
Speaker 4: You think that would be common practice to notify a family.
Speaker 4: You know, she has other jault laws and they're instituted
Speaker 4: in twenty three or thirty other states. In California. So
Speaker 4: my parents, who I never detected, really any political passion from.
Speaker 4: In fact, you know, while I was growing up in
Speaker 4: idolizing Kennedy, they voted for Nixon. But you know, this
Speaker 4: changed all so they became very political, which does make me,
Speaker 4: I think, an app guest for your podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when people are able to turn terrible tragedies into
Speaker 1: galvanizing moments.
Speaker 3: You know, it really is.
Speaker 1: And I remember how Dominic covered the Nicole Brown Simpson
Speaker 1: murder and just it was a real sea change for
Speaker 1: how we talk about victims.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it still happens though. When he was covering OJ
Speaker 4: he was so personally invested for obvious reasons. But what
Speaker 4: the Dream Team, I'm putting that in quotes, the tactics
Speaker 4: that they were using. I would see him because it
Speaker 4: was televised. I would see him in the spectator's office.
Speaker 4: He always sat with the Browns. I could see the
Speaker 4: toll it was taking on him. I'm in New York
Speaker 4: and I can see in television that I think He's
Speaker 4: going to have an heart attack just having to go
Speaker 4: through this over and over again. He'd done trials like
Speaker 4: this before, but this one really took a toll on him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that it really is.
Speaker 1: The way that Dominic covered the Nicohole Brown Simpson murder,
Speaker 1: the OJ Simpson trial and a lot of these other
Speaker 1: trials really was a sort of sea change for standing
Speaker 1: up for victims and you know the experience of the victims'
Speaker 1: families in ways that we probably hadn't seen before.
Speaker 4: Yes, however, I kind of relived our circumstance in nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty three when Harvey Weinstein's came was thrown out in
Speaker 4: the highest court in New York because in our case
Speaker 4: I described to you, you know how the jury was
Speaker 4: not allowed to watch the testimony of the killer's previous
Speaker 4: victim in domestic violence. The reason that the judge said
Speaker 4: he did this when the world came crashing down after
Speaker 4: Dad stood up in the court room and called it unjust.
Speaker 4: He said that he wasn't on trial for beating up
Speaker 4: and putting in the hospital twice the woman that was testifying. Therefore,
Speaker 4: the jury should not hear it. When the New York
Speaker 4: courts threw out Harvey Weinstein's case. It was for the
Speaker 4: exact reason. When other women who testified about their experience
Speaker 4: of abuse with Harvey Weinstein and testified very effectively, the
Speaker 4: New York courts ruled that's not what Harvey was being
Speaker 4: tried for, so they threw that out and there for
Speaker 4: the whole case. So it hasn't really quite changed. Judges
Speaker 4: still get to choose whether a history of domestic violence
Speaker 4: is relev UNDERDT. Incredibly enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the idea of the victim's family being injected
Speaker 1: into the coverage is new and important, or was at
Speaker 1: the time very new and important. I'm wondering if you
Speaker 1: could talk just for a minute about what the sort
Speaker 1: of lessons of this literary family. I mean, we all
Speaker 1: have them, the sort of broader lessons that you learned
Speaker 1: writing this book.
Speaker 4: I always thought I would write a book. It was
Speaker 4: on a bucket list of mine. I'm from a long
Speaker 4: line of storytellers, and I envisioned writing a mostly humorous
Speaker 4: book that would be along the lines of David Sedaris's
Speaker 4: Me Talk Pretty of it being sort of different chapters
Speaker 4: that were both funny and touching about my family and
Speaker 4: having them intersect over the years, and when I started
Speaker 4: to write chronologically, in order to do that, I kind
Speaker 4: of had to wait a few years, not to get
Speaker 4: out of the yoke of being from a literary family,
Speaker 4: and what would they think or that I was going
Speaker 4: to do a tell all of anything. As time went by,
Speaker 4: when I looked at my loved ones and then, you know,
Speaker 4: in my family who were no longer with me, their arcs,
Speaker 4: the arcs of their character really became clear to me.
