Beyond The Scenes - The Ongoing Battle to Remove Confederate Statues

improved or regressed. So in this one, we talked about the history of Confederate statues and why white supremacists are so closely identifying themselves with Confederate ideology from the Civil War. I'm deep diving with filmmaker c. J. Hunt and the founder of Projects Say Something, Camille Bennett. Look, if you like the episode, we do new episodes of Beyond the Scenes every Tuesday, and be sure to tell a friend. It's available on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

or wherever you get your podcasts. What is up? Welcome to Beyond the Scenes, the Daily Show podcast that goes a little deeper into segments and topics that already aired on the show. Like that, this one, This podcast. All right, Like you know, like sometimes you go out and run, you go like go, you go jogging and you run a mile and then you're feeling so good, you hit that runners high and you go another mile. I guess

you might know what that's like. I don't know what that's like, but I am told that as a runner, it is rather rewarding. And that's what beyond the scenes is we are the runners high for stuff that you see on the Daily Show. Today, we're diving into the issue of Confederate statutes. This is a topic we've covered various times on the show. You don't hear about them quite as much of these days as you did a few years ago. Our Confederate statue is gone. Have they

been kidnapped? Where are they? We want to get into their role in American history and the progress that's been made to tear them down. Give it a clip. Do you think that we should just, you know, ted out old Confederate statues because a lot of people say that, like it or not, you shouldn't try to erase history, the race history. Most of these statues that whenever it wasn't even about remembering history. They were put up decades

after the war. What we think of as these Confederate statues are really much more a product of the eighteen nineties to World War One. Southern states were enacting Jim Crow laws. There was a strong revival of the Ku Klux Klan. They weren't celebrating kind of benign war heroes. They were very clearly um meant to be things that would intimidate black people and further white supremacy. Look, I know y'all want to keep your statues, but here's the thing.

Slavery is a trauma that black people to this day are still dealing with. And to have to look at those statues, like basically this was like like basically, it's like if a woman got out of an abusive relationship and then she had to keep pictures of her ex up in her house to remember the time. Like, no, I don't need pictures to remember. Paying Now, to go beyond the scenes on this topic, we have former Daily Show segment director and director of the PBS documentary The

Neutral Ground, brother C J. Hunt. How you doing, man? You you're back home in New Orleans to see you? I'm doing, brother, because you know too black people gonna start, Brother, how you doing how you do also joining us as an activist and founder of projects say something the pride of my home state of Alabama. Camille Benn and sister Camille brother roy Well bless the Holly Favorite is taking

you all the way back to Alabama. Yes, Yes, indeed, Um, I cannot wait to get into all of the wonderful work that you have done and are continuing to do in the state. And I want to talk a little bit about, you know, some of the drama that the sacrifices you have made alone the way in the battle that you're fighting against Confederate monuments. But first let's break it down. C J. Why are there so many? In

the first they lost? C J? Did they? I mean I think that I think I think that's the question, right that Confederate monuments are strange because you know, you can't name another losing army that's erected thousands of monuments to themselves, right, So they're weird for that reason. But the existence of them and how long they have existed in the places that have existed, I think does push

the question of did the Confederacy lose? Did the white supremacist government that wanted to keep us in chains, right, did that government actually lose? Right? So if aliens came down tomorrow and they saw these monuments, they'd be like, so that side one, and we'd be like, no, no, no, no no, they lost. And the aliens will be like, so you let them build monuments to themselves. We'd be like, oh yeah, yeah yeah, and they'd be like, so these men were fighting to keep black people in chains, and

we'd be like, oh yeah, yeah, definitely. They were very clear about it. And they'd be like, and those monuments exist in mostly black cities and we'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah,

this doesn't make sense at all. So that's that's part of They are the question mark of white supremacy, of when it is so clear when we're not talking about reparations or schools or segregation, when we're talking about something as clear as should a monument to ahn Enslaver exist as the highest point in your city that still exists in cities still across the country, even after what was the alibi that they used to justify the erection of all of these statues, Like was it because I guess

the Civil War is interesting in that it was it was family business. This wasn't Germany going into France and they're being German statues all over. This was American on the white American on the well freed slaves own white American crime. You get what I'm trying to say. What were some of the excuses that they used to justify

the erection of so many of these statues. I mean, the most understandable one is this is about honoring the men, and this is about the grief that Confederate widows field And I said, that's understandable because we all feel grief when you lose someone. And that's the reason that these Confederate monuments were first built in cemeteries. That's where you go to mourn the dead. So when you look around cemeteries all across the South, the monuments look identical to

the ones that ended up in town squares. Right, But the question becomes like, how did they ever move out of cemeteries and become the thing that all of these cities are supposed to revolve around. Right? In New Orleans six percent black city, Lee for a century was the highest point in the city. So these things don't start moving out of graveyards until the death of reconstruction. And for all of us who didn't learn anything about reconstruction.

