Hold Your Applause

Hey, this is Duray. And welcome to Pod Save the People. In this episode, it's me, Miles, and Sharonda, back to talk about the news that you haven't heard about or the news that is the hottest news with regard to race, justice, culture, and equity. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at PodSave of the People. Let's go. You see the headlines ICE and the war on immigrants, federal police takeovers in major cities, racial profiling.

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We are all anticipating Snow Mageddon. Here we go. This is Duray at Dere Y on Twitter. This is Miles E. Johnson at Sun Pulpit on Instagram. And this is Sharon Debossier at Bassier Shea on Instagram and at Bassier S on Spill. Well, again, another week. This will be uh what we say to the end of this administration, another eventful week. But let's start with Minneapolis, Minnesota, what's happening with ice. It seems that every single week there's more and more

to talk about. Sharonda, I'll start with you. What have you learned in the last week, or is there any different perspective you have today than you had when we talked about this a week ago?

Yeah. I mean, I think I'm learning, uh, probably like a lot of other people, that we have no idea what's really happening in Minnesota, right? That we are experiencing a bit of a news blackout, that some of what's coming out of Minneapolis is coming out in very fragmented ways that the administration and presumably a lot of the social media companies are working to make sure that we're only getting part of the news story. The Intercept also did a piece on the Somali led resistance to ICE.

which we can link in the show notes for people to check out. But it feels like the community is really organizing. for themselves, right? I think there's a sense that outsiders don't have any sense of how severe and dire the situation is on the ground, that they are the only people who are best positioned to serve each other. And so we're seeing like mutual aid things pop up. We're seeing people be in the street to protest what's happening.

But I think we are also seeing, and I think the set of feelings that are hardening for me right now are my disappointments in Democrats, right? Because I feel like people are issuing strongly worded statements. and pretending like that's going to move the needle and it fundamentally is not. And so it's been really disappointing to watch people, even as the situation in Minneapolis continues to escalate.

say things that lead me to believe that they actually think they can shame this administration into changing its behavior.

I've just been more interested, and you know, I'm as always I'm interested in black people's response to things and like the black consensuses and kind of surprised at how much. A lot of black people are not on this anti ice train. It's really interesting to seeing the response to the the woman who gets who gets arrested. Nikema. Nikema, she gets she so she gets arrested and seeing so many black people kind of respond in my personal life and and in in the digital life.

What was your ass doing there? Protecting those Somalis, seeing um Khalis who is in Alts American icon, who I love, who I think has transferred her kind of alt girl brand to this kind of bohemian. farm life brand and so many black people find so much black excellence in her and her getting a backlash for her anti ice and her um pro immigrant stance in in her comments. Wait, wait, Khalice said something?

She released a shirt collab, right, that said f Ice and as part of the advertisement, uh, there's an image of a black man burning the American flag. And the comments are all people saying like, okay, yeah, we're down with f ice, but you can't disrespect America like that. And it's truly wild to see in the comments.

I saw a lot of stuff being like, why are you over there talking about these Somalis? You're a black American. I think that so many people don't necessarily again, I am a broken record. But I think so many people don't actually understand where black American culture is and where black culture is and that naivete and and quite frankly that ignorance and that distance is costing us so much.

Because even when it comes to Khalis, she doesn't know who she's actually marketing towards when she goes to Kenya and creates a farm and says black excellence and creates industry in Kenya. She's seducing a conservative audience. And even though that conservative audience is not what we normally associate with conservative, it's still conservative. And she learned once she uh did some anti-American and pro-immigration content, which I thought was fascinating to see.

And you know, I get a little scared. I'm like, I hope black people, if you find yourself in any type of black leadership, any type of black visibility, I hope you're really, really intelligent about how you interact with this moment because the sentiment around it is not the neoliberal Don Lemon watching sentiment. That is a very loud, very, I think, politically right. minority. Black people are not collectively feeling that way around this moment.

Now I take to both of you, you know, the last polling that came out shows that forty five percent and forty five percent are Uh against ice. Black people are overwhelmingly and I think this is of a voters. Black people are overwhelmingly in favor of getting rid of ice.

So that seems to show up in the polling. We have talked before though that all you need is sort of one viral moment of a quote immigrant doing something bad and then the polls saying back. What do you think comes out of this Minneapolis moment? I ask because In another world, the backlash that they've gotten would make them chill out a little bit or would make them fall back just a tad. And in this moment you see like a wild doubling down. I didn't realize that that he has this really big

the fixation with Minnesota. I didn't realize that he has thought that he got hoodwinked out of the boats for the last. Three times he was on the ballot, I didn't realize that the Minnesotans are very proud of never having voted for Ronald Reagan. You know, like There are all these things on Minnesota that I was like, Oh, I didn't realize he's obsessed with them.

But what do you think comes of this? Do you think Miles that black people will be on board even more and be like, you know what, yes, this is our fight too and other groups will Sharonda, do you think that he will cave eventually and that this is a test to see how far He can go and that, you know, cause the the Minnesotans are putting up a fight. This is organized in in a lot of ways more than people thought they would be.

But I'm interested in where you think this goes, both of you. Yeah, I think we're past the tipping point, right? I don't see this administration pulling back at all. And I think to Miles' point of this being a a new or additional front in the diaspora wars, right? I think you've also seen the accounts that are showing like faces of ice in Minneapolis, right? So they're taking pictures of ice agents. It's a lot of black people in those photos, right? And

I am worried. I think our algorithms miles might be teeing up. different comments, right? Based on like the content we follow and et cetera, et cetera. So I I didn't see that emerging fracture point around like, you know, black Americans and people who are uh more recent immigrants to the US, black immigrants to the US. I'm thinking about like Nikema too, right? And I think one of the reasons why

they chose to arrest her is that a lot of the online chatter was that they were wrong to disrupt a church service, right? They were wrong to be in a place of worship protesting. And I think the administration has its ear to the ground. And regardless of what other people might be saying in public or not saying in public, similar to the conversation we had about how people really felt about Kamala or feel about Jasmine last week. They know

that what she did, even if people ultimately agree with her point, was an unpopular tactic and they are seizing that moment, right? And so I think they are finding every window of opportunity and exploiting it. I don't think we see them dial down the intensity. You know, essentially about Nikima is you know, I know Nikima. Nakima's been at this for a long time.

And for local politics, the mayor uh mayor fry He's come out very publicly on the Kima side, which is a big deal locally because they had a very heated race against each other and they have sort of been on opposite sides uh politically for a long time. But what Nikima I don't know if you saw the video that Nikima did or any interviews.

