Transcripts For CSPAN2 Alicia Garza The Purpose Of Power 20240712

Post that changed the world ap created a movement. It read, black people, i love you, i love us. Our lives matter, black lives matter. That Movement Continues today and tonight, alicia and chris will discuss the importance of resistance and resilience and how they ground the work in a vision for collective humanity. We believe that everyday people are powerful enough to end the practices that are Holding Black people back and harming our country. And we Champion Solutions that move us forward. In the last two week we helped 6. 5 Million People take action for Racial Justice in our country and were thrilled to be partnering with one world for this conversation. Without further ado here is chris jackson, one worlds editor in chief to kick us off. Thank you for being with us here tonight. I cant imagine who id rather be talking to tonight than alicia garza, one of our countrys most influential activists and speaking particularly well at this moment. Before we start, i want to thank color of change for working on in project tonight and random house who have been so active in getting this all organized. Just like maybe for us to take a short moment of silence for the many tens of thousands of people who weve lost in this pandemic that were undergoing, people who have been dispro partial natalie black, brown, native, elderly and poor and also for all of those that weve lost to racially motivated violence, particularly racially motivated violence in the name of the state. Just going to call out three names tonight. Ahm ahmed arbery, corresponda taylor, and george floyd. Join me for a sort moment of silence. Begin. [moment of silence] and now id like to invite to our virtual stage alicia garza. Hey. Hey. So good to see you, alicia. So good to see you and its good to be seen. So i wanted to start our conversation out by going back a little bit. You know, i think of moments like this of being, you know, for a lot of people, obviously, very upsetting and jarring to us, but also, i think for a lot of people, moments of awakening, and i think about, you know, just in my own life growing up in new york in harlem in the 70s and 80s, how the consciousness probably developed most rapidly around some of the most traumatic moments of that coming of age and normally having to do with proximity to death. There were so many people who were murdered during that period in my neighborhood, but also so many people who we lost to Police Violence and those were the first times i was out on the street was to protest those deaths. And could you tell us a little about, i know, obviously, working on this book together for some time now and i know so much about your open story, but i think one of the interesting things that youve always been someone who has been driven toward activism, practically from childhood. There were inflection points like the murder of oscar grant in oakland that sort of drove and sort of accelerated your kind of commitment. Yeah, definitely. I mean, for me, i actually accumulate up in the Reproductive Justice Movement and got really politicized around the idea that young people, right, couldnt make good decisions what to do with our bodies. This was a time when bush number one and others were really pushing this narrative in this country around not only like a focus on the family narrative, but it was very much about kind of controlling womens bodies. Ap for me, you know, my mother had me and she didnt expect to have me alone and the thing that gave her options is that she had them. She would tell me as a young kid, sex makes babies and babies are expensive. I didnt get the birds and bees talks. It was when i was in college to be frank and politicized around social justice. At that time in the late 1990s, early 2000s, there was a lot happening in terms of the aftermath of uprisings that had shaped our entire country. You know, we all watched as rodney king was brutally beaten on video cameras which were not actually popular at that time. And then of course, if you fast forward, you fast forward to officer grant in my community, which is just a few blocks from my home. I remember coming home after a new years celebration and turning on the television after midnight and seeing that just three blocks from my house oscar grant had been shot in front of a train full of observers and just so happened that young person who was interning at an organization that i worked at was one of the people who caught the entire thing on camera, and it actually became a part of the movie. So there are these inflection points, youre right, where we start to understand that our lives are bigger than us, but we also understand that our lives are shaped by people other than that and we have an opportunity to decide if weng thats right, if we think thats fair. If they think the way our lives are shaped lead us toward wellness and dignity, humanity and wholeness or whether the way that our lives are being shaped are leading us towards punishment and criminalization and injustice and at each one of those inflection points we get to make a point who were going to be. For me at a young age, at 12 years old, i decided i was going to be somebody who not only tells different stories what young people are doing. No, teenagers are not running around having sex like crazy, but there are those of us who are in intimate relationships who are trying to figure out whats best for us and were being denied the information and resources you need to make decisions that work for us. Were being defied the access that we deserve, pressure and intimacy by somebody who frankly has had a whole different agenda about our bodies and our lives. Do we think thats right, if we think thats wrong, what are we going to do about it . For me i got politicized and active in the movement. And others might say, wow, thats a shame that they dont have access to what they need and then we come into moments like this where you cant move on with your life. Your everyday normal is interrupted by people who decide to take actions and even in those, who youre going to be and what youre going to contribute. Thats vale interesting. You know, part of what i think is a question kind of comes to me kickly in this moment and listening to your story and thinking about your story and thinking about my own life. We seem to go through the moments where there are these disruptions of visible movement activity, right . And you know, you talked about what