June 20, 2018 • 29 mins
For some, U.S. politics might as well be sewage -- they don’t want to touch it and don’t want to play in it. Bridget and Yves look at the limits of a two-party system, the limits of government and the ways we can disrupt, dismantle and remake it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Look at you. You've been really inspired to participate in
more local politics. You're killing it. What has your council
person done for you? Don't listen to her. Look how
far you've come. This anti l g B t Q
bill was stopped with your help. That's not even mentioning
the federal government. Cheto in chief and his cronies don't
give a damn about you. Neither that the other so
(00:25):
called leaders of the free world. That's why your community
is still struggling. Never forget you were dragged to this
brutal land against your will. Your ancestors didn't fight so
hard for nothing. There a reason you're alive today. You
may be tired, but you've made Hella gains. You're on
the come up. You're making oppressive systems crumble. Sy No, no, no, no,
no, no no, she's wrong. Those systems are alive and well,
(00:46):
and the antis are still building them up. Same problems,
different day. Your votes matter, your voice matters. All this
hard work and dedication you're putting in it is really
helping to improve our government and our society. There's no
way you'll make rule change working within these old, stale systems.
It's a trout there's no out for you in this
broken system. Freedom is a facade here. You're stuck in
(01:07):
a vicious cycle of oppression. Being a good democrat and
gonna help you. You've got to break the machine. I'm
bridget Todd and you're listening to solution sessions, changing the
world one conversation at a time. Acro Punk is a
(01:28):
safe place, a blank space to freak out in, to
construct a new reality, to live our lives as we
see fit while making sense of the world around us.
Here at afro Punk, we have the conversations that matter
to us, and these are our solutions. In our previous episode,
(01:53):
we drove into some of the ways that voting and
running for office could move the needle, but justifiably not
me when thinks that method works fast enough, if at all,
especially in a world where we're all trying to figure
out exactly what reality is. In French philosopher John Beaudriard
wrote Simulacra and Simulation, arguing that media and symbols could
(02:16):
create an alternate but fake, shared reality. In this world,
language becomes a tool for manipulation on a mass scale.
It tells us that useless products are actually valuable and
that we should buy by by our way into a
new reality, and it renders the people who make these
goods faceless and insignificant. And language, but amplified by those
(02:38):
with the biggest megaphones, can have insidious effects. Don't be
so don't be so overly dramatic about it, chuck what
you're saying. It's a falsehood, and they're giving. Sean Spicer,
our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. But the
point alternative alternative facts. Four of the five facts, he uttered,
(03:00):
of the five facts, we're just not true. Look, alternative
facts are not facts, they're falsehoods, alternative facts. This phrase
couldn't be a better example of Boadyard was warning us
against that language can be perverted, corrupted, used to build
walls and fence off reality. I get up this morning,
I turn on one of the networks and they show
(03:22):
an empty field. Photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally
framed in a way to minimize the enormous support that
had gathered on the National Mall. I have no choice,
you know that gene fire. Yes, we now live in
a world of alternative facts. But the president who denies
(03:43):
things that we all saw happen with our own eyes,
and when that happens, we have to question everything. The
first time I voted, it was the Bush Gore election
of two thousands, and a bunch of us had this
kind of party and I are maybe they announced that
al Gore was the next president state is and we
all started celebrating. This was in the dorms at Georgia State.
(04:03):
And then we turned around and then they Bush was
up there as the president United States. That's Franklin, James Fisher.
Franklin is in a punk band called Algiers. He can
pinpoint the very moment the veil of our democracy was lifted,
the moment he became disenchanted electoral politics, sitting in his
dorm room at Georgia State, watching George Bush the elected
in November two thousand, Florida goes for al Loring. Now, folks,
(04:28):
the employers, you changed the CBS news estivates when all
the votes were in and count the Sunshine state like
plenty of sunshine for al Gore. Our correspondent Corey Oliver
asked him about it at the Atlanta Solution Sessions. That
was the very first piece in a long you know
from from then for me in my active political engagement
(04:50):
from then up until now of a very clear and
explanatory sort of picture of why I no longer place
any faith whatsoever in the American electoral process. And you
you trace that too when the American public, after on
what we're presented as very clearly two false pretenses for
(05:12):
two wars, they decided to legitimately elect George Blush for
his second term. And then you get this supposed post
racial society with Obama. I mean it leads all the
way up into when in the primaries for this past election,
when Trump won, and I was telling all of my
(05:32):
friends who were supposed to Democrats or socialists or whatever else.
Your your alarm bill should be ringing right now. If
I had to describe Frank's take on politics and one word,
it would be skeptical. He's skeptical of the two party system,
skeptical that either political party has the best interests of
marginalized people at heart, and skeptical of their ability to
have an actual impact, including former President Obama. He questioned
(05:56):
the narrative that eight years under Obama created a meaningful
political change. I liked Obama because he was a brother
that gave a lot of racist, olden white men, you know,
hard palpitations because you had you had a brother in
the White House, and he was smooth, but he was
still the president of the United States. Did I ever
think for a second he was really gonna precipitate change?
You know, he fought for a couple of things that
(06:19):
everywhere else in the so called developed world are foregone conclusions. Healthcare.
He proposed accessible healthcare for the general population. And somehow
that's you know, that's the biggest controversy that you could
unite in American political discourse. It just it speaks to
the absurdity of the climate here. I remember when Obama
was elected, everyone saying, Martin King's dream is to Phil
(06:43):
you know, we are finally arrived. Do you think that
Obama's election for Phil King's dream anyway? No, I don't
think so. I don't think so at all. I think
because at the very end of his life, MLK was
turning towards very more fundamentally social issues. He was organizing
the March against Poverty on Washington and at that point
(07:05):
they were like, well you gotta go. You know what
I'm saying. I think he was realizing that what he
had done, and he did a hell of a lot.
