Transcripts For CSPAN2 Mychal Denzel Smith Stakes Is High 20240712

Thank you for watching wherever you are and really thrilled with engagement level weve had with all of you. Well be doing a lot of fun stuff, and pretty compelling conversations in the fall. I would say would probably not be doing any inperson events since 2021 which is a bit of a bummer obama but we want to be safe and smart with what we are doing. We will keep bringing you guys interesting conversations with authors, so we have everything from a wonderful event coming up in october, a conversation you wont want to miss. Everything from that to a conversation with matthew mcconaughey. If thats not a wideranging list of events, its going to be quite a fall so stay tuned. You can follow all our defense on magic city books. Com. I will go through the whole list here. Tonight im so thrilled to have a conversation with mychal denzel smith in the book that seems like it was written for the moment were living in, although books are written quite a bit before the published in print it and Everything Else but sometimes we have these kind of prescient times in a world that are tapped into whats going on. A special us here in tulsa and everything that happened in our community, 2021 would be such an important year for our community as well. Stakes is high. We had an event a few years ago with a wonderful memoir, heavy, which is one of my favorite books the past several years. A powerful book. Im kind of ripping off a blurb is that about the book that understands the pandemic for the pandemic actually happen because it gets americas response. Mychal kind of understands america in a way that he was able to presage the world were living in at this very moment, this weird 2020 space we are in. I think youre going to enjoy this conversation and thank you for writing the book. Its kind of a mayor for us to see who we are and what we are doing right now. Weve had the great pleasure of doing these conversations. Ive got in a few a lot of wonderful people but im so thrilled to end off to another wonderful writer who can be in conversation. So tonight are very special guest moderator is kali fajardoanstine who has written an awardwinning book that i i would encourage all of you to get. We will be posting links, sabrina corina. One of the american book award. It was a finalist for the National Book award. A finalist for the story Pretty Amazing list of accomplishments but more than it its a killer book of stories that you will not soon forget and i think i hope im not spoiling this body feared theres his novel and when 21 so really excited about that. So kali and mike will be in conversation. If questions during the chat please put those in the q a and we will get to those throughout the conversation. I know you guys have tickets and you have a copy of stakes is high but if you would like more copies for your friends, relatives, if youd like to read more than once, whatever the reason is, we will be posting links here and also have kali procures well to get a copy of sabrina corina. Without further do i will turn over to kali and say thank you to both of you for joining us. We appreciate you giving us the time. Mychal, its great to see you virtually like this. Im so excited. I have so much to ask you tonight. When i was going to the book i was like seriously reading the way a used week when i was a teenager, he feel like you have secret treasure trove of information and i was like printing off quotes from you and i ran out of ink. I was like doing so much, like wow. To begin the book is a triumph. Its a glorious and amateur able to pull in from the current moment from history and you all these wideranging topics that you gives it together because theyre part of the american story. These issues range from gentrification, poverty, the history of modern policing, the me too movement and is very essential ideas of the american ethos and how we as a nation, particular those in power, want us to see ourselves of who we are. My first question for you, i just want to get right into it, what was the process of putting this book together and what is a 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, kali, for to spin this and everyone who is watching us and tune in and about the book already tickets fantastic. So the book came together this was a book i intended to write after my first one. I published the sum of 2016 and was very happy with it and id achieve my goal. Published the book and i was basically all that i wanted for my life. And then i turned 30 that year and he turned 32 days before the election of 2016. And there was this sort of existential crises of turning 30 that i wasnt planning on because no, turning threestep that big a deal. People make too much of it is just a number, just in age and then my waist size went, goodbye when it and im like oh no, this is to become something is happening to me. But i say that because like i didnt have a plan for after 30. Suddenly im in this position which like im having to think about what doing what i like to look like as like still relatively young black man in america who didnt plan for having a life after the age of 30 because i presumed that i would not make it to that point. Now, i have to start thinking long term and start for the future. But in two days after i turned 30 election of donald trump and his like maybe there wont be a future. Maybe we are at the end. But sitting in between those two feelings of saying like i want now to plan for my own personal future, but the world seems to be at this impasse in which like we could go toward extinction in a relatively short time when we could actually work on the problems that we have. And so this book was trying to find the place in which we could build the next world. The intervention that i was trying to make or what i was feeling