That just means that when Confederate monuments first start being built, it is after UH integrated schools are defeated. It is after black politicians are kicked out of their positions. It is after the White League and the KKK is running rampant. It is after all of these Southern states disenfranchised black voters. That's the moment these things start moving out of graveyards

and into the public. Like the first Confederate monument that the nation saw is the Lee Monument in New Orleans, and that monument was dedicated by two dudes, the mayor and the state Supreme Court justice, both of whom already knew each other because they were members of the White League, which was a white militia that killed cops in the streets and and and attacked the capital and the president had to send troops to send them away. Right, these

are the original capital rioters. So while it would be insane for us to be like, oh, that capital riot shaman or whatever he calls himself, the notion that he would then get a statue, right, the notion that any of those capital writers would become government officials and build statutes to themselves is insane. But that's exactly what happened

with the Confederacy. Camil c J is the person who brought You're battling your journey to my attention when we were working together on his PBS Neutral Ground film, which we'll talk about in the second as well. C J, how did you get into the late walk me through waking up that first day? Where Because I've always said that the act of activism is selfless and most selfless people there is not a lot of money. I don't know,

nobody doesn't activists. That's just balling. I like, I ain't seen no tesla's at the protests, is all I'm saying. I mean, let me let me just clarify that this activists have businesses. So in terms of because a lot of others is like you, you know a lot of time people, especially black people are like in order to do this work, I also have to sacrifice, like well, my financial well being and I'm like, you can get a job, you can get a b business is still

still in create space so that you can do more work. Understood. I guess where I'm going with it is that there is something bigger than money. That draws people like you to the work that you do. So you know what was it about this specific issue? Because when you look

at Confederate monuments, they are all over the place. According to the SPLC, there's still there's about there was about almost about four hundred statues that have been removed since and more than half of them happened after George Floyd's murder. You know, I kind of feel like the dust is kind of settling a little bit. How many statues are left? And you know, what does that fight look like now? And why do you fight this fight? So I said, give you a little history about where I live. I

live in Florence, Alabama. Um, if you remember right around when when when the South Carolina church shooting happened, right that Dylan Roof, he had the Confederate flags and all. That's that's the neo Confederate movement. Right here in my city. We have the leader of the neo Confederate movement. His name is Michael Hill. His friends with David Duke, the leader of the KKK. I just saw him in public in November and he is literally the leader of that movement.

So once I started to educate myself about not only Confederate monuments, because I'm not gonna lie. I was a regular black kid Alabam, but we were thinking about no monuments. We you know, my mama was like, that's bad for black people. That's all I knew. But once I started hanging out with historians and really understanding where I live literally and understanding what was said when that thing was erected, um, they were very clear that it was it was meant

to uh disenfranchise black people. They even caught us a mongrel race. So once I read that dedication speech, you can't unsee that. So started in two seventeen, we just started kind of picking poking a bear. Now we understood we were not in Birmingham. We were in white nationalists territory. So we we ain't bust out with like taking down no no, no, no no. We were like, can we erect a monument to dread and Harriet Scott dress. Scott's case sparked the Civil War. Okay, he lived in Florence

for ten years. Let's just kind of ease on our monument next to your, our monument next to your monument, just like cat a little ease on into it. And then with Burminham, No, but we kept picking with him. You know, well it's racist, this is what it's sad, what is So then we we created space for when Burmingham, well, y'all, you know, you know what y'all did in Burmham's argument.

So in Birmingham around the George Floyd time, we pulled up to a monument um in Lynn Park and someone got to pick up truck and tied a rope around the monument and attempted to pull it down right there on the spot. The mayor Randall Woof, and the mayor and I and I understand what you're saying, because Birmingham

is a liberal city. It has a black mayor, Randal Wood and took the monument down his damn self and paid the twenty dollar fine that Montgomery put on Birmingham for removing the monument, which clearly y'all couldn't just do that up there in Florence. No, we would have been killed. But we were just so charged and everybody was hyped up in the community. We live in a community about a hundred thousand people. We were just like, you know what we're demanding. We were sick a plan. We're demanding

that you take you were relocate. We're not even asking you to get rid of it, which would have been a fair ass like, you know, just to chunk is somewhere. We just asked you to relocate it where it belongs

in a Confederate cemetery so it can go die. And and that was when all help and we also vowed to protest, which also, by the way, is the most reasonable request, right like whenever whenever someone is opposing Confederate monuments, people who want to keep them in places like so you want to destroy them, so you want to make them gravel, And it's like, no, literally, just move this inside.

It's like if you have a roommate and you're like, no, just your underwear doesn't doesn't belong in the living room, right, Like we should have to feel uncomfortable because your personal thing is the center of our communal space. Just put this inside. And I think you know Camille's demand here is is really clarifying that folks are saying, move this to a private place, put this in the cemetery, put this in a museum, put it in in the bottom

of the river for all face space in the room. Yeah, if we don't do we really need to be educated like in that way like they were. They were put up in a celebratory way, right especially, you know you've got the Daughters of the Confederate Veterans, right U DC, excuse the United Daughters, like Confederate Veterans. These are like public school teachers, you know, putting these things up just to mess with black folks. Do we have to look

at that? I want to see it at all. I hate it has to go to this semesary really, And I think that when we say, you know, when when someone like Camilla is saying, like, hey, they put this up to mess with us, I think a lot of folks are like, no, you're making that up. But the historical record is so clear they were. They were saying this stuff out loud at the monument that still stands in front of the Lauderdale County Courthouse that Camille is

trying to get down. The dedication speaker goes in on talking about how pure the white races in Alabama, and then he goes in and tells the United Daughters of the Confederacy that it is their god given job to make sure that white women aren't sleeping with black men. Sure shall black people be accorded social equality and calls us I'll repeat the mongrel race. I mean, you can't get more blatant than that. And in North Carolina, it's the same thing that the Silent Sam statue that existed

on the u NC campus. The ex Confederate who dedicated that goes into bragging about how he used to be able to whip a black woman steps from the campus, who's running to the campus right, So that, like every one of these speeches, is full of actual evidence about what these folks intended for these statues to be. And whenever folks are trying to talk honestly about that, the people who wanted to keep them in place would like

to pretend that that historical record does not exist. So, Camille, your nonprofit projects, say something, how does that play a part in what you do now? Because I would imagine that was not the original jumping off point. It was you looking at something every day in your city and going now no more. How did this grow into the nonprofit? And what rolled us your nonprofit play and getting these statues removed? Well, I mean the nonprofit was founded in

fourteen after the Ferguson riots. Uh in our area, you know, you could talk about diversity that you can. You've been talking about anti black racism at a hat period. So it was kind of on a whim. Someone asked me, like, can you open up some kind of a forum. I did it, lots of people showed up, We stayed there all night talking about racism, and then it just kind of grew from there. Um and we and we've done.

