Wake that ass up in the morning.
Breakfast Club.
Yeah, since the World's Most Dangerous wanting to show to Breakfast Club CHARLAMAGNEA God just hilarious. DJ Envy is off and Laura LaRosa is at court following Diddy's try But we have a special guest here, Lenee Bene.
What's happening in Lenae?
How are you? I'm good?
You know, I'm sure that y'all see Lenae all the time. Her parking Lot pimping, Pimping episodes have come across your feed in some way, shape or form. But now you got to show called the People's Brief. Yeah, on Revolt Tuesday at nine pm. What's the difference between the People's Brief and Walking Lot Pimping?
Oh, one thing, we got more time, it's forty five minutes. It's also not so you know, every week news headline. It's more so evergreen things that are happening in the news, but things that we can talk about over the course of times. They affect us every day. And just giving people more tools. I feel like on social media, I've always tried to be more information heavy and.
Just provide a positive outlook.
But now that we got more time, we want to try to provide resources too, and answers to questions.
And I just complained, how different is it from parking lot pimping.
I won't say it's too different. I still get to say what I want to say. We what TV fourteen, so let's cuss in. But the team over there want to do what I want to do, and that's like give everybody the truth and be helpful. We kind of take the same old doctors do, do no harm and as much as we can. Yeah, the tone is the same, but it's really cool because it's not it's newsy, but it's not. I never taken a traditional approach to things.
So it's like a mix of sixty Minutes and John Tonight with John Oliver, the Daily Show, a little bit of Amber Ruffin but with me, Yeah, it was rounded. It's very well rounded. We have a lot of fun. The first couple of episode, the first episode were premiered What's Day Thursday. Premiere this week Tuesday, and I had Angela Rye On as my first guest.
That was amazing.
Yeah, we get to get out in the field, do something on the street, but a lot of good people come through and we have a lot of fun.
Did you want to keep parking lot pimping as the show for a revolt like the title of the show. No, did you wanted to make it something else?
I wanted to be something else.
I think the identity of it transfers because it's still me, but it needed to be something different.
It needs to be an evolution. So I was cool, and I still get to do the parking lot.
I don't know how often, because as you see, I'm here just like my weeks look different now. But I've always said the parking lot is never going to leave. It's something crazy. They're right on the Capitol another January sixth, I'll pull out my chair and I do some content.
We're just figured it out the flow.
Do you have a random parking lot you go to?
Are you just fine where I live?
Yeah?
Yeah, you know what I wanted to ask you, Lina. How do you know when to educate, when to entertain, and when to rest Ooh?
I don't know. Restling is new to me. It's been a new endeavor.
When I say new, maybe the past couple of years because I've just had to be so much more intentional about it. But I speak to things when I feel it's necessary, and I'm real in tune with the Lord. I used to stay stay in tune with your star player, as Kat william says. But yeah, I just everything that I speak to I make sure that I'm not just trying to be the first one to speak my opinion on something or just like offer something to the dooms grow. How can I make this conversation useful? How can I
make this something? How can I provide another tool? And like I said, it's easy to find confident that makes you feel bad?
How can I make people feel good?
And more often than that, especially now that I have a team to help me concoct these stories, it's less on me, so it's less taxing.
Yeah, do you write from a place of anger or hope or exhaustion?
All three of them? And it's funny you say that, did y'all see inside out to Oh?
Hell?
Yeah, Okay, if you've seen them, then you get the concept.
I have my friends say like, who's at our leaderboard and everybody said my top three are anger, discussed, and joy. Because of the way that I see things, I just I'm real big on character above anything, and the way you like contribute to society above anything, so more often than not, I'm disgusted, and more often than not that makes me exhausted. And you know, a lot of things make me angry. But I also think anger is a valid emotion and it doesn't always have to present in a way that is heavy.
It's just what it is.
Like.
I'm a black woman in America.
A lot of things make me upset, and I should be able to say that without being made to feel like I have to cover up my emotions in any particular way. But I think the method of storytelling me uses combines all those things in a beautiful way that also shows that we're more than our anger, or more than our joy, more than our exhaustion, more than our disgust, and we can be all things at one time and still be full functioning members of society.