But Nakima is a pastor, a reverend. She's one of the two. She is a lawyer. And she was like, we were invited in here. We were, we did not like break into the church. We were invited into this church. It reminded me of a tactic we did in Ferguson when we did this black church protest where we stood outside of the churches and hummed. Wade in the water. We hummed. We didn't even chant. We hummed.

and one synagogue. And when I tell you you would have thought that we put smoke bombs in the churches, like the reaction from the protest community was so we were like, yo, we hummed outside with signs that said Mike Brown was a lease of these. Jesus was a protester. Like we hummed outside and one church called the police on us, another church.

had their vans block us, but I was shocked that the protesters were like, why would you do this at a church? And we're like, we didn't even go inside. We was outside the church. But people were really hot. It was the one protest action that I was a part of. that like almost broke us all.

Yeah, and what's also interesting is that photo of Nikima who it wasn't enough to see her arrested. They had to AI generate her kind of more crying and and looking more sad than she was as she was getting arrested. Which was interesting to me because Interesting in air quote. But interesting to me because it kind of showed you that like so much of this is about the cruelty and so much of it is about the theatrics of cruelty. So in order to really satisfy the hunger that the base has for

that theater of cruelty. They had a AI generate her crying because her looking stoic and being arrested wasn't enough. Miles, why don't they get in trouble for that? So like clearly it's AI how do they get away with this over and over?

Why doesn't the Department of Justice get in trouble? Like why is there not a blowback from their base about these sort of ridiculous easy Those sort of lies. If our side did something like that, people would be really judgmental. Like, why are you AI? Crow or maybe Sharonda, I don't know, whoever. I'm interested. Whoever has a response to that. I think their response has been they were like, well, it's not propaganda, it's a meme, right? They're like, it's that's how they have have spun it.

And so, you know, they're like, well, it this just goes to show if you do something, then you'll end up a meme too. And it's Wild because people are calling it rightfully what it is, which is a tool of propaganda and it coming from the White House account made people believe that it was the actual image of what was happening.

And they've dodged the question by saying, oh no, we just made a meme, which is something that everyone online has done, seen, engaged, shared, et cetera. It's not a meme, but that's how they've justified it. And you all sides do do it. Like the liberal left, the democratic left does do it. And that's how come Kamala Hare is lost because they created from meme culture, from brat, from all that

That they were trying to put out, they were tr trying to manufacture this excitement that wasn't there and they lost. But the thing with Trump is Trump is actually utilizing and manufacturing excitement that is there. There is a taste for a massage noir as we know. So I think both sides do it. I just think one side does it well and wins.

No, I don't know. I mean I I hear that. I don't think both sides do it. I don't think we it would be acceptable for a democratic president to do anything like this and call it a meme. And I find it hard to believe that anything that might have been Kamala's I don't know. I I can't imagine a meme that Kamala put out. That is in any way similar to what they just said with Nikema. That to me does it this feels like apples and oranges. And to conflate them feels dangerous, dare I might say.

So no, I actually don't believe both sides do this. Or if you're equating the activist left with the president, then I think that also is just like a faulty, I don't know, I don't I don't see this one. I'm with you in general, but this one I'm like, I don't know. Yeah. Well, wait a couple of months. It's just it's it's just what I it's just it's just to me very obvious that both are trying to do it. I think that

the audience of the left oftentimes doesn't fall for it, so they have to be different about it. But it's very obvious that the Democrats are trying and have tried To do the same thing and the same manipulations um with us. You know what it almost reminds me of? It reminds me of Gaza. It reminds me of like now Democrats are trying to show us.

showing the Gaza Strip and aren't you upset that they're gonna turn into casinos and then you read Kamala Harris's book and she tells you Biden was just as mad and had the same plan. So it's just different audiences, so what you can get away with, but to me It doesn't feel like apples and oranges. It feels like, I don't know, SNL versus in living color. Just two different audiences. You can get away with two different things.

But same thing. I hear you on the like the way the left pretends as if we have no memory. I'm actually with you. That I understand much more. Cause I even think about Pelosi kneeling and Kuta Kente Clause. Oh yeah. Not Kuta Kente Claus. Crazy to me and that whole group of people demonized the protesters for so long. Hey, you're listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned this morning.

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Went to Greenland. It looks like we're not gonna invade Greenland, but When I saw the tech people sort of endorse this Greenland thing. I'm like, what world are we in that that the conversation about the United States owning Greenland is a real conversation happening in the country? I Uh uh this one I also am at a loss for. I just encourage everybody to reconnect with your high school history teachers and ask them to talk you through

How the world tries tried to appease Nazi Germany in the 1930s, right? Like it was an actual strategy. you know, that Chamberlain led and that a lot of other quote unquote European powers agreed to. And it was this whole idea that if we just give Hitler and Nazi Germany what they want, then we can avoid conflict. we know that that is not true, right? And in my family, in three generations, right, we're finding ourselves

Back in a position where the world leaders, y'all can't see my air quotes, right? Are choosing a strategy of appeasement. And the strong man in this moment happens to be the US president. But the potential fallout and consequences are looking very much the same to me right now. And I don't understand why we have such short historical memories in the quote unquote West, but we do. We know that this is a strategy that does not work. And I don't understand why people are playing along in this

I think this Greenland story really, really aggravated me. It was one of the stories that I intentionally did not follow because I was trying to try out my little them manipulating time theory because I knew that he was saying something really ridiculous in order to get something done that is actually a part of like a it was already a planned out neoliberal fascist imperial uh strategy. So us acquiring Greeland, where we actually are with it right now.

Many presidents, many imperial leaders in America have already discussed this. have already made this as a goal. What Trump does though is that he knows that with controversy with the Epstein stuff happening, he can actually say something that stays in the news cycle, that gets people scared, that has people commenting, that has the poor people of Greenland and Denmark talking about how they're sovereign people.

And how they're brown and th those things go viral. And now all of a sudden we have this totally manufactured Storm. that now that it's settled and what was never gonna happen doesn't happen. Nobody was ever gonna do that. But now he does get a deal with Greenland that probably would have happened under a lot of presidencies, but with less controversy because other presidents, you know.

we would assume wouldn't be on the Epstein list and wouldn't need to create these controversies to hide the bigger scandals. So just to wrap it up, this is one of those things that I just kind of observed and just kind of made my prediction on and the prediction was right.

I hope we get smarter. I hope we get smarter. I hope we get like smarter and more savvy when we see these bigger things happening because it feels like we're not getting smarter and it feels like we're just getting more exhausted and less cunning and that's concerning'cause Trump is actually getting dumber and and and and getting wilder. So it should be easier to see these things for what they are, but it seems not to be.

Miles, what's the framework you use to decide between the things you think are just sort of for the attention and distraction versus the things that you're like, oh no, he really he uh this is a real thing. This isn't like some weird distraction thing? Trump's framework. Trump's framework.

It's like like every like i he he does the same thing. If you really know, if you don't just care about global politics and imperialism and white supremacist patriarchy, only when Trump is in the office, if you actually apply that across board. you can kind of see this imperial map coming. So if you see something that we didn't want Biden to do, and then we see something that we didn't want Kamala Harris to do, and we saw something that we didn't want Obama to do.

