May 10, 2025 • 50 mins
Our guest is Joy-Ann Reid…the self described writer, podcaster, documentary filmmaker, professional blerd, fan of democracy and OG hater of fascism and apartheid, who is best known as an American political commentator and television host.
In today’s episode, we discuss her recent fireside chat known as Journalism Under Fire. We naturally discuss life under Trump’s second term in office so far. We explore the challenges that she faced in losing her MSNBC show as well as the challenges this administration presents to American journalism as a whole. We discuss her future plans in the media space, and what people on the ground can do to resist the oppression they feel under this administration.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On today's episode of Civic Cipher, we have a very
special guest writer, podcaster, documentary filmmaker, and professional blurred fan
of democracy and og hater of fascism and apartheid, Joy
and Read, fresh on the hills of her panel discussion
at the Journalism under Fire Guarding against Threats to our
Democracy fireside chat in d C. We go now to
our conversation with Joy. All Right, Joy and Read, welcome
(00:25):
to the show. Our listeners know this, but I want
to make sure that I say it to you that
you are more than the introduction. You are more than
you know. What you represent and the work that you
do really does matter. And I just I met a
loss for words. It's just it's a very very special
(00:49):
episode to be recording with you. You know, we've we've
kind of been in similar circles over the years and
you know, tried to get a word to you, but
we understand and respect the work that you're doing and
when the time is, I you know, maybe we'll get
a chance to have a conversation with you, and today
is that day. So this is kind of like, you know,
all of our stars in Alignment and ten Christmases at once,
(01:10):
so welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
It's good to be here, all right, absolutely, all right,
So first stuff, talk to us a little bit about
the fireside chat that I mentioned, because that's kind of
been the big deal in the news. So this took
place at the Journalism under Fire event. For people that
weren't able to attend, or people that might have heard
about it and been curious about it, talk to us about,
(01:34):
you know, what took place and maybe what people should know,
what the people that attended might have learned from that event.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Well, I mean, this was an important conversation, of course,
Nicole Hannah Jones being one of the most seminal and
important figures in modern journalistic history. I mean, obviously, her
creation of the sixteen nineteen project Blew Up the World,
broke the brains of the entire American right, said Christopher
UFO and others off on a tear to try to
destroy diversity, equity and inclusion and their version of critical
(02:04):
race theory, which they didn't even clearly understand. But I
think what's happened now is that, particularly after the election
for the second time of Donald Trump, is that you
have a real aggressive Project.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Twenty twenty five, driven.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Right winging Christian nationalists, driven war on everything from journalism
to basic freedom, to immigration to potentially birthright citizenship, you
name it.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's all being torn apart.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And this particular gathering was to really talk about the
journalism piece and how in each of these three instances
there was a woman from the Los Angeles Times who
actually left there because the owner of the LA Times
has decided to turn that seminal really August paper into
(02:51):
a mouthpiece for Donald Trump and to suppress anti Trump
views at the paper, all the way to Robert Kagan,
who is a conservative who used to write for the
wh Washington Post until he resigned because of Jeff Bezo's
takeover of the paper and his attempt to root out
anti Trump views or critical views of Donald Trump. Although
I have to say that there are still people that
(03:14):
are writing critically about Donald Trump at the Washington Post,
but he's warped the mission, right. He even got rid
of democracy dies in darkness and said now they're now
going to be about individual liberty or something like that.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Some neoliberal, you know, he.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Cannot make principle. And so that's happening everywhere, and of course,
you know. I you know, I like to quote the
Friday thing. I don't know how you're gonn get fired
on your day off, but I did get fired. I'm like,
I remember that, like Friday. But you know, and you know,
I was never told why I was and I said
this on stage. I was never given a reason why
I was let go and why my show was canceled
(03:50):
and why more than one hundred really experienced long time
staffers of MSNBC producers were essentially thrown out of their
jobs and forced to reapply doged. But I could take
a guess. You know, I don't think it helped my case.
(04:10):
That I've been a very firm supporter of DEI, of diversity,
equity and inclusion. That I've been a very firm believer
that Donald Trump is a fascist. That as his two
for his former chief of staff and Mark Milly, his
former joint chiefs of staff chair.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
They both said he's a fascist to the core. That's
their view, not mine.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
His own vice president has said he may be America's hitler.
Then he became his vice president, you name it. It's
clear that he has fascist instincts, and he's married himself
to a group of white Christian nationalists who are very
clearly trying to move the country into fascism and Christian nationalism.
So saying that is probably not helpful, also probably not
helpful that I was pretty firm that, you know, it's
(04:51):
probably suboptimal for the United States to be arming Israel
with two thousand pound bombs to drop on Palestinians at
school and in their apartments and destroying mosques and everything else.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So yeah, I can take a good guess.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Yeah, Unfortunately, I think we can all take a good
guess with all the major shakeups that we are all
collectively witnessing in the media landscape since Trump's reelection. What
are some concerns that you have about the state of
journalism in the United States.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I'm very concerned, honestly. The resignation recently. We also talked
about this at the Forum of the some thirty five
year leader of sixty minutes, head of sixty minutes, Bob Owens,
that was alarming, and he resigned very clearly, saying that
he was leaving because he felt that he no longer
(05:49):
had the editorial independence to cover the news.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Without fear or favor.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
The way that sixty minutes has done since I've been
watching it since I was in junior high school, and
it has not changed. It's very tough on any president.
It's not partisan in any way. But you know, they
recently did a really important, i think report about the
two hundred and thirty five men and we think some
women who were shipped to El Salvador into a prison,
(06:16):
into a gulag without any due process, and that seventy
five percent of them have no criminal record anywhere, and
highlighting the cases of people like kil Mararbordego Garcia, who
was literally renditioned out of the United States, out of
Maryland without due process, and they did a really critical
story on that. They've also done really important reporting on
(06:40):
the war in Gaza and on the human rights violations therein,
and on the allegations of genocide therein. And they were
in a lawsuit with Donald Trump because he claimed that
their interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, which is a
perfectly normal interview for a presidential candidate, was somehow biased.
And he's sicked the FCC on not just CBS, but
(07:04):
also on ABC because he doesn't like the coverage of
himself on ABC. On Comcast, my former employer because he
doesn't like the coverage from MSNBC or the financial accurate
financial coverage I suppose from CNBC, which is talking about
his failures on the economy, you name it. The media
is under fire, and I think when you see people
(07:26):
like Jeff Bezos, who is not a journalist, interfering in
the way that the Washington Post does what it was
designed to do. When you see the owner of the
Los Angeles Times bending the knee to Trump and essentially
requiring his editorial page to do the same. And then
when you're also seeing a takeover of even a lot
of local TV stations by organizations like the Sinclair Media Group,
(07:54):
which is a right wing Fox style organization and entity
that's now taking over your traffic and weather together and
replacing political news with what amounts to conservative you know,
conservative ideas, an ideation. That's a problem. We can't have
a free society if we don't have a free press.
And there's an attack on the free press unlike anything
(08:16):
I've ever seen, and that, to me, I can't like
into anything other than the McCarthy era.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
You know what's interesting about that is that working in
this space, we pay particular attention to the same things
that you're mentioning now. And you know, our listeners, our
viewers around the country, they often remind us to be
(08:43):
encouraged to keep going. Our voices are more important now
than ever, and you realize that how important that infrastructure is.
You mentioned the Sinclair Media Group, you mentioned the Washington Post,
you know, and who owns that infrastructure is critically important
(09:04):
now and we lean further into our relationship with like
Real Times Media, a lot of like black owned newspapers
around the country because you know, as source material a
but also as UH partners and ensuring that we are
strengthened that they are strengthened, because you realize how vulnerable
(09:24):
you are when there's a shift and the power is
concentrated UH into the hands of just a few people.
And so this is kind of an interesting development. But
we only have one story to tell, and it's our
story and it's the truth. And so you know, I
commend you on not not only enduring but but maintaining
(09:48):
and you know, having these important conversations and that you know,
that brings me to the next thing that I wanted
to ask you about, because I heard about the state
of the people tour. So for folks that don't know
myself included, talk to us about the State of the
People tour, and make sure you give the website too,
especially for our listeners that are kind of interested in
(10:09):
staying plugged into something that is a little bit more accurate,
a little less biased.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yeah, and I'll just to your previous point. I want
to note that you know, id B. Wells was operating
as an independent black woman journalist at a time when
the media was essentially controlled by two men and William
randolf Hurst, and when the white media refused to report
on lynchings in any other way than to say that
the dead man, woman or child that was lynched committed
(10:34):
a crime with there was again no due process.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
So there's a history of this, and you know it is.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Really critical, you know, now more than ever that we strengthened.
You know, there are thousands of black, independent black newspapers,
but they are you know, withering away in terms of
support from the public and then our access to you know,
being able to have a wider audience as you all
are able to do through syndication that also is in
many ways dependent on corporate erica.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Right, and if you.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Look at the place where our creators, Black creators have
had the most access.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
It's been through social media. It's been through YouTube and.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
TikTok and Instagram, and companies like Meta are also bending
the need of Trump gave a million dollars to the inauguration.
You know, TikTok suddenly put out a blast to every
single person who owns TikTok and uses it in the
United States, glorifying Donald Trump for not following the Supreme
Court order to make them be sold right and for
supposedly saving TikTok when he's the one who created the
(11:29):
crisis in the first place. So you're seeing the social media.
You know, there used to be a thing called black Twitter.
Black twitter is what built twitter. Twitter would have been
nothing without black people making it popular. And yet black
people own none of that ip that the content was
not owned by anyone. They were just giving that content
to previously Jack and then Elon Musk for free. So
(11:50):
we really have to be cognizant. I think as a
people of not only where we're getting our information, how
to avoid disinformation, and how to share information amongst ourselves
in a way that can be authentic, Which brings me
to the State of the People tour on the night
of the It wasn't really a State of the Union.
