To be doing inperson eventuals until 2021 which is a bummer but we want to be real and safe and smart. Well keep bringing you interesting conversations with authors; so we have everything from wonderful event coming up in october with layla a conversation you tent want to miss dont want to miss. Everything from that to a conversation with matthew mcconathy. If thats not a wide ranging list of events witness ill be quite a fall. Follow our events on magic city books. Com. Tonight im so thrilled to have a conversation with mychal denzel smith. A book that was seems like written for the moment were living in, although books are written planned quite a bit before their published and printed but stereotype wed have these he prescient minds that are tapped into what is going on, and so especially for us here in tulsa and everything thats been happening in our community, 2021 is going to be such an important year for our community as well. Stakes is high. We had an event with just one of my favorite books heavy, a powerful book, and im kind of ripping off a blush he said but a stakes is high, book that kind of understand this pandemic before the pandemic actually happened because it gets americas response. Mychal understands mrs. In a way he was able to presage the world were living in, this weird 2020 space. I think youll really enjoy this conversation and thank you for writing the book. Its kind of a mirror for us to see who we and are what were doing right now. So, we have had the great pleasure to doing these conversations. Ive get ton interview a lot of wonderful people but always thrilled to hand that off to another wonderful write who can be in conversation, so tonight our very special guest moderator is has written an Award Winning book. Well post links, sabrina and karina, lets see. Won the american book awards, a finalist for the National Book squared, a finalist for the prize. Its gotten a Pretty Amazing list of accomplishments and just a killer book of stories that you will not soon forget, and i think hopefully im not spoiling this bus i heard theres a novel on the way in 2021. So colleen and mychal will be in conversation. If you have questions during the chat, please put those into the q a and well get to those throughout the conversation. And i know you have tickets and you had a copy of stakes is high but if you want more copies for friends, relatives, read it more than once, whatever the around, well be posting links and also have colleens book here as well so you can get a copy of sabrina and karina so ill turn it over to colleen and say thank you for joining us. I appreciate you give us the time. Thank you so much, jeff. Hi, mychal. Seeing you virtually like this. Im so excited. I have so much to ask you tonight. When i was going through the book i was like, seriously reading the with a i used to read when it was a teenager. You found a secret treasure trove of information. And i actually was like printing off quotes from you and i ran out of ink. I was like i was like, wow so begin the become is a triumph. Its glorious in how much youre able to pull in from the current moment, from history, and you have all these wide ranging topics that do stick together because theyre part of the american story. These issues range from gentrification, the metoo mom and essential ideas of the american ethos and how we as a make, in particular those in power, want us to see ourselves and who we are. So, my first question for issuing just want to get right into it, what was the process of putting this book together and what is the story of america that you are trying to tell with stakes is high . Yeah, thank you. First of all, to jeff and magic city books and you for participating in this and everyone who is watching us and tuning in and who has bought the book already, thats fantastic. So, the book came together this wasnt the book i intended to write after my first one. I published invisible man, watching the summer of 2016, and was very happy with it, and i had achieved my goal, its published a book and that was all i wanted for my life. And then i turned 30 that year and i turned 30 two days before the election of 2016. And there was the sort of exstep shall crisis of turn existential crisis of turning 30 that i wasnt planning on. Thought turning 30 was not that big a deal, its just a number and my waist size grew by an inch and i was like, oh, no, this is different. Something is happening to me. But i say that because i didnt have a plan for after 30. So suddenly anytime this position in which i have to think about what do i want my life to look like. Like still relatively young black man in america who didnt plan for having a life after the age of 30 because i presumed i would not make it to that point. So now like a future i have to start thinking longterm and start thinking for the future. But then two days every turned 30 the election of donald trump it and was just like maybe there wont be a fewer. Maybe we are at the end. But it sort of sitting in between those two feelings of saying that i want now to plan for my own personal future but the world seems to be at this impasse at which we could go toward our extinction in a relatively short time or actually work on the problems we have. And so this book was trying to find the place in which we could build that next world, and so the intervention that i was trying to make or what i was feeling was that theres a narrative that we tell ourselves as americans but america and about being american, that prevents us from seeing our problems in any way that fosters collective action toward eradication of them. When i started on a different book, scrapped that one, started on this one, and had at first like 13 different essays i was going to write and just different subject matter, and i thought that was the way to good about it but in the writing process everything collapsed around certain broad themes. I was finding when i was writing this, relate today this thing over here and ways of come comen combining these things and they collapsed into this. And i was think about which is so present in the book about new york