was theres a narrative that we tell ourselves as americans about america and about being americans that prevent us from seeing our problems in any way, this collection collective action towards ratification to start on a different book. I scrap that when an start on this one and had at first like 13 different essays i was going to write and the were different subject matter. I thought that was way to go about it. In the writing process everything sort of collapsed around certain broad themes. I was writing this, but its related to this thing over and over ways to combine these things and they all sort of collapsed in this anything also at the same time i was thinking about, which is so present in the book, about new york city where i live and had come with all of these ideas with the idea, like i was going to be like all the millions of people who come to new york, im going to find my community, find my success confide can find everym looking for. Not realizing even as a critic of america and the American Dream that i was doing exactly the same thing i was criticizing people for doing, and its lie new york city was just a microcosm of this broader idea that theres just more possibility here, more potential. But new york city is a gilded city. Its poverty right here, Homeless People sleeping right there in front of those buildings that go for millions of dollars, and police sweeping them off the street. Its a place where donald trump and his family were able to become this rich family by virtue of being slumlords. It holds all that possibility that we want for it, but it also is defined in so many ways by these structures, these ideologies that run throughout American History, that run throughout every institution that we have. 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 presence and trying to critique it into its best form are subject to it, right . Not just subject to it but get swept up in the idealism of it, in that we think that our critiques need to be couched in certain ideas about american patriotism, about wanting the best for the country. But that makes us devote to certain symbols and things that keep us attach to an idea that america in and of itself possesses this type of spirit that is able to overcome everything. And so yes, thats the sort outside to tell about america and trying to capture about this moment, 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 thats 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 will be able to see those at any time. Its also fascinating, and while you were talking you and i share something really strange in common, and as my birthday is november 9 and i turned 30 the day before the day after the election, and the book opens, stakes is high opens with that fateful night and i think talking about like what is the american story and one of the things that was really challenging for many americans, especially those who consider themselves liberal and progressive was the fact our country elect donald trump to the presidency on that night. And i walked by the hotel would had this big party in denver. Were supposed to go celebrate this historic win of the first woman president. That did not happen. Can you talk about that night and the significance and why you chose to open the book with this night . Yeah. In part it just was, its the defining moments, right, of our most recent history. I think it was inescapable. Like, when i says working on another book, i was working on something that was completely divorced from the ideas that are exploring in this book. It was supposed to be like sites of black masculinity, where those ideas get for him and us when you look at Basketball Court and prison and all of this stuff. Thats what i was going to start. One if it was, one of the sites is the barbershop and i was going to explore the barbershop and everything therein. When i started writing that book, the first sentence was about election day because i was in the barbershop on election day and it was about the conversation that was happening. I knew i couldnt escape it and thats what me made me switch over to writing this book. Its so pivotal because, like i think that psyche of those people you are describing, people who feel themselves to be liberals, progressives, people who are on the right side of history, the psyche was broken and in that sense it was something that was unfathomable about this. I cant say that i was completely like i dont want to begin that i was in a position in which id like no, of course donald trump will win. I wanted to be that Something Else was possible. I was like no, we had the first black president , first woman president. That seems like a natural progression but 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 doing the election coverage, and trying to come to terms with the fact donald trump was going to win while we were on their. This evening, of course this happens. If we look at American History we know that every moment of progress, no matter how, like how many school, have nine, like whatever it is, theres always a backlash, always insurance. The powers, the ideologies that a been inscribed in the founding always find a way to reassert themselves. And so we went through eight years of the first black president , and theres so methinks we can talk about with regards to that presidency. I critiqued in the entire time i lived through it and i critique obama as a public speaker, political figure and all those things. For all the limitations of the first black presidency it did represent something that for many was forward progress, was saying theres new possibility available to people. That for a large section of the country, especially aggrieved white men who believed america was their birthright come when a signal was they were losing. They were losing something. They were losing