Speaker 4: When I was writing chronologically, I could see the incredible
Speaker 4: transformation of my father. So I was able to write
Speaker 4: about his weaknesses as a young father and a young
Speaker 4: husband and see that, you know, the shame that he
Speaker 4: was he was burying and you know, was struggling with
Speaker 4: alcohol and his closeted life. And I could see the
Speaker 4: loneliness of my mother. I knew where they were going
Speaker 4: to end up. I knew that they you know, I
Speaker 4: used as an epitaph of my father that he once
Speaker 4: said to me when I was criticizing him for something,
Speaker 4: and he said, what could I say, kiddo, I'm a
Speaker 4: work in progress. And I looked at all these characters
Speaker 4: and I knew and I thought of them I mean,
Speaker 4: as much as I produce, I make movies, I think
Speaker 4: they were characters who I loved very much, and I
Speaker 4: knew where they were going to end up. I walked away.
Speaker 4: You know, when I finished this book, the hard part
Speaker 4: was not writing about Dominique and being attacked and on
Speaker 4: life support and going through what we went through in
Speaker 4: the trial. Because I was in company while I was
Speaker 4: writing it. They were all so vivid, right, you know.
Speaker 4: The hard part was finishing it. I kind of went
Speaker 4: into a state of mourning when I was finishing it,
Speaker 4: and quite honestly, now I'm in this next chapter, you know,
Speaker 4: promoting and talking about these these people in my family.
Speaker 4: I feel them all over again and it's quite emotional.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: My job is to be sort of in service of
Speaker 4: their memory at this point, which was not as clear
Speaker 4: a thought when I was writing it. I just wanted
Speaker 4: to tell their story. That was my original intent, and
Speaker 4: then I just kept on doing it. When I was finished,
Speaker 4: I went, wow, look at these people. Wow, and I'm
Speaker 4: related to them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, Griffin, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: You're very welcome. Thank you, Mollie, good to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to
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Speaker 2: Doctor Marcus Anthony Hunt is a UCLA professor and the
Speaker 2: author of Radical Reparations.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, doctor Marcus Hunter.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much. I appreciate you and the whole
Speaker 6: team for having me.
Speaker 3: We're delighted to have you.
Speaker 1: And it feels very much like something we should be
Speaker 1: talking about right now, because the Supreme Court, in their
Speaker 1: infinite fucked upness as one of their first decisions, and
Speaker 1: I feel like it flew under the radar, but when
Speaker 1: I saw it, I was like, of course, those fuckers,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the Tulsa massacre and also the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court's just continual talk to me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think, you know, one of the intense things,
Speaker 5: especially around Tulsa. I was fortunate enough to be invited
Speaker 5: by doctor Tiffany Krutcher and the Terrence Krutcher Foundation and
Speaker 5: Justice from Greenwood just earlier this month for their legacy
Speaker 5: festivals celebrating one hundred and three years since the Tulsa
Speaker 5: race massacre, and they were really hopeful about the possibilities
Speaker 5: of the Oklahoma Supreme Court doing right by the survivors
Speaker 5: and the descendants. And so I was in DC when
Speaker 5: the decision came down that they won't even get their
Speaker 5: day in court, which is wild and it's even wilder
Speaker 5: because now there is a mountain or mountains of evidence
Speaker 5: that demonstrate that this did actually happen. And I also
Speaker 5: think a lot about the fact that when we hear
Speaker 5: about descendants, when you meet them, like Mother Randall, who
Speaker 5: I had the opportunity to meet while I was there,
Speaker 5: she's a descendant, she's one hundred plus now, but it's
Speaker 5: because she was a child when this happened. So the
Speaker 5: children who witnessed, experienced and survived this never got a
Speaker 5: chance to go before authorities and legal authorities and testify
Speaker 5: and share that this crime happened to them and their community.
Speaker 5: And the fact that they won't even get an opportunity
Speaker 5: to present that before a jury of their peers is
Speaker 5: really really disheartening and just a reflection of how deeply
Speaker 5: important the issue of reparations of reparative justice is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that everyone who listens this podcast is
Speaker 1: educated enough to know about the Tulsa massacre, but would
Speaker 1: love it if you would just give us like a
Speaker 1: little bit of background on it, for just the people
Speaker 1: who are not completely read in on it.