city where i live, and had come to with all of this idealism, the idea that i was going to be like all the millions of people that come to new york, just be going to find my community, find my success, find everything that im looking for. Not realizing, even as critic of america and the american dream, i was doing exactly the same thing i was criticizing people for doing, and its like, new york city was just this microcosm of this broader idea that theres just more possibility here. Theres just more potential. But new york city is a gilded city. Its poverty right here. Its people Homeless People sleeping right there in front of those buildings that good for millions of dollars, and police sweeping them off the street. Its the place where donald trump and his family was able to become this rich family by virtue of being slum lords, and then so it holds all that possibility we want for it but also defined in so many wees by a the structures, those ideologies that run throughout American History that one throughout every institution that we have. And so i was trying to find a way to own my own place in that story. To say, look, even those of us who spend our time looking at American History, looking at the american present and trying to critique it into its best form, are subject to it. Not just subject to it but get swept up in the idealism of it, and that we think that our critiques need to be couched in certain ideas around american patriotism, wanting the best for the country, but that makes us devoted to certain symbols and things that keep us attached to an idea that america in and of itself possesses this type of spirit that is able to overcome everything, and so the story i was trying to tell but america and trying to capture about this moment and how the book comes together, its me wanting more for all of us to be able to say that the story that we have committed ourselves to is the one that is leading to our destruction. Thank you, mychal. I also want to let the audience know, if you have questions, you can use the q a feature and i can see those at any time. So, this is also fascinating and while you were talking, you and i share something really strange and common and that is my birthday is november 9th, and i turned 30 the day before the day after the election, and i the book opens, stake is high opens with that fateful night and you talk but the american story and one thing that was really challenge are for many americans, especially those who consider themselves liberal and progressive was the fact our country elected donald trump to the presidency on that night. And i walked by the hotel where we had this big party in denver, supposed to celebrate this historic win of the first woman president , which did not happen. Can you talk about that night and that significance and why you chose to open the book with this night . Yeah. Just was the tee finding moment of our most defining moment of our most recent history. Inescapable. When i say i was walk us on another book it was something was completely divorced from the ideas im exploring in this book. Suppose to be like black masculinity, and where the ideas are formed and look at the Basketball Court and prison and all of this stuff and thats where i was going to start. And one of it was one sites is the barber shop and going to explore the barber shop and everything and when i started writing that book, the first sentence was but election day because i was in the barber shop on election day and there was about the conversation that was happening. And so i knew i couldnt escape it and thats what made me switch to writing this book and its so pivotal because i think the seek key of those people psyche of people who feel. Thes to be liberals, progressivessen people on the right side of history, the psyche was broken and there was something that was unfathomable pout this, and i cant say that im i was completely immune. Dont want to pretend i was in a position in which i was like, of course donald trump will win this. I wanted to believe that Something Else was possible. I was like, oh, no, we have the first black president , first woman president . Seems lying natural progression but i think what so many of us didnt take into account and what i was trying to get through that night because i was on democracy now during the election coverage, and trying to come to terms with the fact that donald trump was going to win while being on air. It was like, well, of course this happened. If we look at American History, we know that every moment of progress, no matter how, like, minuscule, how benign, whatever it is, theres always a backlash, always a return, the powers that be, the ideology that have been inscribed in the founding always find a way to reassert themselves. We went thank you eight years of the first black president and theres so many things to talk about with regards to that president. I can critique the entire time i lived through it and i critiqued obama as a public figure and public intellectual and owl those things. For all the limitations of the first whether black presidency is representedded for many was a form of progress, theres new possibility available to people. But for a large section of the country, especially aggrieved white men who believed america to be their birthright, what it signaled was they were losing, they were losing something. They were losing hold of their identity, losing hold of their power. And so they fought back, and donald trump is that last gasp. It is this that boxer that is just like, look, im on the ropes and i got try one last thing and they throw that haymaker and hope for the best. So sorry for the sports analogy but thats what it was. And they landed. They landed the punch. And were all paying the price for it. And so it was if i was going to examine america as it is, and who we say we are and who we say we want to be and break down who stutzman we, i had to look at that moment. I had to look at that night and had to reckon with my own emotions around it and my own shortcomings around not being automobile being able to see it. The grief still rippled out today. It