I would never undermine what he did, but I think
he got to the point where he was starting to
realize that what he'd done and started was starting to
reach it. In his conclusion, he couldn't really go any further,
and he started to realize that what he what he
(07:27):
was really addressing and attacking was a systemic issue, and
as a systemic issue because it was an offshoot of
capitalist school problems. We'll be back with more solution sessions
after this quick break. I think it's a pretty common
sentiment among a lot of black folks that we were
supposed to be very very excited about the election of
(07:49):
Barack Obama was exciting, but then maybe looking at actual
progress and feeling a little bit empty. Yeah, I think
that Obama's election was a huge opportunity for us not
to be disappointed like we often and might I say
usually are when it comes to politicians. I don't know
if I'm going too far there, but yeah, there was
(08:10):
that feeling of being disappointed afterward for a lot of
people because there are high expectations of what he would
do for black people, specifically while he was in office,
and those expectations were not met. To say the least,
that's true, but don't you still get a pang of
excitement or pride when you see a black grandma with
a Barack Obama T shirt or toebag. I do love
(08:31):
those airbrush T shirts. Of course, there's like a huge
wall and somewhere in South Carolina, like Columbia or something
with like his painting on it, and every time I
go by and I'm like, I feel good, Like it
feels good, and I think that that's a good thing
for black people to have. But that doesn't mean that
we can't also be critical of the things that he
(08:52):
actually did. I think that he even said that, you know,
I can't just cater to black people, And that's actually
exactly what you talked to see Sheila Nutly about. Yeah,
so I asked her about that whole sentiment of Obama
not living up to expectations, and she had a lot
to say about it. I think I think it's important
to question the extent to which the Obama administration was
(09:16):
responsive to black people's needs. And that's in part because
if any other time in American history, when would the
opportunity be for black people to have the influence that
they did at the highest office in the land by
way of the presidency, than with what we witnessed with
the election of President Obama as the nation's first black president.
(09:39):
That's Sheila Untally, a professor at the University of Connecticut
and author of the book Trust in Black America, Raised
Discrimination and Politics and I'm your co host Eves Jeff Cooke.
When I asked Professor Nuntally about the post Obama era
sentiment that the president didn't live up to expectations or
do enough for black people, she recognized that just being
a Black Democrat in office isn't good enough. We need
(10:02):
substantive representation, she said, not just descriptive representation by way
of Barack Obama being black. We still have to be
critical of black politicians work, and we have to keep
asking questions now that they have a seat at the table,
what are they bringing to it? How are they improving
Black lives? But for people like Franklin, who put little
(10:23):
to no stock in American democracy, the ineffectiveness of black
politicians isn't the only problem with the system. Of course,
politicians can be our saviors. The real issue is the
American political system was built to see US fail, and
these politicians are attempting to patch and rig a machine
whose goal has always been to oppress US. America's history
(10:45):
is one full of racial terrorism and black murder that
was mandated by the government time and again. The government
has proven that black lives are not a priority, and
it feels like a ceaseless battle. So it is a
matter of acknowledgement of this history, but also what that
means for the attitudes and feelings of people who have
(11:06):
been disparaged over time, and that this is something that
should not be left out textbooks or should not be
something that people learn in higher education, but that it
is American history that if we were to know, we
can try to make sure that it does not happen again.
From slavery to the Plessy Versus Ferguson decision that upheld
(11:29):
racial segregation laws to Jim Crow, it's easy to trace
the history of the institutional restrictions placed on black people.
Take the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, where the U. S Public
Health Service study poor black men who had syphilis for
decades but never told them they had infection or gave
them the known treatment. It's set the stage and not
only said for Black Americans to feel skeptical towards society
(11:52):
and government at all levels. Men who were poor and
African American, without resources and with few alternatives, they believed
they had found hope when they were offered free medical
care by the United States Public Health Service. They were betrayed.
(12:13):
Medical people are supposed to help when we need care,
but even once a cure was discovered, they were denied
help and they were lied to by their government. The
line of thought for political skeptics is pretty simple. Actually,
the government consistently proves it doesn't care about black people.
(12:33):
So some black folks what no part in politics? What
kind of emotional toll would you say that years of
systemic mistreatment by the government has taken on the black
community in America. The toll has been distrust in the
political system, and as a distrust that is longstanding, such
(12:56):
that we have seen Black Americans be um one of
the most distrusting racial and ethnic groups UM over time,
right um. And that that distrust is such that it
could affect whether or not Black people decide that they've
(13:16):
become politically active in certain ways. And that distrust lives
on because the government continues to sponsor discrimination based on
skin color. Professor nut Only and I spoke about the
low black voter turnout in the presidential election and what
royal distrust and the candidates and the political system may
have played in that. But the election showed just how
(13:38):
far America is wanting to go to further its legacy
of prejudice and persecution of the marginalized. Just look at
how the Russian government exploited the racial fissures in American
public opinion. As Professor Nuntily put it, part of that
influence that we are continuing to uncover is the use
of social media to the price us or in some
(14:01):
way create an environment of skepticism among voter And so
for example, in the USA Today report of both thirty
five over thirty Facebook ads that it is believed the
Russian government um purchased and played on Facebook related to
(14:24):
race and polices. And we also found that more than
sift reference race. See it's another example of the simulation
Internet ads. Sensationalized media coverage and childlike rhetoric became the
tools for mass manipulation, convincing Americans that a reality TV
star was the most valuable candidate and the government capitalized
(14:46):
on America's tensions over race to control the elections outcome
it manufactured in America that needed to be made great
again via racist, sexist, xenophobic caricature and uncovering evidence of
Russian meddling. We expos is the workings of the machine.
