Revolution: More Possible Than We Think 01.30.24

Miles Gray aka Mine Life a dragon Puppet. I must bring Uchi and no Mind Dreams, No th me underrated on t Ezy Easy. Shout out the Granberry, Shout out Nicole Adrian on the Discord. Yes, the dreaming continues with the lower levels of THC in my system. I had another one that I kept having. My partner was sick and kept vomiting on me. I hate to just start this off like that. But then it was just a misunderstanding in my dream. Somehow my medical panic turned into

like that was just water. It's okay, it's okay. It was a it was a weird one. I don't know what's happening in the SubCom.

And you came with it and said it was part of your very substantial moment in your life on your wedding. So I'm glad to hear that we have we have that in common, just to start.

it's a really specific thing. But no, I like French fries other places, but when you want a Dick's French fry, you can't go anywhere else.

hard dream to get out of. And you know, and I think he has said the same, Like I think I remember some quotes from interviews in the past being like, yeah, he was absolutely type cast. But you know, my favorite memory of him is always going to be the Janet Jackson video because that's really where I just watched that on repeat, you know, in my little like preteen hormonal like explosion of like yeah, yeah, ooh, it is this incredibly beautiful human being and just washed it over.

just yeah, all of it. The fact that you could fail at caring for yourself, you know, and it could be enough lift Yeah.

let's let those real things meld away while it's a distraction. Wow. Okay, yep, Jema,

thank you for that one. Yep, because it's true, like I feel like even like it might like in therapy, there is like an element of self care that is more just about being kind to yourself, but then as a way to sort of be like, this is how we get around the stress, the real stresses of like our really inequitable, unfair world, to be like just just try self care rather than yeah, empowering ourselves and the myriad of ways we can do, like for the many

examples you have in your book are probably a more effective way to use that energy. For sure.

I mean, not only do we see this in how people responded to the ongoing COVID pandemic right where you actually people were mocked for prioritizing community care, and we saw the way which you know, we treated our children like we had our children home for a year and we're they were being told they're falling behind, falling behind. Who how can you fall fall behind when every student

is the whole world and that you know. Yeah, but even now, when we think about how we're told to address societal issues, you know, the idea is to like, you know, like girl boss your way out of it, or you know, all these things instead of saying, hey, you know, why are you here? What has gotten your your community through these times in the past, What is kind of in our blood? And that's communal care and we can get a lot out of it when it's

true communal care. You know, that's not like one subset of the population sacrificing themselves for the whole, but instead people seeing each other and their wholeness and caring for each other and recognizing are shared. You know, survival is one of the most longstanding and important tools we've had

for resilience and resistance and joy and growth. And everything in our society and especially i'd say in an American culture and you know the quote unquote Western culture, it's treated like this really backwards, slow, you know, poverty inducing way of living.

practice and make it illegal. Is I think a really good example of how like to your point, it is something that we've been doing naturally to care for each other, but we were finding a way to sort of obscure that and turn into like a negative because I think, yeah, the momentum of something like that is more like mutual aid or intersectional thinking, and that's probably doesn't benefit the

current situation. As you say, if ND stage, do we feel like there's a concerted effort to erase like the just community like that, I guess I'm just trying to think of, like you know, movies and things like that that I think are like shape how we view different parts of history. And like just the fact that.

Collectivism has always been you know collective consciousness collective care has always been the enemy of systemic oppression because that's where we can lean into our real power and where we don't need people to speak for us and make decisions for us. And so yeah, it is erased all of the time, like the amount of ways in which people will, you know, try to be like no one helped me, you know, even though I did this all my own, Like, yeah, I didn't. And also that's really sad, but.

think like it is probably it is. I feel like intentional, right, because even as we've talked about on the show and even examples in your book, Joma, like we're we're trying to take certain details even out of our educational narratives that we're giving children, like whether that's like the kinds of things Ron DeSantis is trying to do in Florida and obscuring like you know, we have people being like slavery was actually like a great work study program, or

like trying to reduce like like have those kinds of takes in history books or the other example I've heard from one of the people in your labor chapter about how there's no real discussion about like the labor movements

and why those are important. They're just like, yeah, there's a Department of Labor next chapter the USDA, And you're like, what you know, because if we're not taught that as kids, and if those aren't the lessons, then yeah, we have we don't have a great frame of reference to lean on when like those kinds of moments arise where we need to have that kind of thing.