Then we also know that if Trump is threatening to do something in that area, he's probably gonna land where they land, but he's gonna do it different. Now, if he's saying something that we would have never expected anybody ever to say, we know that's a controversy. We know that's a controversy.

But if you can if you can make a clear line between what he's saying to something that your democratic incremental fave is saying, he's bullshitting you. He's bullshitting you. To me that has been the framework that has never failed me. I'll give you an example, cause Gaza's a good example. Again. The reason why we know that he's going to turn Gaza into casinos and make it into a tourist attraction and expand Israel.

'Cause that is what Biden was doing. And people who did not want to critique Biden, did not want to critique Vice President Harris, would not say anything about it, would ignore that it's happening. But Because we already know that that was the bigger American Imperial plan, him mapping his desires on top of it.

It doesn't matter if he uh creates an AI cartoon about it. We know that that's probably gonna happen. We know that's probably gonna happen. Now if he comes and says he's gonna arrest Jeff Bezos, never gonna happen. Never gonna happen Never gonna happen. If he says he's going to do anything that is compromising these billionaires, we know that he's just he's just playing a show. We know that.

So that's the best example I can do because every single other example that I thought of, I was like, Oh no, the Democrats are probably definitely gonna end up doing those things. But just in a softer way that most people don't talk about.

Your brain is the like US bombers. And then US bombers with the pride flag on the back. That's as great a distinction as you see between the two. That is the that is the only distinction. And that's what I love about this moment. That's what I love about So many people, even when you s look at the I've had it women who are going from white moms to going what they call dark woke, I love seeing people kind of awaken to the actual system. And I really hope it doesn't get reversed.

Because it r that's really is it's like, oh, we g still gonna be Imperial, but you're gonna have Juneteenth ice cream and you get to be gay. Yeah. Sharonna, that was a great US bombers with the pride flag, US bombers with the miles. I appreciate you uh keeping the fire alive.

I wanted Sharonda to bring back a story that you had talked to us about before that nineteen year old it was this is one of the one of the issues you had brought up before. Yeah, so we reported earlier on uh Utah allowing uh for AI to write prescriptions for certain kinds of conditions and certain kinds of medications. And I shared a story of a reaction that I had had to medication that had been prescribed.

and how having humans in my life who knew what was happening actually probably saved my life or prevented me from experiencing further medical harm. And so In follow-up, we saw a story of a teen who died after getting drug advice from AI. And just wanted to bring it back because I think it's really important that we don't lose these kinds of threads because I do think sometimes people might hear how we talk about these stories as a bit alarmist or over the top.

And, you know, I know we sort of laughed at Miles's like, okay, we'll wait a couple months, you know, come back. But I think it's true. And some of the stories that we're bringing here, and one of the reasons why we're trying to stay on top of, you know, conversations as they emerge. is we want people to pay attention to the human toll of these tools and and the pace at which we are adopting them because there are real lives on the other side of these choices.

And I wanted to make sure that people understood that the thing that we called out as potential the worst possible scenario has unfortunately happened. We don't have enough conversations about the role of regulation because we take we rightly so take the regulators for granted. You're sort of like, Of course, there's only stuff in the grocery store that would not kill me today.

Yeah. Coming in twenty years if it's not gonna come in today. And I think we you know, Miles, when you talk about the veil being lifted, I hope that this moment, if we survive it, also allows us to talk about those things. I do wanna add another health related thing is that I had the flu.

This week. And shout out to urgent care. And and shout out to um Zoflusa. If I can do ads for Zoflusa, which is a wompil. You shouldn't because we don't like big pharma. Tama flu has been replaced. But uh in terms of our conversations, I didn't realize that black people are 80% more likely to be hospitalized. due to the flu than white people and children of color are more likely to die from the flu. than uh white children.

And I thought about like I'm so fortunate to have this urgent care close by that is open twenty-four hours. I went in at nine o'clock at night. I got an IV. I this is my first time I've ever had an IV drip. It was a leader. I was like, whoo, this is a lot of dripping to happen. Yeah. And then they did some tests. They were like, okay, you have the flu. Boom, boom. I I took the pill and I was really good. It was I was surprised.

But uh this is what healthcare should be like for everybody. And I was like, Oh, I actually see how Like I I have I've never had the flu before. And I was like, I actually see how people could be really, you know, you can't get to a doctor or can't get to somebody or and I live alone. So like at a point I finished my meetings. It's six thirty. I have this headache all day. I'm in the bed in fetal position like Duray.

Get up. Like you gotta get up. It just I felt awful and I never get headaches. So in the morning I had a headache and I was like, Oh, I'll drink some water. And then at six o'clock I still had it and I was like, something's wrong. But I was like, Oh, I see how people can make Choices that really put them in hard positions because of our access to healthcare. Yeah, and get the flu shot. I've gotten it the last few seasons. It helped.

Yeah, specifically as like more people don't care about COVID. So like it's just ravishing bodies. So things like the flu will ravis your body differently, more intensely than it does. I did wanna um talk about the alarmist accusations. I don't know who's giving these accusations. Now if you are and you know, I'm I'm not I'm not I really try to not use ableist language, but it is

I'm sorry, dumb is kind of c and stupidest coming back to my tongue. God forgive me. But if you do not see that there is a conflation of the normalcy and the boring and the absurdist. And in the violent coming together, so you get to watch Netflix as There are slave catchers. If you do if you do not see that those things are happening That means that you are not really doing the self aware critical work to see what's going on. Just because you are comfortable.

Right. And this is something you have to tell myself too, just because you are comfortable in that you live a great urban girlfriend or friends whatever lifestyle.

Does not mean that the world is not destroying itself. It does not mean that these alarming things aren't happening around you. In fact, the individualism of America That's literally the technology of individualism is so you can feel like you're in your little corner of the little world and everybody who's on the same class trajectory as you is saying everything's fine and we could all drink mamosas and if they would just go vote right.

And vote the correct way, we will all be fine. That is the lie that is being told. But there is a subjugated, oppressed. lower class that is not only becoming more nihilistic and not voting and becoming violent, but also is being preyed upon. And if you can't handle both of those things, then that's a reading thing. That's a we we afraid of books thing in in in my opinion. But the last thing to the actual story that you um presented. a little bit of a challenge towards it as well.

Is as much as AI, as much as specifically I'm just thinking about technology overall is something that we should be thinking about specifically as like a global community and a national community. I don't want suffering to mutate and us think it's new. That boy was participating in psychedelic hard drugs and he was asking AI

the good concoctions of it and he was already participating in risky behaviors. So again, I think that the real question always is why does American society produce the type of nihilism and escapism that make this type of drug participation a valid pathway to e escaping your reality. And I think that that didn't really change in the sixties. It's didn't change in the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, and it's not

changing now, it just has technology plugged into it. But there is a deep American sickness of nihilism and escapism that we have not been able to cure. And now it's just mutating. And I hate the idea that we are demonizing or better yet, projecting. all of this bad American stuff on technology as if it just came out of nowhere when we've always been dealing with it. Yeah. That's a fair push. Yeah. That's right. Before we go to the news, I wanted to ask about TikTok.