How did you end up at Revolt? How did that happen?
You know, good people speaking my name, and good rooms. I've been very blessed to have a team no matter what I'm working on, and they've been fighting for me in different rooms. I've been pitching different versions of shows, whether it's scripted unscripted, for the past five years, and nothing's just been the right fit. But as I said, I be in tune with the Lord, and he told me at the end of the last year to stop trying to force things and to just put stuff down
and let him work. And as soon as I said okay, wasn't even expecting it. Two weeks later got a call and said Revolte wants to give you a show. I was like what, Wow, okay, and my hands were open, so I was ready to receive it. So that's how we ended up together.
Oh.
I wonder for somebody like you, Lene, what do you do when you feel like your words on enough.
I don't feel like my word's on enough.
I feel like I do what I'm supposed to do, and I'm okay with that my contribution as long as I do my best, I'm okay with that whatever the result is, because whatever I was supposed to contribute is all I was supposed to contribute, because it's not just up to me, it's not just up to anybody.
Like we all put in.
We all have a piece to the puzzle to create the fuller picture. And sometimes it may feel like it didn't hit the way it was supposed to hit, but you got to give things time, like the sows. The seeds you sow always have their time for harvest, and I've just learned to be content and patient with my contribution.
So it's sometimes you feel like it's like a call to action, almost like you might activate the person who might go out there and actually get active.
Yeah, that's absolutely what I feel like. My lane is.
I feel like I am My job is tent part information to bring as many people to the table as possible, to make them invested, to make them excited, and those are the people that go out and do something with it. Even when I left my master's program, my professors told me I was only going to be able to make money or make a life for myself if I continue to get my PhD.
And that's not what I felt called to do.
I immediately wanted to go and share with very young people all the things that I learned in my program that I had to pay twenty five thousand dollars and take out loans to get with all these real stuffy people that may not have the best methods as far
as connecting with the general public. But I was like, if I can impart this in high school students, they can apply to college, they can go on career paths that with the knowledge, with a fuller knowledge of their capacity and ability and vocabulary and nuance to be change agents. So that's all I've ever wanted to do, and that's what I'm doing, and I'm grateful for that.
And as a Spellman grad, congratulations, I love that. What part of that hbc you experience has shaped your voice?
Well, at Spelman, we got a sand It's my choice, and I choose to change the world. And it's funny, I've said this, I've told this story so many times, but when I was first applied, I had teachers at my high school telling me they didn't think I should go. They didn't think that I would get in because it was too expensive, that it wasn't.
The real world.
But we shouldn't be encouraging our kids in masks to go to school to learn how to plug into the way things already exist. Like we need to be disruptives, we need to be change agents. And that's what my HBCU did for me. It was a psychology student, but every single class you take, whether it's the biology of women, whether it's math, finite math, or whatever, computer science, you take it through the lens of black feminism, and so we have advantage point that allows us to see everybody's
pain and it just makes us. That's why we be the best applicants for the job most of the time, most suited for the job most of the time, because we see people. And so my HBC experience really allowed me to see what people need in order to feel seen, and I try to put that in my storytelling as well.
How do you navigate being both a political educator but also a cultural influencer and algorithm driven work.
Well, politics was never my game, It was never my choice. You couldn't touch me with politics with a ten foot pole. It just became necessary. So, like I said, I've always been driven by what's necessary, and I started this work to really be steeped in pop culture and connect that
through to history through an interdisciplinary lens. But as I began, I started in twenty twenty, so politics was just like thrust upon us in a real way, and so I challenged myself to say, like, Okay, I know that we need to understand this, so how can I incorporate this into what I do? And it just became even more
and more and more necessary. So I just think because I speak to people like we cousins, like we family, because I don't try to hit people over the head with it, and because I let myself feel all the things like a regular person feels. They the algorithm can't beat the content that I'm putting out. Yeah, Like I draw people regardless, and people sharing it in their family group chats, grandmas and aunties and kids in seventh grade and high school students all like talking about what was
on the parking lot this week. And I'm really grateful for that because it's not about me and my parking lot. It's really about the information being shared. So I'm grateful for the anointing that's been put on me that's allowed, no matter what's changed in the social media landscape, people to come to the parking lot.
