WEBVTT - Joy Ann Reid’s Dissection of Trump 2.0 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:02.880 On today's episode of Civic Cipher, we have a very 0:00:02.920 --> 0:00:07.440 special guest writer, podcaster, documentary filmmaker, and professional blurred fan 0:00:07.520 --> 0:00:11.039 of democracy and og hater of fascism and apartheid, Joy 0:00:11.240 --> 0:00:14.120 and Read, fresh on the hills of her panel discussion 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:16.720 at the Journalism under Fire Guarding against Threats to our 0:00:16.760 --> 0:00:20.159 Democracy fireside chat in d C. We go now to 0:00:20.239 --> 0:00:25.520 our conversation with Joy. All Right, Joy and Read, welcome 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:29.120 to the show. Our listeners know this, but I want 0:00:29.120 --> 0:00:31.200 to make sure that I say it to you that 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:34.919 you are more than the introduction. You are more than 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:37.839 you know. What you represent and the work that you 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:44.239 do really does matter. And I just I met a 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:48.000 loss for words. It's just it's a very very special 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:52.640 episode to be recording with you. You know, we've we've 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:55.720 kind of been in similar circles over the years and 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:57.200 you know, tried to get a word to you, but 0:00:57.280 --> 0:00:59.120 we understand and respect the work that you're doing and 0:00:59.240 --> 0:01:00.920 when the time is, I you know, maybe we'll get 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:03.840 a chance to have a conversation with you, and today 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:06.840 is that day. So this is kind of like, you know, 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:10.000 all of our stars in Alignment and ten Christmases at once, 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:11.600 so welcome to the show. 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:14.080 Thank you so much. I appreciate it. 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:16.120 It's good to be here, all right, absolutely, all right, 0:01:16.160 --> 0:01:19.160 So first stuff, talk to us a little bit about 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:21.720 the fireside chat that I mentioned, because that's kind of 0:01:21.720 --> 0:01:24.720 been the big deal in the news. So this took 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:28.440 place at the Journalism under Fire event. For people that 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:30.319 weren't able to attend, or people that might have heard 0:01:30.319 --> 0:01:34.839 about it and been curious about it, talk to us about, 0:01:34.920 --> 0:01:37.240 you know, what took place and maybe what people should know, 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:40.440 what the people that attended might have learned from that event. 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:44.080 Well, I mean, this was an important conversation, of course, 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:46.039 Nicole Hannah Jones being one of the most seminal and 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:50.280 important figures in modern journalistic history. I mean, obviously, her 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:53.640 creation of the sixteen nineteen project Blew Up the World, 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:58.840 broke the brains of the entire American right, said Christopher 0:01:58.960 --> 0:02:01.040 UFO and others off on a tear to try to 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.120 destroy diversity, equity and inclusion and their version of critical 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:06.920 race theory, which they didn't even clearly understand. But I 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:10.680 think what's happened now is that, particularly after the election 0:02:10.800 --> 0:02:13.320 for the second time of Donald Trump, is that you 0:02:13.400 --> 0:02:16.080 have a real aggressive Project. 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.120 Twenty twenty five, driven. 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:23.480 Right winging Christian nationalists, driven war on everything from journalism 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:29.000 to basic freedom, to immigration to potentially birthright citizenship, you 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:29.560 name it. 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:30.840 It's all being torn apart. 0:02:30.960 --> 0:02:34.600 And this particular gathering was to really talk about the 0:02:34.680 --> 0:02:39.440 journalism piece and how in each of these three instances 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:42.519 there was a woman from the Los Angeles Times who 0:02:42.560 --> 0:02:46.519 actually left there because the owner of the LA Times 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:51.560 has decided to turn that seminal really August paper into 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:54.840 a mouthpiece for Donald Trump and to suppress anti Trump 0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:57.600 views at the paper, all the way to Robert Kagan, 0:02:57.639 --> 0:02:59.799 who is a conservative who used to write for the 0:02:59.800 --> 0:03:03.960 wh Washington Post until he resigned because of Jeff Bezo's 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:07.639 takeover of the paper and his attempt to root out 0:03:08.400 --> 0:03:11.520 anti Trump views or critical views of Donald Trump. Although 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:14.920 I have to say that there are still people that 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:17.400 are writing critically about Donald Trump at the Washington Post, 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:19.680 but he's warped the mission, right. He even got rid 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:22.320 of democracy dies in darkness and said now they're now 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:24.760 going to be about individual liberty or something like that. 