It was technically a joint addressed to Congress that Donald
(12:10):
Trump February. There were a group of us who are
a combination of activists, you know, and people like Angela Rai,
who used to be the chief counsel to the Congressional
of Black Caucus and who's now a podcaster and activist
in her own right, Lolo Smith. There are a bunch
of people the Advancement Project, you know, Rashad Robinson up
(12:34):
formerly of Color of Change. Just a bunch of us
decided that we were going to do a twenty four
hour live stream across all our platforms. So I co
host a podcast called Read This Read That. We streamed
it on the Read This Read That YouTube channel, it
was streamed on, you know, Mark Thompson's channel, and all
of us just live streamed together twenty four hours of
(12:54):
content in which we as black creators and an activists
and speakers and media people all came together. And by
the way, these were black folk who generally had never
worked together before. Some of us didn't even know each
other personally. But you know how you know, white people
assume all black people know each other. We all know
each other, we do, right, And so we all came together,
people who didn't even really know each other, had never
(13:16):
worked with each other before livestream twenty four hours of
content in which we just talked among ourselves about what
we need in our community, about.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
What the state of the Union is for us.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
And so out of that came this idea that we
needed to take that live stream that over a million
people watched on these collective all common channels, YouTube, Instagram, etc.
And decided to take that on the road. So the
Stay of the People Tour. It was a very fast
put together by Angela and some other folks. And the
idea of it is to go into ten communities, really twelve,
(13:50):
because Rowley and Durham are two different places. Birmingham and Montgomery,
both in Alabama, but ten very heavily black cities Detroit,
New Orleans, Newark, New Jersey, Los Angeles, California, Durham, you know,
sort of all over the country and go and do
two things. Number One, find out what people need. Because
(14:13):
one of the things that I think is generally a
problem is that a lot of us do a lot
of talking about what people should do and not a
lot of asking what people want.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, exactly right, And so I think for our community.
And a lot of people didn't vote.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
But a lot of people didn't vote mostly because they
didn't know the issues, weren't paying attention, weren't really read in,
and really weren't sure that voting does anything for them.
Even voting for Obama, it didn't feel like it did
anything for them. So going in and saying hey, register
to vote or you know, that's not gonna help anymore.
We need to just ask people what they want, ask
people what they need, what would make their lives better,
provide services, offer assistance where we can. And then the
(14:49):
second piece is to rally people's spirits. Because Hit Strategies,
which is a really terrific black owned polling firm, did
some really scary data after the twenty twenty four election
that found that Black Americans have not felt this disempowered
for a generation. We are seeing generational sense of disempowerment
among black people after the failure of Kamala Hairs to win.
(15:12):
So we need to reverse that by letting people feel empowered,
feel community, feel a sense of community, and also to
do these field hearings to find out what people need
and what they want.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
So we're going to twelve cities.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
We started in Atlanta and started by delivering food to
seniors and then rallied folks together and had a bunch
of smaller group conversations, including a land giveaway, you name it,
and we're going to take that on the road. And
so that's what the State of the People Tour is.
And you can register for your city and find out
what cities were coming to and you can do that
(15:44):
at State of the PPL dot com State of THEPPL
dot Com and that's also on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Ramses and not have to figure out how to get
to one of these cities. Because that definitely sounds like
something that we'd like to be a part of and
support you in any way that we can. You kind
of touched on some of this already, so I want
to kind of bring it back to you. Trump is
dominating headlines with several different initiatives that like muzzle Velocity,
(16:14):
just there's something every day. Rams and I were discussing
how everything seems to be aimed at tearing some group
of people down there. He's not proposing anything that seems
to help anyone, But all of these initiatives that he's
so happy to do his photo op with seem to
be targeted as some group and tearing these particular groups down.
(16:35):
As you were speaking to how black people feel so
disempowered and kind of hopeless, what are some things that
we once should be paying attention to and what are
some things that we can kind of grab a hold
to so we don't feel so hopeless and so disempowered,
like there's nothing that we can do but just accept
this new state that we're in and that that is
(16:58):
a really, as you couldmdgen difficult thing for even us
collectively to do in the space that we work in.
But for those who are even less connected and less
informed than we are, what are some things that we
can that we can share or say to people.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, And you know the thing that so you know,
sort of frustrating for.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
You know, just watching it happen, is that when you
are attacking everything, as you said, everywhere, all at once,
and people are also just concerned about economic survival, right
because for a lot of folks, thing one is how
he's destroying the economy and their opportunity to just be
able to pay their bills and afford food. Right, that's
number one. I mean attacking the economy that you know
(17:41):
you can.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
You can. You can love or hate Joe Biden, okay,
and a lot of people don't like them.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
But the economy was stable and was growing and actually
was the best economy in the West after and during COVID.
But I think people didn't feel it in a lot
of ways, and so they roll the dice thinking that
Trump would improve the economy. A lot of us, a
lot of us that voted for him, and now they're
finding that they're just getting destroyed. Food prices are going
through the roof, gas prices are up. It's kind of
(18:08):
it's all going in the wrong direction, and it's making
it hard for people to live. So I think the
main thing that people are paying attention to is just
how hard he's making it to live. And when you're
feeling economically unstable, it's very difficult to have those strength
and the time on your hands and the will to
fight everything else. So the challenge is number one. We
(18:31):
need to start focusing on how to get resources into
our communities to make sure our people are not hungry,
are not evicted, don't lose their health care, like focusing
on those local issues to keep our people alive. Frankly,
in this moment, I think that's number one, because you
can't focus on everything, right, we can't stop him from
(18:53):
doing everything, but we need to really start thinking locally
and thinking in community terms. How do we keep people
in our communities alive and in their homes with a
roof over their heads and food on the table.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
That's number one.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
And then I think the second piece is if you
do have the capacity to broaden out and do more
the things that he's attacking that in the end are
really going to affect us. Number one, this attempt to
attack birthright citizenship. Know that that's you know, I'm a
daughter of immigrants, so that definitely affects if you're a
first generation immigrant right, or if you're an immigrant yourself.
(19:27):
But it also affects if you're an African American because
the only reason black folks have citizenship at all is
the Fourteenth Amendment, because after you know, during enslavement, black
people were not considered to the citizens of the United States.
The dread Scott case said that black people were not
citizens and had no rights. That whites were bound to respect.
It was a fourteenth Amendment that made black people's citizens.
(19:48):
If you undermine the fourteenth Amendment, there's almost nothing you
can't do to us. This man is already his administration
is regime as I call it, has already deported American citizens.
That's the thing that's already happened, including American citizen children,
one with cancer, a seven year old.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So they've already done it, and they've done it to
brown people.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
But we know that they always get to us eventually,
So we actually have to start paying attention. As angry
as a lot of black folks are with the brown
people who voted for Trump, you need to watch that
because we're on the list. Whatever they do to them,
they're eventually going to want to do to us. Now,
can they deport where are they going to deport us to?
I don't know, Mississippi right, Bigger you can't. But they're
not deporting people to where they come from. They're deporting
(20:28):
people to a foreign prison that we're paying to take them.
And Donald Trump said on an open mic to Nai Bukelly,
who is the president of El Salvador and calls himself
the world's most popular Dictator Trump said to him, the
homegrowns are next. Homegrowns are next. What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Maybe it means they're going to try to find some
first generation Brown people and send them to prison.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Or maybe that means anyone in a disfavored group.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
And there's no group more disfai than us, So I
think we need to really pay.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Attention to that.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
I think the third thing, as much as voting doesn't
solve everything, this Save Act is a problem because if
they pass it, it's going to make it much harder
for us to vote. They're building things into that bill
that are designed to make it harder for women and
people of color to vote. I just recently, I just
got off this morning a public Religion Research Institute presentation
(21:25):
of their latest polling. It's one of the largest polling
organizations in the country. They pulled five thousand people. It's
a big sample poll with a one point seven percent
margin of error. White Christians, white Evangelical Christians stand alone
in fervently favoring everything Donald Trump, Doge, and Elon Musk
are doing, including them taking our data. They had to
(21:48):
stand in favor of having concentration camps in America to
put quote unquote illegal immigrants in. They believe in white
replacement theory biomajority, and they believe that it is white
Christians who are being discriminated against, not anyone else, and
so they want to end any programs that favor people
of color. This attack that feels like it may be
(22:10):
on somebody else is on us. So unfortunately, if we
have the bandwidth beyond saving ourselves and saving our communities
from economic harm immediately, we do need to start thinking
about what this man is doing to undermine the democracy
because we got nowhere else to go but here and
potentially to a foreign prison.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yeah, you know, it's that's I was watching something that
kind of spoke to that.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Dynamic in you know, Middle America.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
We'll call them like, you know, those those reliably red states,
you know, God's Country or however you want to call it,
And you're right, those those people are the most likely
to believe conspiracy theories. They're the most likely to support
Donald Trump and whatever he does, giving him the powers
(23:02):
of a king essentially. They're the most likely to be racist,
They're the most likely to consume propaganda, they're the most like,
you know, there's a whole list, and they fail on
all of these like critical you know, uh headings. You know,
under underneath all these critical elements that are important to
(23:27):
a reasonably informed voter base, they're the most likely to
ignore harms, things that will harm their own communities and
shape their own outcomes negatively in order to.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
What they what they feel is protect their.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Long term interests and their long term interests in their
minds aligned with those of exceptionally wealthy white Christian men
who were born healthy, uh and straight. And so, you know,
that's a problem that we've found. But often when we
try to engage, you know, people that that feel that way,
(24:07):
there's a pushback. And the pushback is that, well, look,
these people are not racist. They're not racist. They just
want everything fair. They don't believe in white privilege. You know,
if they if what is white privilege, they just cannot
conceptualize that they were born with anything extra. And one
(24:29):
of the things that we try to say, and i'd
love to get your thoughts on just kind of this
whole group of people as it relates to people who
try to engage and people that try to inform them,
one of the things that we say is white privilege
is being able to be you know, born and run
your race from the starting line.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
If you get to start with zero, that's white privilege.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
You know, anything else is being born with a strike
against you, essentially, and you have to work a little harder.