hold of their identity, losing hold of their power. They fought back, and donald trump is that last gas. Gas gets the barcode look, im on the ropes and i got to try out one last thing and they throw the haymaker and hope for the best. Sorry everybody for the sports analogy but thats what it was. And they landed. They landed the punch. We are all paying the price for it. It was going to examine america as it is and who we say we are and who we say we want to be, break down that construction of who constitutes we, like 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 of our not being able to see it. Yeah. The night, the grief still ripples out today. It will keep going. You talked about white men and this sort of last reach for power, which brings me to the section of the book of justice. In this section you talk a lot about modern policing. I think 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 and what does abolishing the police look like. I would love to you talk about, like where is the history of this coming from and a know in the book you mentioned the london police. Could you talk about that, please . Yeah. Like the First Modern Police force in the world starts out in london, and what theyre doing there is they are looking for a cheap alternative to the army to be able to suppress uprising in their colony of ireland. I wish people are fighting for their independence and england doesnt want to let go of control. They are using up lots of resources with the army in trying to figure out new ways of been suppressing the folks, controlling the population. Of the about the idea modern police force essentially, like when we say modern police force, because you can look and see like different forms of policing throughout history. Look at Medieval Times in europe and say the nights are pleased essentially. They work obeah of them monarchy and they collect the taxes and they enact violence the people who do not live up to the laws have been set forth by the monarch and all that stuff. But modern police force which is one that is checked, one that is publicly funded, one that is armed, one that is part patrolling neighborhoods come all that. That starts in london and that gets copied in the u. S. Post independence in the 1800s when the looking for, like looking for in northern cities ways of doing exactly what theyre doing in england, which is to suppress labor uprising essentially. You have workers that are saying these robber barons are taking my wages or theyre paying me low wages for the work im doing, putting me in unsafe conditions. I dont like it and then theyre going to strike. What do the cap was robber barons do but form Police Forces to be able to suppress those uprisings, and then those get, those become part of municipalities. In then you also have to recognize the language policing as a format a rise in the south in southern cities in southern plantations as a means of catching runaway slaves. Thats what the job is. Thats the history of like how we establish policing in the u. S. I point to it because i just want you to understand that it hasnt moved far from that. Like the job of the police in those days is to reinforce secondclass citizenship. It is to say who is now become what is value. It is to protect the property of the land owners of capitalist and it is, some of the property is people. Some of the property is enslaved people. And it is to reinforce racial hierarchy. It does the same thing and now, it also polices gender identity. Police determine what counts as a crime when the respond to Domestic Violence calls which so often its this man beating on this woman. They take the side of this man whos been beating on this woman in part because they are enforcing that get this form of violence is legitimate and it is something the state needs to get involved with. It reinforces gender identity in that so many the bodies are placed on the street, lots of trans women who are doing survival sex work were then arrested for doing that and then thrown into jail. Theyre doing that work. They are always reinforcing the very ideas that are at the core of who americans view as as a citizen from who american use as legitimate and worthy of rights. And understanding that then, if we understand police that way, which i dont think we do in the popular imagination, so much is shaped by our tv shows and films in which they are heroes, police are doing daring, heroic acts can swooping in and saving the day from all the terrible bad guys in the world that are hell bent on destruction. Like, theres american imagination that everything is allout chaos. But what police are being called in to do is just to reinforce and ensure that the inequalities that are baked into the system are maintained. And if we think of police that way, then the question becomes, what purpose would police serve in a just society . What purpose would police sir if we were in a position in which everyones needs were met. Know what was a social pariah on the basis of race, gender, sexual identity, last. Like what would happen if there wasnt so much ownership of private property and there was more Public Ownership . What would happen if everyone access to education and health care and clean water . I think about that so often, just the fact that people who dont have clean water. It boggles my mind that its a result, it is being policed. These are people who deserve this and these are people who dont. But in a just society, 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 that they can see because what theyve been socialized that danger is always knocking on my door. Danger is always out there. The people who are other are always out there. The people that are when he wasnt president yet, you know, he said mexico is sending criminals, sending rapists. People think its the police in whatever form