We have other things that we do, right, We work on policy, uh we we we help black mothers and children, We educate people on the white supremacist legislators, we have we do a lot of other things. But the Confederate Monument push was kind of like what put us on the map for whatever reason. We're or really so we're not a member based organization, but it was a hard work of projects, say, something that kept us protesting for twenty nine weeks, five days a week and got the

people energized. Everybody knew us from the work we were already doing. See, and that's what I find so interesting about a lot of this work just in you know, like if just in my journey on the Daily Show, is that it all starts, you know, sometimes with a singular emotion or a single event like c J. When you first did Neutral Ground, I think Charlottesville had already happened, or you were headed to Charlottesville, if I'm not mistaken, But that wasn't where you was five years producing this

damn thing before it came out. You know at the time when you first started, when you first started, it was a New Orleans school board, it was it was an issue, it was a it was a local the city council. And you've talked to people on the Confederate side of this issue. What did you gather from them? Is there is any chance of getting through to these people? Short answers, no, But the you know, my my entry is different. You know that that I am not an organizer.

I'm a comedian. Right so in when we saw the Charleston massacre, when we saw Dylan Ruth walk into a church and kill nine black parishioners, and then finally we have another opening to talk about why Confederate symbols are are so high in so many cities and and a fly above capitals. I was just in New Orleans, not even not even working in TV, just trying to be

a comedian. Right Like at the time I was watching pieces by you and Jordan Klepper and Jessica Williams, and even even the first map for what eventually became our film was trying to make something as good as the whites Borough piece that Daily Show made about a town in New York that has a racist mascot. Right, I'm a racist town seal. So when this started, it was just, Hey, the sation had not yet seen Confederate monuments be removed.

A lot of white folks couldn't even imagine it, so they were coming to the city council meeting where take them down. Nola had demanded, Hey, these four statues need to come down, and the Mayor's like, okay, let's see if we can make this happen. But white folks were at that meeting saying, you better knuke this city if you take down these monuments. This is a knee jerk reaction to an unspeakable tragedy that took place in Charleston,

South Carolina. That's causing race problems that haven't even occurred in this city for decades. So called Civil War wasn't about slavery. The war between the States was about succession, not about slavery. If you take it out, please monuments as nuistances you really needed KNU the city of New Orleans completely, Where do we stop about this? Can we go all the way to Watchington to take down every

memorial there? This is our history, right if you take down the as monuments, who are we as New Orleans? We have no history, you know, a city that's given America jazz and Marty Gras and and all of the best things. Right, So we started filming at that city council meeting, being like, man, how far are some white folks gonna go to hold on to just four objects? Right?

For four objects that celebrate slavery? And at first it was just me, you know, doing jokes off an iPad, like, you know, is it okay if we just take the horse? Or what if we make Robert E. Lee into a urinal so that all of New Orleans around Marty Gros can bond around being on one of our most shameful incidents, right, So that, like all of it was like jokes, you know, like you might have at the end of a field piece. But as we were going, the danger was just mounting.

So even though the city voted to remove these monuments, almost immediately the city starts getting sued and the contractors whose job it is to remove those monuments get run off the job by death threats and a burning car. So from then it's like, dang, I don't know if this can be a field peace. Right, Like, once death threats start happening and car bombs start happening, You're like, I don't know what this means for a third act

of a field peace. So we just continued filming to be like, Okay, what if we take that question seriously? How far will some people go to hang on two statues of the Confederacy? And that ended up being a five year film that took us to Charlottesville and took us through but you you end up really getting to see what this movement looks like spreading to different cities, what the sort of hysteria around you will not replace

us looks like as it spreads. So after the break, you know, can c J you your film gives us a wonderful view of the people who drank the kool aid.

But Camille has been in there with them lawmakers and them legislatures who are continuing to make the kool aid, And I wanted to get into they're making barrels of it, deployed this kool a. After the break, I want to talk Camille about some of the hurdles and challenges and repercussions that you've dealt with and you know, fighting this, and also where did the statues go after we take them down? We need to talk about that as well. Let's be on the scenes. We'll be right back now, Camille.

They're in Florence, Alabama, and as you said earlier, Florence ain't Birmingham, and you are a woman that is a proud Florence resident. You ain't hiding you out here in these streets. You're shopping for your groceries, you going to events, you going to the bars with the girlfriends. What are some of the repercussions that you've dealt with and being a lightning rod for change in a place that is seemingly very resistant to any type of new ways of thinking.

I received death threats personally every single almost every single day that we were protesting. So that's twenty nine weeks, five days a week, some physical threat and and they don't burn bosses in your yard anymore. They take it to social media. So a movement was created from our movement of about seven thousand citizens who would of course, we had intel who would threaten us all the time.