will keep going. You talked about the white men and this sort of like last reach for power, and which bring me to the section of the book justice. You talk but modern policing and a lot of americans are starting to learn the history of modern policing and how did we get this system and what does reform look like, what does abolishing the police look like. Where is the history of this come from and i know in the book you mention the London Police so could you talk but that, please . Yeah. The first modern the First Modern Police force in the world starts now london and what theyre doing there is theyre looking for a cheap alternative to the army to be able to suppress uprising in their colony of ireland. Eye repeople are fighting for irish people are fighting for their. In england doesnt want to let control. Theyre using up lots of resources with the army and trying too figure out new ways of then suppressing the folks, controlling the population. So they adopt the idea of the modern police force. Where you have when we say murder modern police force but you can see different forms of policing, Medieval Times in europe and say the knights are police. They work on behalf of the monarchty and they collect the taxes and they enact violence on people who do not live up to the laws that have been set forth by the monarchs and all of that stuff. But the modern police force which is kept, one that is publicly find, one that is armed, one that is part patrolling neighborhoods, that starts in london andgets copied in the u. S. Post independence, and in the 1800s when theyre looking for in northern cities ways of doing exactly what they were doing in england which is to suppress labor uprisings. You have workers that are saying, like, these capitalists, robber barons are taking my wages or paying me low wages, putting me none safe conditions. I dont like it and then theyre going to strike. And what do the capitalists, robber barns do . But form Police Forces to be able to suppress those uprisings and then those get those become part of municipalities, and then you also have to recognize the way in which policing has format arises in the south, in southern cities and southern plantations as a means catching runaway slaves. Thats what their job is. So, thats the history of how we established policing in the u. S. And i point to it often because i just want people to understand that i hasnt moved far from that. The job of the police in those days is to reinforce a second class citizenship to say who is valued, what is central ud. It is to protect the property of the land owners, of capitalists, and it is to in some of that property is people, some of that property is enslaved people. And it is to reinforce racial hierarchy, and it does the same thing, now and also polices gender identity. It is Police Determine what counts as a crime and what happen they responsibility to Domestic Violence calls in which its so often its just man beating on this woman, they take the side of the man who has been beating on this woman because theyre reinforcing the idea this form of violence is legitimate and it is not something that the state needs to get involved with. It reinforces gender identity in that so many trans women are policed fish bodies policed on the streets. Lots of trans women doing survival sex work who are then arrested for doing that and then thrown into jail and theyre doing that work. Theyre always reinforcing the very ideas that are at the core of who america views as a citizen, who america views as legitimate and worthy of rights. So, in understanding that, then, if we understand police that way, which i dont think we do in the popular imagination, so much of how we understand police is shaped by our tv shows and films in which police are heroes, doing these daring heroic acts and swooping in and saving the day from the terrible bad gays that exist in the world that are hell bent on our destruction and we theres american imagination that says they are preventing us from all out chaos but what police have been called in to do is reinforce and then ensure that the inequalities baked into the system are maintained, and if we think of police as that way, then the question becomes, what purpose would police serve in a just society. Guest what purpose would police serve if we were in a position in which everyones needs were met . No one was a social pariah on the basis of race, gender, sexual identity, class. What would happen if there wasnt so much ownership of private property and there was more public ownership. What would happen if everyone had access to education and healthcare and clean water . I think but that so often, just the fact that theres people that dont have clean water. It beingles my mind but boggles my mind but its being policed. Its saying these are people that deserve this and these are people that dont. But in a just society in a society that establishes those things as rights for everyone, what role would police serve . And i think it scares people right now to think of a World Without police because all they can see, because of what theyve been socialized to believe, is that danger is always knocking on my door. Danger is always out there. So people that are other are always out there. The people that are when he wasnt president yet, he said mexico is sending criminals, its sinning rapists, people believed this and they think that its the police and whatever form they may take, in this instance i. C. E. And the police are going to protect you people with guns that are armed with andthe authority of the state to kill with impunity will protect you from this imagined other that is coming to hurt you. But if thats what youre afraid of, the solution is never going to be police because all that the police can do is arrest those people and throw them in jail or they can kill those people. Well, you have a society that is always going to be producing those people . You always going to be producing those kinds of people. Youre always going to be sew sowing the divisions and always going to be putting people in situations of desperation that they need to action in