Of I love when black people say we're not political. Are you saying politic politics is not your back? Because when you black in this country, everything is politics. I don't care what hood you from, I don't care what ruin are you from. In the South, everybody from your drunk uncle, your crackhead cousin, everybody's talking about what's going on in that system and how the government is sucking us in someone, So it's like you can't avoid having that conversation.
That's what I learned. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, what's.
One political issue you think just we've become too performative about and not solution oriented enough about.
I think voting.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying voting is the only tool. It is, but it is seventy five percent of the work organizing and sustaining that movement.
I will actually take that back.
It's sustaining period, sustainability period in terms of how we organize, in terms of how we fight back against political oppression, because we often wait the year cycle to begin to complain about what we don't like about candidates and then are upset when we're not able to show up in full force and vote together.
And that make a difference.
I don't think that we give ourselves the opportunity for our work to actually for our work to return to us in a good way, because unfortunately, a lot of times we are motivated by rage and sadness and we want to get active when things hit close to home. But something is always hitting close to home for everybody, and if we don't learn to act as a community and have the sort of sustain Garrison Hayes said in a segment in my episode this past Tuesday. He said,
these people don't let up. They've been strategizing. They don't stop strategizing, So why should we, And especially if we're already playing catch up, Like it's never a day when we should just be like, oh, the struggle will be here tomorrow. But that means you should also be strategizing for tomorrow. And it's not to say that your life has to be completely shaped by that, because I say often like I don't my friends think I'm single now, and they're like, so what you want like a Mark
Lamont Hill. No, Like, no shade to Mark. He's great, But I don't need that to encompass my entire life. Like I'm still a human being. So I'm not saying that you gotta live, breathe, die, fight the power, but you do have to have some things ingrained in the way that you move about your day period to.
Understand that the work never stops. So we just gotta find that balance.
And for you, I want somebody who knows that women can have babies. Oh, only women can have babies.
I just want to let you know that interesting there are other people who can have babies, Okay, yeah, I mean if they have a uterus, they can have babies, but they just might identify as women two different things, Like you can be biologically female, but you can't be biologically woman.
This woman is a gender construct ocial construct. If you got a uterius here, you can have a baby.
Yes, that's the point. If you have a uterusy, you can have a baby.
Okay, cool, we have we agree on that.
Has the Democratic Party tried to cooper your platform or methodge I was reading this article in the New York Times yesterday and it was the headline is Democrats throw money at a problem.
Jesus Christ. I just had it up.
But it basically is out there paying influences and they're trying to figure out how to utilize the Internet and.
In the game. I think people got to understand is.
Republicans have been using people with a microphone for years to just disseminate misinformation. So it's not even like that's not a tool that shouldn't be used because we do have to have some opposition. They haven't tried to buy me. No, I only talk to people I want to talk to. There's no amount of money. There's no check that just would make me want to like jump on the bandwagon,
especially because I have critiques. I gotta be able to say whatever I want to say, and the Democratic Party definitely got some things that need to be worked on. I had the honor of working with some good people in the CBC. And that's the other thing. Like we live in America, there's no institution that's got it right or has always had it right from jumps. So I don't sit here and act like I absolutely have to agree with something a body has done since its conception.
But if I'm working with people who I understand are genuine and their efforts, like I'm down with that because, like I said, I'm trying to be solution oriented and do no harm and as much as I can.
And you mentioned Garrison earlier. I like Garrison a lot too. Have you all ever thought about being in politic.
I'm not sure where Garrison has planned. I have mess some influencers who are interested in that work. I just don't think it's personally my calling. Like I said, I think my role is to inspire and my role is to work alongside. When we look at the people who have been people who have been a part of our story as far as Black history goes. We got people in every industry, and I think we forget that it's not just about politics. It's also about who is singing songs.
