Should We Be Participating in No Kings? | MiniPod

am part of the ninety two percent. My mother was an activist in this civil rights era, so resistance is in my DNA, and I wonder as far as the No Kings protests, should we be involved, should we be doing more as a community? Should we be doing more? And what that more might look like? And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on this.

just out there getting your steps in. What do we do afterwards? I need to call to action for afterwards. I need people to be organized. I remember my dad was somebody who actually fixed cheese sandwiches. That was his job at Snick. He fixed cheese sandwiches for the march on Washington. He wasn't in charge of the signs. He was over there with John Lewis before he gave his speech,

which of course we know changed overnight. But then he went out during the day and he made everybody cheese sandwiches, cheese and mayonnaise sandwiches on white bread. That's what the volunteers ate and the people who showed up to the march. But when they left the march on Washington, they had a goal of what they were going to do when they left DC. And so look, if marches are your ministry, and if the No Kings March moves your spirit, then

please participate. But make sure you're not just getting your steps in. That is just to waste the time, and we don't really have time to waste.

five hundred events in these different places. Protest anchor events will take place in Atlanta, Boston, Kansas City, New Orleans and New Orleans as they say, San Francisco, Chicago, and of course the nation's capital of DC. And I think the reason why we're talking about this because on this week's episode, our main episode of Native Lampod. We had a wonderful viewer asked the questions should we be participating

in no Kings? And Andrew gave his thoughts and calls to action, So please go be sure to check out the main episode. And look, I think you know there is some level of black people saying yeah, when it mattered, we did what we had to do. We screened to the mountaintops, don't vote for this man. We organized, we did go GOTV efforts, get out the vote efforts for people.

And there are some people who are a little protested out, which I completely understand that, and I'm not here to criticize anybody's way of functioning h and surviving the times. So I applaud everybody around who does choose to participate

in the Noah King's March, wherever you may be. Michael Harriet and I had a good conversation about it, and he was saying, it's kind of like people in the NBA when they're ride and by and they look at dudes playing pickup basketball and they're like, oh, okay, that's cool, Like dude made a good jump shot. And that's how black people look at protesting.

been enough in this process? It's never ever been enough. We've voted, we've voted for a long time, we've voted since we've had the opportunity to do so. And yet it's called for lawsuits, it's called for protests, it's called for sit ins and sit outs, teach ins and teach outs. It's called for us as a community, as society, having to show up whatever the opportunity, for our voice to be heard, for us to get a message across. We

got that message across. So I really, you know, I don't I don't believe that there is some sacred space where we get to retreat to and say I've done my part, I'm tired, my feet of swollen, you go do yours. If if the impact of the decisions on the other side had that kind of a rollout, that'd be one thing. Oh, the Blacks went out and they voted, and so they don't get they won't get the tranche of this to the third tranch around. That's not how

it works. We get the first of the negative tranch and we're impacted all the way through the thing, and so I'm not going to get up here and preach and admonish people to go and do a thing. I'm I'm not doing that. But I don't think that any of us should decide that it is safe enough territory that we went and voted, and therefore we did our thing, and now we don't have another thing to do. I don't think that makes sense, and that's not rooted in

any any part of our history. That's never been true. Don't let other people confuse us about its truthfulness. And at the same time, don't let anybody embarrass you or or whip you into thinking that you've got to go out and do a thing that you don't feel called to do. But if it is hitting you this way, and you recognize that the fight in human struggle towards what's right is one that is continual, then you got

to do what you know you need to do. And if no Kings is how it's formation, you know, coming into formation for you, then no Kings it is. As far as I'm concerned.

And it's I think that's important one because normally, where you feel called or pulled or led, it is in alignment with your gifts, it is in alignment with your experience, and it's in alignment with where you feel most comfortable, which means you'll be able to present the best version of yourself on the thing. I grew up with a perpetual protester, a proud agitator. We got more, you know, signs in the garage for causes.

what is the next step? And I do think we often get, you know, so focused on raising the money and building the budget around that action, but there is less of a strategy around what happens after that action. Now I'm not poopo on pop a rye, but I am saying that too often we have we have spent so much energy just trying trying to raise the consciousness and the awareness around whatever the activity is that we often lack. How we build in an infrastructure and a strategy,

end goals and objectives that support our liberation. And so what I'm choosing to do in this moment is not to lean into reactive activity, to not lean into you know, he's doing these eighty five things sus this week, and here's my reaction to those things. I'm really trying to deepen into what are re sponse looks like, what a response feels like, and can it be something that includes a solution for our people? And I just feel like

sometimes those things don't always include that. Now, I will say my ignorance here.