they may take in this instance, ice. The police will protect you. The people with guns that are armed with the authority of the state kill with impunity, are going to 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 so the in jail, or they can kill those people. You have a society thats always going to be producing those people, right, like you are always going to be producing those kinds of people, always going to be sewing those divisions and always going to be putting people in situations of desperation that they need to act in ways that we can come in order for their survival. So if police are necessary in this system, in order to make someone feel safe, bit of a couple of us feel safe. But if they are necessary in the system, why would he be necessary in a system in which everyone actually has the access to things make them safe . I think its a reimagining of safety, the reimagining of temerity, a reimagining of just what it takes to ensure that the behaviors you dont want to see in the world are not actually taken because like to make things are criminalized but not all of them are harmful to other people. They are just means of surviving. Definitely. Im in denver now and are population skyrocketing, so wonderful to talk about the criminalization of poverty and how its a crime to be salty when you dont have access to take a bath and you cant even take care of yourself but that becomes a crime. It maybe think about, there has to be people who grew up thinking the police are meant to protect and serve because thats the Public Relations campaign that they told us. When i grew up i did not feel safe. I was told dont trust them. If you get pulled over make sure you drive somewhere else. You could be assaulted at any time. These were things are always on my mind went if i interact with law enforcement. One of my questions along with this is, like what does it look like to about that information about the other side of the story to get out . It seems like they have a very direct Public Relation campaign, like a Propaganda Machine almost thats giving this message that the police are there to uplift us and protect us. Are there ways we 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 or internationally known as black lives matter movement, put a focus on policing, and to say like there are communities that are subject to certain forms of policing that are hyper violent and did not allow for the freedom of movement that other people enjoy. For for a long time its sort of like that was the basic critique, that was it. Like okay, maybe police should stop killing as many people as they do. They still kill 1000 people a year, 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 the killings of Breonna Taylor and george floyd, but especially george floyd because we saw that one, there was a more radical it was defined the police, abolish the police. That is a starting point for the activist side, means that the conversation has to be different. Because if youre going to engage in one, you have to do with the fact that thousands of people in the street are saying this. I dont know it had an impact in terms of completely shifting that narrative. People to do that, but i been thinking about this a lot just in terms i sort of right about this in the book, like the idea of writing and its impact in dealing to the course of writing the book. Kind of like theres a futility to writing, especially in the face of such grave violence to say that what am i doing if im just writing words . But there has to be a record of people who dissented. There has to be record for those who come after us to say, because we see this all the time, right, anytime and injustice of the past is brought up in the president , theres of course the people who will just say well, thats a person of their time. Like they were acting in a way that most people did during that time. But theres always the record of people who believe that action to be wrong come fully that idea to be wrong. We have two lead that. We cant think future generations without access to that because without it, it these you in in a position of l like youre alone as if youre going, if you are the insane one for believing that these things are unjust. As a Propaganda Machine prisoners and to think about it in terms of just yesterday the announcement of the historic settlement in the silicates of Breonna Taylor and her family and the city of louisville. The monetary compensation is one thing but as for a lot of Police Reforms as a part of that package. And i think about that because part of it was that police are going to be encouraged, not required, but encouraged to live in the communities that they police, and also they will be encouraged to do two hours of volunteer work every two weeks. And i think as, just ridiculous on its face, like you can tell the cops to live in the neighborhood that their policing at all this means is is that gg to kill the neighbors now. Like, this is not some solution here but also that part of the campaign to make you think that the police are surrendering and please are trustworthy and police are summoned you should put your faith in, but they dont solve problems. They dont do the things, like theyve been asked to do by these different, but every municipality and nationwide. They just dont do it. They dont prevent crime from happening. Crime in and of itself is just the construction of behaviors that have been deemed undesirable by certain people and those people are then the people in power and those people, their largely by admin with like saying what is criminal. So you sin the police after the quoteunquote criminals. Thats their job. Thats all there ever going to do and does not do much volunteer work they do. They are always going to see with the mission is from the beginning. I think about that in relation to