happened . A series of events going back to may von martin and ferguson and so forth and now here we are again, are we just going to be aloof in or do you feel like with each one of those things were getting closer to something . Its such a good question, chris, in writing the book, are we going in a loop or moving forward . Right. I will say honestly the way i think about and look at history and look at the present and the connection between the two, were not going to circles per se where we end up right where we began. If anything, i would imagine that like a spiral, where youre moving in a circle and youre coming back, but youre not coming back from the place you started from. You can look where you started ap assess the gap in between. No, things are not the same now than they [inaudible] assess our strategies and that require us to frankly keep pushing forward. I know theres a lot [inaudible] black lives matter, people were saying all lives matter and that was the. Guest . Can you hang on one second, alicia. Can you hold on . Were having a little bit of a technical difficulty with your repeat the last thing you said again. Sure. Thank you. Totally, i was just saying that, you know, in 2013 and 2014, we were pariahs in terms of politics. People would say we would say black lives matter and people would say all lives matter and that was the most common response. We were not seen as a legitimate political force. We werent seen as a movement. We were seen as, you know, people who were radicals and even in our own communities, right, we were seen as people, for example, who were trying to move a gay agenda and interrupt a black agenda. Theres lots of ways in which were in such a different place now than we were then. And go ahead. I was going to say there is still work to be done. I dont want to paint a rosie picture here, i mean, frankly, we are still watching the extra judicial murders of black people on television because we capture them on cell phone cameras and its only when there is an outcry that there is any semblance of political will to address it. We are going in a circular pattern in relationship to had you we conceive of how we solve this problem once and for all. I do worry that just like in 2014 where we got body cameras as a result of protests, that ferguson leaders led in relationships to the murder of mike brown. Maybe today what we get is Better Change or nicer place, but fundamentally, theyre still a big challenge that were facing, which is, you know, what do we do about the role of Law Enforcement in our communities . Is it enough to have better training or to restrict their practices or do we actually need to narrow the focus in the role of Law Enforcement in the first place . Its an important conversation for america to have right now. For some its an uncomfortable one, but i can say seven years ago black lives matter made people uncomfortable and being uncomfortable is actually good for this country. People were uncomfortable when black people were fighting for the right to be enfranchised. People were uncomfortable when women were fighting for the right to be enfranchised and look where weve come, right . Now its not uncomfortable to believe that women should have the right to joet. Its not uncomfortable that black people dont have the right to vote. Does it mean we have those rates and were defending them as opposed to needing to create those rights. So, yeah, history is in the circular in that way. It is a spiral and i believe, really deeply and profoundly, that were closer than weve been before and that gives me hope. Well, that is actually an encouraging thought. You know, you have this thing in the book where you talk about you reference a lot this theory about, you know, changing common sense, when you change the common sense, the basic premise that society operates from and you can grow something new and, you know, today about Minneapolis Police department or the city council in minneapolis talking about literally, you know, eliminating this and rebuilding something in its place, which was unimaginable that a major city would be talking about that. Does that kind of thing give you, you know, a sense of being a possibility of what might come . Absolutely. I mean, i woke up and i saw that article and it was the first thing i read when i opened my eyes this morning and all i keep saying to myself is what a time to be alive, right . The fact that the Minneapolis City Council is not only considering redistributing funds so that we dont address needs that communities have with police who arent equipped to address those needs is incredible and its a conversation that organizers and advocates have been pushing for the better part of 20 years. So, i can tell you what a time to be alive. I can also say, i keep seeing things like, you know, the School Districts in minneapolis saying theyre ending their contracts with police, and what that means for, you know, a decade of having police and schools and now to say were not going to do that is very, very powerful. Similarly in los angeles theyre moving some of the same proposals. We should remember when we see things like this, it is the result of organizing. It is the result of the pressure that protest builds on people to have the political will and the courage to examine new ways of operating. And that is fundamentally what movements can accomplish and we shouldnt expect that every movement has, you know, a strategy on a blueprint that they can hand to you and you can plug into. So much of what movements do is respond to changing conditions, takes the pulse of what communities long for, but also, what communities are scared of, right, and push the envelope to get closer to what it is that we deserve. So, were watching this in realtime and its fundamentally incredible and we must, must, must give most credit to the organizers in that city who have really helped to create the conditions to make sh happen and then have engaged us to work with them to help amplify it. Thats really just a blessing. And what you think what i think you have to offer particularly in your book, but also in the model of your life is this question of how do you, you know, the original title for your book was Something Like the human movement, but how is it you can take something from being a germ of an idea as it was in 2014 and like you said, 20 years before that, when people have been working forward this kind of reform, how do you keep the pressure on . How do you build it from being