you know, in Seattle that means you're in tech. So I was in marketing for a tech agency and then for the auto industry doing digital marketing and advertising, and I was in an incredibly toxic environment for a long time. I was the only black person, the only woman in my entire department, and you know, living in an environment that likes to pretend that because the majority of its voters voted a particular way, that it had no work

to do on race or racism. And I was still a black woman at Freytas and coming to this work really for me what was sparked when Trayvon Martin was murdered, and that was when I just had to have a space to express how I was feeling my fear, my outrage, my heartbreak and talk about you know what this meant for me and people I loved in New and Seattle, because I was in a space where I was surrounded

by people who were saying, oh, it's so sad. You know, good thing, you don't have to worry about that here. You know, good thing you don't live in Florida, and not recognizing the amount of fear I had every day, you know, sending my kids out in the world, watching my brother when my brother was on tour at the time as well, and he is, you know, six foot four black man, and you know, feeling, oh, my gosh, y'all the biggest spider. Did you see that?

creative field was just not feasible for me. At that time, and so I just started writing and people started responding, not the people I intended to, like not you know, I've lost a lot of friends, but other people in the area. And so first it was like other black people in Seattle being like, oh my gosh, someone shared that Facebook post or that blog post and no one has described what it's like to live here in such

a way before for me. And then it was just like random calls from like, you know, the New York Times and like being like, hey, we saw that you were you know, we saw this post you made. Can we reprint it? And I'm like, what's happening? Because I had no intention at the time to build a writing career, right.

And the funny thing about it is when you enter a space where you can really speak freely and openly as a black woman, after decades, you know, I was in my thirties of always kind of trying to check part of yourself at the door for your own safety and protection, you can't really like shove that back in a box, you know. Like, once I had a space where I could just I was being super honest about what I was seeing and feeling and being really outspoken.

Then going back and spending you know, ten hours a day in this pretty exclusively white male space where you know, that was incredibly hostile to my existence. I couldn't be quiet about it anymore, and so making the leap to write. You know, I was absolutely getting more requests to write things, but really it was I'm either going to get fired from this job or I'm going to leave this job and see what I can do with this voice that

people seem to be responding to. And so I made that leap with no savings, no real plan B. And you know, luckily, I guess from a life of growing up incredibly poor or the ability to withstand you know, that changed for a while and build upon it. And you know, eventually my lovely agent, Laurie Bramer, reached out to me and asked if I wanted to write a book, and I thought about it, and a couple of years later I did, and you know, the rest is kind of history.

I do now? And we always hear about like you know, whether it's a cynical version like we need a revolution here in this country or other people's like we need to have a like internal like a societal revolution here. Whatever it is about our values, it feels like I feel like for a lot of people, feels like an overwhelming topic with very rigid definitions, like if it isn't a mass movement, then it isn't revolutionary. Or if it isn't cataclysmic instant change, like instantly in one big moment,

then that's not revolution. How do you sort of define it in sort of our own roles within that framework, because I think you really do a great job of helping connect people to this idea without sort of having the whole thing of like do I you to put on a three tip, three cornered hat and grab a musket and get on my horse type of thing, or is it about sort of what we're able to do

what we're putting out there. So how would you sort of define that or help people understand like the sort of this as a concept without getting into the overwhelming parts of it.

reach a certain threshold to be revolutionary. Every aspect of it is and so there's always work to do, and it can seem like a lot, But the good news is that you could literally decide right now to do a piece of it, whether that's you know, looking at your own personal indoctrination and how you see yourself and how you have been asked to be a part of harm, whether it's looking at what's being taught in your kids' school and saying, hey, I'm going to have this conversation

and really open up, you know, try to open up space and safety for these young people in these classrooms. There is always something to be done, and it's important to recognize that people are doing it and that the story of that is often a race. The truth is is the vast majority of our systems don't serve a lot of people, especially our bipock populations and are queer

and trans and disabled by populations. It doesn't serve us, and therefore we've had to create revolutionary systems that you know, we are tweaking and experimenting with every day because we don't have any alternative. And yet people don't talk about that, and they really erase it so that you will think there's nothing to be done instead of saying what is

being done? Because every day, like even you know, listening to some of the stories that people I was talking to and watching them revolutionize their own lives and the people around them, and even if that's just two or three people total, that's huge, especially if we consider all of us kind of taking those steps, we can make some really big change.

how like sort of sort of nebulous. It is in our minds, so like instantly when we hear revolution, like we're thinking like literal historical revolutions that have occurred in countries, rather than this idea of like being a node within a system of change that is consistently sort of espousing like these different values that would help bring about that.