Speaker 5: The Tulsa race massacre, which, by the way, I think
Speaker 5: is still an adequate term to describe what happened. There
Speaker 5: was a thriving black community in Greenwood, a neighborhood in
Speaker 5: Tulsa that had actually arrived as formally enslaved people who
Speaker 5: were enslaved by many of what are called the civilized tribes,
Speaker 5: the Native Americans, who were made to participate in a
Speaker 5: trail of tears. Folks don't know is that as they
Speaker 5: were participating in a trail of tears, many of those
Speaker 5: tribes brought along with them enslaved Black Africans. And so
Speaker 5: those folks then later become the founders of a community
Speaker 5: and a city named Tulsa, but the founders of a
Speaker 5: community that blossoms in to what affectionately becomes called Black
Speaker 5: Wall Street. And in nineteen twenty one, over two days
Speaker 5: May thirtieth and thirty first, one of the most horrific
Speaker 5: acts of domestic terrorism occurs whereby there are rapes, there
Speaker 5: are bombings, burnings, hangings, shootings, and death of all of
Speaker 5: those black residents who were in that community just because
Speaker 5: they had become so successful. And so part of what's
Speaker 5: happened over the years is one it's lived as a mythology,
Speaker 5: only really held together in some ways. Shout out to
Speaker 5: the great sociologist Charlie Wilson and a GAP band because
Speaker 5: they keep it.
Speaker 6: In their name.
Speaker 5: Greenwood, Archer and Pine is what GAP stands for for
Speaker 5: people who know the Gap Band, and one of the
Speaker 5: most famous songs is called You Dropped a Bomb on Me.
Speaker 5: They codify it in music as a way to say
Speaker 5: and keep the memory alive that this happened to the community.
Speaker 5: Charlie Wilson and that band are descendants of the Greenwood
Speaker 5: massacre and the Tulsa Race massacre. And so part of
Speaker 5: what's happened in recent time is that once Miss Breonna
Speaker 5: Taylor and mister Floyd lost their lives, there became renewed
Speaker 5: attention to this issue. As the one hundred year anniversary
Speaker 5: was approaching, and so there's been a lot of action
Speaker 5: around it. But in the last four years it was
Speaker 5: getting some forward momentum for the very first time, and
Speaker 5: the Oklahoma Supreme Court has decided that there's not enough
Speaker 5: of a case from their judgment that it warrants them
Speaker 5: having an actual day in court.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just heartbreaking. And there aren't that many survivors
Speaker 1: right exactly.
Speaker 5: There are only right now three living survivors. And then
Speaker 5: when you go to the community, which is really deep,
Speaker 5: and I encourage all of the folks who are listening
Speaker 5: to us to, you know, take some time and go
Speaker 5: visit Tulsa, because most all of the people who survived
Speaker 5: it stayed, they didn't leave, and so there was also
Speaker 5: like you go into the museum that they have there,
Speaker 5: and there's, for example, a letter that a friend who's
Speaker 5: living in Detroit writes to a survivor in Tulsa says,
Speaker 5: you know, I read in the Chicago Defender about how
Speaker 5: this happened down there, and here's forty dollars for a
Speaker 5: bus ticket that I'll get you to Detroit. Come on
Speaker 5: up here. And he writes back and he says, thank
Speaker 5: you so much. I really appreciate that you care enough
Speaker 5: about me, But I'm sending the money back to you
Speaker 5: because I'm staying in Tulsa. So that's also just to
Speaker 5: say that people stayed. So most all of the folks
Speaker 5: who are native to Tulsa, the black natives of Tulsa,
Speaker 5: not only are many of them Creak Indian, but also
Speaker 5: they never left, so they're still there. So there's a
Speaker 5: community of repair that is still there that has been
Speaker 5: waiting for over now one hundred and three years.
Speaker 1: This Supreme Court terrible, is not anything new. But is
Speaker 1: there any way to go around them? Is there anything
Speaker 1: that these survivors can do? Is there any other legal recourse?
Speaker 5: Yeah, one of the recourses that we have, and this
Speaker 5: is part of what happens in this country, is that
Speaker 5: we no longer have government and there is not necessarily
Speaker 5: public education around civic engagement. But we know, as you know,
Speaker 5: there are three branches of government. Only one of them
Speaker 5: is the judicial. The other one is the legislative, which,
Speaker 5: of course, we can think about our elected officials passing,
Speaker 5: for example, the Tolsa Race Massacred Descendants Fund.
Speaker 6: That could be an act that is passed in Congress.