And how TikTok is about to come into US ownership for the first time. Twitter is all a a buzz about it, that the terms of service seem like more like worse for people than they've ever been. I completely forgot that it hadn't happened already.

Because I know a lot of people who feel like they're being shadow banned on TikTok already. So I'm like, whoo, didn't think it could get worse. But now that it's about to be owned by the Trump allies, it'll be interesting to see what happens. I don't know if you have you heard people talking about this? Yes, because I'm a young spring chicken surrounded by Jen Alpha and Gen Z. Of course I've heard everybody talk about TikTok because it's all I think about. No. I have heard people talk about it.

Here's my thing. Sometimes I wish I can go into a time machine and go 50 years in the future. Because I promise you, specifically around Palestine, we would unsurface what. the democratic left was doing during the TikTok. We we would understand how all of these social media companies have been like manipulated. And I feel like now because it's becoming an announcement, Again, to me, my instinct is something is becoming an announcement and a controversy around what has always been going on.

and what's always been manipulated. I'm so interested as to what did the Democrats do or what did people or I would just say people who are um politically powerful do post the BLM movements and post Ferguson and how those things might have been manipulated. in order to make sure that something like that couldn't happen again.

Like I'm curious about that. But again, to your point, people are already talking about people being shadow banned who have really political content on TikTok and who have trans content on TikTok. That was already happening. So it's like now we're creating this. scandal because somebody turned up the volume. But if we really want to make sure nobody can turn up the volume, we can't accept it even when it's like incremental or soft enough for us to be able to like.

Yeah, I mean, I have a TikTok account. I'm rarely over there. I have a sibling who's 14 years younger than I am. And when she sends me stuff, I'm on TikTok. But I think to Miles' point, people for a long time had been complaining about the censorship that was happening. And I think a lot of that censorship was being done by the previous owners in the hopes of preventing a sale of TikTok, right? In the hopes of saying, like, we will also cave to your pressure if you won't force us to sell.

like the US arm of this thing. What I have also noticed is people saying that they are trying to figure out new code words or language or symbols to use to get their point across to like evade some of the large scale censorship. But I don't think that that is working for a lot of people. I think once you've been tagged or once your account, you know, is associated with a certain set of discussion topics. that I I just think it doesn't work for you. I have also seen, you know, various

uh groups of people who have been influencers, paid influencers, right? Talk about how in this moment the pushback against anything that has been remotely seen as progressive or inclusive. Has meant that they've gotten left out of deals. That's everything from fat content creators, right, to more leftist political content creators.

because there's this move to make sure that everything that's at the top of our feeds and showing up in our feeds fits this very narrow aesthetic and politic. And so I think TikTok is just sort of to Miles's point the current wave of that. And the current focus and the thing that we're, you know, honing in on is around people's political positions. But it's literally everything from the bodies people occupy to the politics they espouse being censored.

Minneapolis is a great example of what happens when the internet becomes corrupted and it just rebirths uh offline organizing. So one of the things that's driving ice nuts is the ice patrols, if you've seen them in Minneapolis with the ice whistles. That there are people all across the neighborhoods who whistle when ice agents are near.

And it really does matter, but this is like offline or you can't do that on Twitter. It that is an offline organizing thing. Or one of my friends, uh family members is now running one of the funds where because they can't go grocery shopping, there are people who are delivering groceries.

And there's this whole infrastructure to be able to deliver groceries to people's houses who are afraid to come outside right now. We have seen in real time in this moment, like the offline organizing skills reemerge in a way that I'm like, Whew, yes. I and I

think that it'll only grow as the internet algorithmy world becomes less reliable. And I say that as somebody who like, I would not be a national figure. I would not be here in this way if not for online organizing. But it is a very different platform than it was before. I think a lot of I see these creators online who and I'm like, I'm so happy I did not come up in this.

ecosystem of sort of internet activism this way, because this would drive me a little bit nuts. And I'm happy that we weren't able to monetize like views that that wasn't a thing because I wouldn't have been able to tell what was true and what's not true back then because I can't tell now. I'm like I I really don't know on the internet. It's very, very hard for me.

But Miles, it seemed like you had a reaction to one of the things Sharonda's saying. Sorry, Sharonda. It wasn't a reaction to like literally what you were saying. You had mentioned the article that we had saw. And I have a associate friend, I was her manager at AfroPunk Semi and then she was like became one of my like tarot clients. So like the very like casual

relationship, but it c a little frustrating to read her inside of that article, if I'm b if I'm being honest, because if I see somebody who's like an Amazon influencer, right? And I see somebody who totally bankrolled on cause this consumerist slave labor industry. And now you're upset because you got digested by it. It's just frustrating to hear people who totally were willing to participate in consumerism, totally

willing to participate in capitalism. And then when capitalism digests you, then you all of a sudden we have like commentary and it feels so flat and shallow, which is how come I think so much of the influencer in the online commentary and just people in general just interacting with each other is just losing its soul because there's just no coherence.

As somebody who's a bigger person and a bigger body as of right now. But like as somebody who's a bigger person and a bigger body, like what do you want me to actually care about? Do you want me to care that Amazon is not giving you money from the people they're exploiting anymore? Is that what you really want me to care about? You want me to care that Netflix is not giving you a check? Is that what you really want me to care about? Like that feels tone deaf to put it the lightest.

Hey, you're listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There's more to come.

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Well, on the culture side It seems like there is a movie that has gotten the most Oscar nominations in Oscar history, which is, you know, these, these things don't feel like they mean as much anymore because every year there's a movie that has gotten the most. So I'm like, I'm always nervous. As problematic as one battle after another is, I love seeing Tiana happy and I'm I'm torn, but

The video of her celebrating being nominated for the Oscar was just so I was like, I love it. I love Happy Tiana, crazy movie, weird take on the revolution. And shout out to Tiana. So sometimes what I really like about not writing critically in public anymore is that I don't have to like overexplain that I can love something and critique something and critique is a function of love. I do not critique things I do not care about. You have never heard me critique South Park.

No matter what, you have never heard me critique things I do not like. But also it gets becomes frustrating to continuously try to show people, specifically people who are grown, specifically people who are college graduates. It like like the connection between media and menstrelcy and the evolution of it. So if we know menstry and then we know that the next explosion of menstry, even if you like it, which I do.

is like black exploitation and we understand that Pam Greer p participated in that and we love Pam Greer. We can very well see the connection between Tiana Taylor's character Pam Grayer, and then we can go ahead and rope it back to Minstrelcy. So just because we like Tiana Taylor and we are happy for her.

Iman and all that other stuff and we would love seeing black women and she's pretty and she's talented and we've been riding for her forever and we're happy to see her does not mean she did not have to participate in the menstrual capitalist apparatus in order to get her gold.

Mm-hmm. That doesn't feel controversial and I really wish not even just black people, the general audience, we would mature our thinking. That becomes really frustrating to me. I think that's right. Sharana, anything to say about Tiana?