just like a kind of moment to being a movement . Well, there is a science and an art and you know, from the time when patrice and opal and i created the black lives matter network, right, which started from a series of social media platforms and grew into a network with chapters all over the world. We didnt have a mode map. We relied on instinct and on and what is moving in the world. I hope that doesnt sound amorphous, thats the secret sauce, who youre in relationship to, what theyre working on and what youre working on. Also, frankly, what time it is in the country, right . And your willingness to keep pushing things toward. We tried so many things. We, you know, held Conference Calls, National Conference calls for people to talk about issue that were of interest for that moment. Our first gathering, frankly, was a Conference Call that we pulled together after the mcbride was convicted of murder. We know of vigilante murder and Police Murder that often times the aggressors are not held accountable and in this particular case ted wafer was held responsibility and responsible and hes in jail. And dream going to get maed at me, not only a writer, but also an organizationer and you know, she worked with people in michigan to make sure that mcbrides death would not go unaccounted for and after that we held a conversation because frankly, so many of us believed that justice comes from people going to jail and while that might make us feel better, right, might make us feel like theyre feeling what were feeling the fact of the matter is prisons and jails are terrible places to be. And from that i think we start to build a reputation of creating spaces for people to connect not only online but then looking at the 2014 when mike brown was killed, patrice and darnell had a great idea to organize a freedom ride to ferguson, another way for people to connect directly to what is happening on the ground. Not only was it intended for people to be able to connect and offer support but there was also a strategic aspect to it. Frankly one of the things we heard a lot was Mainstream Media was telling their own story of what was happening in ferguson. They were telling stories of looters and rioters and unrest and all the images you would see on tv were of tanks and rubber bullets and tear gas. We organize black media to go to ferguson and to be able to tell that story from a black perspective which made a difference in terms of how the story began to be told from that point forward. Without getting too far into the ferguson conversation because ferguson leaders need to tell that story so i am winking and nodding at you that might be the next book from one world but i will say that we let ferguson and didnt think were going to go back but the people who came said we want to keep organizing. They force us to form chapters. We were like we are not prepared for this, and they are like that we are here you already have run your mouth, you created this umbrella so lets go. I walked that story out to say that theres no recipe here. Its really about instinct. Its about network. Its about timing and, frankly, its about being able to move when you just know its right. One of the things that is so beautiful about the way you talk about movements and activism is come in the book, this is not to plug the book can but you do talk about this thats okay. You know, for you activism was fundamentally a way to connect to other people which i thought was a beautiful way to begin the story. Its not about some big abstract political this is how we connect and we can start to share a vision for a world we want to bring into being. But that connection cant just happen online, although we are doing a lot of connecting online right now but its interesting its not online that the moon is happening now. Even under the cloud of this pandemic, people filling the need to go in the street and see each other and be with each other in march together. What is the special sauce of connection . That includes things like youve done in your life like knock on doors, go in peoples homes, touch them, hear them, sit with them and listen to them. How does it make a big difference as opposed to just, its not to dismiss what what n do online or through social media but what is that human component like and support . Everybody longs for connection. That is what makes us human literally. We cant live in isolation. And, in fact, when we put people in isolation you see folks deteriorate. When you hear stories of people who are in solitary confinement they tell you that literally they start to deteriorate because we as human beings depend on connections to survive. It is how we read the world and one another. Making sense of this moment, organizing is fundamentally rooted in connection, and when i was being trained as an organized i was always told organizing wasnt about getting somebody to get involved in your campaign. It wasnt about getting somebody to your slogan. It was fundamentally about relationships and everything moves at the speed of relationship. Ill give you an example. When i was coming up in organizing the only way i could get people to do something that was outside of their comfort zone was to spend many hours on their front porch, at the kids recitals, meeting their friends at the Kitchen Table while they were making dinner after a long day of work. People need to know they can trust you and, frankly, when we look at all big movements throughout history we notice a similar response. When we look at the last period of civil rights, people moved at the speed of relationships and that was both for connection but also for safety. In certain environments if people didnt know who your people were, they didnt mess with you. I can tell you my southern relatives are still the same way. They are like, yeah, but who are your are you people . Where you come from . Its a way for us to make sense of who you are also what your motives are. I think moving into this moment i think you saw people rush out of their homes in the midst of a global pandemic, because being isolated in your house while youre watching on television somebody who looks like you being brutally murdered while the officer looks into the camera while he was doing it, it makes you feel so incredibly alone and fearful and hopeless. And so why people poured into the street is be connected to the energy of other people who are sharing a similar experience. Every one of us who has experienced injustice in the world wonders if its