But even though we've exposed these machinations, the machine is
still grinding along. No collusion, no collusion, no collusion, no collusion,
(15:09):
no collusion, no collusion, absolutely no collusion. So you have
to wonder, why should black people believe in the system
still going this far to cast out the people already
on the margins. What could a few politicians and votes
do to throw a wrench in such an unwieldy yet
powerful machine. Yes, the political machine is pretty powerful and fucked,
(15:31):
but how do we deal with that? What's the skeptic
to do? I wanted to know more about a skeptic
like Frank's take, because he's not alone in the way
he questions our political views and leaders. Musicians have a
long history of standing up against the status quo, and
plenty of black artists have moved beyond their music to
challenge social and political norms. Whether we've agreed with them
or not. James Brown endorsed Richard Nixon and looked up
(15:52):
to segregationist strom Thurman. Fayla Cooty inspired people to fight
oppressive governments, as Zalia Banks defended forty five, though she
or denounced him, and Kanye West wants to be loved
for speaking up about black issues. Has said that he
loves Donald Trump and admires the way he defies expectations
and the outspoken Miss Nina Simone Well, she once said
(16:12):
in an interview, there's no civil rights movement. Everybody's gone.
When it comes to political skepticism. In the music world,
Frank's and good company, so I asked him about it.
What we are interested in as a band is starting
a conversation with people. Um, if people want to join
the conversation as school, and if they want to argue
what we're proposing in conversation, that's cool too. But we're
(16:38):
not writing prescriptions for anyone. We're not a political party.
We don't have any delusions of being activists. Even Frank
had what he calls a normal upbringing and education. He
says he spent twelve years being taught things in school,
only to spend the rest of his life deconstructing them.
What was your education like when you were young. I mean,
(16:58):
it's like everyone else know, you pledge a lead us
to the flag. You you completely bypass the the genocide
of the indigenous people. Uh. You learned that the the
presidents were all great men. You barely learned about women
at all. When I was growing up, I was taught
in American history books, but Africa had no history, and
(17:20):
neither did I. That I was a savage about whom
the let's said the better, who had been saved by
Europe and brought to America, And of course I believed it.
I didn't have much choice. Those the only books there were.
The most concise way I can put it is that
everything that is fed to you is through this lens
of American exceptionalism, which is that everything that happened to
(17:43):
America is not through the exploitation of free or cheap
labor or you know, people who have been subjugated to
a vicious system of capitalism and imperialism. Uh. But that
America got to be how it was because it was
ordained by And it doesn't take you very long, particularly
(18:04):
if you happen to be a minority, to realize that
that's not true. Was there a moment for you were
that crystallized, or was there a time where you thought, Wow,
I've been fed a lie. We're being fed a lie.
You start to put the pieces together, pieces of the
puzzle together, because no system is omnipotente or you know, infallible,
(18:29):
no matter how much they may try to make themselves
seem that way. And I think that's one of the
good things about cultures because it exposes sort of those
cracks in the foundation, that of of falsehood that you
know that the state kind of tries to represent itself
as such. At Solution sessions in Atlanta, Frank was especially
critical of the state party politics and the efficacy of
(18:52):
electoral politics to create social change for black volks. Malcolm
X has a speech called the Ballad or the Bullet
from nineteen sixty four, and he talks about all the
stuff very thoroughly and much more eloquently than I ever
would be able to. Hey, he carry up pussy putting.
That's the government. Any claim to pick, that's designs to
delay or deprived you will need right now of getting
(19:15):
full rights. That's the government that's responsible. And anytime you
find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship,
while the civil rights of a people. Then you are
wasting your time pulling to that government expecting redress instaid.
You have to take that government to the World Court
(19:36):
and accuse it of tennocide and all of the other
plans that he is guilty after day, Now that we
have Donald Trump, it's very easy, I think for people
to forget that. Michael Brown, Freddy Gray, you know, Sandra Bland,
You get the idea. I could go through the whole litany.
(19:57):
All of these happened, All of these things happened. His
atrocity has happened while the most powerful, presumably powerful man
in the country, in the land, in the world was
a black man. And if people tell you that, if
you just get out and vote, then you can change things.
(20:18):
And not only did these things seem to continue, but
they seem to accelerate on Obama's watch. Something doesn't add
up in that equation. He's right, Obama's administration didn't wave
a magic wand and get rid of all discriminatory crime.
Even though the murder rate declined most of the years
Obama was in the White House, there were many mass
(20:38):
shootings mainly committed at the hands of white man. I
might add, the worst grade school shooting in US history,
at least twenty seven dead, twenty children, seven adults, including
the principle, and the gunmen killed himself. White supremacists were
ignited by the fact that a black man was president,
and social justice activists pushed back against them, all to
(20:59):
the delight of the media thirsty for sensational stories. The
expectation of Obama being a savior for black people collided
with the reality of Obama's moderate tendencies and legacy. An
example I continue to think of is that on his
first day, I remember posting this on Facebook. His first day,
he signed executive order to close once on them obey
when this first term, and yet we've seen more renditions,
(21:21):
We've seen more clamping non in civil liberties, we've seen
more on things like that have concerning reason, in comparing
Obama MLK as some do, it's almost as if we
bought into the simulated version of who MLKA was. In reality,
he was a radical enemy of the state. But as
we talked about on the episode on activism, the version
(21:42):
of m okay that many Americans do afy today is
very different from who he actually was, what he actually did,
and what he actually stood for, much like the false
nostalgia that make America great again. In parts, we reimagined
the world where our leaders solved all our problems and
we're safe and perfect. And when you think about our
political landscape, it's no wonder why it can sometimes feel
(22:03):
like we're living in an alternate reality, one where everything
is a copy of a copy, a knockoff of something
that was never real to begin with. You can see
it in our president, whose lives about verifiable facts become
their own fake reality, and Frank even sees it in
the ways that we try to resist and how I
can become a hollow and impotent scream into the wind.