You may may have some hurdles on your lap where
you know, a person who was born that straight, Christian,
healthy white man gets to just run a fair race
and if we catch up to you, I think that
that kind of attacks your concept of white superiority must
(25:15):
be buried somewhere in your head. Please share your thoughts
on you know how challenging this has been to engage
this community, or maybe some strategies you know, or ways
around it perhaps.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Okay, So you know, I would say that for those
who believe in their minds, and I think that most
people who are MAGA who support Donald Trump, they don't
think of themselves as racist. Yeah, and would be quite
offended by the idea that anyone thinks they're racist. And
(25:51):
what they'll often say is, as you did, they just
want everything to be fair.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
But with the data show.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
What the data shows, including this new data, the Pew
Research data, the PRII data you name, it is that
only white Americans agree in a majority with the following statement,
discrimination against white people and discrimination against white Christians is
(26:24):
as bad as discrimination is against other people. No other
group agrees with that. They're the only group that views
discrimination in their mind against white people and discrimination, I
should say, against Christians generally, So discrimination against Christians and
discrimination against whites is as bad as it's been against
(26:46):
other people. In a country where black people were enslaved,
where there was an Asian Exclusion Act, where non white
immigrants were banned from the country in the nineteen twenties
and could not get jobs, there were signs held up
that used to say no Jews, no Cubans, no blacks.
(27:07):
There have never been signs in America that say no Whites,
no Christians. And yet only white people, white Christians, not
even just all whites, but white Christians. Because white unaligned
folks don't agree with this. White Christians are alone in
the polling in a majority, and I'm talking about two
thirds of them believe that there is rampant discrimination against
(27:32):
white people and against Christians. And also only white Evangelicals,
white Mormons, white Catholics, white Christians in general in a
majority believe right that Donald Trump should be given all
the powers he needs in order to set the country right,
(27:55):
and that diversity programs and that diversity in general is
more harmful than helpful to the country.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
There is no other group that believes that.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
So, what I would challenge white Americans to do is
ask yourself, why do only white people believe that.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
So?
Speaker 3 (28:12):
And back off from the question of whether you yourself
are racist? As a white person, can you explain why
white Americans are alone in these belief systems, why no
other group sees it. The sense of victimization, the sense
that white people are being victimized by immigration, victimized by diversity, equity,
(28:32):
and inclusion, and also that elections are being stolen from them.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
No other group agrees with that, no other group. They're
the only ones.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
If white Americans went into were beamed up into space
like you know, Scotty beamed them up to to the enterprise,
and they were all the earth, no Republican would ever
be elected in the United States. Again, because only white
Americans vote in a majority for Republicans. Ask they should
ask themselves why every other group is over here and
(29:03):
they're over here. Some thing's going on and you can't
find any other factor.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Sorry, this is my dog.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
You can't find any other factor that is relevant when
you peel away all the other factors economic condition, educational attainment.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
No other factor explains it, but race.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
And all of the islands that white Christians exist on ideologically,
you can't align them with anything else income, region, age,
race is the only one in which they all align.
So I would just challenge people who are white to
ask themselves why that is if it is not about
(29:48):
a sense that white people guard their superior condition in
the original Constitution and believe that this country was created.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
For You know, we often find when trying to have
these types of conversations that we are not dealing with
the same facts. We are not living in the same reality,
which becomes the non starter. Like right at the beginning
of the conversation, we realize, Okay, the facts and the
(30:23):
truth cannot be two sided. There's no two sets of
facts that mean the same thing. There are no two
realities or two truths. But as you just explained, when
dealing with people, especially specifically MAGA Trump supporters, who I
think identify a piece of themselves in him, so they
end up defending themselves while trying to defend him.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Joy.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
How do we have these conversations when we can't start
from the same place. What are some tools that we
can use to even try for our neighbors, for a
family member that thanksgiving, for those who just are contrarian
in nature, What are some starting points to try to
get us at least back to the same set of
(31:10):
facts and living in the same reality.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
I think part of the problem is it's hard to
do that because, as I have observed trump Ism, I
no longer view it as a political ideology. I view
it as essentially a religion, a religion that has in
many ways replaced traditional Christianity and become a version a
(31:34):
sect of Christianity, because again, white Catholics, Evangelicals, Protestants, and
people who are Latter day Saints all line up together
on one side for the party that is against immigration,
against feeding the poor, against helping the sick.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Esus stood for correct.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
If you just listen to the red letters in the Bible,
it states that we and actually the pope who just died,
Pope Francis his last speech, his last you know, incyclicals
to his public, was that we must care for the
immigrant and the poor. He named himself, Francis, after Saint
Francis of a CCD patron of the poor, patron saying
(32:24):
of the poor. There's never been a previous Pope Francis.
And there's a reason for that that no pope, you know,
in their gilded you know fancy, you know, silk slippers,
wanted to be associated with me, you know, Saint Francis
until him and he said he would say, I am
of the poor and the poor army, I.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Am of them.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Right, And Christians in America, Evangelical Christians, disagree with that.
They disagree with the red letters of Jesus. So what
I tend to think is it's a religion. I couldn't
talk someone out of being a Buddhist if I tried,
and I wouldn't try. So I don't try to talk
people out of mechanism because I think it's a religion,
and I can't talk people out of their religion. But
what I do think that is useful when you're talking
(33:01):
to people who are aligned with him, it's just ask
them some very simple questions and ask and keep asking
and drilling into the facts they think are true. When
they say tariffs are going to make the economy better
say why, how, well, because the foreign government's going to
pay them. Really, because when the importer brings them in,
(33:24):
the importer has to pay those tariffs. Right, how does
the country get involved in that? That sent them that
they're not involved, and just keep making them justify what
they're doing. I think at a certain point you see
a lot of these people do this on TikTok where
they try to get mag of people to explain the
things they believe.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, and they generally.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Can't, they can't support it. Just let them try and
see and see if that breaks the spell.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
I recognize and have for some time that, you know,
we're in a challenging place, but there's this sense of.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
What should we focus on? What first? What's the most
important thing?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Obviously we've talked about Donald Trump himself and the strategy
of his regime.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I like that word.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
We've talked about white evangelicals and and how they feel
as though the country is being taken from them specifically,
and that they are being treated unfairly. We've talked about
we've touched on, you know, maybe the strategies that that
(34:30):
democrats should you know consider, you know, using I know
that you're doing it with the with the tour. But
you know, it's it's not inconceivable to to see Democrats
implementing something similar.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Just asking people what do you want?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
And you know, this conversation obviously is a lot bigger
than today's episode. But I think that you know, just
coming from your your mind and your vantage point, this
question could certainly at minimum be interesting, you know, to
get your response, but for a lot of people it
could you know, give them a sense of Okay, here's
(35:06):
what we should be focusing on. So I'll ask if
you had a magic wand and you could make an
instant change to I'm not going to ask about the country,
because obviously I think I know what that answer would be.
But if you could make an instant change, let's say
to the Democratic Party, what would you change about the
(35:29):
Democratic Party that you think would would lead to better
outcomes not just for Democrats but for the country.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Oh, that's a long conversation. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Having worked in Democratic campaign politics, I think the Democratic
Party has a lot of problems, sure, and I would
I would point to I'll just point to two that
I think are really big. I think one of them
is democrats general refusal to embrace the base they have,
(36:04):
rather than coveting the base Republicans have. I think, in general,
my experience with the Democratic Party is that their base
is multiracial. It's heavily black. Democrats really rely on black
voters and on brown voters, but they really want white voters.
They really really want white working class voters back, and
(36:29):
that has caused them to fixate on those voters almost
to the exclusion of everyone else, to make assumptions about
black and brown and young voters and aapi voters that
are not supported by evidence.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
They just assume the blacks will come out and vote,
especially for Kamala Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Correct, and so yeah, percentage wise they will. But there's
also a third person always in every race, and it's
called the couch. And in this race, millions of us
chose the couch. Millions of young voters chose the couch.