only us or if other people have had that experience. Movements on the mentally bring together people who long for not feeling gas lit around the experiences that they have every day, that they know are wrong but they cant quite place why or who is responsible. Movements also give us an opportunity, a way to challenge and channel the anger, the isolation, that fear and the rage into something productive. Sometimes it becomes a law or a policy. Other times it becomes an ecosystem of organizations that are fighting back against the injustices and ways in which our communities are disenfranchised. When you look at organizations like the movement for black lives, you will see this is a beautiful, rich ecosystem of black organizations that are working together and independently to impact the lives of black people. In that coalition we sadly i can feel less alone, less helpless and with feel more powerful. When we feel powerful we take risks we would necessarily take alone. But the very nucleus of being able to go from why is this happening to me, too im willing to be someone who changes it, fundamentally requires connections and relationships. So interesting and it feels so true. I was out at a march yesterday and sort of watching whats going on like from a distance, very different from being in the middle of it and feeling that energy. Even the people who would hang out over the stoops and claim their pots, you just feel like youre not alone and thats the beginning of their sense of what you see, like feeling like theres some real power in this, its not just my feeling. Its a feeling that his network out and we can do something with the feeling, its powerful. That brings me to my next question, is how do we do something with that feeling . First of all, going back to your story, youll had to consider what is justice look like in this case . What does accountability look like right now for the people who are odyssey immediately responsible for this desk and we seem some these cases that hasnt the first level of canada hasnt happened but in a larger sense like larger sort of structure that we need to make accountable through this . How do we go from this moment to the level, that reckoning with the people who have the power . Im going to give a deeply unsatisfying answer, which is stay in the fight. We are in this moment where we had so much anguish, right, and we want the pain to stop now. The fact of the matter is these systems we are fighting are as old as the country, and they will take a while to undo. Theres times when we can speed up the progress of the project and there are times when the progress of that project really requires a methodical approach to changing what is possible politically, and you need to be able to do that in a range of ways. I could see do the right now ad tell you there is policies and we can enact right now that will stop police from the m. O. U. S chokehold or make it illegal for police to put their knee on somebodys neck as way to restrain thin. I could tell you theres things we can do to train police to be nicer police. But it wouldnt be being honest with you if i didnt say that many places already have those policies in place but they had no one to enforce them. We get, again come into this cyclical pattern of what i think is sometimes trying to find the shortest distance between a to be, rather than, or an or in an to, let me say, i dont think they are a contradiction here we should do stuff down to stop the bleeding for sure but if im trying to stop the bleeding and ive also broken several bones, i can put a a cast on but it doesnt mean that the bone doesnt mean the bone has healed and is going to take a while for the bone to heal and i might need to take a different approach for the bone to heal verses dealing with the cut on my finger. In this case when it comes to policing, i just have to be honest, like the reason that things are so bad in policing is because we asked police to do things they shouldnt be doing. We are asking police to be but Domestic Violence shelters, were asking police to be therapist. We are asking police to deal with people who were in crisis in terms of the Mental Health, and police are not trained to do that. In fact, sure, we could spenda bunch of Time Training people with badges and cons to respond differently to that, and maybe we should, but we also people whose actual profession is to do that work. The reason we dont have enough of those people in our team unity is not because we dont have enough trained people. Its actually because we have had government that is whittled away that safety net. Weve had a government that is whittled away that infrastructure in our communities and they have replaced it with control and surveillance, which actually ends up exacerbating the problem. If you actually limit what police do in our communities and how often they come into contact with our people and for what, that is the key to saving more lives, as long as you also invest on the other side in making sure theres a robust set of resources people can access, that they wont be criminalized for accessing also where you dont have the option for a mistake of trying to deal with a Mental Health crisis and you shoot someone. Therapists dont carry guns. The other tools they use and so we need to make sure that infrastructure is robust in our communities. We need to make sure that we could be calling police for things like petty shoplifting or we could also be dealing with whats underneath that which is somebody doesnt have what they need. For me when i hear people go, we cant just get rid of police, unlike sure, sure, i get where youre struggling and theres places where i struggle around this, too, but i want change as much as you do and i want us to believe that we deserve better than tinkering. We did body cameras. We have done commissions and task forces and blue ribbon panels. At the end of the day we have the answers but do we have the courage, do we have the courage to say actually were going to restore the role of government in our communities . Were going to enfranchise communities to be a part of the solution. We are also going to limit the ways in which we punish people for not having the things they need because we have created a society where that everybody can have the things they need to live well. Thats what i think we can be doing in this moment. One of the interesting things thats been popping up in the news over the last few days as people are starting think about what are