Do you think that is like that that's sort of an obstacle for people who are who are like, I know stuff's bad, but like I don't know revolution am I don't know if I'm like a revolutionary kind of person. Do you think that sort of plays into sort of like the apathy for lack of a better word for some people.

But I think it's also really important to recognize that even in our histay where we see what is known as violent revolution or very like active military type revolution. What you also have for years and years of social revolution that happened before and after, and where that doesn't happen, we actually see a lot of harm. Right, So the real work is about how we see ourselves, how we

relate to each other, how we structure our systems. Often what makes news is first the violent response to that, and then how people withstand that, and that can often look like the quote unquote revolutions that we see in news. Right, We're not seeing people immediately going I'm gonna even when we think we do, I'm going to go and I'm taking a gun and I'm overthrowing like that is not

actually what we're seeing. What we're usually seeing is years of social and political revolution happening, a violent response, and then people meeting that response, and that's that little snippet, That little piece is what meets makes the news. But then afterwards we don't see the continued work of healing

from that, of growing from that of redefining. But that is done in large and small spaces every day, and it's done in ways that are so quiet it doesn't make headlines because people don't want us to know it can be done that way. It doesn't mean that there will never be violent responsible and we saw that even in twenty twenty, right, we saw people taking guns to protests, right to shoot peaceful protesters because this idea it could

that you know, it was a revolution. It was called a revolution because people were revolutionizing how they thought about systemic racism. And then people said, oh, let me get

my gun and stop it. Right, And the idea of it being violent, even now, like in history books, is likely going to come down and looking like black people were in this violent uprising and not we were part of this beautiful, moral, intellectual revolution that was met with an incredibly violent response because anything that threatens systems is considered a mortal threat to the systems, right, and they're going to treat it violently regardless of what tactics we have.

And so I want people to look at that and recognize, like, how much do I actually know what perspective everything I've thought about as far as revolution, What perspective have I been given? Who's writing these stories and what really happened? And you know, think about what does it mean to get people to change their minds? Because you can't do that at a point, you know, what is it getting people into the streets, What is getting people to say we want a new system? That's the actual revolution?

take place inside. I always go back to movies because I think they have a profound impact on like how people kind of view parts of the world that they haven't experienced. And like there's like movies about cops a lot for a lot of our history. And it's been said that it's easier to imagine like a zombie apocalypse than the end of capitalism. And like that's why this book is so exciting, because it focuses on telling these

stories and creating these alternatives. So I'm just curious, like how you came, how you approached that work, and then if there are any specific stories of these like alternative systems that you've seen people successfully implement that that you think will are particularly helpful for you know, people's ability to imagine a world outside of the systems of capitalism, policing, and human caging.

for a long time. And then you know, I started asking as I was talking with people, like who's inspiring you, who's you going? Who do you really want to see in these pages? And it really brought me into these spaces that even I hadn't known existed before, and you know, work that people were doing that I didn't know existed. And I really hope that when people go through this book, but they'll see is that wherever your interests lie, wherever your skills lie, there's space for you to make really

courtant change. And so a lot of the things that I wasn't even sure were going to interest me, like as someone who is you know, Okay, So I you know, I love things and I'm highly critical of capitalism, right, which I think is is a pretty universal idea. So I wasn't exactly thinking like I'm going to have a chapter on business and to people able to do you know, because I feel like we have like those weird books of like do business Better and it's like not you.

to talk about my abolitionist business. And I was like what, you know that I had not set out for that, but hearing him talk about this reimagining and taking these principles that he had dedicated so much of his life to and saying I'm going to apply it everywhere I'm and yeah, I want to have this coving company and I want to apply it here, and I want to see if I can do something completely different with this was really beautiful, and it totally you know, caught me

off guard because I really wasn't planning on including that in there, and you know, looking at that and saying, oh, even in these everyday things, we can actually challenge a lot of assumptions and try something really creative and see what we can, you know, see how we can further live these values. They don't just exist in one space.