ways that we deem criminal in order for their survival. So, if police are necessary in this system, in order to make someone feel safe and they dont make all of us feel safe. But if theyre necessary in this system why would they be necessary in a system in which everyone actually has the access to things that make them safe . I think its a reimagining of safety, reimagining of community, its a reimagining of what it takes to ensure that the behaviors that you dont want to see in the world are not actually taken because so many things criminalized but not all of them are harmful to other people. Theyre just means of surviving. Definitely. Im in denver now and our house Homeless Population is skyrocketing and you talk but the criminalization of poverty and how its a crime to be filthy when you dont have access to take a bath and cant tear care of yourself but that becomes a crime. I also methods me think pout has to be people who grow up thinking the police are meant to protect and serve because thats the Public Relations campaign they have told us when i drew up i did not feel safe. Was told dont trust them. If you get pulled over nowhere make shoe you drive somewhere else. You could be assaulted at any time. These were things that were always on my mind when i was interacting with law enforcement. So one of my questions, what does it look like to sort of allow that information about the other side of the story to get out . It seems like they have a very direct Public Relation campaign, 0 Propaganda Machine almost that is giving the message the police there are to uplift us and protect us. There are ways we kind of shift that narrative . Is that happening right now . I think its happening a little bit now. Especially the past five to six years of what is nationally known internationally known as black lives matter movement. Its focused on policing, and to say there are communities that are subject to certain forms of policing that are hyperviolent and that do not allow for the freedom of movement that other people enjoy. And for a long time it was that wag the basic critique and that was it. Just like, okay, well, maybe police should stop killing as many people as they do. They still kill a thousand people a year at least but there was at least some acknowledgment that in some instances police do the wrong thing. I think now to this past summer in response to killings of Breonna Taylor and george floyd and tony mcdade but especially george floyd because we saw that one, there was more radical cry. It was defund the police. It was abolish the police, and i think that is a starting point for the activist side. Means that the conversation has to be different. Because if youre going to engage anyone you have to deal with the fact that thousands of people in the streets are saying this. I dont know it has had an impact in terms of completely shifting that narrative, for people to do that, but ive been thinking about this a lot just in terms i sort of write about this in the book, just like the idea of writing and it impact and feeling through the course of writing a book, seems like theres a futility of writing, especially in the face of such grave violence, to say that what am i doing from just writing words . But there has to be a record of people who dissented, record for those who come after to us say because we see this all the time. Anytime that an injustice of the past is brought up in the present theres a course of people who will just say, well, that is a person of their time. They were acting in a way that most people did during that time. But always the record of people who believed that action to be wrong, believed that idea to be wrong and we have to leave that. We cant leave future generations without access to that because without it, it leaves you in a position of feeling like youre alone, as if you are the insane one for believing these things are unjust. So, as that Propaganda Machinere cysts and i think about it in terms of just yesterday the announcement of the historic settlment in the civil case of Breonna Taylor and her family in the city of louisville, the monetary compensation is one thing but the asked for Police Reforms as a part of the package, and i think about that because part of it was that police are going to be encourage not required but encouraged to live in the communities they police, and also that theyre going to be encouraged to do two two hours of volunteer work every two weeks. And as one just ridiculous on its face, right . Its like you can tell the kochs to live in the neighborhood that theyre policing but all this means is theyll kill their neighbors now. This is not some solution. But also that that part of the campaign to make you think the police are friendly and trustworthy and someone you into shoo put your faith in but the dont solve problem. They dont do the things theyve been asked to do by these different by every municipality nationwide tampa just dont do it. They dont prevent crime from happening. Crime in and of itself is just the construction around behaviors that have been deemed undesirable by certain people and those people have been the people in power and those people have been largely white men wite employs after the quoteunquote criminals. Thats their job and doesnt matter how much volunteer work they do, theyre all feelings to what theyve their mission has been from the beginning, and so i think about that in relation to something i write about in the book with Shirley Chisolm and how when she was a new york state assemblywoman, she presented a bill in response to Police Violence to say that all police that are going through training must complete a civil rights course. They had to learn the history of people that they were policing and had to learn about injustice and i say in the book, i like to think she knew that would mean those people couldnt become police because once you know exactly what the history of policing is, and you know how violent and how oppressive it is i would like to think any person of conscious wouldnt follow it. You like to think that. I want to bring up Shirley Chisolm because i was