Speaker 5: Okay. The other thing that we know is that there's
Speaker 5: the executive branch where you have the president, the White House,
Speaker 5: the Vice president, and their entire staff that can execute
Speaker 5: either orders or actions on behalf of this community. And
Speaker 5: so one of the things that I've been up to
Speaker 5: for the last four or five years, working with Congressoman
Speaker 5: Barbara Lee, is trying to encourage the bid To Harris
Speaker 5: administration to more publicly use the bully paulpit to bring
Speaker 5: more attention and public awareness to these issues, because underneath
Speaker 5: the horror and the terror is a very positive story
Speaker 5: because these folks, like Mother Randall have kept the faith.
Speaker 5: They still believe that America can do right. Can you
Speaker 5: imagine you watch your whole community be bombed and terrorized
Speaker 5: for two entire days, then many of them were put
Speaker 5: in internment camps afterwards, which many folks don't know. And
Speaker 5: fast forward after being over one hundred years old, you
Speaker 5: still believe in the American justice system, You still believe
Speaker 5: in the American legislative system. They still vote, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean. And so it's really about getting the
Speaker 5: right light shed on this issue because when you find
Speaker 5: out most Americans find out about this, and their hearts
Speaker 5: go out to these folks, their hearts break for them.
Speaker 6: And the question is why.
Speaker 5: Has the Bida Harris administration not shined an appropriate light
Speaker 5: or reparative justice across the nation where so many communities
Speaker 5: are activating based on the idea of democracy, working and
Speaker 5: trying to protect and defend that democracy.
Speaker 6: Why have we not seen the.
Speaker 5: President travel down after this announcement, came out and sit
Speaker 5: with mother Randall and just comfort her. That is it
Speaker 5: taking a position that's just recognizing the compassionate humanity, and
Speaker 5: then it in charges the media to follow the story,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 3: Right right?
Speaker 1: And also, I mean I think the position that they
Speaker 1: should have their day in court is not a controversial position.
Speaker 5: It's a very you know, it's a very American belief,
Speaker 5: you know, like we're not saying that the court is
Speaker 5: going to be in your favor, but you, after knowing
Speaker 5: what happened, you should be entitled to your day in court.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my feeling too, So, uh, talk to me
Speaker 1: more broadly though, there are some.
Speaker 3: Like it does feel.
Speaker 1: Like, well, there have been a lot of steps back
Speaker 1: recently towards racial justice. I'm thinking about like the other
Speaker 1: stuff the Supreme Court has done. There have been some
Speaker 1: big wins too.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 5: I mean, for me, this whole journey in terms of
Speaker 5: like national federal government legislation. Things started with Congressman Barbaroly
Speaker 5: calling me on my personal phone five now six years
Speaker 5: ago and saying that she wanted to write legislation to
Speaker 5: create the first Every US Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Commission.
Speaker 5: I couldn't believe I got that phone call I saw
Speaker 5: in two o two.
Speaker 6: I thought it was the IRS. I thought it was
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 5: Student Loan, and I almost didn't answer, you know, and
Speaker 5: when I answered, it was her And.
Speaker 6: She saw me on c spam Book TV doing a panel.
Speaker 5: I was moderating a panel on slavery, and she said,
Speaker 5: I watched it and I just wanted you to know
Speaker 5: how amazing it was and that you're doing good working.
Speaker 5: If you're available, I would love for you to work
Speaker 5: with me on this, And you know, I said, of course.
Speaker 5: And over the course of that journey, I've met so
Speaker 5: many people from so many different walks of life, so
Speaker 5: many different races and religions and ethnicities who are all
Speaker 5: working around issues of truth, reparations, reparative justice, equity, anti poverty,
Speaker 5: voting rights that most of America doesn't get to know about.
Speaker 5: And so part of what I've been feeling a lot
Speaker 5: about is like people would be surprised to find out
Speaker 5: that there are so many towns, cities, regions, states, and
Speaker 5: areas of the country and worlds where black people are
Speaker 5: not the dominant majority and they're doing a reparations process.