We don't say I'm a movement worker right now, and so I care about liberation when I'm marching, But then you know, my relationship with my family, my children, and my coworkers is going to be highly patriarchal and hierarchical. You know, that's not how this goes. And you can actually be quite revolutionary by just simply saying all of these,

you know, statuses I'm sharing. What if I live that, I what if I said every everywhere that I'm you know, interacting with people or systems, I'm trying to bring those values into that well.

it to fizzle out pretty quickly thereafter. Unless I think, especially for people who weren't part of these communities that were at the highest risk. What is the challenge that we should be laying out to people who are like Okay, clearly you feel like this is something worth saying. I will share my handle on social media to rebroadcast this message,

but I just can't quite get there. Is it, Like what sort of examination do we need to do, like internally, whether that's like I mean, like what your whole chapter on ableism had me really like inspecting my own beliefs and how limiting my own beliefs were around that and how much you know that is sharian Stare sort of metaphor was about like how ableism is just intertwined with everything, especially because we're in this capitalist mindset about productivity and

what productive bodies do or do not do. So like, what are the what are the kinds of steps I think that everyone can do, because I think many people are like, I know what has to be done. I can live. For me as a black and Asian person, I'm very able to. It's very easy for me to speak about anti Asian racism or anti black racism things like that, but ableism a little bit different. My life

isn't intersecting with those kinds of things as much. I try to talk about other issues around transphobia and homophobia as much because I do know people in like in those communities. But what sort of like what are what are the kind of nudges we need to be giving ourselves to be Like, Okay, our head's in the right place, but now let's let's take it beyond the retweet, Like how do we do that without freaking somebody out? Because again I think people think that can be very or

it's just not their place. Maybe to take it further than that, Yeah, I.

compression issue. And like, you know, a couple years ago, I remember there was a big kerfluffle in the knitting community about racism as far as whose patterns get published and things like that. Right, I was getting it, I know because I get emails from people say, you know, I love advice when people are tagging me and saying you should read this book. So the truth is is you can pick that one space and say, what's happening in this space? How are people moving through this space

or have access to this space? Who's invited to this space? How is it different from my experience? And where does my privilege And so if you just pick that one little space, if you love knitting and you're saying who you know whose patterns get published or who gets to go to writing conferences and get seen, or who's appropriating culture and these sorts of things, I'm going to focus on this and I'm going to go, you know, look for the voices of people who have been talking about

this because people do not suffer in silence. And I'm just going to start here. I'm going to learn as much as I can about this one little space, and I'm gonna learn to leverage my power in that space, because chances are if you're in that space, you have some level of power or privilege or knowledge that makes

you better suited to start there. Once you have that idea and you're listening to people who are saying, yeah, you know what, like I went to this conference in nice tree, like crap, and I would really love it if organizers would do this. Okay, you have an action now, right, you have a thing you can join in on, you can ask about. But once your knowledge deepens about that and you start to see how it works, you'll be surprised at how quickly you can apply that to other spaces.

And you can hear other people talking about what problems they're having, and you'll have a reference and you can be like, oh, you know what, that is actually so similar to how it's set up in the knitting space. You know, let me me support you with any way I can, and I get it now, and I'm not starting from scratch, right, And it's a great way to start.

And you know, even in the book, you have people like Ian Head in the book, Who's you know, foundation for his incredibly meaningful legal aid work helping you know, incarcerated people advocate for themselves and helping to you know, get the important verdicts on stopping frisk policing started with his love of hip hop. You know, it's started because he loved to wrap right and delving into that and saying,

what is happening? What is the reality for these musicians that I love who are trying to, you know, really tell me what's going on and what can I do here? And branching from there, you know, ended up with a lifelong passion and mission that he has found incredibly rewarding and has had real measurable impacts on community. So I think it's so important for people to recognize that, you know, wherever people exist in systems like these issues happen, and

therefore it matters that we address it. So it doesn't always have to be I'm going to look at who's the president and I'm going to focus here, or I'm only going to focus on police brutality. It's I can focus in my one space because every day people are being impacted, and it will give me the context to also be able to stand in solidarity on these other larger issues.

and we're back. And you know, we've been covering this show has been we've been doing this daily show for a long time, and you know, covering the incredibly consistent energy pushing back against ideas like defund the police and abolitionism coming from places like the New York Times, you know, places that coming into adulthood, I had been told where like liberal or progressive, And it feels like there's a lot of parts of the mainstream media that have kind

of pushed past the idea of defunding the police, like it's settled law among people that like defund the police was bad politics, Like everybody heard James Carvill say it, and they're like, well, I guess guess that's true.

the ways in which our systems have built. Now, that is broad, because we actually see that in our mental health system, we see this in our quote unquote child welfare system, and we see it in our incarceration systems, in our school systems. And so there are a lot of different places to fight this and say, you know,

people have the right to their own autonomy. We don't have the right to say that only certain people deserve freedom, deserve liberation, deserve a second chance, deserve to learn and grow and change and be a part of community, and that we will look at the problems we face as a community and with the fundamental belief that as a community we can solve it because these problems don't exist in a vacuum. If these problems are rooted in society and community, in our systems, then we can solve them.