And I think if I were those organizers, I would want to ask people, why, you know, what does solidarity look like in this moment for the whole of us, so that people feel like they should show up.

some things just serve that purpose. And I'll just say, as it relates to Marsh's and just physical forms of resistance, I probably have as a person who likes to think of myself on the thinking, you know, what's the full throttle piece of this, like, once we've done with this, what is then to that? And then once we're done

with that, what's the strategy than this? And where I have been most encouraged, where when I can't get the satisfaction I want, on what the policy agenda is going to look like in polate formation, where I have found strength and in a reservoir of hope and a reservoir of okay, we can do this thing. I don't know why this feels so crazy, but it's when I looked up and looked out and see that there were people

who had my back. I didn't even think they did, just by their physical presence, the fact that they thought enough to show up to stay in there, literally in the gap. They didn't have to write a letter to the paper, they didn't have to make a speech, but their physical bodies gave me what I needed to just get through that next thing. So I don't think we should under underprize, underestimate, under calculate, under index what it means to just be that force in the gap. And no,

I don't have the policy agenda. No I don't have the total strategy I cannot satiate your need for a policy paper, but I got my body, and right now my body is standing right here in this moment in resistance to what's going on. So I just I say all that to say, do not for those of you who physically take your bodies, who physically take yourselves down to a No King's protest or to a movement for

black lives, or whatever the cause may be. I don't want you to ever think that you're selling yourself or the movement short because you didn't arrive there with a

complete plan in mind. Maybe what maybe was needed of you in this moment is your physical self, so that the person who is writing the policy paper or the person in the in the will of the Senate trying to move that policy thing to a vote and to action, knows that they have people names that they can't call them, faces they can't recognize outside this building, or holding it

down for them. When it feels like you can do it all by yourself, and it finally hits on you that you can't do this by yourself, that you can't stand here alone and get what you want from and that you need those bodies outside who are holding you down to be right where they are. That's what your

contribution is in the moment. And I think what I was envisioning that I think made me emotional as I was thinking back to my trial, and I thought about the speech of Letitia James at the top of our show this week, and I was thinking about all these people who will finding themselves in the legal cross hairs

of the system. While while many of us are opining that ohe a judge and a jury and a whatever, we'll see right through this and that there'll be vindication on the other side, Well before you ever get to vindication, there's a lot of sleepless nights and worry. And so where my prayers go to for Letitia James and for so many others is for their mental and spiritual health and well being. What they're going through, something that they don't deserve, and that many of us are believing that

on the other side of this will be justice. My prayers go to their mental and spiritual health right now, and that they'll have the fortitude to push through it when everybody else is considered this a pretty drawn out conclusion, it'll be okay, a judge, jury, and people of decent and common sense will see the ridiculousness of this all and they'll be fine. On the other side, well, every night and every day, and every night and every day, they still have to question will I have enough to

make mortgage? Will I be able to pull down enough to ensure to my kids' colle you know, fund and so on and so forth. I don't want to go down the list of it, but just know there are humans on the other sides of these titles. There are humans on the other side of these charges. There's doubt, there's fear, there's confusion, there's all other sorts of things. When the leader of the free world is the on the is on the up, you know, the opposite side of you in this fight.

know I had intended in our main episode. I just wish we had more time because I really wanted to hear from you about you know, every time you see another one of these cases drop if it's triggering for you, and so I even appreciate like the connection drawn to like the no King's protests, and you've seen it as a sign of solidarity with folks who are on the other side of a vast abuse of power by this administration, including the targeting and the selective prosecution of his political enemies.

So I I'm really grateful for you sharing that, and I hope we can get this to Tish so that she can see that she's certainly not forgotten, and in fact, you see, the opposition of the people is something that is deeply supportive of folks like you, and folks like Tish and Marilyn and Lisa Cook and Fannie Willis who have all been on the other side of this man who wishes you were king, and people who are over like, folding, over, bending over, taking a knee bow and whatever it is

to give him exactly what he wants. But we're not always as clear about the people who are on the other side of that and who have survived it, and the long term impacts of having to find the strength and the wherewithal to survive it. So I just wanted to say thank you.

So I just think it is so important for us to consistently revisit that and good brother, where you're feeling bottled up, I hope that you see this as a safe space to not only share, but also to offer folks like tishan others a blueprint for how to navigate it and do so successfully. Tif, I don't know if you have anything none.

at all. So just thank you for sharing that. I also want to say I have not yet watched, but

I want to encourage our viewers. I'm planning on watching right now the conversation with Janney Nelson, who just argued before the Supreme Court this week, And I just feel touch that there's a black woman who made the argument on behalf of voting rights and the first person she left the Supreme Court and the first person that she chose to sit down with was Angela and so I just think that is a testament to who Angela Ria

is and what this Native Land platform means. So I hope our audience will help elevate this very important interview and show why Native Land Pod is such an important platform. So if you like anything you heard in this conversation, please share it, and if you do tune into the

Jennae Nelson interview, please share that. Not only is it informative, but it certainly helps us be able to secure more timely interviews like that where we're so often ignored and discarded by white run newsrooms and legacy media that is increasingly a dying force as they continue to fill us every day. So thank you, guys.