You know, randomly I ended up down a rabbit hole about Sammy Davis Jr. last night. This is related because. No, I'm really fascinated by what it took for Sammy Davis Jr. to live the life he lived and have the career he had. And I was in an argument, men, around the black comedic tradition and the role of black comedians as like broader social theorists and critics, right? And how I feel like a lot of contemporary black comedians have abandoned that very critical role in black culture.

And we started talking about like, you know, the ways in which black comedians, particularly black men comedians, had to show up in order to enjoy a degree of commercial success. Right. And who we felt had like been able to navigate that dynamic successfully and still get their point across. And then people we think. Navigated that dynamic in a way that has essentially defanged them. Right. So I would put prior in the category of like having successfully done it.

And I would put no shade to Eddie Murphy, Eddie Murphy in the, you know, bucket of like essentially being D Fang as a social critic. So anyway, so we talked about Sammy Davis Jr. because no one ever talks about him as an inspiration for their work or why they wanted to get into entertainment or why they wanted to be a performer, despite his very clear commercial success, right?

And so I was like, I wondered what his contemporaries thought of him, right? And like what was the conversation in black cultural circles around Sammy Davis Jr.? And I think what we're seeing around the Tiana stuff is to Miles's point, her trying to figure out how to make a way for herself in an industry that requires a certain kind of performance of a black woman. while also trying to push the envelope creatively, which we've seen her do in so many ways and in so many moments.

And I think there are two conversations happening. There are the public conversations that we know white people are going to access and elevate. And then there are the conversations around the performance and the movie that are happening in Black cultural circles that are very different. And so I feel almost like we're having another Sammy Davis Jr. moment, right? Where you're like, this woman is going to be elevated on the highest stages performing with the biggest white celebrities.

And there's going to be an entirely separate set of conversations and feelings about that in Black cultural spaces.

I forgot I've gotten more radical on this standpoint where like if you have ever been on a a red carpet, you have class traded. There is no participating inside of that apparatus and helping black people. If you are seducing black people, if you are making with your body, with your black work, with your black talent, if you're legitimizing

anything around Hollywood, anything around the entertainment industry or the media industry, you have class traded. That is me, that is you, that is we. That is what's going on. And just because one individual person, to me, what any black celebrity symbolically, no matter what what it is, it shows the desperate

constraints. Um I was autistically uh obsessed with Sammy Davis Jr. and seeing uh how people were up and down with him and how people like people loved him and he was actually kind of weaponized against black people and Sammy Davis Jr. had

Um, so many different performance opportunities where he tried to kind of court black audiences back. It reminded me of Whitney Houston, it reminded me of Michael Jackson and some of the choices that he made in order to do that too. Or even reminds me of Janet Jackson and how come she

came out so Afrocentric at a point in order to distance herself from her brother who was seen as a sellout and distance. That is the thing. We are in such economic and societal desperation that one of the only pathways we can find to a life worth living is through the very system that w seeks to dominate us and absorb everything and leave nothing but scraps. Like that's just the situation we're in. And I think trying to pretend that Tiana Taylor is somehow like

I want all that bullshit to die. I want all of it to die. All the black girl magic, all that stuff. Not literally, but like I want all of that. Seduction into media in Hollywood to die because it is worthless and anybody who is trying to seduce you into it is um

In my opinion. On the topic of movies, there is a movie that is the most nominated movie in the history of the Oscars. And like I said before, it is Sinners. Miles lead us. Yes, so Sinners has I believe like the the one that I remember'cause I I saw is All About Eve'cause Betty Davis is one of the greatest actresses ever to act and I love All About Eve. And I know that that was a film that used to have that crown and um sinners beat that film out, which is really cool.

So here's my thing and here's something that I've seen happen, at least in the digital space. I've not met any regular black people who care about the Oscars. I'm in the Midwest. I mean, so I'm not gonna so this is all just kind of like from my like di digital ecosystem. But

What I've been excited to see is more black people seeing these announcements of like excellence and not being moved by them. I'm so excited to see black people who um of course there are black people who are kind of like who have this kind of incestuous relationship with black success stories, whereas if somebody else is successful,

you take it as more than another black person to be proud of and you take it as like a marker of your own success, which I think has been really, really weird to um witness if I'm being honest. But I've been really excited to see so many black folks say no matter what happens, the win for centers is

the fact that we got to see this movie, the fact that this movie was made and we enjoyed it. But there is no legitimizing sinners through the Oscars. There's no legitimizing the goodness of this film through the Oscars. And even though I would say kind of like

the neoliberal black digital ecosystem is always gonna be louder and just a bigger population. Because I remember being so lonely in my feelings with the Beyonce article, with my Moonlight article, when that happened to Moonlight and me just trying to get black people to

just disconnect from these legitimizing forces that are totally informed by capitalism and white supremacy. It made me excited to see so many black people, specifically young black people, if I'm being honest. I feel like millennials and Gin X black excellent people are a a little bit of a lost cause, but it's it's exciting to see Gen Z and younger black folks say, We don't care. Stop doing this to us and then if the Oscars happen, we hope that they get everything that they deserve.

But then if they don't get best picture, then we're in a controversy and then Oscar's so white and then we need a hashtag and da da da da da. And then in five years we get disrupted again. I think I'm glad to see so many black people get off of that. a merry-go-round of humiliation and disrespect to our culture and our art. It makes me happy. Cinners is a great movie, period. As you both know, I was not going to go see it until y'all were like, you have to go see it so we can talk about it.

And I slept with the lights on that night because uh I'm a I it was terrifying to me. But I don't know. I do think that there is something about wanting your art to be appreciated by the people you consider your peers, right? That I totally get. You know, I've also heard from people that like when you win the awards, you can demand more, right? You get more latitude, you you you earn more, et cetera, et cetera. We've talked about on the pod before.

how winning has also meant that black actors have been sidelined for a while because people don't want to pay them what they're now worth as Academy Award winning actors and, you know, et cetera. I think what's been interesting to me also is that everyone feels like the nominations are a participation trophy. Like there was so much conversation and discourse around centers. You kind of had to nominate it in all of these ways. But it's it feels like Beyoncé at the Grammys.

Where it's like she was not gonna win album of the year. We knew it was gonna go to Adele, even if we liked Beyonce's lemonade better. And I think people feel similarly like they're about to Beyonce at the Grammys, Ryan Kugler at the Oscars, you know? So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. This is what I always will say about the Oscars that completely blew my mind is that I did not know that they don't have to watch all the movies. Now that I know Oscar voters, I didn't realize

They don't watch all the movies. That is crazy to me. That just feels nuts. So like now they're trying to make it better, but I don't know. That just feels like a crazy thing. The second is that it wasn't until I had a more national perspective on a lot of things that I realized how hard the campaigning goes. So like the the public thing is its own thing.