like ignorant and had not heard of her and i was like, what . What is going on. Why was i not educated . And she now i looked her up and im like what is wrong with me, need to read 800 backs. Can you talk about this political figure, what she means to you and you mentioned this statue and so also made me think but what wow, what if these racist statues were replaced with people that were meaningful to our groups and the people we come from . I would love to hear more about her. So, her fame and the thing that people keep bringing talk but her in paving the way, especially with obama in 08 and then again with hilary in 2016. The first black woman to run for president on the democratic ticket. She was not successful, obviously, but she was also the first black woman elected to congress, and she is the first is the thing that people get hung up on, as a trail blazer who did thissing toes and made it possible for an obama later and made it possible for Hillary Clinton later, and then she cropped up again in discussions around alexandria ocasiocortez. In part because she was from new york but also both took on new york political establish independent their run and their ability to be able to get elected to congress. But she came to me in part im wearing this what i was wearing on democracy now, that one was red and this is yellow but has her campaign slowing gone on it. Catalyst for change. And she ran an explicitly antiracist, fem feminist Campaign Even show she runt oning a campaign for black people or women but for americans but her platform [loss of audio] and she very famously sort of gives her first speech on the house floor before anything is even happening she is given a vote on anything, its an antivietnam war speech and she hasnt been established in the congress at all. Her very first speech is a antiwar speech and he works for the expansion of food stamps and free break fast program and all of this stuff. All these antipoverty measures throughout her career. I wore this shirt on the night of the election, and i was thinking but her because she was being celebrated in these different ways, and thinking about her because they are putting up that statue not far from where ily but what she worked for in her career and that statue is going to stand there and the houseless folks i see on the street right now are going to sleep underneath that statue of this woman who fight to end poverty, and its like so where are we . What meaning are we trying to give to this statue if the very her very legacy is not something that people are willing to fight for but she is being used in this way to bolster certain ideas 0 around you can do it, everything is possible, trail blazer, all of this stuff. Its another way in which we use historical figures to then be adopted into this american exceptionalism narrative and that america always comes out on top. That america is the reason that Shirley Chisolm is able to do what she is able to do. America this reason that why Shirley Chisolm had to do what she had to do and thats the part that were unwilling to integrate into the story that we can sell america americans can celebrate her for being the first black woman elected to congress but never asked s why the shadow be first in 1968. Why it took that until 1968 for that to be possible . Celebrate her to be the first black woman to run for president but ask why she only get 2 of the democratic vote and not enough delegates to do any sort solve wheeling and dealing on the convention floor. What are the reason its why you reject the actual politics of this person . The actual mission of this person, even though youre trying to fold them into this american story, one that is about the idea that everyone has the potential to overcome all their obstacles without ever asking why those obstacles are there in the first place . Thats one thing i love so much about the book. Im a fiction writer and so to be able to spend time in these pages and learn an abundance of information, felt like a relatively short amount of time. Im learning and learning. So i actually have some questions now. I know i one of most pleasurable things is to learn. Aisle glad there was enough information. My editor kept trying to get me to write more and more. Really . Every sentence, every paragraph is spring lead with the history, the project future. Everything has such resonance of meaning. So now i have a question about the process for you also a writer and where you get your influences and pull from. One thing i just love about the book are all the enepigraphs when in front of a chapter. You have this beautiful ive always left in the midst of new york more than in its reality. It was enabled me to live there are so long, loving something more than the thing it, talk but the myth of this place. You have this wonderful epigravel from mortgage gap parker, kept thing the only place left is outer space. And i just want to know what was the process like of finding these when you are reading, just keeping track of them. In a notebook . You talk but the works you were consulting while your were building this book. I did keep track of them in a notebook. So many unused ones. I dont know how much youre reading while youre doing the work but i was reading a lot, and not everything was directly research. It was just oh, im interested in reading this thing right now and thats what im reading, but theres like i dont know how this sounds to people but it does feel like theres some sort of, like, cosmic intervention to say like i was supposed to be reading this right now because there is something in here that is meant to be used by me and i am supposed to be pulling from, the ideas are forming in a way that becomes clear when i read this thing and so i was reading severance and that is exactly what i have been trying to say. Thats exactly that captures it exactly. I was reading moved beloved and thats the thing i was trying to do, that feeling. And so, yeah, just a matter of, like, things id already read and that id come back to or come back to me in ways that i didnt anticipate. I was reading morgans book and that was early in the