Transcripts For CSPAN2 Ben 20240704

Parable of american healing. Ben jealous has spent his professional life at the nexus of social change media and emerging technologies. Hes a former democratic nominee for governor of the great state of maryland, a former National President and ceo of the acp. Former executive director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association and for more than half a decade has been investing in social impact startups. While at the acp, jealous led a series of wholesale changes in how the organization used social media and related technologies to enhance its organizing. He is also a professor of practice at the university of pennsylvania. Jealous will be in conversation with april ryan. Ryan is a white house correspondent, the longest serving black female journalist where shes been covering urban issues from the white house for 26 years. She has been featured, in essence, vogue, cosmopolitan, elle magazine and other top publications. She served on the board of the prestigious White House Correspondents Association and is an esteemed member of the National Press club. April is the author of the Award Winning book the presidency in black and white. Also at mamas knee mothers and race in black and white. And most recently, black women will save the world. An anthem. Please join me in welcoming to politics and prose ben jealous and april ryan. Then its always good to be here at politics and prose. The premier bookstore in the nation. Yeah, we cant get better than that. I want to thank brad and alyssa for having us to talk, particularly in this moment, in this moment, for a time such as this. Never forget our people were always free. This is the part i like a parable of american healing, a parable of american healing. What does that healing look like . You know, the the the need for it is urgent. I live in pasadena, maryland. Its a town that the Washington Post has labeled the most racist town in our state. With that said, cathy hughes and i both live there and we both love it. So and the braxton family is from there, too. Yes. Amen, man. And and, you know, life is always more complex than the Washington Post likes to make it out. Put it that way. But during covid, you know, i really got to spend a lot of time with my neighbors walking our dogs and such. And there was a lot of casual talk about civil war and i decided that it was time for me to write a book that gave people hope and a sense of direction about how we actually pulled this country back together. I know what that looks like. I know what it takes because thats what the journey of my own family. My father was disinherited by most, so his family disowned and disinherited for marrying my mom. My parents had to leave maryland because their marriage was against the law and i grew up kind of on a bridge between the north and the south, black and white, even the old world, the east coast, and kind of the cutting edge of california. And my parents, ive watched them kind of healed themselves here, healed their own families. And i decided that it was time to to actually put a book in peoples hands that not just gave them hope, but gave them a sense about how to start taking the steps that actually allow us to pull this country back together, pulling the country back together after hundreds of years of trying to figure out just who we are, where we come from, as people are banning books, banning stories about true stories, about our history, etc. But in the midst of this, as you were talking about, just the genesis of you, i thought about trevor. Noah yeah, born a crime, you know, talk to me about the parallels because what people dont understand, we are just almost 50 years out of getting all of those rights where black and white people could marry, where we had Voting Rights, where we receive the Civil Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act that allowed us to go to restaurants on the side of the road, stay in hotels on the side of the road. And i think about this within black history month, i think about these laws that we had. All of them are not here now. And our challenge, like Voting Rights and affirmative action, is being challenged in the United States Supreme Court in this moment. But i think about what life was like before these laws were passed. I think about people like charles drew. Dr. Charles drew, the man, the black man who changed the dynamic of what we call the current Blood Donation system in this nation. He died because he was driving in North Carolina before the Civil Rights Act and he fell asleep at the wheel. He couldnt go to a hotel on the side of the road. He died in a hospital because his injuries were so grave that this is the man that created the modern Blood Donation system in this nation. His daughter was a city councilwoman. Charlene drew jarvis here in the city. And when he went into the hospital, they took him downstairs in the black part of the hospital. A white doctor recognized him and took him upstairs, but it was too late. And you talk about a parable of healing. Yes. And that wasnt long ago. So in this moment, as we watch Sarah Huckabee sanders and her response, i mean, it was it was more than harsh for some. For others, thats what they want in this nation. Shes the governor of the state of arkansas. She spoke of banning a latin exit, but yet shes talking about freedoms and and talking about the little rock nine. Who are we as a nation . Who are we . Well, you know, youre talking about trevor noah in south africa and apartheid and segregation obviously are kind of mirror images. Yes. And the anc was actually modeled on the structure of the acp when it was founded, but it evolved very differently the way if you take the same plant and you planted in different soil, it can grow very differently. For me, though, it was important to get back beyond the start of segregation, to understand like what we had emerged out of, because segregation was so unnaturally sterile. Like, my mom was 14 when she made her first white friend. Thats insane. In a country that has many white people as well. You can live in the space so black. And my father similarly, you know, the presumption was that up in maine, he wouldnt have had any black friends and most of his friends didnt. But his father had crossed that racial barrier as a doctor. He was the only white doctor who would do. House visits into black communities up there. Thats why they actually grew up with a bunch of black friends. But that was my mom. It was