And I think that that is fundamental to this work. And so you know a lot of people will try to fight that and say, you know, with fear mongering, well, if there's no cops tomorrow, what are you going to do?

As if there isn't a process, isn't the system? And often I would say, you know that fear mongering glazes over how incredibly brutal the reality is, right, which is that you know, we have a system that does nothing to deter harm our crime, that is stealing away large percentages of our population, that is leading to the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of people by police officers every year, that is leading to the thefts of children from black, brown and Indigenous homes, That is leading to

the forced treatment and incarceration of mentally ill people. And we're not safer, We're no safer, right, and so this idea that trying something new would be worse how much.

they can only respond after it's happened. And yet we act as if that's the eposoite, like you can't you know, unharm someone with a police officer, and if anything, they're showing up and creating a whole new level of crime. And so this idea that it would make us safer

just doesn't make any sense. And so I think it's important to recognize, like that there's something so deeply hopeful and beautiful and abolitionism in that fundamentally it believes in people, like it believes that we can actually solve this that no one is irredeemable, that we can look at societal issues and address them and change the way that we relate to each other, that we can heal each other, and that yes, we can address safety at the same time.

And it doesn't mean it's perfect, but oh my goodness, what we have right now is is causing more harm

than good. And so that means that there's so many different ways in which we can do this work, and you can pick different spots, and yeah, it can seem like we'll never get there right that we're not going to have a time where there aren't policing, But every time that we can kind of remove the task given to policing InCAR thural systems, every time that we can dismantle pieces of it and strengthen alternatives, we're doing really important abolitionists work. And we can do that and still

say this shouldn't exist. So I always say that, like, it is abolitionists to say I don't want cops in schools. It's abolitionists to say that, you know, people need to be given alternatives to incarceration. It is abolitionists to say that people shouldn't be given, you know, forced treatment for mental health issues against their will. It is abolitionists to

do all of these. And I can say that work for and saying I don't want any cops, you know, I can say that right while also working towards these things that are available to me right now.

legislators politicians, is our reforms. Right, and we talk a lot about reform is not we're just We're just you're just putting different, a different code of paint on the same problem. How do you sort of like balance obviously the need for these kinds of like deeper changes or these different like different kind of emphasis alongside like the reforms, because a lot of the times you get these sort of these debates now where people are like, well, don't

let the perfect be the enemy the good. They're saying they're built and cops to use a slightly lighter baton or something, and we're supposed to be like, oh, okay, yes, sure, but like, how do we sort of in a world where if people are so focused and able to say, like, no, like a lot of our crime is because of desperation or lack of support. That's what we need to be doing. I don't want to hear about anything unless I mean talk to me when we're getting rid of qualified immunity

or something like that. How do you how should people sort of like look at this balance of understanding what glacial, incremental sort of reform can do versus trying to like, for lack of a better word, hope for something revolutionary, something different, something that's sort of upending the status quo.

talk about in the book. It's so vital that we understand the difference between like true liberation, liberatory work, and harm reduction and recognize what's neither, because a lot of what we say is police reform is neither harm reduction or liberatory work, and we have to say, at least give us some harm reduction, right, So it's really important to listen to the people most impact by it, and people who are actually you know, experts on this from

the perspective of communities harmed, right, and say no, this doesn't work, and we know this doesn't work, and listen to that and be really really clear, because people will sell you anything and call it revolutionary, and then we will they'll label, you know, harm reduction as like this huge attack on the system and we're not even getting

to like the meat of it. Harm reduction matters, absolutely matters, because the truth is is, if we have these long term, big goals, we have to be alive to get there, right. But that means we have to be honest about what it is. And so you know, when first of all, if it's offered to us by the system, throw it away.