process and there was like, oh, yeah, like what im trying to say here is that there is no escape. Theres very little that and also because it was in conversation with other things i was dealing with. Was writing that the for forethought, and a tribe called quest and the song Space Program and then that morgan quote, its like, oh, that fits perfectly with this idea here. And so it wasnt always purposeful. It wasnt like, oh, i need to read this book because it has information that will work for me, but it was i was in the strand one day looking through youth books asia just do because i love book stores immensely. The thing ive been missing most during pandemic times going to a book store was the first place i went when they opened up. I was look through the new york section in the strand and e. B. Whites book but new york city was there and i read it and theres so much here so much rich here. There was that marc brothers Marx Brothers book but new york. This is something i need to hear, something that i just it captures the idea in that i either want to build on or simply dont think needs to be improved upon. That is encapsulates the thing or just in terms of using them at enepigraphs its to prime people, the way you need to think to absorb what im trying to do here and to relate to it and also just i think just practice to just be like im not alone in this and i think that it disspells the myth of the writer as this, like, total solo artist. No, were in conversation with one another all the time and we learn in community, and i think that is important to note is that knowledge isnt produced by a Single Person on their own. It is produced in conversation with each other and community with each other, and i want to be able to show my work and show people this is how i these are places you can explore with me. I love that. I first love the idea of showing the work because i think often especially in White Supremacy a lot of it is hiding the work and hiding the pathway to power and you provide by doing so many references, providing an Additional Reading list. Good yourself further and youre really laying out the framework, this is how you can achieve for this breadth of information. Can you talk but the title . Yeah. Stake is high. Thats the first thing that came to me. It was the reason that this became a book in the first place, because as i said i was setting out completely different book, but i kept thinking about stakes is high the album from 1996, amazing album. The thing about a particular lyric on one of the songs is from the group, that said, [loss of audio] and [loss of audio] thats a tone line but also kind of depressing. Youre like the longevity of your group can be compared to the longevity of racism. Just never going anywhere. But that was the germ of the idea to say were experiencing reflection in the election of donald trump, a reflection of the permeance of patriarchy of the permeance because theyre baked into the very foundation of the american identity, and so when i think about that i was thinking about the very name of the album the stakes is high and being rooted in that black and saying theres something also permanent about the status of blackness within this country. The idea of blackness being the marker by which everyone else measures success in this country. But just the phrase itself, stakes is high. I dont know how much higher they get than what were experiencing right now with the timeline we have. If you can look right now at this country, just this country, just narrowing this country and the fires raging out in california, and the Pacific Northwest and the hurricanes gathering in the gulf coast, while the entire country deals with a Global Pandemic of an airborne illness and say we have generations and generations to deal with this problem. No we dont we just dont. Were laid to game in dealing with climate disaster and theres this, look, its not just that ang fry white men took the last punch and wanted to get power back. Its the things they want to with that power will accelerate all of the problems that we are facing and the very our very existence, sustainability of this planet to be able to just lost it the ability of this planet to sustain life, human life. Were up against that. Were up against the tight timeline to deal with it. So, stakes is high and they dont get any higher than what they are now. Yeah. I think of all the books ive been reading recently your book matches the punch of the energy right now, which is, yeah, were on the edge of, like either we have to rebuild or maybe its over pretty soon for all of us. So theres kind of veer off interest this idea of an alternate timeline which people are doing more and more because we worth doing it in the early day 0 the pandemic. My calendar has this on it but thats not going anywhere. This happened. And i mean that is one of the thing is just absolutely adore about the book, this idea of mythmaking and story building, as a fiction writer you had me there whats the role of the imagination and being able to provide us with a pathway out of this, all of this, all of this oppression and injustice, and what can we envision to be able to move forward . Do you have any thoughts . Yeah. I think i Say Something to this effect in the book, is that imagining where we want to go will teach us how we get there so, what do we actually want . And i think that or political imagination has been so stifled because we get caught in these 40 year election cycles in which fouryear election cycles where were awful choosing between the lesser of two evils and people can try to debate that to no end. Theres the possibility of this. No, you are choosing between which one will be less bad for the time being, and that is what were presented with every single time. And if thats the best we can do, its the best we can do and believing that the american president is our savior and that whatever side you fall on and like its that singular person, the singular figure that will rescue us, but the best we can do is choosing from the Democratic Party of the republican party. If these are the things we believe