Speaker 5: You know, California did the first in the nation ever
Speaker 5: reparations commission, and they didn't even become a state until
Speaker 5: eighteen fifty. And the nation did not fall apart. California
Speaker 5: didn't succeed from the Union, Northern California didn't become its
Speaker 5: own state. Los Angeles is still intact because it's a
Speaker 5: democratic process, and it demonstrates that you can use this
Speaker 5: process to actually find out where the harm lies, where
Speaker 5: the damage is. And it's really just saying, why can't
Speaker 5: we use reparations as an invitation to create a more
Speaker 5: beautiful America. I mean, that's my position on it. And
Speaker 5: when you talk with a lot of people, that's the
Speaker 5: place that they're operating from. It's not from a place
Speaker 5: of anger or hate or rage or zero sum. It's like,
Speaker 5: rather than waiting for another war to come, another conflict,
Speaker 5: another virus to kill people, and then to use that
Speaker 5: to unleash all of the full resources that America has
Speaker 5: in its arsenal. We could actually just use the premise
Speaker 5: of our history native land dispossession and enslavering Black Africans
Speaker 5: as the kind of continuous permission to build a better nation.
Speaker 5: We could just do it from that place and it
Speaker 5: would be beneficial to everyone.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I also think that it's a question of like
Speaker 3: are we.
Speaker 1: Of country that is fair and just or are we
Speaker 1: a country that is not fair? You know, like this
Speaker 1: is I mean, who do we want to.
Speaker 6: Be that's right?
Speaker 5: And are we a country that continues to operate with
Speaker 5: multiple injuries?
Speaker 6: The answer is yes.
Speaker 5: If we were a national foo fotball team, it would
Speaker 5: be like, you know, Aaron Rodgers got injured the first
Speaker 5: game with the Jets ACL tear, you got to go
Speaker 5: have surgery. Not only do we have an ACL tair,
Speaker 5: then we had a knee tair, a back tair, all
Speaker 5: of these different things. When people say trail of tears,
Speaker 5: when people say slavery, when people say Jim Crow. These
Speaker 5: if we think about the body, these are injuries to
Speaker 5: the body. And yet and still we then go to
Speaker 5: war multiple times over our history, and we think that
Speaker 5: we're fully healthy in when we're doing this, rather than
Speaker 5: being on the field of the global stage, playing injured
Speaker 5: all of the time. And of course, when you have
Speaker 5: an injury and you have to go to the hospital
Speaker 5: and go through a healing, it isn't the most fun
Speaker 5: thing initially, But when you get on the other side
Speaker 5: and you're actually healed from it, you're back better than ever.
Speaker 5: You know, you can then take on what's ahead. And
Speaker 5: we know that the world has so much more other
Speaker 5: things that are on the horizon, other challenges that if
Speaker 5: we continue to be on a global field playing injured,
Speaker 5: I don't know how long we can keep pace.
Speaker 3: No, I agree.
Speaker 1: I also wonder a little bit about how it might
Speaker 1: fix the sort of brokenness in America.
Speaker 5: Yeah, one thing that could happen is that we could
Speaker 5: really get into the point that once upon a time,
Speaker 5: not long ago, there was no such thing as white people.
Speaker 5: It just did not exist. And the reason why whiteness
Speaker 5: was working is because there was a dominant majority that
Speaker 5: was experiencing a kind of dominant experience of upward mobility,
Speaker 5: of you know, American dream happening in your family, the
Speaker 5: kind of Horatio Alger story. But what we've been seeing
Speaker 5: for the last fifty years in white communities, for so
Speaker 5: called white communities, opioid epidemics, the loss of intergenerational wealth,
Speaker 5: educational outcomes declining, people dying of early ages. All sorts
Speaker 5: of things that traditionally were thought to be happening only
Speaker 5: in marginalized communities are now happening amongst a dominant group.
Speaker 5: Hence the tea Party, they insurrect, all of they occupy
Speaker 5: Wall Street. And if people start to understand that whiteness
Speaker 5: is a scam and at the very least one of
Speaker 5: the most toxic identities ever created, then we can start
Speaker 5: to think, like, Yeah, why am I invested in an
Speaker 5: identity that's.
Speaker 6: Literally killing me and other people?
Speaker 5: Why am I invested in something that makes me responsible
Speaker 5: for a US government that created a three fifths clause
Speaker 5: in its own constitution? Why am I invested in identity
Speaker 5: that is no longer returning the benefits that they promised me?
Speaker 5: That is I think a big part of it is
Speaker 5: understanding that a lot of these things that people are
Speaker 5: in vested in are lives that were told to them
Speaker 5: so that they could feel okay with being in a
Speaker 5: kind of dominant experience, and that experience is becoming less
Speaker 5: accessible for everyone. But with the affirmative action conversations and
Speaker 5: Supreme Court decisions. It just keeps feeding the distortion that
Speaker 5: when black people or a LATINX folks or Asian Americans
Speaker 5: are getting success, it's at the expense of the dominant majority,
Speaker 5: when in fact, LATINX, black and Asian folks are not
Speaker 5: experiencing this super generational, once in a lifetime generational mobility.