something about in the book with Shirley Chisholm and how when she was a new York State Assembly person, 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, right . They had to learn the history of people that they were policing and they have to learn about injustice, and i say in the book i like to think that she knew that would mean those people couldnt be, police. Once you know exactly what the history of policing is and no ical violent and out oppressive it is, i would like to think any person of conscience wouldnt do that. You would like to think that. I want to bring up Shirley Chisholm because i was like ignorant and id ive not hearf her and i was like, what . What is going on . I was in that educated . Now i looked her up and im like what is wrong with a . I need to go read 800 books. Can you talk about this political figure . Also you mentioned his statue. It may be think about like what if some of these statues are replaced with people that i love you more about her. Yeah. I mean, Shirley Chisholm, her fame like the thing that people keep talking about her for in paving the way, especially with obama in 2008 and again with hillary in 2016, the first black woman to run for president on the democratic ticket. The discussions around alexandria ocasiocortez partly because she is both from new york but also political establishment and they ran in their ability to be able to get elected to congress, but she came to me in an effort it was a yellow one but has a Campaign Slogan from 72 when she ran for president , catalyst for change, she ran and explicitly antiracist and feminist campaign, even though she was like im not running a campaign for black people, im running for women and americans in her platform is politics at the time and she very famously gives her first speech on the house floor before anything even happens before shes given a vote on anything its an antivietnam war and she hasnt been established in the Congress Auto her very first pieces of work speech, she works for the expansion of food stamps and programs and all the stuff, all the antipoverty measures throughout her career and on the night of the election, she was being celebrated in different ways and because they are putting up the statute not far from where i live, but thinking about what she actually stood for and what she actually worked for in her career, that statue is going to stand there and the house was folks that i see on the street right now are going to sweep under the statute of this woman who fought to end poverty and so where are we, what meaning are we trying to give to the statue if her very legacy was not something that people are willing to fight for but shes being used in this way to bolster certain ideas around you can do it, everything is possible, trailblazer, all of the stuff, its another way in which we use historical figures to be adopted into the american exceptionalism and that america always comes out on top, america is a reason that she is able to do what shes able to do. Im not sure why she had to do what she had to do but i think thats a part unwilling to integrate into the story is that america can celebrate for being the first black woman elected to congress but never ask why she had to be first in 1968, why it took until 1968 for that to be possible, and then i celebrate her for being the first black woman to run for president but not ask why she was only able to get 2 of the democratic vote and not enough delegates to do any wheeling and dealing on the convention floor, what are the reasons 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 the obstacles are there in the first place. That is one of the things that i love so much about the book, im a fiction writer and i love novels so to be able to spend the time in the pages and learn in abundance of information, felt like a short amount of time like im learning, i actually have some questions, one of the most pleasurable things is to learn. Im so glad that it was enough information that my editor kept trying, every paragraph is springloaded with the history behind it, with the projected future, everything has such resignation of meaning, and i have a question about the process for you as a writer and where you get your influences and pull from, one of the things i love about the book, their socalled epigraphs when there in front of a chapter, you have the beautiful severance, i always lived, and loving the idea of something where the thing itself and i cant think of the only city left outer space are you keeping track in a book or something can you talk about the work that you are consulting when youre building this book in a notebook, so many unused ones and i dont know how much you find in your writing process, how much reading when youre doing all the work but i was reading a lot, not everything was directly researched, im interested in reading this thing right now and thats what im reading, i dont know how this sounds but it does feel like there is a cosmic intervention to say i was supposed to be reading this right now, there is something in here that is meant to be used that im supposed to be pulling from, the ideas are forming in a way that becomes clear when i read this so i was reading severance and im like thats exactly what ive been trying to say, thats exactly the caption, i was reading beloved and im like thats the thing, thats what im trying to do with this chapter, exactly that feeling so it was a matter of things i already read and then i come back to that come back to me in ways that i did not anticipate but i was reading morgans book and i was very early in the process and it was like what im trying to say here is there is no escape, there is very little and it was also because it was in conversation with other things that i was dealing with, i was writing the forethought of the introductory