Thirty percent of Americans voted for Kamala Harris, thirty one
(37:11):
percent voted for Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
The rest voted for the couch. That's a problem.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
The pri polls show that a third of the voters
who chose not to vote in the last election now
regret their vote, and a majority of those who did
not vote in the last election. This is across all races,
and who regret their vote. About seventy percent of them
believe Donald Trump is a dictator. So there is a
(37:39):
pool of voters out there who you could pull off
the couch if you would.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Just focus on them and ask them for their votes.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
The second issue I have with the Democratic Party is
that they are also very married to neoliberal economics. You
hear Democrats talk a lot about the middle class, the
middle class, to the middle class, the middle class, the middle
class is shrinking. A lot of their voters are not
middle class, they're barely middle class, or working class, or
or Democrats ignore them completely.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
They don't talk about them.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
They only talk about this mythical middle class, and they
focus their economic ideas on this mythical middle class. College
educated and college educated, people whose kids go to college,
people who themselves went to college or have PhDs, people
watch MSNBC.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
That is a part of the electorate.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
But in America, only about at maximum forty percent of
Americans have college degrees, and that's only in about twenty
two states. In the rest of the states, fewer than
thirty percent of Americans have college degrees. College entertainment is
not a majority position.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yeah, if I may, I want to make sure that
I interject this and qu don't let me jump in
front of you. But I heard something said recently. I
think that the gentleman's name is doctor Roy Casa Granda,
if I'm not mistaken, that's his name. But he said
something that was so potent, and he said that the
difference between middle class and poor is essentially it's just
(39:03):
stable housing. And so I think it's it's important to
kind of help illuminate the point that you're making in
terms of how the middle class is shrinking and what
we would typically conceive of as middle class that is
very much a myth nowadays.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
And so yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
For folks to hyperfixiate on the mythical middle middle class
ignores the reality of our current predicament. And they're they're
playing politics as usual, and this is not the state
of plan anymore.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
So so continue.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Absolutely no, and and and you're and you're absolutely right
in that if you only focus on the middle class
and suburban college educated voters and you're going for the suburbs,
will the poor and the working class include rural people,
not all of them are white. That includes people who,
as you said, have unstable housing. That includes people who
are one paycheck away from poverty, people who are using
(39:56):
payday loans to pay for groceries, which is an increasing phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Democrats don't talk about that. They don't talk like that.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
You know who talks about the working class Republicans, and
they don't even care about the working class. They could
give it him. They only care about the super rich.
But they talk like they care about the working class.
And the third thing I would say about Democrats that
is a problem, if we had to have three big diagnoses,
it is their fervent defense of the system. Democrats are
systems people, and they insist that what we must do
(40:25):
is defend democracy, defend the system.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Well, the system doesn't.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Work for a lot of people, and so when you're
a person defending the system, you are essentially rejecting people
in your own base who think the system is failing
and who voting for even Barack Obama did nothing for them.
They didn't get anything materially from it, Whereas when Donald
Trump got elected, in their mind, they got a check,
(40:49):
even though the check was from Nancy Pelosi. But the
Democrats weren't smart enough to put the Donald Trump put on.
So they think Trump is a check. They think Trump
eagles checks. I'm arouving your converse with a United States
senatorial candidate who said, well, what should I be saying?
And I said, cut all the rest of your speech
out and just say checks. Let's say check works. That's
(41:11):
what people need.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
You spoke about college educated, and immediately what popped into
my head was the dismantling of the Department of Education,
the other side trying to rewrite or erase our history
and major institutions of higher learning kind of bending the
(41:34):
knee preemptively to the wishes of this administration and the
newly re elected president. Your alma mater, however, made the
news for some different reasons recently. As a Harvard graduate,
tell us a little bit about your thoughts of Harvard
to just not bow to that pressure that the Trump
(41:57):
administration is kind of blanketing all institutions of higher learning with.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
I was very pleasantly surprised. I was very proud of Harvard,
and I haven't said that very often since I graduated
inteen ninety one Harvard. You know, I took ten at Harvard.
Harvard is not a liberal institution. The idea it's liberal
is kind of ridiculous. It's full of very rich people.
Legacies are about forty three percent of the admittees who
just get there because the granddaddy went there and they're
(42:24):
super rich, and they have named some of the buildings
are named after him. Harvard teaches neoliberal economics and nothing else.
They teach against equity and inclusion. They're just not liberal.
But in this case, they are one hundred and forty
years older than the United States, and they have a
fifty three billion dollar endowment, and they're not going to
be told what to do by a mere president of
(42:44):
the United States, who, in their mind is an ephemeral
figure who will be out in four years or maybe
eight or maybe twelve or until he dies or guy.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
So I'm proud of Harvard, and I wish more institutions.
I think Columbia was of the opposite and abject failure.
Didn't defend their students who are being deported without due process,
didn't defend democracy, and it bent the knee. So I'm
hoping that Harvard and also the Big ten. I'll give
the big ten colleges there due that they're standing up
(43:14):
to him. I think any way that people are standing
up to Trump in large ways are small, big ups.
To Jalen Hurts, I'm about to be an Eagles fan
for life now because that way, that wasn't even my team.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
But he's like, yeah, I got.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
Other things to do than to go stand around with
Donald Trump, you know, and I'm not doing it.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yeah. I liked that, couldn't cur I'm with that. I
like that absolutely. I know that.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
We're short on time, but I wanted to make sure
that we ask you about this because you know, you've
had a lot to say about, you know, the boycotting
of Target, and you know, just the resistance. You know,
we talked about obviously Harvard and the Big ten U
and I applaud them as well, them getting together and
figuring out ways to resist Donald Trump. But that's as
people as individuals who can choose to shop here to
(44:01):
shop there, you know, talk to us about maybe and
talk to our listeners. I should say about maybe the
long term strategy of boycotts and how you see them
as having the potential to shape political outcomes.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Yeah, what I would say is that, you know, I'm
a student of the apartheid movement in South Africa, and
the way that eventually South Africans, Black South Africans broke
apartheid was through general strikes. It was by making the
country ungovernable and economically unsound. And that was through a
combination of encouraging divestment and boycott externally and using general
(44:42):
strikes and economic resistance internally. And that is the way
you ultimately can break autocracy and in our country. I
just wrote a book about Medgar Everson Marley Evers Williams,
and one of the ways that Medgar fought against autocracy
here was to encourage people to use boycotts and to
(45:04):
use boycotts to break the autocracy in Mississippi. And what
he would say is that not everyone has got the
capacity to march, or has got the courage to march,
or has got the courage to engage in civic activism,
because it's risky to go out there and put yourself
in the you know what, the police and the authorities.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
But everyone can do a little something.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
He launched his boycott against the Jackson retailers who would
not respect black customers by saying and he launched it
during Easter, and he said, rather than go and buy
your new Easter outfit this year, Maybe make an outfit
or where what you wore last year. Just refuse to
shop when you're not respected. And I believe that Meger
was right. I would not set foot in a store
(45:47):
that treated me with disrespect. And Harvard treated our community
with disrespect. They don't deserve our dollars. Walmart did the
same thing. All of these companies, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, these
companies that have said we don't want diversity, then fine,
you don't have to have diversity in your customers either.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Ooh.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
That is to me, the small thing we can each do.
We can just choose to shop elsewhere, choose not to
hand our money to people who would bow down to
a wanna be dictator. If you can just do that
little thing, you are already doing the activism that's possible
for you, and you are already doing something heroic for yourself,
(46:26):
your community, your dignity, and your country.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Joyanne Red.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
We already express to you that you are literally a
superhero to us. Our listeners, we assume and I'm not
even assume, and I know how they feel, are going
to be just as excited to hear your voice as
we are to be having this conversation with you, catch
us all up on what's next for you, how we
(46:53):
can keep what with you, social media websites, whatever that is.
Because I was talking to a great friend of ours,
Jamail Hill, who loves you to life. Uh, And we
just all want to be able to show up for you,
specifically in this moment and moving forward and the best
way that we can.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
So how do we support you? How do we keep
up with you?
Speaker 4 (47:16):
Besides Ramses and I crashing this tour and showing up
to give you a hub. How can we all collectively
be a part of the Joyanne read movement?
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Well, I appreciate that, you know, Jamel Hill, that's my girl,
that is my Machete's sister and vacation buddy.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
So absolutely love her.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
And big up to Jamail who is fighting the good
fight in a tough atmosphere. She did that a y
which is a rough atmosphere. Yes, indeed, and one and
beat them at their own game.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
I am.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
I keep it real simple. Pretty much everything that I
do is at Joyanne Read. So I am at joy
and read on Instagram, I am at joy and read
on threads. I'm at joy and read on Blue Sky
and my sub stack is.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Joyanneread dot com.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
The only places it's a little bit different is on
TikTok and Facebook. I'm joy read official, and if you
subscribe to me on nread dot com, I do not
charge for subscriptions. You can just subscribe for free. The
only people that I charge a fee too is if
you want to comment to me because you're gonna troll me.
You're gonna have to put some coins in the bucket
you want to be a comment or you gotta pay
(48:20):
is free. I don't believe in paywalls. You guys can
just subscribe to my subsecon on joy andread dot com.
I try to post every day some kind of thought
or thing, and I will also be announcing there and
of course on Read This, Read That, my podcast with
Jackie Read my Sore Sister Cousin Friend, and I will
be letting folks know on those two forums when my
(48:40):
new show, which is going to be called The joy
Read Show, will be launching. So I am launching a
new show. Find out when I'm giving you all the
little sneak peek. The show is going to launch very
soon and I'm going to make the announcement on Joynread
dot com and I'll read this read that.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Well, listen, we will, we will take it, and we
will continue to watch you you, to watch you shine
and support you however we can, as Q mentioned, So
with that in mind, I'd like to say thank you
again very much for taking time to come here and
talk to us, to share your insight with us, You're
brilliance with us, and to obviously to make an announcement
(49:16):
on your forthcoming show and how people can stay in
touch with you and hopefully become fans of you if
they haven't been before in the same way that we are.
So once again, today's guest is American political commentator, best
selling author, and television host Joy and Read.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Ramsey is and cute. Thank you all very much.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
Look as an old hip hop head, first of all,
I will take those CARDI B tickets.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
If you want to. And look, I'm look my theme.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
Song when I graduated from Harvard me and my best
friend shots to you. Unfortunately pass since then our theme
song was can I Kick It?
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yes? You can? You? Can?