very you know, she found herself dating my dad. It was like he proposed to her at the end of the first week. Wow. And she was like, hold up. Like, i didnt plan on, like, going on a date with a white guy, let alone marrying one. And he would ask two more times in two weeks, and she would say, yes, theyve been together for 66 years, 66, yeah. She broke up with the black racecar driver after she said yes. So it was it was a whirlwind. Yeah, it was a whirlwind. It was yeah. It was a whirlwind romance. She has she has no regrets, but when i when i got back beyond it, into the time of slavery, into the period between the end of reconstruction and the start of jim crow, what i realized was the lesson that dr. King was trying to teach us at the end of his life, that race ism. Yes. Is everything we experience as black people are people of color. And yet it is also a wedge that is driven to divide people and keep them from uniting. Thats what he was trying to teach us in the poor peoples campaign. That was the point. He was assassinated. And then i stop for a second and i said, dr. King was an assassin and desegregation effort. He was assassinated trying to unite the poor, black and white of all the black panther leaders who were assassinated. Fred hampton was the one where the police planned the execution. It was like the most aggressive, the most horrendous of all of them. What was he trying to do . You night the young patriots, poor whites and the black panthers before for medgar evers, there was harry moore and harriet moore, 1951. And we choose to remember harry moore is maybe his most famous. I was president of florida, acp, blown up by the ku klux klan along with his wife christmas night, 1951. One of their daughters left in college park when i was president , i met her. She was 80. She was still a shell of a, you know, really just tremendously transformed by the fact that her parents had gone to bed on christmas night and then they couldnt even find a tooth there. Was that much dynamite. But what we forget about harry moore is he was also the president of the florida Progressive Party. He had registered a million voters the year before. He was trying to unite poor folks, black and white and and when i got back into to the period before jim crow, my mind started exploding. April, like every two days, i was doing research. And this is this goes way back. You get into the confederacy. You i mean, its this this book goes way back. But keep going. Im sorry, because im into history like this. I mean, look, first like like the first thing, im like, just unsettling me was i figured out that robert de lee was my cousin and who else . Who else is your cousin . Cheney. How long were you in Barack Obamas cheney . Thurgood marshall. I mean, and Thomas Jefferson. And Thomas Jefferson and and apparently james hemings. Sally hemings. Yeah. Apparently, her kids because were because were cousins to Thomas Jefferson. Right. I used to i used to joke that my family was was black like in the jeffersonian model of blackness until i figured out he was our cousin. And i was like, this is a joke. Its just its what a what it was, right . And so there were but there was a couple of moments that really kind of blew my mind. The first was i had the will of the last man to own my grandmothers paternal side of her family like her grandfather, her great grandfather. And there were no other enslaved people mentioned in the will except for my grandmothers. A great grandfather. And while it didnt free him, every line that in that paragraph was about protecting him. And i said to henry louis gates, jr. I said, skip, like, help me out here. What am i looking at . And he said, well, based on the dna, based on this and some other records, best we can tell, the owner understands that his enslaved man servant is his six year older brother. They would have been raised in the plantation household together. And while he doesnt have the courage to free him, hes trying to make sure that hes not tortured in his old age, that hes not mistreated when the owner dies because the owner knows that hes dying. And his older brother will live longer than him. Well, that just opened up this whole world, right . Because, again, i had viewed all of history against the backdrop of segregation that my mom had been raised in. And like the walls seemed like they were, you know, fierce and thick and there was no and all of a sudden its like, wait a second, the slave owner understands that a slave is his brother. Hes trying to protect him. Well, my grandmothers grandfather would have been the owners nephew and he walked out of slavery at the last day of slavery. Virginia, the battle of appomattox. He walks out and half. Hes 17 years old and tommys doubled that age. Hes leading the black republicans in virginia and im like, where do you get that hubris . Youre born a slave and youre becoming this statewide political leader. And black people were republicans. Yes. Well, its the mass. And that was the Progressive Party at the time. And. This is all part of the equation. Theres all sorts of reasons. But one of the factors must be that he understood that the men that he shared blood with, the men who had led the commonwealth, that had to be part of it. You know, in other words, the knowledge that your owner is your uncle, that hes a proud and outspoken coven cousin. To robert e lee has to be part of your factor in understanding who you are, because edward david bland, my grandmothers grandfather, would run against his white cousin and beat him. And then election after the end of reconstruction. And that was the next thing that kind of blew my mind was we were always taught basically, like, you know, there was a civil war, there was reconstruction. And then there was like jim crow, but nothing happens in an instant. There was a period of transition in between and. When i realized my grandmothers grandfather had run for office in 1880 and reconstruction ended in 1876, and the terror of the klan had been unleashed for four years. And when he would run for reelection, six people would be killed in that election by white supremacists. I realized id stumbled into this kind of like ive been taught a fiction. Ive been told he was a reconstruction statesman. He was a statesman after reconstruction. And then the only thing ive been taught about him is that he helped start Virginia State university. And so as i dug in, i what i realized was a it was after reconstruct action b he led blacks out of the republican party. C