chapter and i was thinking about the song space program. Its like that fits perfectly with this idea, it wasnt always purposeful, it wasnt like i need to read this book because it has information that will work for me but it was, i was in this rym badran day looking through a book as they do because i love bookstores, its the thing i been missing most about pandemic times is going to a bookstore as soon as they open up that was the first place and went but i was looking for the new york section industry and and you could write a book about new york city was there, it was a slim book and i picked it up and i read it and there was so much here, there is so much rich here, the mark brothers book about new york, this is something that i need to hear, this is something that captures the idea that i want to build on or simply dont think needs to be improved upon, that encapsulates exactly the thing in terms of using them as epigraphs in those instances is the prime people is to say these are the ways that you need to be thinking right now to absorb and what im trying to do to relate and also citation or practice, im not alone and i think that dispels the myth of the writer of the total solo artist, were in conversation with one another all the time, we learn and that is important to note that knowledge is not produced by a Single Person on their own, it is produced in conversation with each other in community with each other, i want to be able to show my work and show people these are the places that we can explore. And i love the idea of showing the work because they think austin and white supremacy, a lot about hiding the work in the pathway to power in you provide so many references youre providing Additional Reading list, go out here and you really laying out the framework, this is how you can achieve this breath of information, can you talk about the title, where the title from the book came from, i would like to hear about that. The title is the first thing that comes to me, it was the reason this became a book in the first place because as i said i was setting out completely different books but i kept thinking about the album of 1996, an amazing album, they were thinking about it, the particularly ricks on one of the songs from the group. I was like thats a dope line but also suppressed and that you like the longevity of your group can be compared to the longevity of racism, it is never going anywhere. But that was the idea to say were explained to reflection in the election of donald trump is a reflection of the permanence of the permanence of capitalism that these things have to reassert themselves because they are baked into the very foundation of the american identity, when i was thinking about that i was thinking about the very name of the album, the stakes are high and it being rooted into the macular saying there is something permanent about the status of blackness within this country, the idea of blackness being the marker by which everyone else measures in this country but just the phrase itself, i dont know how much higher they can get and what were experiencing right now with the timeline that we have, we can look right now at this country, just narrowing the country and the flyers are raising out in california and the Pacific Northwest in the hurricane gathering in the gulf coast while the entire country deals with the Global Pandemic as an airborne illness and say we have generations and generations to deal with this problem, no, we dont, we dont, we are late to the game in dealing with climate disaster and its like its not just angry white men took the last punch and wanted to get power, the things that they wanted to do with the power will accelerate to all the problems that we are facing in their very existence sustainability of this planet the ability of this planet to sustain human life, we are up against them and up against the high timeline in order to be able to deal with it, stakes is high, they dont get any higher than what they are now. I think of all the books ive been reading, yearbook matches the pitch of the energy which is were on the edge of either we have to rebuild or maybe its over pretty soon. Its kind of confusing a little bit and you 0 off into this idea of an alternate timeline which i think a lot of people are doing more and more because we were doing in the early days of the pandemic every single day, my calendar has this but it wont tell me where this happens, that is one of the things that i absolutely adore about the book the idea of Story Building as a fiction writer you have been there, yes i love it, what do you think the role is of the imagination and being able to provide us with a pathway out of this a pathway out of all of this suppression and injustice, what vision being able to move forward, do you have any thoughts on that. I think its something to the effect of the book that imagining where we want to go will teach us how we get there, what do we actually want and i think her political imagination has been so stifled because we get caught in the fortyyear election cycle in which were always choosing between the lesser of two evils and people can try to debate that to know in india would be like there is a possibility, no, you are choosing between which one will be less bad for the time being and thats what were presented with every single time, that is the best we can do, the best we can do and believing the american president is our savior and whatever side you fall on is the singular person in singular figure that will rescue us but its the best we can do is choosing from the Democratic Party or the republican party, these are the things that we believe from moment to moment the best we can do then we are doomed, we can take the on that and just say out loud what it is we actually want, this is the thing that frustrates me