But y there's so much work to get Oscar Boders just in the room to watch the movie, which is where they spend so much money. And I was like, that is just fascinating to me. So those two things just continue to blow my mind. I think about the film, I you know, I I echo mo most of what you would say, Miles, is that This was a great film, regardless. Zero awards, all 16. It was an incredible film. I think what's a little different for me about this is that.

It seems like we do have a collective appreciation for Ryan Kogler. I know I do as a as you know, Free Vale Station is his first major film in in that way and about an issue very close to my personal life and my professional life. And would love for him to get every ounce of recognition he possibly could get, though he doesn't need this to be six. He is already Ryan Kugler.

And you know, people make fun of Michael B. Jordan for some things, but I'm like, he played two characters. I thought that was great. And definitely if it's him and Marty Supreme, you know, I saw Marty Supreme and Timothy Chalamet was whatever, but like what was going on in that movie? So I'm hopeful. I don't know what other awards there are. You know, I remember Solange obviously being like, you know, we should make our own stuff. Yeah. After she won her Grammy.

Miles with that. It does feel like it would be really beautiful. to be recognized by your peers. And I you know, Ryan saying that he's not a voter because he doesn't want to judge art. I think is the most Ryan Kugler thing you could possibly say, which I also kinda love. But what I don't like is if they win nothing, I think I'm team for the call to burn down Nas. Like whatever whatever our collective call is, if you lose all sixteen, I'm It would be so ridiculous to see

Black people go from like a digital cultural ecosystem of resting and the thing that activates us is losing an Oscar. I would pray that we would have collectively more self-awareness to say, oh my goodness, all this other stuff. But that Oscar. We in the streets free, like, or we're in we're in this digital like panic over that. I really hope black people let it go. And again, this is like.

Dr. Bell, who like I really enjoy watching and reading, um, and who has illuminated me a lot about like the narratives that

are around black excellence and black capitalism and the myths around it and he's written extensively around it. And he also kind of like annoyingly but c accurately reminds us that these films that garner billions of dollars and millions of dollars are going through the same executives in the same companies that are helping fascists take over the government and helping bombs go to these different places.

So a lot of times the price tag and the numbers don't really mean sh and maybe and I kind of interrogate what peership is. So I understand peership as in your director and another director. But I I think as black people, just like we change certain things from scraps to soul food or to instruments to jazz, I think that we should

shift what peership is. If you are really one of us, which I feel like Ryan Kugler has totally shown that he is with the story he tells and how he presents himself, I think that he should think of peership as how do I get this economic success. to the people who I am using because I know they are thirsty for identity. And I think that his again, I think his films have been brilliant. I think the reason why he has captured a black audience is because of his masterful

knowledge of film, but I think that if you really want to show and get appreciation from peers, remember black folks, all black folks, regular black folks are your peers too. And how do we create economic systems from this successful film to the black community. If it's not that, then to me, all black art is a failure if it's not trying to do that work. Hey, you're listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there's more to come.

My news is about the Board of Peace. I don't know how much you all have. paid attention to the borderpiece, but this is another thing that I thought was not real. And I thought frankly, I thought it was like a internet creation. I was like, oh, Trump's on the borderpiece and then I was like, oh snap, this is like a real, legitimately trying to make it a thing.

So what I'll remind us all of is uh Trump's obsession with being labeled as a international peacemaker. So it's a Nobel Peace Prize, which he didn't get, but he is he is received Uh, the last winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, he now has her prize, but the Nobel folks are like, that's not how it works. He created the FIFA Peace Prize.

As a way to receive somebody's Peace Prize. And that was a thing. Again, there's never been a FIFA Peace Prize before that. And now he has made what he's called the Board of Peace. Now what I'll tell you, the wildest thing about the borderpiece to me is that I did not realize that it was approved by the UN Security Council. I thought this was like some random thing that Trump just like made up in his back seat. Like he made up the Trump phone and the

all the other things. I didn't realize that the UN Security Council has been a part of the shenanigans the whole the whole way. And then Miles this goes back to Europe, bombs with bombs with the pride flag and bombs without Because the whole point of the border peace is a part of a broader plan that includes establishing a security force in Gaza. Now, who's a part of the border peace? There are 20 countries, including Argentina, Bahran, Belarus, Bulgaria, Egypt, Israel.

Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and the only way to get permanent membership on the Border Peace is to donate a billion dollars. Now there is no dollar amount to be included as a member, but the only way to get permanent membership is the billion dollar minimum. Who is the chair? The charter says that Trump is the chair of the board and can be replaced as the chairman only, quote.

Through voluntary resignation or as a result of incapacity, as determined by a unanimous vote of the executive board. So he has installed himself as the chair of the billion dollar minimum permanent membership committee. of the Board of Peace. Now importantly, there are some groups that have chosen not to participate, like the great country of Canada, the UK,

France has not yet signed on. But I was just shocked that so many people are participating in this borderpiece nonsense that is happening. And the reason I brought it here was.

Because I wanted to see what you all thought about it. When I when I it it was different to me when I thought this was like one of his uh Trump specials, when I realized that the UN Security Council is also part of it, it reminds me in in so many ways how how many people were not paying attention around what was going on in Gaza. and how the Gaza Strip is even more important for these leaders

than even the far left activists ever pushed for people that this is this remains a huge topic. And I will just shout out the Palestinian activists, the free Palestinian activists. Who forced this conversation about Gaza to be a national conversation? Who refused to let up, even when they were shunned from the left. because uh as with most of the activists work. They are right. I think I'm curious as to like what surprised you most about it.

or anybody uh like m the the most about it. Again, there there's a parallel world where the same thing happens and nobody cares. I think because of how A, the mainstream media, legacy media For justifiable reasons, hates Trump. So I think that they end up catastrophizing specifically what Trump does, but then staying mute on what Democrats do. And then they kind of erase a narrative of how these

two things are working in concert or in parallel, or they're not that different. And that to me is really, really frustrating. I think that It's obvious to me that something would have been erected inside of Vice President Harris's or Biden's presidency that was something that keeps the Middle East on and American imperial control. And I think The way that Trump does it.

I think the fact that he sprinkles some money laundering on top of it, which to me, what a lot of this is, is a way for him to get money from these other countries. the way that he is such an egomaniac, so he is gonna be c announce himself chair and he can't leave it. I think all those things are absurd and wild and I'm totally in agreement. But I think the meat of what's going on is something that we've witnessed happen and that Vice President Harris

explain to us what was going to happen. So I'm always a little confused. I sometimes I feel like maybe I'm missing something around other people's surprise around Trump doing it. Cause I feel like Trump already lets us know how he's gonna do it. So like what outside of the how that he's doing it is the thing that is the most disturbing is always a little confusing to me.

Yeah, I'm uh I'm gonna put back on my US history teacher hat and encourage people to go back to their unit of study on what was called the scramble for Africa. Because we've seen this play out before, um, where we had European countries convene conferences and summits, right, to talk about how they were going to parse the continent of Africa.