Speaker 3 (49:53):
You tipping the trial called quest? I'm a o G
hip hop fans. I appreciate y'all It's always great to
be with fellow hip hop fans.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
I appreciate
On today's episode of Civic Cipher, we have a very
special guest writer, podcaster, documentary filmmaker, and professional blurred fan
of democracy and og hater of fascism and apartheid, Joy
and Read, fresh on the hills of her panel discussion
at the Journalism under Fire Guarding against Threats to our
Democracy fireside chat in d C. We go now to
our conversation with Joy. All Right, Joy and Read, welcome
(00:25):
to the show. Our listeners know this, but I want
to make sure that I say it to you that
you are more than the introduction. You are more than
you know. What you represent and the work that you
do really does matter. And I just I met a
loss for words. It's just it's a very very special
(00:49):
episode to be recording with you. You know, we've we've
kind of been in similar circles over the years and
you know, tried to get a word to you, but
we understand and respect the work that you're doing and
when the time is, I you know, maybe we'll get
a chance to have a conversation with you, and today
is that day. So this is kind of like, you know,
all of our stars in Alignment and ten Christmases at once,
(01:10):
so welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
It's good to be here, all right, absolutely, all right,
So first stuff, talk to us a little bit about
the fireside chat that I mentioned, because that's kind of
been the big deal in the news. So this took
place at the Journalism under Fire event. For people that
weren't able to attend, or people that might have heard
about it and been curious about it, talk to us about,
(01:34):
you know, what took place and maybe what people should know,
what the people that attended might have learned from that event.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Well, I mean, this was an important conversation, of course,
Nicole Hannah Jones being one of the most seminal and
important figures in modern journalistic history. I mean, obviously, her
creation of the sixteen nineteen project Blew Up the World,
broke the brains of the entire American right, said Christopher
UFO and others off on a tear to try to
destroy diversity, equity and inclusion and their version of critical
(02:04):
race theory, which they didn't even clearly understand. But I
think what's happened now is that, particularly after the election
for the second time of Donald Trump, is that you
have a real aggressive Project.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Twenty twenty five, driven.
Speaker 3 (02:19):
Right winging Christian nationalists, driven war on everything from journalism
to basic freedom, to immigration to potentially birthright citizenship, you
name it.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's all being torn apart.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
And this particular gathering was to really talk about the
journalism piece and how in each of these three instances
there was a woman from the Los Angeles Times who
actually left there because the owner of the LA Times
has decided to turn that seminal really August paper into
(02:51):
a mouthpiece for Donald Trump and to suppress anti Trump
views at the paper, all the way to Robert Kagan,
who is a conservative who used to write for the
wh Washington Post until he resigned because of Jeff Bezo's
takeover of the paper and his attempt to root out
anti Trump views or critical views of Donald Trump. Although
I have to say that there are still people that
(03:14):
are writing critically about Donald Trump at the Washington Post,
but he's warped the mission, right. He even got rid
of democracy dies in darkness and said now they're now
going to be about individual liberty or something like that.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Some neoliberal, you know, he.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Cannot make principle. And so that's happening everywhere, and of course,
you know. I you know, I like to quote the
Friday thing. I don't know how you're gonn get fired
on your day off, but I did get fired. I'm like,
I remember that, like Friday. But you know, and you know,
I was never told why I was and I said
this on stage. I was never given a reason why
I was let go and why my show was canceled
(03:50):
and why more than one hundred really experienced long time
staffers of MSNBC producers were essentially thrown out of their
jobs and forced to reapply doged. But I could take
a guess. You know, I don't think it helped my case.
(04:10):
That I've been a very firm supporter of DEI, of diversity,
equity and inclusion. That I've been a very firm believer
that Donald Trump is a fascist. That as his two
for his former chief of staff and Mark Milly, his
former joint chiefs of staff chair.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
They both said he's a fascist to the core. That's
their view, not mine.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
His own vice president has said he may be America's hitler.
Then he became his vice president, you name it. It's
clear that he has fascist instincts, and he's married himself
to a group of white Christian nationalists who are very
clearly trying to move the country into fascism and Christian nationalism.
So saying that is probably not helpful, also probably not
helpful that I was pretty firm that, you know, it's
(04:51):
probably suboptimal for the United States to be arming Israel
with two thousand pound bombs to drop on Palestinians at
school and in their apartments and destroying mosques and everything else.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
So yeah, I can take a good guess.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
Yeah, Unfortunately, I think we can all take a good
guess with all the major shakeups that we are all
collectively witnessing in the media landscape since Trump's reelection. What
are some concerns that you have about the state of
journalism in the United States.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
I'm very concerned, honestly. The resignation recently. We also talked
about this at the Forum of the some thirty five
year leader of sixty minutes, head of sixty minutes, Bob Owens,
that was alarming, and he resigned very clearly, saying that
he was leaving because he felt that he no longer
(05:49):
had the editorial independence to cover the news.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Without fear or favor.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
The way that sixty minutes has done since I've been
watching it since I was in junior high school, and
it has not changed. It's very tough on any president.
It's not partisan in any way. But you know, they
recently did a really important, i think report about the
two hundred and thirty five men and we think some
women who were shipped to El Salvador into a prison,
(06:16):
into a gulag without any due process, and that seventy
five percent of them have no criminal record anywhere, and
highlighting the cases of people like kil Mararbordego Garcia, who
was literally renditioned out of the United States, out of
Maryland without due process, and they did a really critical
story on that. They've also done really important reporting on
(06:40):
the war in Gaza and on the human rights violations therein,
and on the allegations of genocide therein. And they were
in a lawsuit with Donald Trump because he claimed that
their interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, which is a
perfectly normal interview for a presidential candidate, was somehow biased.
And he's sicked the FCC on not just CBS, but
(07:04):
also on ABC because he doesn't like the coverage of
himself on ABC. On Comcast, my former employer because he
doesn't like the coverage from MSNBC or the financial accurate
financial coverage I suppose from CNBC, which is talking about
his failures on the economy, you name it. The media
is under fire, and I think when you see people
(07:26):
like Jeff Bezos, who is not a journalist, interfering in
the way that the Washington Post does what it was
designed to do. When you see the owner of the
Los Angeles Times bending the knee to Trump and essentially
requiring his editorial page to do the same. And then
when you're also seeing a takeover of even a lot
of local TV stations by organizations like the Sinclair Media Group,
(07:54):
which is a right wing Fox style organization and entity
that's now taking over your traffic and weather together and
replacing political news with what amounts to conservative you know,
conservative ideas, an ideation. That's a problem. We can't have
a free society if we don't have a free press.
And there's an attack on the free press unlike anything
(08:16):
I've ever seen, and that, to me, I can't like
into anything other than the McCarthy era.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
You know what's interesting about that is that working in
this space, we pay particular attention to the same things
that you're mentioning now. And you know, our listeners, our
viewers around the country, they often remind us to be
(08:43):
encouraged to keep going. Our voices are more important now
than ever, and you realize that how important that infrastructure is.
You mentioned the Sinclair Media Group, you mentioned the Washington Post,
you know, and who owns that infrastructure is critically important
(09:04):
now and we lean further into our relationship with like
Real Times Media, a lot of like black owned newspapers
around the country because you know, as source material a
but also as UH partners and ensuring that we are
strengthened that they are strengthened, because you realize how vulnerable
(09:24):
you are when there's a shift and the power is
concentrated UH into the hands of just a few people.
And so this is kind of an interesting development. But
we only have one story to tell, and it's our
story and it's the truth. And so you know, I
commend you on not not only enduring but but maintaining
(09:48):
and you know, having these important conversations and that you know,
that brings me to the next thing that I wanted
to ask you about, because I heard about the state
of the people tour. So for folks that don't know
myself included, talk to us about the State of the
People tour, and make sure you give the website too,
especially for our listeners that are kind of interested in
(10:09):
staying plugged into something that is a little bit more accurate,
a little less biased.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yeah, and I'll just to your previous point. I want
to note that you know, id B. Wells was operating
as an independent black woman journalist at a time when
the media was essentially controlled by two men and William
randolf Hurst, and when the white media refused to report
on lynchings in any other way than to say that
the dead man, woman or child that was lynched committed
(10:34):
a crime with there was again no due process.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
So there's a history of this, and you know it is.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Really critical, you know, now more than ever that we strengthened.
You know, there are thousands of black, independent black newspapers,
but they are you know, withering away in terms of
support from the public and then our access to you know,
being able to have a wider audience as you all
are able to do through syndication that also is in
many ways dependent on corporate erica.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Right, and if you.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Look at the place where our creators, Black creators have
had the most access.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
It's been through social media. It's been through YouTube and.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
TikTok and Instagram, and companies like Meta are also bending
the need of Trump gave a million dollars to the inauguration.
You know, TikTok suddenly put out a blast to every
single person who owns TikTok and uses it in the
United States, glorifying Donald Trump for not following the Supreme
Court order to make them be sold right and for
supposedly saving TikTok when he's the one who created the
(11:29):
crisis in the first place. So you're seeing the social media.
You know, there used to be a thing called black Twitter.
Black twitter is what built twitter. Twitter would have been
nothing without black people making it popular. And yet black
people own none of that ip that the content was
not owned by anyone. They were just giving that content
to previously Jack and then Elon Musk for free. So
(11:50):
we really have to be cognizant. I think as a
people of not only where we're getting our information, how
to avoid disinformation, and how to share information amongst ourselves
in a way that can be authentic, Which brings me
to the State of the People tour on the night
of the It wasn't really a State of the Union.