It's also about who's acting on TV scerience because even like the breakfast Club, who's listening to you guys speak every day like we all have a role in getting people engaged in a process, and we have to be in the marketplace, in mass and in different ways to be able to exercise enough influence to get people focused back in on the problem. So I'm just one of those people. And I consider myself more of an artist than anything, a storyteller. As I said, I'm getting back
into my poetry and spoken word. But that's what I feel called.
And it's sad to do.
When you Askedelman, what was your major psychology? You want to be a therapist psych Absolutely not.
I wanted to understand people.
Yeah, so you're majored in psychologists to be able to understand people.
Absolutely dope.
Well, clearly it worked.
What is uh?
Some challenges that you know, because this is a big responsibility.
You have a show, a weekly show, having to come up with this content, whether it is I know, it's a bunch of different things that you do, but it's still when it's a longer time, you know, is there or are there any challenges that you run into having to have everything together? You know, and it ain't nothing going on?
What do you oh? It's always something going on. But I think I have a team. It's not just me. So we got about five writers on the show and we id eight.
We were really never not talking to each other, but we picked these themes that honestly could use three to four episodes, but we try to pick out the subtopics that.
Make the most sense for the story we're trying to tell in that one episode.
And I think the biggest challenge right now since we're brand new, is bringing people to the table to have a conversation with us, like booking guests. We're also in Atlanta, and people travel through Atlanta all the time, but they don't stop and stay all the time. So we're hoping though with what we've done so far, we're able to build a portfolio that makes people be like, dang, I'm going through Atlanta. Let me see if I can stop by the people's reef just like people want to stop
by the breakfast club. So we're working towards it, we're figuring it out. But yeah, I just think the hardest part is adjusting because we want to be ahead, you know, and it's hard to stay ahead when you want to do it right because things take time.
But we'll figure it out.
You said something that it's so interesting to me. You said you went to Spellman, you're majored in psychology because you wanted to understand people. I never went to college, but I did try to attend a couple of technical schools in my area.
Charic in Psychrolina, tried and technical college.
One time I went for communications, one time I went for business, one time I went for psychology. And I went because of that reason. I wanted to understand myself and I wanted to understand other people. So what did you want to understand about people?
Exactly?
Behavior? What drives behavior? Also what affects behavior?
And you find out, you know, one of the biggest arguments is nature versus nurture, and you just find out all the things that contextualize those two things. What it's your upbringing, whether it's like in the things you might Inherit also like what socioeconomic stressors that have affected your family long term that can result in yielding specific behaviors or even psychotic breaks or what have you. Don't have
to get too deep into that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, and I also was a person I grew up in the Deep South Baptist, I didn't really stand that much about therapy, and I remember in one of my first classes, I was like, yeah, that's cool and all I want to learn about bipolitist order, but like black people don't really get that right, and it was like, no, girl, we are exposed to these
sort of things. But anyway, I think at the end of the day, it just really helped me understand emotions and like I said, the validity of them and giving them space to exist and what can trigger you on what can't, And then also how outside stressors like race, like gender, like sexuality or whatever also contribute to a
person's well being. And I think saying it right now, I think what I just want most is for Black people to be well, no matter what you look like, no matter who you with, no matter how you move throught your life. I want us to be well and I want us to be invested in the wellness of one another, because the object and goals of oppression is to make us sick, to make us distracted. And if we are focused on one another's wellness and wholeness, then we can be stronger than ever.
Do you remember one of the first textbooks they gave you at Spelman.
Yeah, adw in the World, the African Diaspora in the world. We all had to take an introductory class where we learned about just the experience of black people around the globe. I was not just us experiencing things and how oppression looks similar for us, and not just people who identify as black, just darker skinned people around the globe, because the case systems and things like that.
What about the regards to psychology, because I remember they gave us a psychology by.
David Myers.
I don't know if I remember too much about my psychology textbooks because my master's was in African American studies and that's what's most salient. But if anything I remember is that damn DSM the diagnostic manual. Basically it has all the disorders like psychological disordument.