The worst threat I received was someone said they wanted to hang my body from the from the courthouse, my burnt body from the courthouse. UM. I received physical threats. So a white nationalists tried to run me over, me and two children by a motorcycle. UM. I received hate mail. UM my own childcare centers. Counter protesters showed up at my childcare centers. Um. And it hasn't stopped right because

of what happened during the protest. We just made national news last week because we had to were suing the police department for the way they treated us while we protested. That's a federal lawsuit by the a c l U. And then what pops up on one of our properties a White Lives Matter sticker right with with with a bar code and you go to that code. This is this, this is a national organization. You know, the Proud Boys, right, the Proud Boys split up and now you've got the

Proud Boys and White Lives Matter. So White Lives Matter is literally on the scene now on top of you know, and we had the Proud Boys during the protests as well. So and not to mention you this, listen, the Secretary of State, our secretary of State came after me personally. This was around insurrection time. He posted a Twitter that says something about it's a war on white people. The patriots need to start fighting back. Me and a group of black women. We had a response to that. We

wrote an open letter. It was twenty other organizations, but he decided to single me personally out and put me on his Twitter, fight me in the media and newsweek and all this mess just just a sick oh and and and right after that you have um our attorney general come out and start to threaten us on Twitter and things like that. So, I mean, it was a statewide situation. But at the end of the day, and not to mention the Secretary of State, John Merrill came

to Florence and held a rally, you know. So the threats went from like they just got bigger and bigger, and at that point we had to hire you know, I had to hire a security team because I did, what do you do the gravity of that when you first started, even as it got worse and you went, Okay, maybe I need to get a gun maybe I need to change the way I walked to my car, Maybe I need to change the way I drive to work. Did you see this snowballing to the point of a

full blown security detail? Never? Never, feeling normal is very important to me. So even as these things were happening, I would just be like, yeah, they're just talking, you know, it to be all right. But it wasn't until you know, the motorcycle was inches away from my body and I'm looking at this white nationalists and he's like, you know, get out the way, and I'm blocking I'm blocking two children. He about the head. That's when I started getting scared.

But for a while, you're just writing. You're writing the adrenaline of your trying to get something done, and you got people with you. The people are with you, encouraging you and and um telling you you can do it, and so you you kind of have focused on that. Now, my husband, he was right right now that brother was was lunching like it was. That's where that's why the security liten. The brother was was struggling, um, and that's that that was really when the security team had to happen,

because he just couldn't be there. And I mean, it's not like this hyper masculine like, but you know, you want your wife to come home every night, You're willing to do whatever. Like c J, how do you I guess to both of you, really, how do y'all protect you your peace and safety? Because you know, c J, I don't know if it was as clear cut like that for you being out with the camera crew versus

when you were out promoting the film. And I know that I saw some of the comments under some of the promotional post for Neutral Ground, and it was it's a lot of discourse. I mean, I have it's a it's a whole other world for me because I'm in we have safety because of cameras and you know, being in the entertainment industry, we have safety because I live

in New York at present right. So I think that that is the thing that when I am out with the film, I what I'm experiencing from audiences is a feeling that this monuments thing is done and we did it, and there is a triumphant feeling like the monuments are down in in Charlottesville, the monuments are down in Richmond. But I want folks listening to this to be thinking about Camille's story, the story that Camille just told you is happening as we're celebrating monuments down in New Orleans,

monuments down at U n C. Monuments down in Durham. Right, that, like the national story we tell is that we're doing this thing and that we are winning. And while we should feel a lot of power about being able to take these monds, it's almost like knocking the bosses out in the video game. You expect the game to be over once the bosses are done, but it's like we have to rework our way through the levels and be like, all the soldiers are still standing, and it's like, I'm

not even being rhetorical. All the soldiers are still standing. There are seven there are there, you know, when you look get all Confederate memorials, monument street names, Southern property Lost Center estimates, there's about two thousand. Right, there's over two thousand monuments, memorial street names still named after the Confederacy. If you're talking just monuments, it's seven hundred, right, And of that seven hundred, over three hundred are still in

front of court houses. So it's not like Camille is dealing with like the last vestige, like the last monument that happens to be in front of court houses. Almost half of the monuments that still exist honoring the Confederacy are located at the doors of where we are supposed to receive equal justice and protection. So I hope folks are thinking, like you know, folks react to me and my film like, oh, den, was it scary to be in Charlottesville or was it scary to be in a reenactment? Yeah,

those things are psychologically scary in the moment. But I want folks thinking about, like what it means that in all of these cities where folks do not have democratic majorities, where folks know your name and know where you work, what it means to still have to be saying in why the hell is this in front of the courthouse? How was this not a violation of the equal protection clause? Right?

Like the the absurdity not just of of of the fact that you know the k K is out there, but that all Camille is asking for is move this so it's not in front of the place that distributes justice. Like that is the wild thing to me. I want to say that for projects say something. It was about the monument, but it wasn't about the monument. It was about social change and revolution. So we in the process

of us protesting, we unseated a racist mayor. Lots of people got fired from their jobs because what we would do is screenshot their racist comments and just send it on up to the boss. Ah, you help with unemployment, right listen, right right? Creating just a new way of thinking and being was really important to us, not just for Florence, before Alabama itself. I mean we kicked up

so much dust, We passed so many people off. I mean, we had legislators coming to Florence doing like anti Marxist rallies. It got bad, and yes it's still happening, but that's not I mean Alabama. But we had a hundred and fifty seven Confederate statues I think we got down. This is just a guestimation, maybe between maybe five, so I mean shouldn't be celebrating and one them we had to pay a fine for removing, which if you are a celebrity or a rich person out there, you should be

picking up people's tabs in these states, right that. If that, if do do do me or Camello have twenty dollars to get a monument down no. But if you are celebrited, you want to be like, Hey, Alabama, I got the tab. I will pay for all of these monuments to come to me. You should do that. And then let me just say this real quick to y'all. Don't forget where

y'all came from. You know, when you talk about freedom, when you talk about civil rights, when you talk about the the emancipation of black people, you you know, everybody want to state at Alabama, dang, why y'all still live there? If there wasn't for us, you may not have had the liberties that you you know, So don't forget about us.