It was technically a joint addressed to Congress that Donald
(12:10):
Trump February. There were a group of us who are
a combination of activists, you know, and people like Angela Rai,
who used to be the chief counsel to the Congressional
of Black Caucus and who's now a podcaster and activist
in her own right, Lolo Smith. There are a bunch
of people the Advancement Project, you know, Rashad Robinson up
(12:34):
formerly of Color of Change. Just a bunch of us
decided that we were going to do a twenty four
hour live stream across all our platforms. So I co
host a podcast called Read This Read That. We streamed
it on the Read This Read That YouTube channel, it
was streamed on, you know, Mark Thompson's channel, and all
of us just live streamed together twenty four hours of
(12:54):
content in which we as black creators and an activists
and speakers and media people all came together. And by
the way, these were black folk who generally had never
worked together before. Some of us didn't even know each
other personally. But you know how you know, white people
assume all black people know each other. We all know
each other, we do, right, And so we all came together,
people who didn't even really know each other, had never
(13:16):
worked with each other before livestream twenty four hours of
content in which we just talked among ourselves about what
we need in our community, about.
Speaker 2 (13:23):
What the state of the Union is for us.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
And so out of that came this idea that we
needed to take that live stream that over a million
people watched on these collective all common channels, YouTube, Instagram, etc.
And decided to take that on the road. So the
Stay of the People Tour. It was a very fast
put together by Angela and some other folks. And the
idea of it is to go into ten communities, really twelve,
(13:50):
because Rowley and Durham are two different places. Birmingham and Montgomery,
both in Alabama, but ten very heavily black cities Detroit,
New Orleans, Newark, New Jersey, Los Angeles, California, Durham, you know,
sort of all over the country and go and do
two things. Number One, find out what people need. Because
(14:13):
one of the things that I think is generally a
problem is that a lot of us do a lot
of talking about what people should do and not a
lot of asking what people want.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yeah, exactly right, And so I think for our community.
And a lot of people didn't vote.
Speaker 3 (14:27):
But a lot of people didn't vote mostly because they
didn't know the issues, weren't paying attention, weren't really read in,
and really weren't sure that voting does anything for them.
Even voting for Obama, it didn't feel like it did
anything for them. So going in and saying hey, register
to vote or you know, that's not gonna help anymore.
We need to just ask people what they want, ask
people what they need, what would make their lives better,
provide services, offer assistance where we can. And then the
(14:49):
second piece is to rally people's spirits. Because Hit Strategies,
which is a really terrific black owned polling firm, did
some really scary data after the twenty twenty four election
that found that Black Americans have not felt this disempowered
for a generation. We are seeing generational sense of disempowerment
among black people after the failure of Kamala Hairs to win.
(15:12):
So we need to reverse that by letting people feel empowered,
feel community, feel a sense of community, and also to
do these field hearings to find out what people need
and what they want.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
So we're going to twelve cities.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
We started in Atlanta and started by delivering food to
seniors and then rallied folks together and had a bunch
of smaller group conversations, including a land giveaway, you name it,
and we're going to take that on the road. And
so that's what the State of the People Tour is.
And you can register for your city and find out
what cities were coming to and you can do that
(15:44):
at State of the PPL dot com State of THEPPL
dot Com and that's also on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
Ramses and not have to figure out how to get
to one of these cities. Because that definitely sounds like
something that we'd like to be a part of and
support you in any way that we can. You kind
of touched on some of this already, so I want
to kind of bring it back to you. Trump is
dominating headlines with several different initiatives that like muzzle Velocity,
(16:14):
just there's something every day. Rams and I were discussing
how everything seems to be aimed at tearing some group
of people down there. He's not proposing anything that seems
to help anyone, But all of these initiatives that he's
so happy to do his photo op with seem to
be targeted as some group and tearing these particular groups down.
(16:35):
As you were speaking to how black people feel so
disempowered and kind of hopeless, what are some things that
we once should be paying attention to and what are
some things that we can kind of grab a hold
to so we don't feel so hopeless and so disempowered,
like there's nothing that we can do but just accept
this new state that we're in and that that is
(16:58):
a really, as you couldmdgen difficult thing for even us
collectively to do in the space that we work in.
But for those who are even less connected and less
informed than we are, what are some things that we
can that we can share or say to people.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah, And you know the thing that so you know,
sort of frustrating for.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
You know, just watching it happen, is that when you
are attacking everything, as you said, everywhere, all at once,
and people are also just concerned about economic survival, right
because for a lot of folks, thing one is how
he's destroying the economy and their opportunity to just be
able to pay their bills and afford food. Right, that's
number one. I mean attacking the economy that you know
(17:41):
you can.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
You can. You can love or hate Joe Biden, okay,
and a lot of people don't like them.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
But the economy was stable and was growing and actually
was the best economy in the West after and during COVID.
But I think people didn't feel it in a lot
of ways, and so they roll the dice thinking that
Trump would improve the economy. A lot of us, a
lot of us that voted for him, and now they're
finding that they're just getting destroyed. Food prices are going
through the roof, gas prices are up. It's kind of
(18:08):
it's all going in the wrong direction, and it's making
it hard for people to live. So I think the
main thing that people are paying attention to is just
how hard he's making it to live. And when you're
feeling economically unstable, it's very difficult to have those strength
and the time on your hands and the will to
fight everything else. So the challenge is number one. We
(18:31):
need to start focusing on how to get resources into
our communities to make sure our people are not hungry,
are not evicted, don't lose their health care, like focusing
on those local issues to keep our people alive. Frankly,
in this moment, I think that's number one, because you
can't focus on everything, right, we can't stop him from
(18:53):
doing everything, but we need to really start thinking locally
and thinking in community terms. How do we keep people
in our communities alive and in their homes with a
roof over their heads and food on the table.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
That's number one.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
And then I think the second piece is if you
do have the capacity to broaden out and do more
the things that he's attacking that in the end are
really going to affect us. Number one, this attempt to
attack birthright citizenship. Know that that's you know, I'm a
daughter of immigrants, so that definitely affects if you're a
first generation immigrant right, or if you're an immigrant yourself.
(19:27):
But it also affects if you're an African American because
the only reason black folks have citizenship at all is
the Fourteenth Amendment, because after you know, during enslavement, black
people were not considered to the citizens of the United States.
The dread Scott case said that black people were not
citizens and had no rights. That whites were bound to respect.
It was a fourteenth Amendment that made black people's citizens.
(19:48):
If you undermine the fourteenth Amendment, there's almost nothing you
can't do to us. This man is already his administration
is regime as I call it, has already deported American citizens.
That's the thing that's already happened, including American citizen children,
one with cancer, a seven year old.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
So they've already done it, and they've done it to
brown people.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
But we know that they always get to us eventually,
So we actually have to start paying attention. As angry
as a lot of black folks are with the brown
people who voted for Trump, you need to watch that
because we're on the list. Whatever they do to them,
they're eventually going to want to do to us. Now,
can they deport where are they going to deport us to?
I don't know, Mississippi right, Bigger you can't. But they're
not deporting people to where they come from. They're deporting
(20:28):
people to a foreign prison that we're paying to take them.
And Donald Trump said on an open mic to Nai Bukelly,
who is the president of El Salvador and calls himself
the world's most popular Dictator Trump said to him, the
homegrowns are next. Homegrowns are next. What does that mean?
Speaker 2 (20:48):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Maybe it means they're going to try to find some
first generation Brown people and send them to prison.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Or maybe that means anyone in a disfavored group.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
And there's no group more disfai than us, So I
think we need to really pay.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Attention to that.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
I think the third thing, as much as voting doesn't
solve everything, this Save Act is a problem because if
they pass it, it's going to make it much harder
for us to vote. They're building things into that bill
that are designed to make it harder for women and
people of color to vote. I just recently, I just
got off this morning a public Religion Research Institute presentation
(21:25):
of their latest polling. It's one of the largest polling
organizations in the country. They pulled five thousand people. It's
a big sample poll with a one point seven percent
margin of error. White Christians, white Evangelical Christians stand alone
in fervently favoring everything Donald Trump, Doge, and Elon Musk
are doing, including them taking our data. They had to
(21:48):
stand in favor of having concentration camps in America to
put quote unquote illegal immigrants in. They believe in white
replacement theory biomajority, and they believe that it is white
Christians who are being discriminated against, not anyone else, and
so they want to end any programs that favor people
of color. This attack that feels like it may be
(22:10):
on somebody else is on us. So unfortunately, if we
have the bandwidth beyond saving ourselves and saving our communities
from economic harm immediately, we do need to start thinking
about what this man is doing to undermine the democracy
because we got nowhere else to go but here and
potentially to a foreign prison.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Yeah, you know, it's that's I was watching something that
kind of spoke to that.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Dynamic in you know, Middle America.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
We'll call them like, you know, those those reliably red states,
you know, God's Country or however you want to call it,
And you're right, those those people are the most likely
to believe conspiracy theories. They're the most likely to support
Donald Trump and whatever he does, giving him the powers
(23:02):
of a king essentially. They're the most likely to be racist,
They're the most likely to consume propaganda, they're the most like,
you know, there's a whole list, and they fail on
all of these like critical you know, uh headings. You know,
under underneath all these critical elements that are important to
(23:27):
a reasonably informed voter base, they're the most likely to
ignore harms, things that will harm their own communities and
shape their own outcomes negatively in order to.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
What they what they feel is protect their.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
Long term interests and their long term interests in their
minds aligned with those of exceptionally wealthy white Christian men
who were born healthy, uh and straight. And so, you know,
that's a problem that we've found. But often when we
try to engage, you know, people that that feel that way,
(24:07):
there's a pushback. And the pushback is that, well, look,
these people are not racist. They're not racist. They just
want everything fair. They don't believe in white privilege. You know,
if they if what is white privilege, they just cannot
conceptualize that they were born with anything extra. And one
(24:29):
of the things that we try to say, and i'd
love to get your thoughts on just kind of this
whole group of people as it relates to people who
try to engage and people that try to inform them,
one of the things that we say is white privilege
is being able to be you know, born and run
your race from the starting line.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
If you get to start with zero, that's white privilege.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
You know, anything else is being born with a strike
against you, essentially, and you have to work a little harder.