the police . Its odd because weve had police for ever, and yet now for the first something people are starting to wonder what is this institution . Theres trying it makes you wonder what are we paying for, perhaps like an Occupying Army in certain neighborhoods. I want to quickly say were going to do a q a in a minute slick of questions theres a q a button down there. You can ask them. I feel like you were talking about what we are sometimes you use the second person when you said you can do about some of these things. That brings me to this question, because its hard to remember everything thats happening in 2024th because theyre so much that we have an election coming up in 2020. Being an oped that Stacey Abrams wrote in the times saying voting feels an adequate in our darkest moment and it did saying voting will not save us some harm but silence will surely than damn us all. What role do you think Electoral College pics has and what does it take to get to that point of accountability . I in somebody who believes that electoral politics is harm reduction. I came out as an organizer really hating politics and hating elections and feeling like all of this stuff is deeply rigged and not for us. I have come to think about it differently mostly because i fed people older than me, wiser than me who have handed tweaked my ear and been like hey hey, check this out. Actually elections do matter. You know, i believe that elections help us choose the terrain train we want to fight on and they help us choose the people who want to fight terrain. I never expect that the candidate that i support in very few cases is a candidate that i support somebody i want to have over for dinner, right . Or like build a deep relationship with. I do need them to do things for me and for my community. I believe that the process of making elected officials accountable to the people that they represent is fundamentally important for the future of this democracy. Thats why i i spend my time te days, i spend the majority of my time thinking about how to make black committees powerful in politics to my work at the black futures lab and the blacks for the future action fund. We spent a lot of time over the last two years listening deeply to black communities across the nation. We did the largest larger survf black people in america in 155 years. Largest we spent our time listening to the experiences that black people are having in the economy, in our democracy and in our society, and really getting ourselves clear about what other needs that need to be addressed from the mouths of our own people and how do we translate that into a fight for power in the electoral arena. Because of the fact of the matter is black people want what everybody wants. We want safety. We want dignity. We want to be treated as fully human, and want to have our needs met. There are so Many Americans who want the same thing, and for various reasons cant access that. But in order for us to be the kind of force that changes the balance of power in this country we have to be able to see ourselves as connected, and elections and electoral politics is one way we can do that. I also know that when it comes to elections in black communities, so often we are used as symbol rather than substance. Whether its politicians showing up on our doorstep and october when the election is in november, whether its the concerts that we cant rather than the town halls that are discussing policies to change the rules that are rigged in our communities, whether its the place of plate of Fried Chicken Bat Masterson shows up every time black folks get engaged. Theres all these ways in which frankly racism is deeply entrenched in our electoral system as well. Our work with the lab and action fund is not just centered around collecting data but using that aid in the service the building power. For example, we have a program where many called blacks to the ballot will be essentially created a black agenda for 2020 from the results of the Largest Survey black people in america. These are the things that across gender, across income, across ideology that black people across the nation can agree on in terms of solution. We are using that can motivate our communities to register to vote and to turn out. We have a hunch, right, that if we dont focus of so much on candidates but instead focus on what we need and forcing candidates to address the things that we need, that may be, right, maybe participation will be greater and larger and more robust because we are united around not just like talking points like rebuild the middle class or lift every voice of whatever nonsense they throughout today, and yes, i said it. But instead we are united around the rules we want shifted and have want to change the rules. And we have a way to determine who is with us and who is against us. If the people who we elect dont choose to move our agenda forward then we find elected officials who will are we become them ourselves. Thats the way i look at politics and thats i look at electoral organizing. Thats an important point and one of the things that excites me again about your work and your book as it describes that work, it talks about politics as i said a form of connection between people which i think is an arguably something we all want, as you said its on the middle to our species, the desire to connect with other people but also its work that can be joyful and creative and imaginative. Like thinking about the new world and one of the reasons why people sometimes turn away from politics is to feel like its just the grim work of reinforcing the status quo. Again, these moments of awakenings are potentially moments when you can fill that gap with imagination and say this is what we can be. I love the idea of this, of getting people to say like what are the things that are important to them and you can actually use your vote to get closer, not just to like for stalling disaster, which is also part of it, but its also to start to bring into gather the world that you want. Do you think we need to get a Different Group of people like running for office and at that level, not just voting but being involved in the electoral system that way . 