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:26.440 Some neoliberal, you know, he. 0:03:26.400 --> 0:03:30.200 Cannot make principle. And so that's happening everywhere, and of course, 0:03:30.280 --> 0:03:32.600 you know. I you know, I like to quote the 0:03:32.600 --> 0:03:34.079 Friday thing. I don't know how you're gonn get fired 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:35.480 on your day off, but I did get fired. I'm like, 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:40.120 I remember that, like Friday. But you know, and you know, 0:03:40.200 --> 0:03:42.680 I was never told why I was and I said 0:03:42.680 --> 0:03:45.000 this on stage. I was never given a reason why 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:50.040 I was let go and why my show was canceled 0:03:50.080 --> 0:03:56.360 and why more than one hundred really experienced long time 0:03:56.600 --> 0:04:01.960 staffers of MSNBC producers were essentially thrown out of their 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:07.120 jobs and forced to reapply doged. But I could take 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:10.080 a guess. You know, I don't think it helped my case. 0:04:10.160 --> 0:04:13.320 That I've been a very firm supporter of DEI, of diversity, 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:16.040 equity and inclusion. That I've been a very firm believer 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:19.360 that Donald Trump is a fascist. That as his two 0:04:19.480 --> 0:04:22.280 for his former chief of staff and Mark Milly, his 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:23.719 former joint chiefs of staff chair. 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:26.719 They both said he's a fascist to the core. That's 0:04:26.800 --> 0:04:27.800 their view, not mine. 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:31.560 His own vice president has said he may be America's hitler. 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:35.320 Then he became his vice president, you name it. It's 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:39.200 clear that he has fascist instincts, and he's married himself 0:04:39.200 --> 0:04:42.160 to a group of white Christian nationalists who are very 0:04:42.200 --> 0:04:45.479 clearly trying to move the country into fascism and Christian nationalism. 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:48.000 So saying that is probably not helpful, also probably not 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.200 helpful that I was pretty firm that, you know, it's 0:04:51.240 --> 0:04:56.080 probably suboptimal for the United States to be arming Israel 0:04:56.120 --> 0:04:59.080 with two thousand pound bombs to drop on Palestinians at 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:04.239 school and in their apartments and destroying mosques and everything else. 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:06.760 So yeah, I can take a good guess. 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:10.920 Yeah, Unfortunately, I think we can all take a good 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:15.000 guess with all the major shakeups that we are all 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:20.480 collectively witnessing in the media landscape since Trump's reelection. What 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.080 are some concerns that you have about the state of 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:25.200 journalism in the United States. 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:31.640 I'm very concerned, honestly. The resignation recently. We also talked 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:35.839 about this at the Forum of the some thirty five 0:05:36.000 --> 0:05:41.279 year leader of sixty minutes, head of sixty minutes, Bob Owens, 0:05:41.520 --> 0:05:45.440 that was alarming, and he resigned very clearly, saying that 0:05:45.520 --> 0:05:49.400 he was leaving because he felt that he no longer 0:05:49.400 --> 0:05:53.640 had the editorial independence to cover the news. 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:54.279 Without fear or favor. 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:56.720 The way that sixty minutes has done since I've been 0:05:56.720 --> 0:05:59.840 watching it since I was in junior high school, and 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:02.880 it has not changed. It's very tough on any president. 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:05.840 It's not partisan in any way. But you know, they 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:09.919 recently did a really important, i think report about the 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:12.520 two hundred and thirty five men and we think some 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:16.520 women who were shipped to El Salvador into a prison, 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:21.440 into a gulag without any due process, and that seventy 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:25.159 five percent of them have no criminal record anywhere, and 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:28.920 highlighting the cases of people like kil Mararbordego Garcia, who 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:32.080 was literally renditioned out of the United States, out of 0:06:32.120 --> 0:06:36.279 Maryland without due process, and they did a really critical 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:39.680 story on that. They've also done really important reporting on 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:43.800 the war in Gaza and on the human rights violations therein, 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:48.280 and on the allegations of genocide therein. And they were 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:50.960 in a lawsuit with Donald Trump because he claimed that 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:54.120 their interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, which is a 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:58.200 perfectly normal interview for a presidential candidate, was somehow biased. 