You may may have some hurdles on your lap where
you know, a person who was born that straight, Christian,
healthy white man gets to just run a fair race
and if we catch up to you, I think that
that kind of attacks your concept of white superiority must
(25:15):
be buried somewhere in your head. Please share your thoughts
on you know how challenging this has been to engage
this community, or maybe some strategies you know, or ways
around it perhaps.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Okay, So you know, I would say that for those
who believe in their minds, and I think that most
people who are MAGA who support Donald Trump, they don't
think of themselves as racist. Yeah, and would be quite
offended by the idea that anyone thinks they're racist. And
(25:51):
what they'll often say is, as you did, they just
want everything to be fair.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
But with the data show.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
What the data shows, including this new data, the Pew
Research data, the PRII data you name, it is that
only white Americans agree in a majority with the following statement,
discrimination against white people and discrimination against white Christians is
(26:24):
as bad as discrimination is against other people. No other
group agrees with that. They're the only group that views
discrimination in their mind against white people and discrimination, I
should say, against Christians generally, So discrimination against Christians and
discrimination against whites is as bad as it's been against
(26:46):
other people. In a country where black people were enslaved,
where there was an Asian Exclusion Act, where non white
immigrants were banned from the country in the nineteen twenties
and could not get jobs, there were signs held up
that used to say no Jews, no Cubans, no blacks.
(27:07):
There have never been signs in America that say no Whites,
no Christians. And yet only white people, white Christians, not
even just all whites, but white Christians. Because white unaligned
folks don't agree with this. White Christians are alone in
the polling in a majority, and I'm talking about two
thirds of them believe that there is rampant discrimination against
(27:32):
white people and against Christians. And also only white Evangelicals,
white Mormons, white Catholics, white Christians in general in a
majority believe right that Donald Trump should be given all
the powers he needs in order to set the country right,
(27:55):
and that diversity programs and that diversity in general is
more harmful than helpful to the country.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
There is no other group that believes that.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
So, what I would challenge white Americans to do is
ask yourself, why do only white people believe that.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
So?
Speaker 3 (28:12):
And back off from the question of whether you yourself
are racist? As a white person, can you explain why
white Americans are alone in these belief systems, why no
other group sees it. The sense of victimization, the sense
that white people are being victimized by immigration, victimized by diversity, equity,
(28:32):
and inclusion, and also that elections are being stolen from them.
Speaker 2 (28:38):
No other group agrees with that, no other group. They're
the only ones.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
If white Americans went into were beamed up into space
like you know, Scotty beamed them up to to the enterprise,
and they were all the earth, no Republican would ever
be elected in the United States. Again, because only white
Americans vote in a majority for Republicans. Ask they should
ask themselves why every other group is over here and
(29:03):
they're over here. Some thing's going on and you can't
find any other factor.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Sorry, this is my dog.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
You can't find any other factor that is relevant when
you peel away all the other factors economic condition, educational attainment.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
No other factor explains it, but race.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
And all of the islands that white Christians exist on ideologically,
you can't align them with anything else income, region, age,
race is the only one in which they all align.
So I would just challenge people who are white to
ask themselves why that is if it is not about
(29:48):
a sense that white people guard their superior condition in
the original Constitution and believe that this country was created.
Speaker 4 (29:59):
For You know, we often find when trying to have
these types of conversations that we are not dealing with
the same facts. We are not living in the same reality,
which becomes the non starter. Like right at the beginning
of the conversation, we realize, Okay, the facts and the
(30:23):
truth cannot be two sided. There's no two sets of
facts that mean the same thing. There are no two
realities or two truths. But as you just explained, when
dealing with people, especially specifically MAGA Trump supporters, who I
think identify a piece of themselves in him, so they
end up defending themselves while trying to defend him.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
Joy.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
How do we have these conversations when we can't start
from the same place. What are some tools that we
can use to even try for our neighbors, for a
family member that thanksgiving, for those who just are contrarian
in nature, What are some starting points to try to
get us at least back to the same set of
(31:10):
facts and living in the same reality.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
I think part of the problem is it's hard to
do that because, as I have observed trump Ism, I
no longer view it as a political ideology. I view
it as essentially a religion, a religion that has in
many ways replaced traditional Christianity and become a version a
(31:34):
sect of Christianity, because again, white Catholics, Evangelicals, Protestants, and
people who are Latter day Saints all line up together
on one side for the party that is against immigration,
against feeding the poor, against helping the sick.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Esus stood for correct.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
If you just listen to the red letters in the Bible,
it states that we and actually the pope who just died,
Pope Francis his last speech, his last you know, incyclicals
to his public, was that we must care for the
immigrant and the poor. He named himself, Francis, after Saint
Francis of a CCD patron of the poor, patron saying
(32:24):
of the poor. There's never been a previous Pope Francis.
And there's a reason for that that no pope, you know,
in their gilded you know fancy, you know, silk slippers,
wanted to be associated with me, you know, Saint Francis
until him and he said he would say, I am
of the poor and the poor army, I.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Am of them.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Right, And Christians in America, Evangelical Christians, disagree with that.
They disagree with the red letters of Jesus. So what
I tend to think is it's a religion. I couldn't
talk someone out of being a Buddhist if I tried,
and I wouldn't try. So I don't try to talk
people out of mechanism because I think it's a religion,
and I can't talk people out of their religion. But
what I do think that is useful when you're talking
(33:01):
to people who are aligned with him, it's just ask
them some very simple questions and ask and keep asking
and drilling into the facts they think are true. When
they say tariffs are going to make the economy better
say why, how, well, because the foreign government's going to
pay them. Really, because when the importer brings them in,
(33:24):
the importer has to pay those tariffs. Right, how does
the country get involved in that? That sent them that
they're not involved, and just keep making them justify what
they're doing. I think at a certain point you see
a lot of these people do this on TikTok where
they try to get mag of people to explain the
things they believe.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, and they generally.
Speaker 3 (33:40):
Can't, they can't support it. Just let them try and
see and see if that breaks the spell.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
I recognize and have for some time that, you know,
we're in a challenging place, but there's this sense of.
Speaker 2 (33:56):
What should we focus on? What first? What's the most
important thing?
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Obviously we've talked about Donald Trump himself and the strategy
of his regime.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
I like that word.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
We've talked about white evangelicals and and how they feel
as though the country is being taken from them specifically,
and that they are being treated unfairly. We've talked about
we've touched on, you know, maybe the strategies that that
(34:30):
democrats should you know consider, you know, using I know
that you're doing it with the with the tour. But
you know, it's it's not inconceivable to to see Democrats
implementing something similar.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Just asking people what do you want?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
And you know, this conversation obviously is a lot bigger
than today's episode. But I think that you know, just
coming from your your mind and your vantage point, this
question could certainly at minimum be interesting, you know, to
get your response, but for a lot of people it
could you know, give them a sense of Okay, here's
(35:06):
what we should be focusing on. So I'll ask if
you had a magic wand and you could make an
instant change to I'm not going to ask about the country,
because obviously I think I know what that answer would be.
But if you could make an instant change, let's say
to the Democratic Party, what would you change about the
(35:29):
Democratic Party that you think would would lead to better
outcomes not just for Democrats but for the country.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Oh, that's a long conversation. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Having worked in Democratic campaign politics, I think the Democratic
Party has a lot of problems, sure, and I would
I would point to I'll just point to two that
I think are really big. I think one of them
is democrats general refusal to embrace the base they have,
(36:04):
rather than coveting the base Republicans have. I think, in general,
my experience with the Democratic Party is that their base
is multiracial. It's heavily black. Democrats really rely on black
voters and on brown voters, but they really want white voters.
They really really want white working class voters back, and
(36:29):
that has caused them to fixate on those voters almost
to the exclusion of everyone else, to make assumptions about
black and brown and young voters and aapi voters that
are not supported by evidence.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
They just assume the blacks will come out and vote,
especially for Kamala Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
Correct, and so yeah, percentage wise they will. But there's
also a third person always in every race, and it's
called the couch. And in this race, millions of us
chose the couch. Millions of young voters chose the couch.
Thirty percent of Americans voted for Kamala Harris, thirty one
(37:11):
percent voted for Donald Trump.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
The rest voted for the couch. That's a problem.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
The pri polls show that a third of the voters
who chose not to vote in the last election now
regret their vote, and a majority of those who did
not vote in the last election. This is across all races,
and who regret their vote. About seventy percent of them
believe Donald Trump is a dictator. So there is a
(37:39):
pool of voters out there who you could pull off
the couch if you would.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Just focus on them and ask them for their votes.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
The second issue I have with the Democratic Party is
that they are also very married to neoliberal economics. You
hear Democrats talk a lot about the middle class, the
middle class, to the middle class, the middle class, the middle
class is shrinking. A lot of their voters are not
middle class, they're barely middle class, or working class, or
or Democrats ignore them completely.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
They don't talk about them.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
They only talk about this mythical middle class, and they
focus their economic ideas on this mythical middle class. College
educated and college educated, people whose kids go to college,
people who themselves went to college or have PhDs, people
watch MSNBC.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
That is a part of the electorate.