The thing about fakes is, no matter how good they are,
(22:25):
you could always see the flaws, the little cracks in
the facade that show the whole thing is just a knockoff.
A theme that came up time and time again in
my conversation Sprank. Were those times when the crack show
and we're given an opportunity to stop the machine and
see reality for what it really is. It can be
something as commonplace as Instagram or in the wake of
(22:45):
resistance to Trump. The way we behave at political demonstrations,
it's easy to confuse noise for real progress whatever. I'm
on a political demonstration in the United States and people
are chanting, show me what democracy looks like. Democracy looks like,
and then they do that for about two hours, and
then they go to brunch. That's not what democracy looks like.
(23:08):
Democracy is ugly and like the democracy is hard one
and endangerous. Here more solution sessions after this break. Well,
many of us, myself very much included, remember Obama's legacy
as one of progressive change. Frank doesn't agree. For frank
Obama's legacy is one that easily tricks us into thinking
(23:30):
things were rosier than they were, the way you might
remember things from your youth as happier than they felt
and you were actually experiencing them. But Obama's legacy is
also a reminder that being a Democrat or a member
of any party you align yourself with does not inherently
make a politician the best one for your interests. Supporting
a party based on a constructed and well marketed platform
is just giving into that simulation. In fact, Franklin says,
(23:53):
no political parties ideology reflects his The only thing that
feels at all politically representative are those who questioned the
two party system entirely. There is not a reposition of
a representational party in American politics that does that, which
is why the Democrats are not a viable option for
anything that has any substance in my life or in
(24:16):
you know, my my peers and contemporaries ideas. And if
you look throughout history at the people who did force
these aforementioned changes through activism, through organization, those people did question.
Even while Frank is clearly critical of establishment party politics,
that didn't stop him from voting in the last election,
(24:37):
something he says he does not out of expectation for
social change, but out of a testament to the hard
one right to vote that our ancestors died for. He
also thinks there's hope that voting in local community elections
could actually make reel change. For as pessimistic as he
sometimes sounds, maybe being critical about the world around you,
it's actually a certain kind of optimism, striving to see
(24:58):
the world clearly and wondering how it luck, if it
were better. If you want to put a label on
how we think with regards to American politics, it's optimistic.
It's seeking to look beyond the system as it exists
in you know, the duplicity's forms through which it represents
itself or tries to represent itself to people, and looking
(25:21):
for another way, which is not that difficult. It just
takes a little bit of hope and imagination and a
little bit of common sense. So you call it commonsense
if you want, you know, how to think it's that complicate.
There's the time when the operation of the machine becomes
so odious, makes you so sick at heart, but you
(25:44):
can't take part, you can't even passively take part. And
you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and
upon the wheels, upon the levers, by all the apparatus,
and you've got to make it stuck, and you've got
doing the take that the people running to the people owned.
But unless you're free, the machine won't be prevented from
it at all. So, even if you believe that voting
(26:06):
is basically futile or the two party system is wasting
everyone's time in America, it doesn't mean that you have
to check out completely. You can still engage in building
a better country and a better world. Franklin suggests reading
and having real conversations to reveal false realities that incite
true progress. And that's a good start. But once you've
exposed the machine and disassembled its cogs, what's next? Where
(26:29):
do we go from there? Matthew Kinkaid of Overcoming Racism
spoke about this at Solution Sessions in Atlanta. We have
to build our own institutions. It's just the reality of this.
If you look at the Black Power movement or any
sort of movements of solidarity, the reason why these leaders
are the first ones to get killed is because all
of our power are collective spending power, are collective intellectual power.
(26:51):
We can think that when we start to build our
own institutions. And so if we're expecting the government to
make a change, the reality is you're right, it's against us.
So we have to start building institutions. And one of
the reasons why it's tough, that's so many people teaching
our kids don't come from our communities because the civilized
movement isn't done. We have to prepare our kids to
continue that battle in that journey is to teach our
(27:12):
kids to start building their own institutions. If you're black
in America, you live in a country where you've never
been valued. Black people were in chains when the Declaration
of Independence proclaimed all men were created equal, and we're
still the targets of state sanctioned murder, while white people
tell us that racism no longer exists. Because this trauma
envelops her history, our very existence the United States is
(27:33):
one of conflict. We've always had to resist. So it's
our right to be disenchanted. It's okay to distrust people
who have never earned our trust. It's logical to denounce
and defy institutions that were built on our backs and
simultaneously broke them. But we have to pave a way forward.
If we're going to lift the veil, then we have
to know what's beyond it. What's the solution. Bridget read
(27:56):
everything you can. What's the solution? Bridget started ie u?
What's the solution? Bridget make your own lanes? What's the solution?
Bridget break the machine. Next week, we get into the
work we can do outside of politics. To do that,
we talked to Black Lives Matter co founder Patrise Colors
about what sparked her advocacy and got her fired up.
You know, that's what I think about every single day
(28:18):
when I wake up. Am I changing the material conditions
from black people? Am I making more space and room
so that we could be free and we could be freer.
And that's the work for all of us to be doing.
Whether you're black, white, not the next Asian and digeness,
we should be thinking about how we change the material
conditions for those most marginalized. Ye Afro Punk Solution Sessions
(28:54):
is a co production between Afro Punk and How Stuff Works.
Your hosts are Bridget Todd and Eve's Jeff Coke. Executive
co producers are Julie Douglas, Jocelyn Cooper, and Kuan latif Hill.
Dylan Fagan is supervising producer and Kathleen Quillian is audio engineer.
Many many thanks to Casey Pegram and Any Reese for
their production and editorial oversight, and many thanks to our
(29:16):
on the ground Atlantic crew, Ben Bowland, Corey Oliver and
Noel Brown. The Underside of Power is performed by Algiers.
Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Apropunk
Look at you. You've been really inspired to participate in
more local politics. You're killing it. What has your council
person done for you? Don't listen to her. Look how
far you've come. This anti l g B t Q
bill was stopped with your help. That's not even mentioning
the federal government. Cheto in chief and his cronies don't
give a damn about you. Neither that the other so
(00:25):
called leaders of the free world. That's why your community
is still struggling. Never forget you were dragged to this
brutal land against your will. Your ancestors didn't fight so
hard for nothing. There a reason you're alive today. You
may be tired, but you've made Hella gains. You're on
the come up. You're making oppressive systems crumble. Sy No, no, no, no,
no, no no, she's wrong. Those systems are alive and well,
(00:46):
and the antis are still building them up. Same problems,
different day. Your votes matter, your voice matters. All this
hard work and dedication you're putting in it is really
helping to improve our government and our society. There's no
way you'll make rule change working within these old, stale systems.
It's a trout there's no out for you in this
broken system. Freedom is a facade here. You're stuck in
(01:07):
a vicious cycle of oppression. Being a good democrat and
gonna help you. You've got to break the machine. I'm
bridget Todd and you're listening to solution sessions, changing the
world one conversation at a time. Acro Punk is a
(01:28):
safe place, a blank space to freak out in, to
construct a new reality, to live our lives as we
see fit while making sense of the world around us.
Here at afro Punk, we have the conversations that matter
to us, and these are our solutions. In our previous episode,
(01:53):
we drove into some of the ways that voting and
running for office could move the needle, but justifiably not
me when thinks that method works fast enough, if at all,
especially in a world where we're all trying to figure
out exactly what reality is. In French philosopher John Beaudriard
wrote Simulacra and Simulation, arguing that media and symbols could
(02:16):
create an alternate but fake, shared reality. In this world,
language becomes a tool for manipulation on a mass scale.
It tells us that useless products are actually valuable and
that we should buy by by our way into a
new reality, and it renders the people who make these
goods faceless and insignificant. And language, but amplified by those
(02:38):
with the biggest megaphones, can have insidious effects. Don't be
so don't be so overly dramatic about it, chuck what
you're saying. It's a falsehood, and they're giving. Sean Spicer,
our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. But the
point alternative alternative facts. Four of the five facts, he uttered,
(03:00):
of the five facts, we're just not true. Look, alternative
facts are not facts, they're falsehoods, alternative facts. This phrase
couldn't be a better example of Boadyard was warning us
against that language can be perverted, corrupted, used to build
walls and fence off reality. I get up this morning,
I turn on one of the networks and they show
(03:22):
an empty field. Photographs of the inaugural proceedings were intentionally
framed in a way to minimize the enormous support that
had gathered on the National Mall. I have no choice,
you know that gene fire. Yes, we now live in
a world of alternative facts. But the president who denies
(03:43):
things that we all saw happen with our own eyes,
and when that happens, we have to question everything. The
first time I voted, it was the Bush Gore election
of two thousands, and a bunch of us had this
kind of party and I are maybe they announced that
al Gore was the next president state is and we
all started celebrating. This was in the dorms at Georgia State.
(04:03):
And then we turned around and then they Bush was
up there as the president United States. That's Franklin, James Fisher.
Franklin is in a punk band called Algiers. He can
pinpoint the very moment the veil of our democracy was lifted,
the moment he became disenchanted electoral politics, sitting in his
dorm room at Georgia State, watching George Bush the elected
in November two thousand, Florida goes for al Loring. Now, folks,
(04:28):
the employers, you changed the CBS news estivates when all
the votes were in and count the Sunshine state like
plenty of sunshine for al Gore. Our correspondent Corey Oliver
asked him about it at the Atlanta Solution Sessions. That
was the very first piece in a long you know
from from then for me in my active political engagement
(04:50):
from then up until now of a very clear and
explanatory sort of picture of why I no longer place
any faith whatsoever in the American electoral process. And you
you trace that too when the American public, after on
what we're presented as very clearly two false pretenses for
(05:12):
two wars, they decided to legitimately elect George Blush for
his second term. And then you get this supposed post
racial society with Obama. I mean it leads all the
way up into when in the primaries for this past election,
when Trump won, and I was telling all of my
(05:32):
friends who were supposed to Democrats or socialists or whatever else.
Your your alarm bill should be ringing right now. If
I had to describe Frank's take on politics and one word,
it would be skeptical. He's skeptical of the two party system,
skeptical that either political party has the best interests of
marginalized people at heart, and skeptical of their ability to
have an actual impact, including former President Obama. He questioned
(05:56):
the narrative that eight years under Obama created a meaningful
political change. I liked Obama because he was a brother
that gave a lot of racist, olden white men, you know,
hard palpitations because you had you had a brother in
the White House, and he was smooth, but he was
still the president of the United States. Did I ever
think for a second he was really gonna precipitate change?
You know, he fought for a couple of things that
(06:19):
everywhere else in the so called developed world are foregone conclusions. Healthcare.
He proposed accessible healthcare for the general population. And somehow
that's you know, that's the biggest controversy that you could
unite in American political discourse. It just it speaks to
the absurdity of the climate here. I remember when Obama
was elected, everyone saying, Martin King's dream is to Phil
(06:43):
you know, we are finally arrived. Do you think that
Obama's election for Phil King's dream anyway? No, I don't
think so. I don't think so at all. I think
because at the very end of his life, MLK was
turning towards very more fundamentally social issues. He was organizing
the March against Poverty on Washington and at that point
(07:05):
they were like, well you gotta go. You know what
I'm saying. I think he was realizing that what he
had done, and he did a hell of a lot.