And all of that coincided with the second industrial revolution, right? So it's the turn of the century from the nineteenth to the twentieth century when we need new kinds of natural resources, minerals, and materials to power the second industrial revolution and age. And so we again have seen these bodies be established before. We have seen strong European or Western powers position themselves as the deciders.

and build something right when they don't like the existing world order or when they don't like the existing systems that allow for these things to happen. to create something under the guise of legitimacy and authenticity to meet their imperialist and colonialist aims. And we're seeing the exact same thing, right? We're seeing a plan for a region of the world.

that is being led by outside entities under the guise of something that is legitimate and lawful, right? We have a charter, we have a governing board, right? We have criteria for membership, criteria for presumably anyway, a transition of power said should the current head become incapacitated or pass away, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And all of this is simply the ongoing legacy of imperialism, right? And I think

For a long time, we have talked about imperialism as something that happened, right? And no longer is happening, but we're seeing them deploy the same tools, create the same entities, and leverage the same playbook centuries later.

Yeah, I think the thing that shocks me is just how and I know, I know, in my heart I'm like Dura, you shouldn't be shocked, but it's just how brazen it all is. Like a billion dollar membership. He is essentially the chairman for li forever until Like there's no mechanism to remove them.

All these other countries are like, Yeah, this makes sense too that like it just I guess another way to say it is I don't know what it'll take for for people to realize that they're being hoodwinked. Like if this is not enough, if all of these things are not enough, then I'm like, I don't even know what could pull the veil back where you're like, yeah, all of this is a scam. Who's being hoodwinked? The people.

People on the left are not for Trump, right? So we know they're not being hoodwinked, they see it. So like who who who else is there to be hoodwinked? People on the right like this. People on the people people on the right like this imperialism. People on the right believe there is no compromising with Palestinian or brown people because they are savages. They are Muslims. They want to do the lobo sharia law and that we are just uh naive leftists and liberals. Who don't know any better.

And who have this kind of um fanciful way of that we see the globe. And so they're okay with this. Of all education backgrounds, mind you, the dumbest on the right to the smartest on the right, they are okay with this. That is a part about being on the right, is that you you you think imperialism is good. You want there to be an Amazon, Apple, global world where you can go anywhere you want to go and that your American passport makes you dominate anywhere you go. That is the plan.

Maybe I still hold a false distinction between the Trumpers and the general right, but I do think there are people on the right who that there is a base of the right who doesn't support all of this foolishness that Like I even think about the small fraction of the Right Who is team get rid of Ice. Is that that seems like it matters and that there's a way that they actually don't agree with some of this stuff?

Maybe I'm wrong. There used to be a time where there was a a super clear distinction between the right, like the sort of traditional right, the MAGA people, at least first term of Trump. that has become much blurrier this go round, which I totally get. I just I look at his approval ratings and stuff like that, even on the right, and it just doesn't seem It seems like the media representation of how popular he is in the message.

Does seem outpaced with even the polling at the base. That would be my offering. My thing is who is this traditional white? Sorry just speaking like this. I'm not speaking like literally to Dorae. But like, but like I'm just speaking to like when I hear stuff, I'm like, Did your family go untouched by crack?

Did your family not have a JFK story when JFK was saying that he was gonna make this world better and somebody shot him and said, No, you won't? Like did you did you were we not here? Like the right. has always been an anti-black, anti-human advancement apparatus. And what the Democrats say is, don't kill our friends. We'll find use for them. We actually think we can integrate them. They won't be you, but we don't have to kill them. We can actually still look good.

to our more civilized European um neighbors and we don't have to s keep them enslaved. We don't have to keep us segregated. Come on, there's a better way to do it. And so the Democrats have always been going from that angle and the right has always been saying, F that. We do not want them there.

Recorded talking about how it goes from you being able to say nigger to talking about policy and how some of the right's policy has become so abstract that people are forgetting what we stand for. The right has always been an evil apparatus. To me, what I he I love. That there's no more blurry lines because I cannot stand. Somebody talking about I am an economic conservative, but a social liberal. That it doesn't exist. That is some BS. If you are on the right.

You are a part of an evil regime and when Trump dies, you will still be a part of her evil regime. If you voted for Bush, you voted for evil. If you voted for his daddy, you voted for evil. If you voted for Reagan, you voted for evil. So you're sort of like big bomb, little bomb, still a bomb. It's not big bomb little bomb. It's not big

Obama did a bomb. Obama did more drone strikes. It's got a it's a bomb and a bomb. It's it's the bomb. It's like Obama still did more drone strikes. A lot of what the uh the Democrats have been doing is in order to try to court This um right back into liking them. And the big part of it is they want to be racist, they want to be sexist.

They want policies that keep people at a permanent underclass. They do not want to advance socially or economically. That's a big part of them. If you are still calling yourself a Republican based over policies in 2026, you are a white supremacist. I can talk to you and tell you what flavor you are, or if you're sugar free or you got the full f sugar. Yeah.

But you are still the white supremacist. There's all that fantasy around voting right in America. What? And then speaking of Canada, you go to Canada and their furthest right is me. I'm seen as a neoliberal to a lot of Canadians. We're in such a fiction in America that it it's it's baffling to me sometimes. I'm like, well, do you what's your read on that?

I mean I I do think that we have talked about Trump as if he is particularly bad and I don't think he is. I mean in some ways I think that he's sloppy and that's a lot of what we're noticing. But I think Trump is is Reagan two point oh, right? And and we've talked about that before in like a lot of ways from the silly like Reagan's critique of roots, right?

To the political, right? That has a real impact on people's day to day lives, like some of the policies that Reagan and his administration championed and are still with us, the consequences at least today. I also think that we skip over the fact that the Republican Party as a party has had an organizing force internal to it that has moved it further and further right. If you look at Newt Gingrich and his contract with America.

If you look at the tea party, which we also skip over right now, right? Like the Tea Party used to be a radical, radical fringe. And then the middle quote unquote of the Republican Party moved to absorb the Tea Party. So they were already further right before you get the rise of Trump and Trumpism. I'm philosophically here, I I think, but I'm just like, I don't know. It feels Something feels different. It feels very different what Trump is like.

firing three hundred thousand federal government employees and Taking 1.5 million people's visa statuses in one moment, freezing food stamps, like targeting states that disagree with them, deploying ISIS's personal police department, like those things. That feels very different than and maybe it is that the the other right had more of a reliance and belief in like procedural something, but it this doesn't feel it doesn't all feel the same to me.