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:04.240 And he's sicked the FCC on not just CBS, but 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:07.400 also on ABC because he doesn't like the coverage of 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:11.480 himself on ABC. On Comcast, my former employer because he 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:17.480 doesn't like the coverage from MSNBC or the financial accurate 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:20.680 financial coverage I suppose from CNBC, which is talking about 0:07:20.680 --> 0:07:23.239 his failures on the economy, you name it. The media 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:26.880 is under fire, and I think when you see people 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:30.680 like Jeff Bezos, who is not a journalist, interfering in 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:33.640 the way that the Washington Post does what it was 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:35.920 designed to do. When you see the owner of the 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:39.680 Los Angeles Times bending the knee to Trump and essentially 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:43.520 requiring his editorial page to do the same. And then 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:46.800 when you're also seeing a takeover of even a lot 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:52.760 of local TV stations by organizations like the Sinclair Media Group, 0:07:54.360 --> 0:07:59.200 which is a right wing Fox style organization and entity 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:01.600 that's now taking over your traffic and weather together and 0:08:01.680 --> 0:08:07.280 replacing political news with what amounts to conservative you know, 0:08:07.400 --> 0:08:11.200 conservative ideas, an ideation. That's a problem. We can't have 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:13.480 a free society if we don't have a free press. 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:16.240 And there's an attack on the free press unlike anything 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:18.680 I've ever seen, and that, to me, I can't like 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:20.280 into anything other than the McCarthy era. 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:24.600 You know what's interesting about that is that working in 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:31.720 this space, we pay particular attention to the same things 0:08:32.400 --> 0:08:37.200 that you're mentioning now. And you know, our listeners, our 0:08:37.280 --> 0:08:43.640 viewers around the country, they often remind us to be 0:08:43.760 --> 0:08:46.839 encouraged to keep going. Our voices are more important now 0:08:46.880 --> 0:08:53.840 than ever, and you realize that how important that infrastructure is. 0:08:53.880 --> 0:08:58.440 You mentioned the Sinclair Media Group, you mentioned the Washington Post, 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:04.400 you know, and who owns that infrastructure is critically important 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:07.520 now and we lean further into our relationship with like 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:11.160 Real Times Media, a lot of like black owned newspapers 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:14.800 around the country because you know, as source material a 0:09:14.960 --> 0:09:21.679 but also as UH partners and ensuring that we are 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:24.840 strengthened that they are strengthened, because you realize how vulnerable 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:27.840 you are when there's a shift and the power is 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:33.720 concentrated UH into the hands of just a few people. 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:36.080 And so this is kind of an interesting development. But 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:39.920 we only have one story to tell, and it's our 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:41.960 story and it's the truth. And so you know, I 0:09:42.000 --> 0:09:47.960 commend you on not not only enduring but but maintaining 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:53.480 and you know, having these important conversations and that you know, 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:55.080 that brings me to the next thing that I wanted 0:09:55.080 --> 0:09:58.480 to ask you about, because I heard about the state 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:01.360 of the people tour. So for folks that don't know 0:10:01.440 --> 0:10:03.400 myself included, talk to us about the State of the 0:10:03.440 --> 0:10:05.600 People tour, and make sure you give the website too, 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:08.240 especially for our listeners that are kind of interested in 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:12.640 staying plugged into something that is a little bit more accurate, 0:10:12.679 --> 0:10:13.560 a little less biased. 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:16.160 Yeah, and I'll just to your previous point. I want 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:19.280 to note that you know, id B. Wells was operating 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:22.439 as an independent black woman journalist at a time when 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:25.240 the media was essentially controlled by two men and William 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:28.760 randolf Hurst, and when the white media refused to report 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:31.480 on lynchings in any other way than to say that 0:10:31.559 --> 0:10:34.960 the dead man, woman or child that was lynched committed 0:10:34.960 --> 0:10:37.240 a crime with there was again no due process. 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:39.640 So there's a history of this, and you know it is. 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:43.400 Really critical, you know, now more than ever that we strengthened. 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:46.920 You know, there are thousands of black, independent black newspapers, 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:49.800 but they are you know, withering away in terms of 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:54.080 support from the public and then our access to you know, 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:56.080 being able to have a wider audience as you all 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:58.800 are able to do through syndication that also is in 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:00.320 many ways dependent on corporate erica. 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:00.960 Right, and if you. 0:11:01.000 --> 0:11:04.080 Look at the place where our creators, Black creators have 0:11:04.120 --> 0:11:05.080 had the most access. 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:07.520 It's been through social media. It's been through YouTube and. 0:11:07.520 --> 0:11:11.120 TikTok and Instagram, and companies like Meta are also bending 0:11:11.120 --> 0:11:13.480 the need of Trump gave a million dollars to the inauguration. 