Speaker 5: Most Americans are finding a loss at it, and rather
Speaker 5: than attending to that, they just distract us with stories
Speaker 5: about the fearless fun is just for black women.
Speaker 6: That's unfair.
Speaker 5: You know, Evanston is going to give out ten million
Speaker 5: dollars to descendants of African American descendants of slavery.
Speaker 6: That's not fair.
Speaker 5: And it's like, but we learned when a coronavirus came
Speaker 5: something we never expected to happen and killed millions of people,
Speaker 5: there were trillions of dollars available. People got PPP loans,
Speaker 5: including members of Congress, and no one bad it than I.
Speaker 5: So we know that the resources are there, and we
Speaker 5: know that they don't take away from somebody. It wasn't
Speaker 5: like the PPP loan was money that they took from
Speaker 5: San Francisco to give the Los Angeles.
Speaker 6: It didn't work like that.
Speaker 5: It came from the collective pot that we call the
Speaker 5: United States government and it went to everyone in need.
Speaker 5: And that's what reparative justice is about in the first place.
Speaker 1: So there's some anxiety that Biden is not performing as
Speaker 1: well as he has historically with black voters.
Speaker 3: What could he do to win black voters?
Speaker 5: What he can do is one listen more than he speaks,
Speaker 5: to take and make the meeting with Congresswomen Barbara Lee
Speaker 5: that she's been waiting for his entire administration. We've now
Speaker 5: done three open letter campaigns, public open letter campaigns, including
Speaker 5: one that she coordinated with her colleague, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson,
Speaker 5: league Congresswomen Corey Bush and Congressman Jamal Bowman. They've asked
Speaker 5: for a meeting.
Speaker 6: That was it. There's been no meeting.
Speaker 5: And Congresswomen Barbara Lee is the highest ranking black woman
Speaker 5: in the US Congress. How can you just decide not
Speaker 5: to meet with her? That tells me everything about what
Speaker 5: you think about black people and black voters. And part
Speaker 5: of what happens is when you try to make them
Speaker 5: accountable for that, there's this pushback of like, we're the
Speaker 5: most diverse administration. Ever, on day one, we put forward
Speaker 5: a racial Equity Executive Order, the first of his kind,
Speaker 5: Katanji Brown, Kamala Harris, and it's like, I don't weaponize
Speaker 5: black representation to silence people about the things that the
Speaker 5: community needs, especially because some of the things that they're acclaiming,
Speaker 5: for example, the most diverse administration, the Racial Equity Order,
Speaker 5: all of these other gods. They closed the black white
Speaker 5: wealth gap at percentages not seen in many years or
Speaker 5: in decades.
Speaker 6: That is the responsibility of every president.
Speaker 5: If we're talking about society that was founded on enslaving
Speaker 5: Black Africans, there was a gap when you got the
Speaker 5: job that you got to close. That's always every president's job.
Speaker 5: So you're doing it, okay. But why you were hired,
Speaker 5: why seventy two plus million people voted for you, was
Speaker 5: because Breonna Taylor lost her life. Was because George Floyd
Speaker 5: lost his life. And you brought George Floyd's grieving orter
Speaker 5: to your office and you told her on national television
Speaker 5: you would get this done for her, and you would
Speaker 5: bring her back to the Oval office and sign this bill.
Speaker 5: Four years later, that has not happened. Four years later.
Speaker 5: There have been multiple state of the unions where Breonna
Speaker 5: Taylor's name has not even been mentioned. And I think
Speaker 5: as citizens, as people who care about our democracy, we
Speaker 5: all have a duty to ensure that this remains an
Speaker 5: unfulfilled promise and not a lot, because if we start
Speaker 5: to live in a world where elected officials are allowed
Speaker 5: to publicly on camera lie to black children, then what
Speaker 5: are we here for?
Speaker 3: Such a good point. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 6: You already know.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for holding the space and for
Speaker 5: modeling for your colleagues across the media spectrum that these
Speaker 5: kinds of conversations are really needed and actually really positive.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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