I would never undermine what he did, but I think
he got to the point where he was starting to
realize that what he'd done and started was starting to
reach it. In his conclusion, he couldn't really go any further,
and he started to realize that what he what he
(07:27):
was really addressing and attacking was a systemic issue, and
as a systemic issue because it was an offshoot of
capitalist school problems. We'll be back with more solution sessions
after this quick break. I think it's a pretty common
sentiment among a lot of black folks that we were
supposed to be very very excited about the election of
(07:49):
Barack Obama was exciting, but then maybe looking at actual
progress and feeling a little bit empty. Yeah, I think
that Obama's election was a huge opportunity for us not
to be disappointed like we often and might I say
usually are when it comes to politicians. I don't know
if I'm going too far there, but yeah, there was
(08:10):
that feeling of being disappointed afterward for a lot of
people because there are high expectations of what he would
do for black people, specifically while he was in office,
and those expectations were not met. To say the least,
that's true, but don't you still get a pang of
excitement or pride when you see a black grandma with
a Barack Obama T shirt or toebag. I do love
(08:31):
those airbrush T shirts. Of course, there's like a huge
wall and somewhere in South Carolina, like Columbia or something
with like his painting on it, and every time I
go by and I'm like, I feel good, Like it
feels good, and I think that that's a good thing
for black people to have. But that doesn't mean that
we can't also be critical of the things that he
(08:52):
actually did. I think that he even said that, you know,
I can't just cater to black people, And that's actually
exactly what you talked to see Sheila Nutly about. Yeah,
so I asked her about that whole sentiment of Obama
not living up to expectations, and she had a lot
to say about it. I think I think it's important
to question the extent to which the Obama administration was
(09:16):
responsive to black people's needs. And that's in part because
if any other time in American history, when would the
opportunity be for black people to have the influence that
they did at the highest office in the land by
way of the presidency, than with what we witnessed with
the election of President Obama as the nation's first black president.
(09:39):
That's Sheila Untally, a professor at the University of Connecticut
and author of the book Trust in Black America, Raised
Discrimination and Politics and I'm your co host Eves Jeff Cooke.
When I asked Professor Nuntally about the post Obama era
sentiment that the president didn't live up to expectations or
do enough for black people, she recognized that just being
a Black Democrat in office isn't good enough. We need
(10:02):
substantive representation, she said, not just descriptive representation by way
of Barack Obama being black. We still have to be
critical of black politicians work, and we have to keep
asking questions now that they have a seat at the table,
what are they bringing to it? How are they improving
Black lives? But for people like Franklin, who put little
(10:23):
to no stock in American democracy, the ineffectiveness of black
politicians isn't the only problem with the system. Of course,
politicians can be our saviors. The real issue is the
American political system was built to see US fail, and
these politicians are attempting to patch and rig a machine
whose goal has always been to oppress US. America's history
(10:45):
is one full of racial terrorism and black murder that
was mandated by the government time and again. The government
has proven that black lives are not a priority, and
it feels like a ceaseless battle. So it is a
matter of acknowledgement of this history, but also what that
means for the attitudes and feelings of people who have
(11:06):
been disparaged over time, and that this is something that
should not be left out textbooks or should not be
something that people learn in higher education, but that it
is American history that if we were to know, we
can try to make sure that it does not happen again.
From slavery to the Plessy Versus Ferguson decision that upheld
(11:29):
racial segregation laws to Jim Crow, it's easy to trace
the history of the institutional restrictions placed on black people.
Take the Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, where the U. S Public
Health Service study poor black men who had syphilis for
decades but never told them they had infection or gave
them the known treatment. It's set the stage and not
only said for Black Americans to feel skeptical towards society
(11:52):
and government at all levels. Men who were poor and
African American, without resources and with few alternatives, they believed
they had found hope when they were offered free medical
care by the United States Public Health Service. They were betrayed.
(12:13):
Medical people are supposed to help when we need care,
but even once a cure was discovered, they were denied
help and they were lied to by their government. The
line of thought for political skeptics is pretty simple. Actually,
the government consistently proves it doesn't care about black people.
(12:33):
So some black folks what no part in politics? What
kind of emotional toll would you say that years of
systemic mistreatment by the government has taken on the black
community in America. The toll has been distrust in the
political system, and as a distrust that is longstanding, such
(12:56):
that we have seen Black Americans be um one of
the most distrusting racial and ethnic groups UM over time,
right um. And that that distrust is such that it
could affect whether or not Black people decide that they've
(13:16):
become politically active in certain ways. And that distrust lives
on because the government continues to sponsor discrimination based on
skin color. Professor nut Only and I spoke about the
low black voter turnout in the presidential election and what
royal distrust and the candidates and the political system may
have played in that. But the election showed just how
(13:38):
far America is wanting to go to further its legacy
of prejudice and persecution of the marginalized. Just look at
how the Russian government exploited the racial fissures in American
public opinion. As Professor Nuntily put it, part of that
influence that we are continuing to uncover is the use
of social media to the price us or in some
(14:01):
way create an environment of skepticism among voter And so
for example, in the USA Today report of both thirty
five over thirty Facebook ads that it is believed the
Russian government um purchased and played on Facebook related to
(14:24):
race and polices. And we also found that more than
sift reference race. See it's another example of the simulation
Internet ads. Sensationalized media coverage and childlike rhetoric became the
tools for mass manipulation, convincing Americans that a reality TV
star was the most valuable candidate and the government capitalized
(14:46):
on America's tensions over race to control the elections outcome
it manufactured in America that needed to be made great
again via racist, sexist, xenophobic caricature and uncovering evidence of
Russian meddling. We expos is the workings of the machine.