0:11:14.040 --> 0:11:17.439 You know, TikTok suddenly put out a blast to every 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:19.520 single person who owns TikTok and uses it in the 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:23.720 United States, glorifying Donald Trump for not following the Supreme 0:11:23.760 --> 0:11:26.680 Court order to make them be sold right and for 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:29.320 supposedly saving TikTok when he's the one who created the 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:32.360 crisis in the first place. So you're seeing the social media. 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:35.000 You know, there used to be a thing called black Twitter. 0:11:35.280 --> 0:11:37.720 Black twitter is what built twitter. Twitter would have been 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:41.880 nothing without black people making it popular. And yet black 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:44.800 people own none of that ip that the content was 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:47.000 not owned by anyone. They were just giving that content 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:50.000 to previously Jack and then Elon Musk for free. So 0:11:50.040 --> 0:11:52.880 we really have to be cognizant. I think as a 0:11:53.040 --> 0:11:56.600 people of not only where we're getting our information, how 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:00.880 to avoid disinformation, and how to share information amongst ourselves 0:12:01.200 --> 0:12:03.120 in a way that can be authentic, Which brings me 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:05.680 to the State of the People tour on the night 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:08.240 of the It wasn't really a State of the Union. 0:12:08.240 --> 0:12:10.880 It was technically a joint addressed to Congress that Donald 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:17.199 Trump February. There were a group of us who are 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:20.520 a combination of activists, you know, and people like Angela Rai, 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:22.960 who used to be the chief counsel to the Congressional 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:26.240 of Black Caucus and who's now a podcaster and activist 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:29.400 in her own right, Lolo Smith. There are a bunch 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:34.240 of people the Advancement Project, you know, Rashad Robinson up 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:36.760 formerly of Color of Change. Just a bunch of us 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:38.840 decided that we were going to do a twenty four 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:42.560 hour live stream across all our platforms. So I co 0:12:42.640 --> 0:12:44.960 host a podcast called Read This Read That. We streamed 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:47.320 it on the Read This Read That YouTube channel, it 0:12:47.360 --> 0:12:51.040 was streamed on, you know, Mark Thompson's channel, and all 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:54.760 of us just live streamed together twenty four hours of 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:59.040 content in which we as black creators and an activists 0:12:59.080 --> 0:13:02.000 and speakers and media people all came together. And by 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:04.840 the way, these were black folk who generally had never 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:06.560 worked together before. Some of us didn't even know each 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:09.040 other personally. But you know how you know, white people 0:13:09.080 --> 0:13:11.320 assume all black people know each other. We all know 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:14.520 each other, we do, right, And so we all came together, 0:13:14.520 --> 0:13:16.280 people who didn't even really know each other, had never 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:19.400 worked with each other before livestream twenty four hours of 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:22.280 content in which we just talked among ourselves about what 0:13:22.320 --> 0:13:23.880 we need in our community, about. 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:25.320 What the state of the Union is for us. 0:13:26.520 --> 0:13:29.040 And so out of that came this idea that we 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:31.120 needed to take that live stream that over a million 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:36.560 people watched on these collective all common channels, YouTube, Instagram, etc. 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:39.600 And decided to take that on the road. So the 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:41.760 Stay of the People Tour. It was a very fast 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:45.760 put together by Angela and some other folks. And the 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:50.040 idea of it is to go into ten communities, really twelve, 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:53.640 because Rowley and Durham are two different places. Birmingham and Montgomery, 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:57.000 both in Alabama, but ten very heavily black cities Detroit, 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:05.520 New Orleans, Newark, New Jersey, Los Angeles, California, Durham, you know, 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:09.839 sort of all over the country and go and do 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:13.839 two things. Number One, find out what people need. Because 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:16.280 one of the things that I think is generally a 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:18.480 problem is that a lot of us do a lot 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:22.120 of talking about what people should do and not a 0:14:22.160 --> 0:14:24.320 lot of asking what people want. 0:14:24.360 --> 0:14:26.520 Yeah, exactly right, And so I think for our community. 0:14:26.520 --> 0:14:27.480 And a lot of people didn't vote. 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.080 But a lot of people didn't vote mostly because they 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:32.720 didn't know the issues, weren't paying attention, weren't really read in, 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:36.240 and really weren't sure that voting does anything for them. 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:38.440 Even voting for Obama, it didn't feel like it did 0:14:38.480 --> 0:14:40.760 anything for them. So going in and saying hey, register 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:42.600 to vote or you know, that's not gonna help anymore. 