100 . Ive been so energized i some of the folks that we have elected to really engage in politics in the very transformative way, whether its aoc or whether its our sister Ayanna Pressley or whether its people like Elizabeth Warren who probably never saw themselves as somebody who would be a senator but who worked to make inequality go away and realize there are people who are defending rigged rules every single day and the rocks at the catalyst much as we want or we can invade it. People like rashida tlaib, people like barbara lee whos been a politics, i dont hate her, but forever and got her start actually she was mentored by shirley shortages of her bus says bring your folding chair to the table. I just, i dont want people to take away from this that the only path to power is to become an elected official. Not all of us are cut out for every role but i do think its important if we want to change the way democracy functions that we put people in that democracy that can model what that looks like, i can model Accountable Leadership with integrity, that can model what it means to have a radical vision but also know how to get things done. I think we need many more aocs, many more press ladies. We need many more squats, many more people youre not afraid to say the way this country is set up is raid, and we have the power to change the rules that do we have the courage and do we have the will. Finish us how to do that. Ive been asked 1 million times to run. I dont think thats really my jam. I think im better in this role but i also encourage people to run and a help to grim people on how to run. I believe our people can be powerful insights of congress and city halls across the nation and also thank our people can be powerful in our communities, and those are not mutually exclusive. Thats a really beautiful thought. Thats what politics could potentially be. I have one more question im going to ask and then ill bring some questions from audience. We have quite a few flowing in. One of the things thats really special about your vision as you have laid it out here, theres a kind of discipline of inclusiveness defined in the way you talk about movements and talk about political change. You talk a lot about the necessity of Multiracial Movements, but you also talk about how at the heart of them all these movements, there needs to be a particular concern for black liberation as well as their being groups that are wholly devoted to black liberation where black people can Work Together for that purpose but also places we can all come together and, of course, working as you have with Domestic Workers so long, thats a true Multiracial Group that has come together to create real change some of the most vulnerable workers in the country, immigrants and black people from all over the world. I was curious what you would say about that tension between racial movements, also centering the need for black liberation and why it is you think those things can go together . Thats a good question and gives me the opportunity to talk about my squad at the alliance. Let me start off just by saying that if we understand antiblackness as the fulcrum around which White Supremacy operates, then we have a better understanding of why we need Multiracial Movements but one we also need black liberation movements. And why those movements need to be in relationship and in coordination, and they also need to be resourced and invested in equally. When you look at the history of Domestic Work, for example, Domestic Work is rooted in the legacy of slavery. This used to be work that was predominately done by black women, and black women who were enslaved. When you look at the conditions of Domestic Work, and Domestic Work sometimes is a term people dont understand so Domestic Workers literally work inside the home, or work that is taking care, helping to take care of aa family, helping to take care of children, helping to maintain household, helping to support and care for aging loved ones, right, or helping to support the independence of people with disabilities. These are folks who work inside the home to add additional capacity, right, to the family. That work used to be, as i said, black womens work. The conditions of the industry today are very much shaped by the condition that shaped the industry under slavery. You know, low pay, low wages, no contract or agreement, no benefits, no sick days off, no time with your family. Very loose rules or in the rules at all. I will say that we see those same conditions today, right, and if we were not investing in undoing the vestiges of dynamics that come out under slavery and were directed toward black people, then we dont have shot at changing the conditions that exist in industry today. I can tell you most Domestic Workers are not covered under many federal labor protections. Same thing with Agricultural Workers here is the reason is because those are racist compromise that excluded Agricultural Workers, excluded Domestic Workers who are largely lacked and brown from access to the things that most workers have access to now. Those exclusions, the racist exclusions continue today. If we are not dealing with the unique conditions under which our communities are attacked, the unique conditions under which our communities are disenfranchised, then we dont give ourselves enough leeway around the potential of what we can build. Having been an organized and Multiracial Movements for a long time, i can tell you i often feel alone and isolated in those movements because black folks, while there may be smatterings of us, there are not really legions of us in Multiracial Movements. I always ask myself, why is that . One of the answers that i have come to is about sometimes what we do in an attempt to build Multiracial Coalition or alliance is we try to flatten everybodys experiences as the same. They are not the same. We can walk around until were blue in the face and say we are all human but the fact of the matter is some of us are able to access humanity in in a differt way than others. It are movements can address that we cant hope to bring people to them. You just have to be honest about that. Also i believe we need Multiracial Movements in this country to win, and what im seeing across the nation is like making my heart lift and sang every single day because its not just black folks out there in the streets. Theres a lot of white folks, a lot of folks or latin x, a lot of folks will identify from the asian diaspora, and on and on. I want us to strengthen that. And then i remembered that part of what it means to strengthen Multiracial Movements is to make sure that all of us have the infrastructure we need to be able to fight back. One of the consequences after the less. If civil rights and certainly the period of black power is that