Yeah, I mean, ask people how they feel about Sheriff Arpayo in Arizona, right? Who had people in tents in the hot Arizona sun when he was detaining them. on suspicion of being undocumented. Ask people how they felt about But that's to me the police. So that's the the police I are one bra brush to me. That's not you know the police are the police. You know like the languages and you know I always get some, you know, well meeting.

older white people after these kind of go on who wanna discuss it, who who I encourage to talk to me, you know, I'm I'm nice as long as you don't get on my nerves. But they'll be like, Well, Trump did feels like different and stuff like that. I'm like, yeah, he's way more inconvenient. So that's what I'm saying. If we even look at like somebody like Mitt Romney, he was such an

extraction from the right's original project that they began failing. So they finally found a mascot that activates what the right was always supposed to symbolize, which was keeping this a white male ethno national state that has a underclass of people of color but does not have equality. That is what we see going on. And when Trumpism, Trump

passes or whatever happens, you're still gonna have to deal with that reality. Like you're still gonna have to deal with that. And I think the inconvenience of Trump and the sloppiness and the fact that He's activated people who were unactivated before because they wanted somebody who was like, I don't stop talking to me about these taxes. Are you gonna keep those N words in their place or not?

Stop talking to me about smaller government. Are you gonna make sure my wife can't leave me even if I beat her ass or not? That's what people want to know. And Trump said, I'll let you know. What I do hear in what you're saying, whether the what I'm calling the traditional right publicly believed these ideas before or legislated them. What is true is that when Trump came and said them, People did not say not me. People did not say I'm not voting for it.

People did not say, I don't believe those things. People voted for it, that the votes were there. That like somebody came out and did it. They might not have said it before. Both times. Right. When they had a chance to, they did. And I will give you, I'll give you that.

Yeah, so my news is a piece of news in follow up to an immigration raid from September twenty twenty five on a residential building in Chicago. We talked about immigration agents who were propelling down onto the building from Black Hawk helicopters. you know, bussing down doors, detaining people because the Trump administration claimed that they had gotten A tip that the building was occupied by mostly undocumented Venezuelan gang members. And.

There were lots of questions swirling around that raid, um, especially because people were like, this is a random building in a random part of Chicago. Like, why this big military operation? And even then the quote unquote gang cover story, right, just didn't sound right to people. And so since that raid, the state of Illinois has been investigating claims that it's actually the building management and ownership.

that tipped off authorities because they have been in a protracted fight with residents over the living conditions of the building. And that this was an attempt by building ownership and management. to force out undesirable quote unquote tenants, right? And I'm bringing it to the pod because, you know, Darae, you just mentioned Trump deploying ICE as his personal police force, right?

But what happens when the moneyed class also thinks about deploying ICE as their personal police force? We saw another story, I think, this week. around a public's executive trying to leverage immigration enforcement against his ex-wife. Like just wild things are happening. And just wanna bring this again because I think often our memories are short.

We don't think about the consequences of these kinds of actions on people over the long term. And we've been talking about the need to organize in place, in person, and what happens when people are displaced and dispersed. So yeah, wanted to bring that to the pot for discussion.

I think we don't talk about enough how There are like Philosophical dare I say like even like like spiritual realities that make people land at conservatism.

And you kind of mentioned it, I put in in the group chat earlier around this comedian building these fake websites where people can call ice on people and would document the phone calls and what people were doing. And you kind of hear something that it's disturbing because you hear people calling ice on XY's or on employees they don't like and stuff like that.

But you what you do see is a consistent pattern of cruelty that lands you in conservative action. And I think that's to my point of again, where it's like if you're a one issue voter and you're a landlord. And you say I vote Republican because economically that is what's best for me, I must still name you a white supremacist. J you don't have to get it in order to be it. That's why I want to be a little bit more clear and a little bit more broad when it comes to how I name these things because

It doesn't matter if it hurts your feelings or if you don't get it, it's what you're doing. You're you're being a white supremacist capitalist and you're utilizing imperialism for your patriarchal capitalist needs and and and wants. That's what you're doing. You don't gotta get it.

You could have an accent, like the person who who was calling on his ex-wife is an immigrant too. You can hear the accent. So so again, this is not something that I'm when I say white supremacy, I'm just talking about white people. I'm talking about a disease, a psychological, philosophical disease.

That has inhabited people and we call it conservatism or we call it Republican. It's not just that. That's how come these wild things are happening when the Republicans are in office because it truly is an illness of having a society that we split and we make

seem that we're in a binary instead of we're all living on some type of gradient. When you split people into thinking they're binaries, bigotries are birthed. No matter if we're talking about a gender binary or a political binary and we're seeing the results of that. Again, like just start like wrap it up when it comes to that landlord calling ice on his building.

I think I love that this is being reported, but I think thinking that this is the only individual instance of this and then also not connect this to the anti blackness that is connected to gentrification and noise complaints. And all these different things that people have tried to tell people about and show people that these landlords have a different mind or have a different motivation than you would think. Like now we're in this place where, you know,

Essentially Trump did green light you have your own police force. He that is what he signaled to us. But I think we've already had black people in different thinkers already kind of try to call the alarm. And the last, last, last I'll lie, last last thing that I'll say is that it's hard for me in like usually when I write or when I speak I really try not to critique organizing.

Or, you know, anybody who's like into activism and on the streets. But I really hope that like a lot of people who do organizing and a lot of people who um have resources and are thinking about where to put their money resources see how important housing is and how housing can transform whatever you do. Like I don't won't go on the the rant that I went on earlier in the group chat, but what I will say is that like

Us ignoring the essential needs of a black community and just going by what the media had allowed us to take storm from has had us suffer, you know? Like I do think that. we're in a moment where so many people

are already pressed. I don't know what anybody's mortgage is, but can anybody really afford to pay a second mortgage or anybody else? Even if you're getting a lot of money, isn't everybody paying these big rents and stuff like that? And I wish that we were more strategic around regular black folks in housing in not just black folks but black and brown folks in housing because I think that's how you keep a loyal base to activism.

This just reminds me about how easy it is to participate in the police state or or fascism, whatever you wanna call patriarchy, that the invitation is always there. And then the question is like, have we primed people to say no or have we have we made it so seductive and so easy to say yes?

And the answer in almost all of the things is like it is just really seductive because people can talk themselves out of a police state that they're like, Oh no, this is for my safety, this is for like You can rationalize something else that is not the seductiveness of the police state or

fascism and by the time it comes back to you, because you realize that the monster always eats itself, especially if you don't have the luxury of being a white straight man with structural power. If you are anything else the system will often eat itself. And even if you are that man, it will eat you alive too. You just might still be here, but spiritually dead, right? That it always does something to you.

But it is always seductive. And I think about the number of people in my day to day job who call the police with the best intentions and then the police come shoot dumb and you're like, well yeah, because this is how it works, is that the thing doesn't work. But participating in it often feels like the right decision or decision that you can make feel right.

Well, that's it. Thanks so much for tuning in to Pod Save the People this week. And don't forget to follow us at Pod Save the People and Cricket Media on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. And if you enjoyed this episode of Pod Save the People, consider dropping us a review on your favorite podcast app. And we will see you next week.

Potter the People is a production of Crooked Media. It's produced by Adri Moultrie and mixed by Charlotte Landis, executive produced by me, and special thanks to our weekly contributors Milesy Johnson and Sharon Debassier. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.