But even though we've exposed these machinations, the machine is
still grinding along. No collusion, no collusion, no collusion, no collusion,
(15:09):
no collusion, no collusion, absolutely no collusion. So you have
to wonder, why should black people believe in the system
still going this far to cast out the people already
on the margins. What could a few politicians and votes
do to throw a wrench in such an unwieldy yet
powerful machine. Yes, the political machine is pretty powerful and fucked,
(15:31):
but how do we deal with that? What's the skeptic
to do? I wanted to know more about a skeptic
like Frank's take, because he's not alone in the way
he questions our political views and leaders. Musicians have a
long history of standing up against the status quo, and
plenty of black artists have moved beyond their music to
challenge social and political norms. Whether we've agreed with them
or not. James Brown endorsed Richard Nixon and looked up
(15:52):
to segregationist strom Thurman. Fayla Cooty inspired people to fight
oppressive governments, as Zalia Banks defended forty five, though she
or denounced him, and Kanye West wants to be loved
for speaking up about black issues. Has said that he
loves Donald Trump and admires the way he defies expectations
and the outspoken Miss Nina Simone Well, she once said
(16:12):
in an interview, there's no civil rights movement. Everybody's gone.
When it comes to political skepticism. In the music world,
Frank's and good company, so I asked him about it.
What we are interested in as a band is starting
a conversation with people. Um, if people want to join
the conversation as school, and if they want to argue
what we're proposing in conversation, that's cool too. But we're
(16:38):
not writing prescriptions for anyone. We're not a political party.
We don't have any delusions of being activists. Even Frank
had what he calls a normal upbringing and education. He
says he spent twelve years being taught things in school,
only to spend the rest of his life deconstructing them.
What was your education like when you were young. I mean,
(16:58):
it's like everyone else know, you pledge a lead us
to the flag. You you completely bypass the the genocide
of the indigenous people. Uh. You learned that the the
presidents were all great men. You barely learned about women
at all. When I was growing up, I was taught
in American history books, but Africa had no history, and
(17:20):
neither did I. That I was a savage about whom
the let's said the better, who had been saved by
Europe and brought to America, And of course I believed it.
I didn't have much choice. Those the only books there were.
The most concise way I can put it is that
everything that is fed to you is through this lens
of American exceptionalism, which is that everything that happened to
(17:43):
America is not through the exploitation of free or cheap
labor or you know, people who have been subjugated to
a vicious system of capitalism and imperialism. Uh. But that
America got to be how it was because it was
ordained by And it doesn't take you very long, particularly
(18:04):
if you happen to be a minority, to realize that
that's not true. Was there a moment for you were
that crystallized, or was there a time where you thought, Wow,
I've been fed a lie. We're being fed a lie.
You start to put the pieces together, pieces of the
puzzle together, because no system is omnipotente or you know, infallible,
(18:29):
no matter how much they may try to make themselves
seem that way. And I think that's one of the
good things about cultures because it exposes sort of those
cracks in the foundation, that of of falsehood that you
know that the state kind of tries to represent itself
as such. At Solution sessions in Atlanta, Frank was especially
critical of the state party politics and the efficacy of
(18:52):
electoral politics to create social change for black volks. Malcolm
X has a speech called the Ballad or the Bullet
from nineteen sixty four, and he talks about all the
stuff very thoroughly and much more eloquently than I ever
would be able to. Hey, he carry up pussy putting.
That's the government. Any claim to pick, that's designs to
delay or deprived you will need right now of getting
(19:15):
full rights. That's the government that's responsible. And anytime you
find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship,
while the civil rights of a people. Then you are
wasting your time pulling to that government expecting redress instaid.
You have to take that government to the World Court
(19:36):
and accuse it of tennocide and all of the other
plans that he is guilty after day, Now that we
have Donald Trump, it's very easy, I think for people
to forget that. Michael Brown, Freddy Gray, you know, Sandra Bland,
You get the idea. I could go through the whole litany.
(19:57):
All of these happened, All of these things happened. His
atrocity has happened while the most powerful, presumably powerful man
in the country, in the land, in the world was
a black man. And if people tell you that, if
you just get out and vote, then you can change things.
(20:18):
And not only did these things seem to continue, but
they seem to accelerate on Obama's watch. Something doesn't add
up in that equation. He's right, Obama's administration didn't wave
a magic wand and get rid of all discriminatory crime.
Even though the murder rate declined most of the years
Obama was in the White House, there were many mass
(20:38):
shootings mainly committed at the hands of white man. I
might add, the worst grade school shooting in US history,
at least twenty seven dead, twenty children, seven adults, including
the principle, and the gunmen killed himself. White supremacists were
ignited by the fact that a black man was president,
and social justice activists pushed back against them, all to
(20:59):
the delight of the media thirsty for sensational stories. The
expectation of Obama being a savior for black people collided
with the reality of Obama's moderate tendencies and legacy. An
example I continue to think of is that on his
first day, I remember posting this on Facebook. His first day,
he signed executive order to close once on them obey
when this first term, and yet we've seen more renditions,
(21:21):
We've seen more clamping non in civil liberties, we've seen
more on things like that have concerning reason, in comparing
Obama MLK as some do, it's almost as if we
bought into the simulated version of who MLKA was. In reality,
he was a radical enemy of the state. But as
we talked about on the episode on activism, the version
(21:42):
of m okay that many Americans do afy today is
very different from who he actually was, what he actually did,
and what he actually stood for, much like the false
nostalgia that make America great again. In parts, we reimagined
the world where our leaders solved all our problems and
we're safe and perfect. And when you think about our
political landscape, it's no wonder why it can sometimes feel
(22:03):
like we're living in an alternate reality, one where everything
is a copy of a copy, a knockoff of something
that was never real to begin with. You can see
it in our president, whose lives about verifiable facts become
their own fake reality, and Frank even sees it in
the ways that we try to resist and how I
can become a hollow and impotent scream into the wind.