from moment to moment are the best we can do, then we are doomed. If we cant think beyond that and just say out loud what it is we actually want, and i think this is the thing that frustrates me about especially like the Democratic Party, is that they say those are the things they want. Like the loftier goals and then say its not possible. Well, unless you say it out loud and get a bunch of other people on board with it then obviously its not going to be possible. Obviously if you write it off in the beginning its not going to be possible and i think i talk but the alternative timeline in little bit in there and talk but imagining what a world where Shirley Chisolm would have won in 1972 but writing it off immediately, just like there was no place where america would have to be a completely different country for that to even be possible if want to imagine what hat looks like and i can do that by myself but again it comes back to an idea that i believe in democracy and i belief that we should be doing that together and we have ideas about what a better life looks like than the one we have. Its a matter of listening to those things, believing theyre possible, and also believing were responsible for one another. Were responsible for that future for other people. But its hard to imagine all of that when youre up against reality and the reality is that there are people, millions of them, who refuse to even put a piece of cloth over theirs face to protect their neighbors from catching this deadly airborne illness even in the face of nearly 200,000 of them dead. Theres a selfish isness to thi. An individualist ideology running through so many people that believe that they only have to look out for themselves. Im saying, like, that is destruction. Thats the place were going right now. Thats also you say where its either going to end right now or wore going to fifth out a way to make it work, and the only way to make it work is to have the imagination to be like the world exists as it is but theres another world that could be if were willing to try. Awesome. Love that. I am big proponent of the imagination. I spend all my time there. We have time for but one more question, and so i just i wanted to ask you, i didnt feel i didnt feel pessimistic or bummed out. Felt like this is cool. I have community with this person. I agree with a lot of this but i can see some people feeling deexpected and a little bess mystic dejected and a little speaks mystic. What do you want youre readers to take from this become . I want if thats the feeling, sit with it. I want whatever feeling that you have in response to this to be your feelings. Im not going to police your feelings but i want people to sit with it and if it depresses you, makes you feel hopeless, start can go why does it make you feel hopeless . What is lacking here that makes you feel like theres just no hope for these things to come to pass . And those are the places i think where then you need to act. If you believe that theres something wrong here, whatever issue it is, whatever Community Based thing it is, whatever it is, if theres a thought in here that makes you go well, thats just impossible, net the place to start, to be like i need to talk to other people about this and i need to get in community with other people to be able to fix this thing because that is exactly where we end up all the time is being like the issue is too big for me. Obviously its to big for one person. All thesing thes are too big for one person to tackle. I want people to sit withwhatever neil this work produces in them and say whoa do i feel that way . How can i find other people who are feeling the way that im feeling, and how can we then be in community with one another so that we dont feel that way anymore. I love that. Sow much, mychal denzel smith. This book is stakes is high. And thank you magic city books. Thank you again mychal. Such a pleasure. Everyone buy sabrina and karina when it comes out in 2021. Awesome. Good night, everybody. Tonight booktv an history of hurricanes. Thoughts on current immigration issues and donald trump jr. Offers comments on what he calls liberal privilege, former cia director john brennan talks about his life and career. And former second Lady Lynn Cheney chronicles the leadership of four of the first five performs who hailed from the state of virginia. Find the complete Television Schedule at booktv or consult your program. Guide. Heres a look at Publishing Industry news. Britains literary award has nounsed they will delay the ceremony by two days from november 17th to the 19th. In order not to conflict with the release of former president Barack Obamas memoir. The booker prize takes place in october but will now occur the day after the announcement of the National Book awards. Kevin young has been named the new director of Smithsonians National museum of africanamerican. In other news a federal judge ruled that Justice Department has shown sufficient evidence that former National Security adviser john bolton broke nondisclosure agreements with the publication of his recent memoir of his time in the trump white house. His lawyers south dismissal of the case which may now lead to a trial. Also in the news, npd book scan reports that print book sales roast just over 10 , adult mon fiction sales saw another week of positive gains gains and werd by bob woodward res become for president trump. Two books have been return to a british library. The books were sent through the mail and included a note of apology. At todays rates if late feed had been amid that i would hey totaled more than 10,000. Booktv will continue to bring you new programs and publishing news. You can watch all of our past programs anytime at booktv. Org. Im bill burns, im at the president of the cash anything gee Carnegie Endowment for billion and im die lighted to welcome Rebecca Lissner and mira rapphooper and their become, an open world. Recovering diplomats like me are sometimes prone to understatement, but even i can see that it its a vast understatement to say that were living through a moment of profound upheaval on both the international and