our Community Power infrastructure was intentionally decimated in part by a government that was really intent on dismantling a very successful black Power Movement that was also Getting Energy and excitement and participation, multiracial he. Theres asian folks will tell you i was part of the panthers. Theres white folks at will tell you i was down with the panthers. We have a government sponsored programs that were intentionally designed to dismantle that level of unity, and while they did it they also dismantled the infrastructure that black communities have built to be powerful. We cant as black folks actually contribute to a Multiracial Movement if we ourselves are not organized. It we ourselves have not built the candidate of infrastructure that we need not just for ourselves but to be able to contribute to the larger project of structural change. So for me i fundamentally believe that there is a science to building Multiracial Movements, and some of it is about understanding how antiblackness functions within this movements. Some of it is about being careful about trying to flatten everyone into sameness rather than examining differences and how this differences are strategic to the project were trying to dismantle. And really how those movements can create a new model for how we see each other in our wholeness. Multiracial movements cannot be colorblind. We cannot do that thing where we say i dont care if your blue, green, purple, white or black. There are no purple peoples fries and no, no green people, but also want you to see all of me. I want you to see me and see me the way i want to be seen. The way i i want to be seen isa beautiful, courageous black person who loves the skin that i am in and is done a lot of work to get there. So rather than saying im standing with you, and by standing with you im not seeing you, tell me that you see me and that you were joined with me and that your committed to helping other people see me and helping you be seen, right, in the ways we determine for ourselves. That is the most fundamental component of what it means for us to build movements across difference. That is really beautiful. Im going to turn out to some of the questions were getting from our audience. Such a great answer to that question by the way. Because i was in a march yesterday and it was a mix of people, and it was very exciting to see i find myself excited to see that it was a mix of people who are all chanting together black lives matter. What youre describing about understanding, so many oppressions we deal with in this country are rooted in at the blackness, and he dont deal with at the blackness its hard to deal with any of these radiating issues, which identified that. You have a chance. And to see people understand that finally, sort of, is exciting. So heres some questions. Lets see here. This is an interesting one. What advice would you have you may not have any, some of these are questions you are not necessarily, you know, okay five. What is your response to people an interesting question, whether police in the family or even who are police themselves . Is there something you say and another listener talked about the kneeling that some police are doing at events and some people find that to be a little bit almost like a strange reenactment of the thing that were protesting. Of course happy with a very small number of police anyway. But anyway, what do you think about, is there a redemptive move that a policeman or a woman can, you know. Yes. [laughing] you know, chris, as you are asking that i was actually thinking about how lots of black people have police and our families. Of course. And the experience of policing and being in relationship to police i think is really fascinating. I hear this from white folks a lot, like what if, my uncle is a police officer, my dad, generations of my family have been police officers. Yeah, i get it and adjust harkin back to the notion that for black folks we have dealt with this tension for a long time. Law enforcement in our families and even they know, right, even the members of Law Enforcement and black families know, yes, there is a problem here. Different people have different ways of making sense of this by the dont think this is such a contradiction. I think when it rises to the level of becoming a contradiction is when we defend the profession and the role that it plays, because our relationship is so deep to the person in the profession. We need to be very clear that when we say defund police, we dont mean your dad doesnt matter. To say that policing as a profession, its not, its the profession. When i hear things like blue eyes matter, i do, i like chris because unlike look, thats something you choose to do. Being black is a way we are born and so they are already starting from very different fundamental places. But let me also say this. And people might be surprised to hear me say this, but again ive been in this game for a long time and i will tell you when you talk to Law Enforcement and you will have a conversation, like not like a conversation thats like to you hate the police or do you love the police . Like a conversation of what its like to do the job. Lots of people will tell you i got into this profession because i wanted to help people. I have met very few people who are in Law Enforcement who said i got into this profession because really want to mess people up, you know lex people come into it because we learned a a lease our protagonists in our communities and we have Learned Police our way to solve problems. People come to the profession because want to be part of solving problems they see in their communities. They want to be part of protecting people and making people feel safe against threats they may perceive in their community. But theres something that happens. Most of the time when i talk to people in Law Enforcement, they say i got into the profession because wanted to help and then i quickly began to get frustrated at my lack of ability to do so. That actually getting called to a Domestic Violence situation and knowing that as i take away one person i am also impacting the family that has the resources to rebuild, actually it doesnt make me feel like a hero. When they see somebody on the street is having a Mental Health crisis and knowing that theres no shelter to bring them to, theres no program to bring them to, and dont place i can take them is jailed but that is probably the worst possible place for them, it really erodes that sense