You know. Harm reduction, you know, would be things like one, you know, getting police out of officers out of schools. Right, the systems still exist, but we don't need the officers in schools. Studies have shown time and time again that you know, it leads to an increase in arrests of black and brown and indigenous and disabled students with no actual reduction in harm. And it's not in whether they're you know, arrested, has no ties to violence in schools,

drugs and schools or anything like that. It's just do you have black students? Do you have cops? Now? We have more black students arrested, so we know it doesn't work, right, So harm reduction would be you know, getting them out, and that isn't you know, it's an abolitionist practice in that it is, you know, getting them out, but it's

not getting rid of the system. Other ones would be you know, before you start referring making calls kicking kids out of school and getting them in these pipelines, you know what who oversees that? Right? Who approves that? What records do you have? Whatever things are you trying first?

Those are all things that are really important to look at while staying while recognizing if the system still stays in place, it's not getting rid of the system, and so we can work towards that, push towards that don't accept anything that re entrenches the system. And so retraining always re entrenches the system. Retraining is never going to

be a harm reduction. It's just putting more money into a system and asking you know, and we've shown that they don't come out, you know, gentler kind or more understanding of community. They come out with more police officers, you know, and they come out with more levels of excuses for why they're doing what they're doing. And so just listening to community on that is really really vital.

But when it comes to every day and if you're looking at smaller things we can do, you know, if you live in an area that has cash bail programs, getting rid of cash bail is one of the most vital things you can do right now, right you know, in Washington here we have like pay to stay where people actually have to pay for their incarceration if they work out a deal and they want to go in early, so that they aren't away from their family for three years and maybe six months, they have to pay for

every day that they're in there, and so, you know, things like that are wild classes basist, and getting rid of that doesn't get rid of the system. But it's also a really really important step that we can take right now to reduce the numbers of people caught up in this popular in these systems, and how long they're caught up in them, and that gives us what we need, the strength we need in community to keep fighting.

only source for the information. Do you think of that as being put in place by powers, like architecturally structured to put this power in place, Because I also feel like there's also some some desire for that narrative coming from below also, like from the readership, And I'm just wondering, like how you think about that, Hey, does that inform how how you approach people when you're trying to talk to them about you know, the car soural system and

you know, things like that. There's this big infrastructure of power and money that is like trying to keep these institutions in place. But then there's also people who are just like really quick to believe the the bullshit stories. And I don't know if it's because that's what they've always had, if it's because you know, it preserves their feeling of superiority and protection, but just just interested to hear your thoughts on that.

Even if you have privilege, only the very select few are, and often that is only for a limited time. But you know, that is something that people don't want, and so that is often kept from the people who are made to participate most, right, people with the most privileged. The reality of how unsafely are is something that many of us can't escape, you know, and which is why we're often the first and the most outspoken about trying

to change it. But that unsafety exists for everyone, and that culpability exists, and people want to avoid it, and people have been protected from it, and they're you know, their bellies are soft to it, you know what I mean, Like they're they don't they haven't built up that tolerance for it and have been told that they would fall apart if they knew the reality that they couldn't handle it, and they're fed a constant diet of fear. When we look at our media, and this constant fear of the other,

fear of this danger that is pumped into people. Right we look at these shows where it's just this random person gets a thirst for blood and is out murdering people who's going to come help you, or you know, like this, you know gang violence where the gang leaders are just soul as creatures who popped out of nowhere and they're going to take over your city if you don't, you know, have this people are fed that and people who don't have that firsthand experience with the reality of

these systems and are living this completely alternate reality and are being told no other reality exists that you know, you would feel comfortable calling a cop knowing they could help you get your cat out of a tree or whatever, and you'd be safe and everyone would because that's your reality. Challenging that makes the world terrifying, right, It can make the world team really terrifying. Challenging how you've been made

a part of it can seem really terrifying. It can make you feel really powerless in a way that you know, many of us have never had the luxury of avoiding. And people will put up walls around that. And it has little to do with intent. It has You can say you care, you know, and you love, But if you're not actively challenging these ideas and willing to sit with that discomfort, then you'll have a problem. And people don't want to hear it, right, People really don't want

to hear it. They don't want it to land on their doorstep. If they are thinking about things like police brutality, they want the name of the one cop that they can yell at and blame because if it's a system and they're, you know, paying taxes into that system, if they've been supporting that system, if they voted for the candidate who said they'll bring law and order and safety to their area, knowing that that men it would increase cops in black and brown communities, right, then there's a

whole level of culpability. And if that thing that they've been pouring money and effort into would endanger their disabled child, they don't want to know. They don't want that, they don't want that reality, and so it's really important that we challenge it while also showing that people are building alternatives and that idea that we could build something else is kept from a lot of people who've never had to. And so it's always wild to me when people say, well,