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:44.280 We need to just ask people what they want, ask 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:46.040 people what they need, what would make their lives better, 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:49.680 provide services, offer assistance where we can. And then the 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:53.400 second piece is to rally people's spirits. Because Hit Strategies, 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:57.200 which is a really terrific black owned polling firm, did 0:14:57.240 --> 0:14:59.720 some really scary data after the twenty twenty four election 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:04.000 that found that Black Americans have not felt this disempowered 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:08.280 for a generation. We are seeing generational sense of disempowerment 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:12.040 among black people after the failure of Kamala Hairs to win. 0:15:12.560 --> 0:15:15.600 So we need to reverse that by letting people feel empowered, 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:19.400 feel community, feel a sense of community, and also to 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:21.640 do these field hearings to find out what people need 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:22.520 and what they want. 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:23.840 So we're going to twelve cities. 0:15:24.200 --> 0:15:27.080 We started in Atlanta and started by delivering food to 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:30.440 seniors and then rallied folks together and had a bunch 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:34.880 of smaller group conversations, including a land giveaway, you name it, 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:36.800 and we're going to take that on the road. And 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:38.520 so that's what the State of the People Tour is. 0:15:38.560 --> 0:15:41.360 And you can register for your city and find out 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:44.520 what cities were coming to and you can do that 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:48.480 at State of the PPL dot com State of THEPPL 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:51.840 dot Com and that's also on Instagram and TikTok. 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:55.560 Ramses and not have to figure out how to get 0:15:55.600 --> 0:15:58.640 to one of these cities. Because that definitely sounds like 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:00.360 something that we'd like to be a part of and 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:03.520 support you in any way that we can. You kind 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:05.360 of touched on some of this already, so I want 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:08.880 to kind of bring it back to you. Trump is 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:14.720 dominating headlines with several different initiatives that like muzzle Velocity, 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:18.560 just there's something every day. Rams and I were discussing 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:21.440 how everything seems to be aimed at tearing some group 0:16:21.440 --> 0:16:24.480 of people down there. He's not proposing anything that seems 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:27.400 to help anyone, But all of these initiatives that he's 0:16:27.400 --> 0:16:30.000 so happy to do his photo op with seem to 0:16:30.000 --> 0:16:33.880 be targeted as some group and tearing these particular groups down. 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:37.840 As you were speaking to how black people feel so 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:41.640 disempowered and kind of hopeless, what are some things that 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:44.960 we once should be paying attention to and what are 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:47.200 some things that we can kind of grab a hold 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:50.760 to so we don't feel so hopeless and so disempowered, 0:16:50.760 --> 0:16:54.040 like there's nothing that we can do but just accept 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:57.960 this new state that we're in and that that is 0:16:58.000 --> 0:17:02.000 a really, as you couldmdgen difficult thing for even us 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:04.359 collectively to do in the space that we work in. 0:17:04.440 --> 0:17:07.280 But for those who are even less connected and less 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:09.560 informed than we are, what are some things that we 0:17:09.600 --> 0:17:12.560 can that we can share or say to people. 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:16.520 Yeah, And you know the thing that so you know, 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:17.840 sort of frustrating for. 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:21.800 You know, just watching it happen, is that when you 0:17:22.119 --> 0:17:25.200 are attacking everything, as you said, everywhere, all at once, 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:28.720 and people are also just concerned about economic survival, right 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:32.200 because for a lot of folks, thing one is how 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:34.879 he's destroying the economy and their opportunity to just be 0:17:34.880 --> 0:17:37.760 able to pay their bills and afford food. Right, that's 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:41.359 number one. I mean attacking the economy that you know 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:41.639 you can. 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:43.720 You can. You can love or hate Joe Biden, okay, 0:17:43.760 --> 0:17:45.040 and a lot of people don't like them. 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:49.000 But the economy was stable and was growing and actually 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:52.119 was the best economy in the West after and during COVID. 