Yeah, gotcha.
What's the moment when you realized your influence was having real world consequences for better all words, real world consequences.
Honestly, because I started during the pandemic, we was all inside, so I didn't get to really get to see people. But when we started to trickle back outside, and unfortunately Atlanta was among the first to get back outside when people started meeting me and just like crying, like talking about like how either I changed their perspective on something, or I helped heal a relationship in their family, or
even really what it was. I think I was invited to speak somewhere at the school, and an older woman about sixty years old, she took me to the side and she thanked me for saying things she never got to say when she was my age.
And that was really beautiful.
Yeah, that was something you've never said in park a lot temper because you knew people weren't ready for it.
I don't think there's nothing I've said.
I say what I want to say, and sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's even it's scary for me, like for instance, when October seven happened, just not really being ignorant and also knowing like the necessity to discuss these things in the call was strong, like also with my management being like I don't know what you should say, and I don't know what you shouldn't say, and maybe we should just like bow out, and also seeing other creators get
like flamed or for not saying anything at all. So sometimes it's hard, but I don't I don't not say the things I had a mentor tell me once. I always pray for a tongue of clay so that I'm speaking whatever God puts on my heart to say and it's not coming from me. That it also helps me feel less responsibility.
But yeah, have you ever said something that you I guess would be like was say after it said, and after you know, you get like I guess, some type of backlash like, well maybe they weren't ready to hear this, so I should have said that later.
No, no, no, we don't got time. Yeah, and I mean, yeah, we just don't have time. And even if the first time you hear me say it and you don't like it and that's your introduction to it, I know it's going to be brought up again and you've had some sort of yeah, some point of reference. So whoever, whoever, the they're able to get the point across from It's fine because again, it's not about you agreeing with what comes out of my mouth.
I don't. I'm not responsible to people in that way.
Have you ever felt like you had to like shrink your truth to protect your peace?
Not shrink my truth. But sometimes I just be quiet. Yeah, sometimes I don't feel the need to argue with folks.
Yeah, what's something you think you've out grown as a creator, even if your audience has mm.
I think early on I outgrew the need to feel like I was always on time or in time with the demands of social because, like I said, I just want to be responsible with what I'm saying and give myself time to research and learn about what's going on before I say something about it.
Yeah, how do you you know everybody likes to say for the culture, how do you define being for the culture in a time when culture is constantly commodified.
I speak to the originators of the culture. I speak to the heart of it, the see of it, the ground up. I meet people where they are. Yeah, I think as I said, Also, I think I might have a different definition of it because not everybody agrees like what the priorities of the culture are. But as again, I'm interested in protecting all black bodies and speaking up for all black bodies.
So that's that's how I define culture.
I like, I like the idea of people's brief I would love to see linee in settings I'm talking to you, like you know said right here, but I'd love to see you in settings to where like you're debating people in a way, not debating, because you know, you debate your equals everybody else you teach.
But I think a lot of times on these platforms, do.
You need people who are actually speaking truth to power and teaching folks you ever thought about like going to.
Some of those spaces. Maybe no, I'm mixing it up on Abby Phillips show.
Or no, I mean because I mean sometimes I just feel like a lot of that is bating.
I feel like a lot of it is unncessary waste of time and breath because some people don't have They come into rooms knowing they're not going to change their mind, and they're coming their rooms with misinformation as their goal to spread. So I don't me personally, that's not my my give. I think someone like the Conscious Lee, he's very good at that and I let people do what they do best.
Yeah, the consciously.
Yeah well, lene Vannie hosted The People's Brief every Tuesday at nine pm on Revolt And I guess we get parking a lot of pamper when we can.
Yeah, for sure.
Where they follow you at, you.
Can follow me everywhere at Lenavanee. You can tap into the show on Revolt TV. You can also watch us at eleven am the next day on streaming and then snippets of it on YouTube.
Absolutely, it's it's the Breakfast Club.
Thank you guys.
Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club