what are you going to do? You know, what are you going to do? If someone read you, that's the thing people say a lot to me, right, especially as woman, people will weaponize that against me. And then like, first

of all, I'm absolutely a survivor of sexual assault. Many women have been, and please do anything right and my healing, my sense of safety came from the practices that, like my black and Brown community had to build to try to address this because we always knew that we weren't going to find safety in the system, and we weren't

going to find repair in the system. And so, you know, those kind of ideas, these things that are thrown out erases the fact that right now, the you know, a large segment of blackground and indigenous populations, queer and trans populations absolutely know that they could never find safety in our systems and they have to build elsewhere, and they

have been, but that is completely erased. You know, the ways in which we solve conflict is erased, the ways in which we ensure safety is erased, the way in which we heal each other and ourselves has been erased. And it all comes down to you have to trust this person with a gun. Nothing else has been done,

nothing else can work. And so media I think plays a huge part in that they're invested in that because one, they personally don't want to investigate that, and I've talked with editors, you know, as a writer, who don't personally want to investigate it. They want to keep it in

a comfortable place for them. But also they have funders who are systemically you know, invested in this, and there is a real backlash four people publicly taking a stand and saying we're going to address the real roots of this. People have been made to pay, and I do think that people are afraid of that and afraid of challenging those assumptions.

That there was I think it was Miriam Caaba who you were saying, like which really put this into perspective, was like it's it's not about like these big things, right, It's like I might be butchering the quote, but it's just about taking out removing just the bricks of like these oppressive systems. It doesn't have to be a wrecking ball type moment, because if if everybody's taken a brick out one by one for themselves, shit will start crumbling.

That's just there's just no way for something structurally to keep it structural integrity if we're always like just kind of picking away at it. And I think that's a really important message for I think, and I really encourage our listeners to really, uh to check your book out, because we are in such a time right now where I feel like everyone feels like they're banging their heads against a wall and they're like, I'm seeing this happen right now, am I Like, but we're not doing the

right things. And I think it really is an empowering message a to see these other stories of people who a lot of are starting from absolute powerlessness and then opening the door to something really really substantive and really monumental without necessarily that being the initial intention of it, of just it's more just about advocating for yourself. So I really thank you for putting all of these stories

together and your words around it. Because as someone who's done, like worked from all over the political spectrum, from being a lobbyist to being like in the streets and things like that, I've always sort of grappled with these feelings of like where my power lies or how I can actually exercise that and what it means to be revolutionary

or not. And I think it makes it a very accessible way and I think is very powerful, I think for people to understand that it's just about these small actions, because they all like, we can't just think we can't. We have to get out of like the superhero mentality of them, like I'm going to figure it out by

myself right now. Rather than can I contribute to a community that's doing well, can I from my space say, you know what, maybe we don't need funding that's contingent upon us interacting with the police to keep our nonprofit going, et cetera, et cetera. So yeah, I just again I feel like, thank you for putting this book out, and yeah, it's really great to just be able to speak with you today. It's just been really eye opening and I'm sure our listeners have had the same experience too.

can find my Facebook. And I just hope that people love the book, engage with it and find their own little piece of revolution that they can be a part of.

of the pops to mind right away. But there's a lot of like these young early twenties black men who are like, you know what, I want to wear clothes, and I just want to wear things that are beautiful. And I'm going to be walking around the streets of New York in this beautiful thing from head to toe and I'm gonna blog it and I want people to

see it. And I just that itself, you know, every day for our community, where so much of our definitions of my masculinity you have been externally imposed upon us. To have this younger generation say, actually, this is what this looks like for me, and I'm going to define it proudly and show it for other people to find their own definition of self is also a really revolutionary thing while also being beautiful.

at gobble ghoul Marks. It's a picture of Polly talking to Tony and he's got his hands up and he says, all I'm saying, Tea is if they're gonna nominate Barbie for Best Picture, they probably should have nominated some of them. Broad's that was involved capture the the angst of all the Oscar snuffs in the way Socialist Sopranos Memes only knows how tweet I've been enjoying is just Kevin Durant's response to finding out that Joe El Embiid scored seventy points last week. I don't know.

daily Zeikeeist. We're at the Daily Zeigeist on Instagram.

and it's just a great track. And if you like Kareem Riggins or mad Lib on their own, you'll definitely love them together on this one. So this one now, all right?