Speaker 3 (38:27):
But in America, only about at maximum forty percent of
Americans have college degrees, and that's only in about twenty
two states. In the rest of the states, fewer than
thirty percent of Americans have college degrees. College entertainment is
not a majority position.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
Yeah, if I may, I want to make sure that
I interject this and qu don't let me jump in
front of you. But I heard something said recently. I
think that the gentleman's name is doctor Roy Casa Granda,
if I'm not mistaken, that's his name. But he said
something that was so potent, and he said that the
difference between middle class and poor is essentially it's just
(39:03):
stable housing. And so I think it's it's important to
kind of help illuminate the point that you're making in
terms of how the middle class is shrinking and what
we would typically conceive of as middle class that is
very much a myth nowadays.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
And so yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
For folks to hyperfixiate on the mythical middle middle class
ignores the reality of our current predicament. And they're they're
playing politics as usual, and this is not the state
of plan anymore.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
So so continue.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Absolutely no, and and and you're and you're absolutely right
in that if you only focus on the middle class
and suburban college educated voters and you're going for the suburbs,
will the poor and the working class include rural people,
not all of them are white. That includes people who,
as you said, have unstable housing. That includes people who
are one paycheck away from poverty, people who are using
(39:56):
payday loans to pay for groceries, which is an increasing phenomenon.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Democrats don't talk about that. They don't talk like that.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
You know who talks about the working class Republicans, and
they don't even care about the working class. They could
give it him. They only care about the super rich.
But they talk like they care about the working class.
And the third thing I would say about Democrats that
is a problem, if we had to have three big diagnoses,
it is their fervent defense of the system. Democrats are
systems people, and they insist that what we must do
(40:25):
is defend democracy, defend the system.
Speaker 2 (40:27):
Well, the system doesn't.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Work for a lot of people, and so when you're
a person defending the system, you are essentially rejecting people
in your own base who think the system is failing
and who voting for even Barack Obama did nothing for them.
They didn't get anything materially from it, Whereas when Donald
Trump got elected, in their mind, they got a check,
(40:49):
even though the check was from Nancy Pelosi. But the
Democrats weren't smart enough to put the Donald Trump put on.
So they think Trump is a check. They think Trump
eagles checks. I'm arouving your converse with a United States
senatorial candidate who said, well, what should I be saying?
And I said, cut all the rest of your speech
out and just say checks. Let's say check works. That's
(41:11):
what people need.
Speaker 4 (41:14):
You spoke about college educated, and immediately what popped into
my head was the dismantling of the Department of Education,
the other side trying to rewrite or erase our history
and major institutions of higher learning kind of bending the
(41:34):
knee preemptively to the wishes of this administration and the
newly re elected president. Your alma mater, however, made the
news for some different reasons recently. As a Harvard graduate,
tell us a little bit about your thoughts of Harvard
to just not bow to that pressure that the Trump
(41:57):
administration is kind of blanketing all institutions of higher learning with.
Speaker 3 (42:03):
I was very pleasantly surprised. I was very proud of Harvard,
and I haven't said that very often since I graduated
inteen ninety one Harvard. You know, I took ten at Harvard.
Harvard is not a liberal institution. The idea it's liberal
is kind of ridiculous. It's full of very rich people.
Legacies are about forty three percent of the admittees who
just get there because the granddaddy went there and they're
(42:24):
super rich, and they have named some of the buildings
are named after him. Harvard teaches neoliberal economics and nothing else.
They teach against equity and inclusion. They're just not liberal.
But in this case, they are one hundred and forty
years older than the United States, and they have a
fifty three billion dollar endowment, and they're not going to
be told what to do by a mere president of
(42:44):
the United States, who, in their mind is an ephemeral
figure who will be out in four years or maybe
eight or maybe twelve or until he dies or guy.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
So I'm proud of Harvard, and I wish more institutions.
I think Columbia was of the opposite and abject failure.
Didn't defend their students who are being deported without due process,
didn't defend democracy, and it bent the knee. So I'm
hoping that Harvard and also the Big ten. I'll give
the big ten colleges there due that they're standing up
(43:14):
to him. I think any way that people are standing
up to Trump in large ways are small, big ups.
To Jalen Hurts, I'm about to be an Eagles fan
for life now because that way, that wasn't even my team.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
But he's like, yeah, I got.
Speaker 3 (43:25):
Other things to do than to go stand around with
Donald Trump, you know, and I'm not doing it.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yeah. I liked that, couldn't cur I'm with that. I
like that absolutely. I know that.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
We're short on time, but I wanted to make sure
that we ask you about this because you know, you've
had a lot to say about, you know, the boycotting
of Target, and you know, just the resistance. You know,
we talked about obviously Harvard and the Big ten U
and I applaud them as well, them getting together and
figuring out ways to resist Donald Trump. But that's as
people as individuals who can choose to shop here to
(44:01):
shop there, you know, talk to us about maybe and
talk to our listeners. I should say about maybe the
long term strategy of boycotts and how you see them
as having the potential to shape political outcomes.
Speaker 3 (44:17):
Yeah, what I would say is that, you know, I'm
a student of the apartheid movement in South Africa, and
the way that eventually South Africans, Black South Africans broke
apartheid was through general strikes. It was by making the
country ungovernable and economically unsound. And that was through a
combination of encouraging divestment and boycott externally and using general
(44:42):
strikes and economic resistance internally. And that is the way
you ultimately can break autocracy and in our country. I
just wrote a book about Medgar Everson Marley Evers Williams,
and one of the ways that Medgar fought against autocracy
here was to encourage people to use boycotts and to
(45:04):
use boycotts to break the autocracy in Mississippi. And what
he would say is that not everyone has got the
capacity to march, or has got the courage to march,
or has got the courage to engage in civic activism,
because it's risky to go out there and put yourself
in the you know what, the police and the authorities.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
But everyone can do a little something.
Speaker 3 (45:26):
He launched his boycott against the Jackson retailers who would
not respect black customers by saying and he launched it
during Easter, and he said, rather than go and buy
your new Easter outfit this year, Maybe make an outfit
or where what you wore last year. Just refuse to
shop when you're not respected. And I believe that Meger
was right. I would not set foot in a store
(45:47):
that treated me with disrespect. And Harvard treated our community
with disrespect. They don't deserve our dollars. Walmart did the
same thing. All of these companies, Amazon, Jeff Bezos, these
companies that have said we don't want diversity, then fine,
you don't have to have diversity in your customers either.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
Ooh.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
That is to me, the small thing we can each do.
We can just choose to shop elsewhere, choose not to
hand our money to people who would bow down to
a wanna be dictator. If you can just do that
little thing, you are already doing the activism that's possible
for you, and you are already doing something heroic for yourself,
(46:26):
your community, your dignity, and your country.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Joyanne Red.
Speaker 4 (46:30):
We already express to you that you are literally a
superhero to us. Our listeners, we assume and I'm not
even assume, and I know how they feel, are going
to be just as excited to hear your voice as
we are to be having this conversation with you, catch
us all up on what's next for you, how we
(46:53):
can keep what with you, social media websites, whatever that is.
Because I was talking to a great friend of ours,
Jamail Hill, who loves you to life. Uh, And we
just all want to be able to show up for you,
specifically in this moment and moving forward and the best
way that we can.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
So how do we support you? How do we keep
up with you?
Speaker 4 (47:16):
Besides Ramses and I crashing this tour and showing up
to give you a hub. How can we all collectively
be a part of the Joyanne read movement?
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Well, I appreciate that, you know, Jamel Hill, that's my girl,
that is my Machete's sister and vacation buddy.
Speaker 2 (47:30):
So absolutely love her.
Speaker 3 (47:31):
And big up to Jamail who is fighting the good
fight in a tough atmosphere. She did that a y
which is a rough atmosphere. Yes, indeed, and one and
beat them at their own game.
Speaker 2 (47:43):
I am.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
I keep it real simple. Pretty much everything that I
do is at Joyanne Read. So I am at joy
and read on Instagram, I am at joy and read
on threads. I'm at joy and read on Blue Sky
and my sub stack is.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Joyanneread dot com.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
The only places it's a little bit different is on
TikTok and Facebook. I'm joy read official, and if you
subscribe to me on nread dot com, I do not
charge for subscriptions. You can just subscribe for free. The
only people that I charge a fee too is if
you want to comment to me because you're gonna troll me.
You're gonna have to put some coins in the bucket
you want to be a comment or you gotta pay
(48:20):
is free. I don't believe in paywalls. You guys can
just subscribe to my subsecon on joy andread dot com.
I try to post every day some kind of thought
or thing, and I will also be announcing there and
of course on Read This, Read That, my podcast with
Jackie Read my Sore Sister Cousin Friend, and I will
be letting folks know on those two forums when my
(48:40):
new show, which is going to be called The joy
Read Show, will be launching. So I am launching a
new show. Find out when I'm giving you all the
little sneak peek. The show is going to launch very
soon and I'm going to make the announcement on Joynread
dot com and I'll read this read that.
Speaker 1 (48:53):
Well, listen, we will, we will take it, and we
will continue to watch you you, to watch you shine
and support you however we can, as Q mentioned, So
with that in mind, I'd like to say thank you
again very much for taking time to come here and
talk to us, to share your insight with us, You're
brilliance with us, and to obviously to make an announcement
(49:16):
on your forthcoming show and how people can stay in
touch with you and hopefully become fans of you if
they haven't been before in the same way that we are.
So once again, today's guest is American political commentator, best
selling author, and television host Joy and Read.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Ramsey is and cute. Thank you all very much.
Speaker 3 (49:34):
Look as an old hip hop head, first of all,
I will take those CARDI B tickets.
Speaker 2 (49:37):
If you want to. And look, I'm look my theme.
Speaker 3 (49:44):
Song when I graduated from Harvard me and my best
friend shots to you. Unfortunately pass since then our theme
song was can I Kick It?
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Yes? You can? You? Can?
Speaker 3 (49:53):
You tipping the trial called quest? I'm a o G
hip hop fans. I appreciate y'all It's always great to
be with fellow hip hop fans.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
I appreciate
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