about especially the Democratic Party, they say that those are the things that they want, the loftier goals but then they say its not possible, and less 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 talk about an alternative timeline a little bit and you talk about imagining what world the chisholm wouldve one in the election of 1972 in writing it off immediately, there was no place for america would be completely different countries, i want to imagine what thats like, i want to know and i can do that by myself but again it comes back to an idea that i believe in democracy and i believe we should be doing that together and that we have ideas of what a better life looks like for the one that we have, its a matter of listening to those things, believing that there possible, not believing that were responsible for one another and responsible for that future for other people but its hard to imagine all of that when youre up against reality and reality that there are millions of them who refuse to put a piece of cloth over their face and protect their neighbors from catching the deadly illness even 200,000 of them died. There is a selfishness to this, there is an individualistic ideology running through so many people that believe that they only have to look out for themselves, i am saying that spells destruction, that is the place that we are going right now, as you say it is either going to end right now or were going to figure out a way to make it work in the only way of making it work is to have the imagination to be like the world exist as it is but if theres another world that could be if were willing to try. I love god, im a big proponent of the imagination or, i spend all my time there. We have time for one more question, i wanted to ask you, i didnt feel pessimistic or bummed out, i just felt this is cool, i feel like i have community with this person and agree with a lot of this but i can see some people feeling subjective and a little pessimistic as to reading this, what feelings do you want to stir into people and what do you want your readers to take from this book. If that is the feeling, fit with it, i want whatever file that you have as a response to be your feelings, i dont want to police your feelings but i do want people to stick with it and if it depresses you or makes you feel hopeless, start asking why does it make you feel hopeless, what is lacking that makes you feel like there is no hope for these things to come to pass, those are the places where then you need to act, if you believe there is something wrong here, whatever issue it is, whatever communitybased thing, whatever it is, there is a thought in here that makes you say that is just impossible, that is the place to start, thats the place to be like i need to talk to other people about this and i need to get in community with other people to fix this thing because that is exactly where we end up all the time, the issues too big for me, obviously its too big for one person, all of these things are too big for one person to tackle, i want people to sit with whatever feeling that produces in them and say why do i feel that way, how can i find other people who are feeling the way that im feeling and how can we be in community with one another so we dont feel that way anymore. I love that, thank you so much, mychal denzel smith, the book is steak says hi, i think you should encourage everyone else to get a copy in thank you magic city books, thank you again mychal, it was a pleasure. Everybody by the fifth novel when it comes on 2021. Awesome. Good night everybody. Tonight on the communicators mit Research Scientist Daniel Weitzner on security and privacy issues with artificial intelligence. The problem theyre trying to regulate encryption is a quick fix, it might feel good but its not really going to help, the concerted criminal activity is always going to find ways to hide their communication one way or another and this leaves all the rest of us more vulnerable state, i am concerned that policymakers really should look at the whole picture when theyre making this choice. Mit Research Scientist Daniel Weitzner tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on the communicators on cspan2. Weeknights this month we are featuring book tv programs as a preview of whats available every week and on cspan2, tonight its a look at president ial history, first Susan Eisenhower examines her grandfather Dwight Eisenhowers leadership style and the important decisions he made during his presidency. And former second Lady Lynn Cheney chronicles the leadership of the war of the five president s who hail from the state of virginia, washington, jefferson, madison and monroe. And later historian recounts the 1948 president ial election, watch tonight beginning at 830 eastern and enjoyed book tv this week and every weekend on cspan2. You are watching book tv on cspan2, every week and with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2, created by americans Cable Television company as a Public Service and brought to you by your television provider. Tomorrow is election day november 3, stay with us to learn who the voters select to leave the country as president in which parties will control congress, live coverage on Election Night starts at 9 00 p. M. Eastern and continues through the washington journal at 7 00 a. M. Eastern, join the conversation, share your experiences as the results come in and hear from the candidates. Watch live on cspan at cspan. Org or listen live on the cspan radio app, Election Night on cspan, your place for an unfiltered view of politics. Good evening and welcome, i am elizabeth and im joined by author rick tyler who is the author of a hybrid driving composting american makes the case for conservatism, he is joined by friend and author john clark, good evening gentlemen welcome to