The thing about fakes is, no matter how good they are,
(22:25):
you could always see the flaws, the little cracks in
the facade that show the whole thing is just a knockoff.
A theme that came up time and time again in
my conversation Sprank. Were those times when the crack show
and we're given an opportunity to stop the machine and
see reality for what it really is. It can be
something as commonplace as Instagram or in the wake of
(22:45):
resistance to Trump. The way we behave at political demonstrations,
it's easy to confuse noise for real progress whatever. I'm
on a political demonstration in the United States and people
are chanting, show me what democracy looks like. Democracy looks like,
and then they do that for about two hours, and
then they go to brunch. That's not what democracy looks like.
(23:08):
Democracy is ugly and like the democracy is hard one
and endangerous. Here more solution sessions after this break. Well,
many of us, myself very much included, remember Obama's legacy
as one of progressive change. Frank doesn't agree. For frank
Obama's legacy is one that easily tricks us into thinking
(23:30):
things were rosier than they were, the way you might
remember things from your youth as happier than they felt
and you were actually experiencing them. But Obama's legacy is
also a reminder that being a Democrat or a member
of any party you align yourself with does not inherently
make a politician the best one for your interests. Supporting
a party based on a constructed and well marketed platform
is just giving into that simulation. In fact, Franklin says,
(23:53):
no political parties ideology reflects his The only thing that
feels at all politically representative are those who questioned the
two party system entirely. There is not a reposition of
a representational party in American politics that does that, which
is why the Democrats are not a viable option for
anything that has any substance in my life or in
(24:16):
you know, my my peers and contemporaries ideas. And if
you look throughout history at the people who did force
these aforementioned changes through activism, through organization, those people did question.
Even while Frank is clearly critical of establishment party politics,
that didn't stop him from voting in the last election,
(24:37):
something he says he does not out of expectation for
social change, but out of a testament to the hard
one right to vote that our ancestors died for. He
also thinks there's hope that voting in local community elections
could actually make reel change. For as pessimistic as he
sometimes sounds, maybe being critical about the world around you,
it's actually a certain kind of optimism, striving to see
(24:58):
the world clearly and wondering how it luck, if it
were better. If you want to put a label on
how we think with regards to American politics, it's optimistic.
It's seeking to look beyond the system as it exists
in you know, the duplicity's forms through which it represents
itself or tries to represent itself to people, and looking
(25:21):
for another way, which is not that difficult. It just
takes a little bit of hope and imagination and a
little bit of common sense. So you call it commonsense
if you want, you know, how to think it's that complicate.
There's the time when the operation of the machine becomes
so odious, makes you so sick at heart, but you
(25:44):
can't take part, you can't even passively take part. And
you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and
upon the wheels, upon the levers, by all the apparatus,
and you've got to make it stuck, and you've got
doing the take that the people running to the people owned.
But unless you're free, the machine won't be prevented from
it at all. So, even if you believe that voting
(26:06):
is basically futile or the two party system is wasting
everyone's time in America, it doesn't mean that you have
to check out completely. You can still engage in building
a better country and a better world. Franklin suggests reading
and having real conversations to reveal false realities that incite
true progress. And that's a good start. But once you've
exposed the machine and disassembled its cogs, what's next? Where
(26:29):
do we go from there? Matthew Kinkaid of Overcoming Racism
spoke about this at Solution Sessions in Atlanta. We have
to build our own institutions. It's just the reality of this.
If you look at the Black Power movement or any
sort of movements of solidarity, the reason why these leaders
are the first ones to get killed is because all
of our power are collective spending power, are collective intellectual power.
(26:51):
We can think that when we start to build our
own institutions. And so if we're expecting the government to
make a change, the reality is you're right, it's against us.
So we have to start building institutions. And one of
the reasons why it's tough, that's so many people teaching
our kids don't come from our communities because the civilized
movement isn't done. We have to prepare our kids to
continue that battle in that journey is to teach our
(27:12):
kids to start building their own institutions. If you're black
in America, you live in a country where you've never
been valued. Black people were in chains when the Declaration
of Independence proclaimed all men were created equal, and we're
still the targets of state sanctioned murder, while white people
tell us that racism no longer exists. Because this trauma
envelops her history, our very existence the United States is
(27:33):
one of conflict. We've always had to resist. So it's
our right to be disenchanted. It's okay to distrust people
who have never earned our trust. It's logical to denounce
and defy institutions that were built on our backs and
simultaneously broke them. But we have to pave a way forward.
If we're going to lift the veil, then we have
to know what's beyond it. What's the solution. Bridget read
(27:56):
everything you can. What's the solution? Bridget started ie u?
What's the solution? Bridget make your own lanes? What's the solution?
Bridget break the machine. Next week, we get into the
work we can do outside of politics. To do that,
we talked to Black Lives Matter co founder Patrise Colors
about what sparked her advocacy and got her fired up.
You know, that's what I think about every single day
(28:18):
when I wake up. Am I changing the material conditions
from black people? Am I making more space and room
so that we could be free and we could be freer.
And that's the work for all of us to be doing.
Whether you're black, white, not the next Asian and digeness,
we should be thinking about how we change the material
conditions for those most marginalized. Ye Afro Punk Solution Sessions
(28:54):
is a co production between Afro Punk and How Stuff Works.
Your hosts are Bridget Todd and Eve's Jeff Coke. Executive
co producers are Julie Douglas, Jocelyn Cooper, and Kuan latif Hill.
Dylan Fagan is supervising producer and Kathleen Quillian is audio engineer.
Many many thanks to Casey Pegram and Any Reese for
their production and editorial oversight, and many thanks to our
(29:16):
on the ground Atlantic crew, Ben Bowland, Corey Oliver and
Noel Brown. The Underside of Power is performed by Algiers.
Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Apropunk
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