And there are people who are still here working. And to that point, in to piggyback off your points system most prolifically, the fact that racism is more out and the open in the South and a lot of instances does not mean it ain't happening. The most interesting thing I found out working what you see j on that documentary was that a lot of these monuments was made in the North. Yes, yes, them, and sent them down that tours and they put them in front of the

courthouse to make us feel pressure unfairly judicated. I mean, the only helpful thing about Confederate monuments to me is how clarifying they are about the or that America tells itself. So even as we're removing monuments, were telling a story like, oh man, those racist Southerners put those monuments up, and finally we're doing the right thing. And if you look

at these monuments, many of them were manufactured in the North. Right, the Lee Monument in New Orleans, the first towering monument to Lee in the nation was bronzed steps off the n y U campus. Right. So we have this idea that they were put up in the night. This is why organizer Angela Kinlaw would take them down. Nola says,

these monuments were put up in the daytime. What she means is that every one of those dedications is happening not in secret, not as an fu to the North, but they're happening in the daytime with hundreds to thousands of people around it, special trips and trains down from the North. If you look at these dedications speeches, there's a section in many of these speeches where they're like, shout out to all my northern friends, thanks for coming there, y'all having a good time, not to mention c J.

I always bring this point home. Everybody want to be mad at white men, then white women was dirty United dot As a confederacy, we raised the money those little and most of them were public school teachers. Children played a big role in those dedication ceremonies. They would have them do little marches and stuff. The UDC put up hundreds of bronze and stone monuments, but they also worked with a much more malleable material, the minds of children.

Monuments were considered a gift to future generations, and so they always chose a child to pull the rope that reveals the monument, and they would choose thirteen young girls from the community. They would wear sashes, sort of like a debutante, except across the sash would be the names of thirteen Confederate states. And then these children reform what is known as a living battle flag. And they were

erecting these monuments. They were simultaneously poisoning our history, our school books, right, so making sure that they embedded this romanticize gone with the wind version of the Civil War that still exists today. And they did that, you know, that did that. So you know a lot of times people just they don't understand exactly. You know, the Confederate monuments were put up to educate or to miseducate. Yeah, and you know, and that is one of the things

I appreciate about. You know, it's taking five years on the film. I don't recommend it, but but sometimes it needs to go that long. But it is all my time now is spent showing the film to young folks right to to to seventh grade through college kids. That's what you ain't on the band list. You should be on a couple of band list. No, we are on.

We are right that the film that we're talking about cannot be legally shown in public schools in at least twelve states, right because all of these states have passed white discomfort laws, which they call CRT bands. Right, but these are white discomfort laws saying that you can be fired as a teacher for teaching anything that makes a student feel guilt, shame, or discomfort. Look up Tennessee's it's

one of the most repressive. Not only does Tennessee allow teachers to be fired for teaching anything that makes kids feel guilt, shame, or discomfort, which side note is all history class, right, but they also allow public schools to be defunded up to five million dollars of their state funding. Right, so that when we're talking about you know, when I'm when I'm showing kids a scene about, you know, how much the Confederacy wrote down this is about slavery. Right.

That's one of my favorite scenes of the film that people are like, this wasn't about slavery, And then you show the actual documents and they're like number one thing where fight for slavery. Mississippi firmly identifies with the cause of slavery, Louisiana looks to the formation of the Southern Confederate sup protect slavery. Right, Like they're just they're out there when we show kids a scene of what they actually wrote down, or when we show kids a scene of what the u d C did to, you know,

dictate what school boards are rejecting. Right. The UDC creates standards that are like, reject a book if it says the war was about slavery. Reject a book if it says masters were unkind to their slaves. Right, the UDC, they did that, they get it done. But when we show students, now, you know, we just showed him this week when we show students now these clips of the film. The thing they want to talk about is how that's

still happening. The thing they want to talk about is that they're like white moms are still doing that, and they're doing that more effectively than the UBC ever did. Right, if you want to if you want to rewrite how a generation thinks about the story of slavery, it's a lot more effective to pass a law that that dictates what is taught in school than to raise a hundred

thousand dollars for one monument. So when they mess up on these laws, where they mess up on these laws, they always they're not you know, Republicans, they're smart till they're dumb. So you you want to say, you want to say, you know, write that down discomfort, What is it?

Divisive concepts? You do? I want listeners to understand. You know, that goes both ways, right, So what could be divisive is when you come into the classroom you talk about Civil War and you say States rights and you completely omit. The omission of history can be considered advisive and divisive. And now you can go to the school school board or if they allow in southern rural spaces, the sons of Confederate veterans. You know, they get to come and

do little little assemblies and stuff. If that's allowed at your school, all a little stuff like that. That's divisive. And you can even flip these laws on Confederate mindus because in some states they say in up and if anything that state funded, anything that state funded, you can't. You can't have these divisive concepts if you If you do that right, then that applied to Confederate monuments. Who's

paying to maintain that's the state. So you can come right back in, bring your black self in there and say this, use the law against them. That's what happened in Alabama. That's how we killed the antire CRT legislation um that came through in two We started helping them understand like it goes both ways. We can flip it. Tell us how you killed that. What hold that for after the break, because I want to put a button

on this whole conversation. I want to find out how you made that change and what we can do about these statues going forward. How do we keep this fight going? And I got a couple of solutions. We need to put our hairs together on where these statues can go, because that's that's that's part of the problem too. We didn't get rid of the statue. They don't want to put it in the cemetery. We gotta come up with

some different solutions. So let's do that after the break, behind the scenes, so you could be able for the break. You were talking about a CRT law that you were able to successfully get undone there in the state of Alabama, and you've done a lot of legislative work in the state with regards to Confederate monuments. Walk us through that process of lobbying, like what are the steps that it takes to get a statue removed? I guess specifically in Alabama.