of effectiveness and entrenches a sense of battle, right . Im fighting a war. That shifts peoples perception of the role they are playing in a community. Most Law Enforcement officers that ive talked to will tell you i wish that those things were not my role. I wish that we were able to address the needs that people actually have and, frankly, i dont think police should do that. And people will talk about law and people talk about order and its very complicated but i wonder if theres also a place for connection there. Now i am somebody who fundamentally believes that policing is not the way to solve problems, and that doesnt mean i dont like your grandpa or your uncle or your mama, and i got Law Enforcement in my family, too, like many black people do. And even my family members understand as well want im saying and what were doing across this country. It also want want to see the profession get better comic and i dont know if theres ever going to be an alignment there because theres that deep hurt and pain. I know lots of people who do the work to bring that alignment together and they are gods people, honestly. It is hard to do system change work. And with that being said, with the solidarity shows that you talked about, i want something more. I want something more. I think that we deserve more than Police Taking a knee. I really do. I heard in some cities yesterday there were Police Taking a knee and then an hour later they were arresting people, and shooting people with rubber bullets, and this constant dissidence is part of why the trauma continues and its not that the people behind the shields are good people are bad people. Thats not the point. The point is its their job is to control and to contain. Now were also giving them the responsibility of solving problems that they cannot solve, and that is always going to create the kind of situation where theres a powder keg and the match thats waiting to be lit. And so i am for symbolism but it also for substance. I would just compare folks taking a knee to the thing that the police union had said two days ago in minneapolis where he said ive been involved in three murders and a number lost sleep over any of them. One really important way to get involved, if its Law Enforcement, is to curtail the scope and scale of the unions. I know in my city our police union and the leader of the police union, in particular, is a constant source of racist diatribe and dialogue in response to deep grief, hurt, loss, and pain. And as long as we had that dynamic it will only land as symbolic when police take a knee, right . I got asked literally last weekend because it was all this hoopla about who joined the protest and all the chaos and the protest, and suddenly im being asked should we be telling protesters to work with police to identify bad protesters . Im like, hey, hey hey weve lost focus here. No, right . No. What we need to be talking about is how we keep from getting to a place where people have to take the streets in a Global Public Health Pandemic just to assert that are lies matter . That is the most important thing for us to address in this moment. All of the other like symbols and shows are just going to remain those unless we get to the deep core of what is putting american so much anguish right now. Thats a good answer. Its a better one, these are all people are part of the community, but im sorry. Thats not a problem. I hear you now. Okay, great. Good. One last question. I think this is not something weve talked a lot about to but its a very relevant thing. Were in the middle of a global Health Pandemic and also this period of isolation which is been a cause of lots of depression and economic dislocation, depression, job loss and now this. How are you, for instance, like taking care of yourself within this . Ill tell you my selfcare, this week has not been great, but thats how this goes, right . In terms of the pandemic, from the beginning of march all the way up until a week ago i was riding my bike four times a week, 45 minutes a day religiously. That was my way of moving to the stress and anxiety of what it means to be told that not only do you need to stay home but like you need to limit or not be in contact with people outside your home, which takes a a toln you because again remember, connection is that the heart of everything. A week ago all kinds of stuff broke loose and, frankly, my days over the last week have been 13 hours straight on the telephone, in meetings, trying to get people to do things or trying to get people to stop doing things. Im giving advice to people about what they can do right now even though theres so much stuff out there, and trying to make sure that i am Drinking Water and that they eat more than one thing a day. So on monday i was doing awful. I was crispy, as they say, right . I was just like dont mess with me today, then i watched the president teargas people to take a photo with the bible outside that at a church he has never attended, and the symbolism but also the substance of the symbol literally broke me. I mean, as if its not enough to be did dealing with a public hh crisis in the ongoing slaughter of black people, this country is now sliding into fascism in a way that terrifies me, and i dont use that word or phrase lightly. But then i start to see people continue to resist, and for that resistance to grow, and that makes me feel like we really are the majority. We really are the majority. Core values are majoritarian values in we can win. We can win. Thats where im at now and thats whats taking care of me is like seeing the progress, allowing myself to see whats changing, what victories are happening, and also letting people take care of me. So my partner makes sure that i stick food in my mouth in between sentences on Conference Calls and that my water glass is always filled, and that i get to rant and rave for like a good hour after i shut everything down, and images get to be quiet and its really glorious. So that is how i am caring for myself right now. Thats a wonderful way to into. Take care of yourself by watching us maybe win a little bit. Thank you, everyone, thank you so much, alicia. I couldve talk to for another two hours. Rarely got into my questions. We will do this again sometime. But thank you so much and get some water. Thanks. All right. Thank you, everyone. Heres a a look at some boos being published this week. Houdini of doing. My name is kevin butterfield, director of the library of mount vernon and in coming to