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:54.120 But I think people didn't feel it in a lot 0:17:54.119 --> 0:17:57.040 of ways, and so they roll the dice thinking that 0:17:57.080 --> 0:17:58.960 Trump would improve the economy. A lot of us, a 0:17:59.000 --> 0:18:01.760 lot of us that voted for him, and now they're 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:05.200 finding that they're just getting destroyed. Food prices are going 0:18:05.200 --> 0:18:08.720 through the roof, gas prices are up. It's kind of 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:11.440 it's all going in the wrong direction, and it's making 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:13.080 it hard for people to live. So I think the 0:18:13.320 --> 0:18:16.919 main thing that people are paying attention to is just 0:18:17.000 --> 0:18:20.240 how hard he's making it to live. And when you're 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:24.840 feeling economically unstable, it's very difficult to have those strength 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:27.159 and the time on your hands and the will to 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:31.439 fight everything else. So the challenge is number one. We 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:34.760 need to start focusing on how to get resources into 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:38.480 our communities to make sure our people are not hungry, 0:18:38.840 --> 0:18:42.400 are not evicted, don't lose their health care, like focusing 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:48.520 on those local issues to keep our people alive. Frankly, 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:51.280 in this moment, I think that's number one, because you 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:53.400 can't focus on everything, right, we can't stop him from 0:18:53.600 --> 0:18:56.560 doing everything, but we need to really start thinking locally 0:18:56.920 --> 0:19:00.399 and thinking in community terms. How do we keep people 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:03.560 in our communities alive and in their homes with a 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:05.320 roof over their heads and food on the table. 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:06.320 That's number one. 0:19:06.520 --> 0:19:08.520 And then I think the second piece is if you 0:19:08.600 --> 0:19:11.960 do have the capacity to broaden out and do more 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:14.960 the things that he's attacking that in the end are 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:18.080 really going to affect us. Number one, this attempt to 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:22.200 attack birthright citizenship. Know that that's you know, I'm a 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:24.320 daughter of immigrants, so that definitely affects if you're a 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.400 first generation immigrant right, or if you're an immigrant yourself. 0:19:27.720 --> 0:19:30.119 But it also affects if you're an African American because 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:34.119 the only reason black folks have citizenship at all is 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:38.680 the Fourteenth Amendment, because after you know, during enslavement, black 0:19:38.680 --> 0:19:41.160 people were not considered to the citizens of the United States. 0:19:41.200 --> 0:19:43.000 The dread Scott case said that black people were not 0:19:43.040 --> 0:19:45.920 citizens and had no rights. That whites were bound to respect. 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:48.639 It was a fourteenth Amendment that made black people's citizens. 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:51.359 If you undermine the fourteenth Amendment, there's almost nothing you 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:55.199 can't do to us. This man is already his administration 0:19:55.320 --> 0:19:58.520 is regime as I call it, has already deported American citizens. 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:02.000 That's the thing that's already happened, including American citizen children, 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:03.479 one with cancer, a seven year old. 0:20:03.800 --> 0:20:05.359 So they've already done it, and they've done it to 0:20:05.440 --> 0:20:06.119 brown people. 0:20:06.480 --> 0:20:08.400 But we know that they always get to us eventually, 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:11.520 So we actually have to start paying attention. As angry 0:20:11.560 --> 0:20:13.120 as a lot of black folks are with the brown 0:20:13.119 --> 0:20:15.280 people who voted for Trump, you need to watch that 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:18.560 because we're on the list. Whatever they do to them, 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:20.560 they're eventually going to want to do to us. Now, 0:20:20.600 --> 0:20:22.040 can they deport where are they going to deport us to? 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:26.000 I don't know, Mississippi right, Bigger you can't. But they're 0:20:26.000 --> 0:20:28.680 not deporting people to where they come from. They're deporting 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:32.960 people to a foreign prison that we're paying to take them. 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:37.320 And Donald Trump said on an open mic to Nai Bukelly, 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:39.560 who is the president of El Salvador and calls himself 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:43.399 the world's most popular Dictator Trump said to him, the 0:20:43.440 --> 0:20:47.960 homegrowns are next. Homegrowns are next. What does that mean? 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:48.679 I don't know. 0:20:48.920 --> 0:20:50.480 Maybe it means they're going to try to find some 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:53.240 first generation Brown people and send them to prison. 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:58.480 Or maybe that means anyone in a disfavored group. 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:01.919 And there's no group more disfai than us, So I 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:03.119 think we need to really pay. 0:21:03.000 --> 0:21:03.520 Attention to that. 0:21:03.560 --> 0:21:06.480 I think the third thing, as much as voting doesn't 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:10.600 solve everything, this Save Act is a problem because if 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:12.200 they pass it, it's going to make it much harder 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:15.080 for us to vote. They're building things into that bill 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:18.119 that are designed to make it harder for women and 0:21:18.160 --> 0:21:20.679 people of color to vote. I just recently, I just 0:21:20.680 --> 0:21:25.160 got off this morning a public Religion Research Institute presentation 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:28.440