Let me be clear on lobbying as it related to Confederate monuments. No lobbying. We didn't know lobbying around that issue. Um, Alabama was flooded with anti black and inhumane bills this session. So you literally and and by the way, there were there were bills around Confederate monuments that were directly like attacking the work that we did, like making it a felony to put chalk on a monument. You know, somebody

chalked a monument just they it's got crazy. But it was so bad that you had to choose between human bodies, like anti protest laws and what they were doing to childcare which affects Black women and children disproportionately so, and also anti CRT bills that you couldn't even focus on stone because at the end of the day, right that's stone. But in terms of of how to get a monument down, we're still figuring it out. Our monument is still up.

But what I can say is if you are fighting to get a monument down, keep fighting, but take your eye off of that piece of stone. You got work to do, especially if it's been up for a really long time. That that you know what that means. I mean, your city is racist, a lot of racism there, a lot of a lot of white supremacist culture there and you have so much work to do around that to dismantle that um that you know when the when the statue come down and come down, you can keep fighting

towards that. I mean, we we fight them in the courts. They put up an injunction so you can't even remove it if you wanted to. We we found an amicus brief and intervene so now we wait ninety days, we gotta go back to court. I mean, it's a process. But you you can't. You can't just say, well, I'm trying to take Mondya down. Until it goes down, I'm just go home, or I'm just gonna talk about this. You have a multitude of issues to talk about, and

that's why supremacy you can find it everywhere. Which is also why it makes sense that projects say something is working to fight the hysteria over c RT because it's like you, you can have your eyes set on being like dang, Robert E. Lee shouldn't be here. But while that's happening, while you are petitioning a court or or a local government to take that down, a state government is passing laws to make it illegal for you to tell kids what Robert E. Lee did. And I want

you to know this. So you talked about lobbying in Alabama. This is my first year. Oh my god. I mean, first of all, I was talking to Republicans, which I thought I would never do. I mean, I had I had my mind. I don't know what I thought I was gonna do, but I had to actually like talked to and and have conversations with with white Republicans men who who were actually sponsoring bills like anti c r T. So UM Representative Oliver that's who who was actually sponsoring

the c r T bill. He told me that it was about activism. It was not I need you all to understand. Yes, the children and the teachers were like, they're experiencing this too, But the root issue is he wanted to stop activism. This man told me that he believed that what did he say that the George Floyd and all of the Black Lives matter and all that stuff. That's what caused racial discourse for this. That's the root of it. So he wanted to do something and he

was smart, and you know the Republicans are smart. They were like, where is all this rhetoric coming from? All this this these intelligent conversations, let's figure it out. CRT did it. That's what's energizing the people. So that's that was the root cause of it. Um. What we had to do to fight the legislation is have conversations like I had a three hour conversation with a representative and just kind of trying to help him understand how it

goes both ways. It's gonna go both ways. It really feels like marriage counseling without the counselor like in trying to people trying to get through to one another, like don't you understand this issue? No? And by the way, if you speak about it again, we're gonna lock you up.

And it seems like there's a long orchestrated attack of not just trying to run out the clock legally through just a bunch of legal paperwork and come back to court continuances, but it's also setting laws in place that keep that present new hurdles for you, while also running a multi pronged attack. Like you said, I love that that it's just stone, but also abortion trans rights into our gain and have black and C and that all

becomes part of the conversation. So it's hard to deal with that while also trying not to be run over by a psychopath on a motorcycle. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta choose your pain, to choose your pain. But but anyway, when it came to killing the anti CRT build, I mean we did a public hearing um there were other organizations involved as well, UM and and this was a coalition right of what we what projects Say Something,

and and the coalition called the public Hearing. Projects Say Something was at the forefront of that, and that public hearing we explained to them how you were they were going to be impacted as well, and then we just kept showing up. We sent information, cheat sheets, Republicans and Democrats. We tried, we came up with amendments, We did everything we could to kill it. And then one day we looked up and it was dead. Um. And there wasn't a lot of protesting around the issue. To be honest,

it was just you know, elbow grease really um. But we don't know it could come back. Yeah, I mean, I mean that's the Yeah, it's gonna come back. That's the subtitle. If this was a franchise, it's like White Supremacy, it could come back, the Confederacy, it could come back. It could come back. So you just kind of repeat the same cycle. But lobbying was not easy. Where did these statues go after the So there's this guy, we

got to try and get him on the show. C j U Davon Henry right the Contract, Black Contract, Black Brothers out of Richmond. He's one of those Black Brothers, one of the Black brothers his only function in life. For the last two years, he's just been riding around the Southeast with his trucks taking down Confederate monuments. Like they've taken down like almost like well over twenty monuments just in various cities all over the Southeast. And I want to ride with him just to see where we

dropping them off. Fit like forget the bulletproof vest, forget risky, or like what is the final destination for these places? Number one and number two Camille? Just as a broader point, should black people be the ones getting paid to take these down? Is that like a good thing? Is that a good black business? Or should white people be the ones should or shouldn't be a white business who takes it down and get reparations? A minute now, you you can't got to the point the city got to the

point where they ain't taking it down. Yeah, I brother should get that money because think about it, Yes, it's it's and it's so wild because as you describe him, it almost sounds like a Johnny apple Seed of our day, right, like like this one person who has to go like that sounds like a fable, right Like there is a man who travels the country to take the statues that, right, like John Henry asked with this modern with his modern name is Devin Henry. Oh wow, wow, that's the storybook.

But but also like when you look at this, that's just the that's the absurdity. In New Orleans. It came to a point where the white mayor, right, couldn't find any any cranes, even though the city is full of cranes. Right, everyone, you know, these white businesses were like, don't let him, don't give him the tools to take it down. So he had to call in a business from Atlanta, Right, he had to call in black contractors from Atlanta to come in and take it down in the middle of

the night wearing swat gear. Right. So it's just this, it's it's a portrait of the obstacles that that white supremacy puts in place to even move its stuff, let alone destroy, let alone redistribute the wealth from But like, if you want to move that, we will make you move. We we will make it so that a black man has to come in from out of town and do this in the middle of the night wearing a bulletproof vest.

But there's also something really hopeful to that that when when the Lee monument went up in um In the black paper said out loud, the black editor of the paper said, out loud, the Negro put these up, and he's gonna be there to take these down when it's time. So there's also like a beautiful poetry about seeing black people be like, yeah, it's it's actually time. It's been time, and we're gonna take these down and figure out new

uses for those spaces. In Charlotte's Ville, they were considering at one point boiling that monument down and making a new piece of art out of the boiled metal, right like.

And so there's the realm of imagination that we can have around what to actually put in these spaces that uplift folks, Where to actually put the old statues we we think, we think in the world this the only rogue government who put up statues to themselves, Like look to what happened to the statues of Hitler and to the statues of the leaders of the Soviet Union, right like, those aren't still up in town squares, those those places.

Figure out places to put those that are not speaking for everyone, you know, I want to talk a little bit about you know, the brother who you know you made that really real, the swat gear and all of that, and and just to take it, take it seriously. I mean, when you think about should we have to it's it's

it's it's it's a mixed bag. No, we shouldn't have to feel we shouldn't have to and be unsafe and get death threats and have to deal with the mental anguish of fearing for your life as you take them down. But then as a as a business owner, I'm like, you know you do you could have like a monopoly on it here, like you know, you know, and I don't know how much you charge him to do this, but you know that that the more good, but that that could be a positive. The Eternal Vigil. They refused

your suggestion to move it to a cemetery. They're in Alabama, so where else can we move them? Let's just bound, let's just bounce around because I I kind of like the idea, c J. I feel like, did you did this make the edit of neutral ground of just like a Confederacy park where it's just you put them all in one spot, like in Atlanta they have um Stone Mountain, where's Robbert E. Lee and them it's like a little it's a bootleg Mount Rushmore. It's a Confederate Mount Rushmore. Ye,

mount Mount Rushmore, but with more races. Hold y'all, wait a minute, my sister may Muna, she lives over there. Black people live it Stone mount They don't want that stuff around around them, you know. But maybe somewhere that's white, like a white place they can like Utah, I don't know, like I mean, that's the problem with parks though, right Like Stone Mountain is the biggest Confederate monument in the country,

literally carved into a mountain. The u DC originally wanted that to be a monument to the k k K. They said this out loud. They wanted riders in sheets on Stone Mountain. But the problem with parks is that if it's a public park like it is in Stone Mountain, people use the fact that black people go there as justification for keep that the monument is okay. How many people in Georgia have said out loud, well, if it was a problem, why would black people go to the park.

So wherever you put it, it needs to be almost a private space where just people going to have a picnic doesn't doesn't get spun as somehow support for self contained and then I mean in a perfect world, you know, I'm not against destruction like burning them or like making other arts. I mean, I don't think that's going to

work for the rural South. Then do we create like a like just a little corner of the city where you have all the statues and just welcome a Confederate corner there, Like you know when you go to a baseball game or sporting event they have all the legendary athletes out in fortaces like like that, but like just a little section of town. Because these folks ain't gonna let go whatever it is they're hanging on too. So if you turn the statue into gravel and let kids

play on it and playgrounds, gonna be some problems. So the biggest problem is where can you move it without it becoming a shrine? Right, So if you turn it into gravel, our folks still gonna come and be like, I'm collecting the gravel of my of my ancestors. This is some good Confederate gravel right here. Or if you move it into museums, right like all a bunch of the um the monuments and Richmond are being moved into museums. The question of black history museums when they take in

a Confederate monument. On one side, it's like, oh, we can really, we can really tell the truth about this thing. We can really bring the shame forward about what was said and it's indoors. But also, I don't want to be at a Black history museum and then see me Confederates coming there to teach their sons about how good Robert E. Lee is. You could have that, You could have a Confederate part of a Black history museum and

just call that that exhibit. The supervisors, Yes, yes, you have to go into you have to go into the The most about it is white people. Why do you need these monuments were created again to intimidate black people. You can go to the cemetery and see your your deceased loved one that nothing is stopping you. But why do you have to have these monuments, these shrines to

white supremacy? Why is that so important to you? Because they were definitely erected on the premise of intimidating black people, So why does that need to stay for you? You need to understand why they were erected. Why do you need this because lives are more comfortable than the truth, and it's easier to live in what you've been taught rather than unpacked why it may not be the truth at all and then have to question everything that you've

ever been taught. And it's red peel, blue peel laying at that point going forward, Camille, what's next for projects? Say something? What's the next horizon? Because I know we still have you know, the statues themselves that you all are fighting for, But what what are what are some other things that are on the horizon for your organization? Um? Well, what new oppressions? That's what oppression? What's what's the hottest? The hottest is now we we have to be in

federal court. Right. We made the post and the l A Times and all the big spotlights because we have to fight our police department for how they treated us and and the vague Norris Noise ordinances and how we had to silently protest because we couldn't even use our voices anymore without the threat of arrest. Right. Um, So now we're fighting in federal courts that a c l U. Duke Law and the National Lawyers Guild is fighting um in federal courts and and the the most and it's

not a it's not a victory really, right. It's really sad that it had to go that far. We spent a year and a half trying to negotiate with police, with our local police department when they were completely silent. They would not work with us. And now we're you know, in federal court, which is not fun right at all. So that's one fight. We will continue to fight anti black legislation across the state of Alabama. We will continue to fight for equitable child care policy. That's something that

really really disproportionately affects black women and black and brown children. Um, oh my goodness. We are doing the healthcare navigator grants, so we're helping black people get access to the marketplace. I mean, we have all kinds of projects that we do all of the time. What's next is we continue to expose white supremacist culture in Alabama and join for ships forces and coalition build um. And it's a work

in progress all the time. C J is their plans for the neutral ground too, more neutral, more neutralists, Still still not neutral. It's never been neutral. Um. I mean, you know, I wanted to take time before we had a sequel, you know, like you know when you when you spend five years making a movie, you're not immediately like,

let's get back out there. But our sequel just kind of happened naturally, Right, Like discovering that your own film about the Confederacy, about how white women were able to rewrite textbooks to make people think slavery was fine. Right to discover that that film is now banned in over twelve states, That's a natural sequel. So that is what I've been spending my time on as we show the film to young folks, of just being on the road and trying to show what this panic over critical race

theory actually looks like. Right, North Dakota just pass their law and it says that for the purposes of this law, you cannot teach kids that racism is anything besides individual bias. So it is illegal in North Dakota to teach folks that racism exists outside of I don't like some people. So that That's what I'm spending my time on, trying to be in communities and be like, what does this what does this fight look like? What does it look what does what does critical race theory mean to people

who are not white and are not screaming. What does it look like for for you know, folks who have been in these communities, who have been before the CRT panic, being like, hey, we need some you know, like one wilco in Williamson County, Tennessee. There. Like for years we've just been saying we need school policies for what happens when someone calls my kid the N word, right, And then because of this hysteria, then the the attempt to get actual policies to protect children of color is now

being cast as woke education and critical race theory. So that's the that is the that's the sequel that we're making. Why is it illegal to show the neutral ground in twelve states? I wish we did not have to make it. Keep with every adversity, with every negative, you can make it into a positive every time, and just keep educating

people based on whatever happened, whatever they throw at you. Yeah, And you know, I think it's it's almost like the moment where where in a sci fi movie you killed the monster and then the heroes look up and they're like, oh no, the monsters in the air. Right, It's like we pulled up these Confederate monuments, but then the particles have gone into the air and have now become laws that are stronger than the monuments themselves and could could

would end up lasting longer. So as we are panic about the Glenn young Kins coming to power, as we are panicked about all these states you know, passing stop woke and don't say gay and trying to ban all these books both about race and about jen I do think we need to tell success stories, like Camilla is talking about in Alabama, that there are places where we are beating back candidates who are trying to scare white people into believing that black people are taking something from

their education. Right that in Tennessee, the very women's mom's group that tried to ban a Ruby Bridges book failed. There are districts all over the country where we are winning and and showing that parents actually want their kids to learn history. So I think that's a story that we need to keep telling to that like the enemy is, it is in the air, but we are also doing

our work. And also just to speak on the Confederate monument thing, what one of my biggest irritants was when like other cities would be like, well, we got ours down. You didn't like, did you kill so? Did you care? Well, you've been out there for seven years, probably not doing it. I'm like, it's like, sir, you still disenfranchised voters. You just elected a governor that from all the things the folks. Again, it's so it's embolic, but like you gotta look at

the bigger picture at all times. I know that there's plenty of work to be done. Well, Camille been and thank you for the work that you have done, and thank you for the work that you continue to do. Ce J. Hunt, I will see you somewhere around New York City, and uh, whatever your next endeavor is into racism, count me out. I want no parts, good luck, good luck with whatever racist reenactment you decide to show face at this time, because I know you're gonna up to

any and no part of yr Tiki Torch Extravaganza. Thank you so much, Daily Show listeners, you heard it here. Roy is a part of it. I need to just say quickly, UM projects say something is grossly underfunded, like many grassroots organizations are founded and led by black women, UM donate to us, like I understand, people care. All the emails are fine, but your your funds are needed. Um, we are underfunded and we need funding. You can go to www. Dot projects Say Something dot org and donate anytime.

I'm good. Put me down for five right now? What let's go projects Say something dot org right, yes, okay, alright, text I reminded texting you know I'm much. I'm gonna do it right now. You go over to it. Trust me. My mama gonna hear this, and my mama, My mama, Mama listening to every episode of this podcast. Okay, some money to that young woman. You make sure you do that, moy put me down for six because I care more

than roy. Wow, you're gonna start this ship is listen, listen, listen, Thank you, Thank you, and it's it's for the people. Thank you. I'll mess the six everyone. This is what you should be doing with your friend grip. You should be like I'm donating the projects say something. You should join me. Well, let me go do that right now before I forget, because I do be forgetting. Uh. Camille Bennett, C. J. Hunt, thank you so much for going beyond the scenes with

us today. Thank you. Hey, if you are somebody you know wants to help out, Projects Say Something. Feel free to head over to www Dot Projects Say Something dot org to donate to this amazing organization. This has been a special preview of Beyond the Scenes from the Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Don't miss new episodes every Tuesday, available on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This has been a Comedy Central podcast