they he, he went into partnership with a former confed at general. I just kept getting weirder to create a third party called the re adjusters and they took over the virginia government for about four or five years. The governorship, both houses, both us senators and i was like, well, who is this general and who are the re adjusters . Well, the re adjusters were response to the plantation elite, trying to reassert their control over the state now that the former confederates have been re enfranchised and the and the plantation when a bridge too far they said this civil war debt is onerous. Were going to have to shut down the Public Schools to pay for it without thinking for a second that the former confederate soldiers, the men who didnt own slaves but fought to defend slavery, have been relying on those free Public Schools for more than a decade for their kids to back then, women couldnt vote. These men, both the democratic party, just have their own party, their own party and their name register comes from their demand. Readjust to the terms of the civil war debt so we can keep our Public Schools. Well, it was the black reconstruction statesmen that started those schools and so as the leader of that group of people, my grandmothers grandfather, edward david blaine, approaches general William Beeman and says, lets strike a deal. We want to keep those schools. Ill lead blacks into your party and then youll have enough power when the dust settled that they had a party about 40 white, about 60 black, a majority black party whose principal leader was a former confederate general, whose deputy was a freedmen and and they take over the State Government. Now stop me. If anybody ever taught you there was a period in American History when johnny reb and the freedman got together and took over State Governments and then you got to ask yourself, why didnt they teach us this . This is what theyre trying to keep us from going. Now. And its because the walls of jim crow came up right after that epic. And what would be more threatening to jim crow than the notion that populist needs the need to educate children and feed families was enough for people to get over the hurts of the civil war and unite what would be more threatening to jim crow and future generations was to ratify and make law the promise of sherman. Yes, to bridge wealth. The wealth gap to to have homes, have ownership, to be free in every sense of the word. And when we talk about that, that promise of sherman what was it wasnt a meal, but what was it was 40 acres. 40 acres. Yeah, 40 acres. Yeah. Well, and this is the thing, right . Like, what are those, those registers do and like that for you for five years that controlled the, the government just in the four or five years they saved the free Public Schools, they radically expanded virginia tech, making it what it is today, the working persons arrival to uva, they created Virginia State, the first public hbcu south of the masondixon, and gave it the mission to train black teachers. And they quadrupled the number of black teachers while they were in office. They abolished the public whipping post. They raised taxes on corporations and led the state from a budget deficit into a budget surplus. And they abolish the poll tax. And it was that last one that kind of blew my mind again because the poll tax was woven into the virginia constitution in 1902, you and i were taught, oh, the poll tax was an assault on black political power like that demonstrate did during reconstruction to make sure that would never come back. And it certainly was. It it suppressed 80 of the black vote. Yeah, but you know who else it suppressed 50 of the white vote. And who specifically the poorer whites who couldnt afford the equivalent of 50 bucks today to cast a ballot and who were they . The ones who are most likely to have joined the re and helped the blacks take over the State Government and how long had they had the right to vote . Only since the 1840s. So . So white men who own no land were enfranchised in the 1840s. Black men were enfranchised in the 1860s. And by the time you get to 1880, theyre teaming up and taking over State Governments. And by time you get the 1902, they pass a poll tax to make sure that essentially all of that power is wiped out, essentially outlawing a populist, multiracial movement. Postreconstruction. We saw black men who were in congress, right . Yes. So it is real. But with all of this, as you last year, it was just last year, 2022, you were out out of the white house fighting for voting, right . Yes. Bringing church choir boys and Martin Luther king. The third year and listening to you had fun. I had to cover it. But but and they were going to they loved going to jail. Im like, yeah. I went five times and im like, official. I think im off the White House Christmas list for like, well, i think at this point you didnt go this year, right . I wasnt invited. Thats right. Thats why. So anyway. Yeah, but no, but seriously, with that said and to look at what happened before did you have to wrestle with some of this . Because it seems like its great history, but sometimes your family may have been on the wrong side with the confederacy. Yeah, well, they were like on every side. You know what im saying . Yes. You know, but what it what it pushed me to really understand and ive just seen your delta back, my grandma died at 105 last summer. She was Virginia State in 1936. Delta two, honorary oh and and, um, but, you know, i, i asked the question again. I got distracting my grandma. Youre. I know. Yeah. This morning she was with us. Tell 105 it hasnt been a year yet but wow yeah thats thats as longevity. Oh you were talking about the family. Yeah. Yeah. And everything. Dahling dealing with wrestling with some of the things that are juxtaposed to who you are today. No, thats right. It was helpful that a barack obama is also cheneys cousin, because at least i had context for like digesting that one. But when i got to robert e lee, i was just flummoxed. I was just like, oh, my god. But then want to help me understand, is this that we talk about the American Family and yet for a lot of us, black folks, youre like, well, like, are we part of that . You know . And then you realize, you know what . Like our American Family is dysfunctional. Its abusive, huh . And yet, at the end of the day, this it actually is a family. I was there when myrlie evers approached john mccain backstage in 2008 and said, john, you know, my people are from west point, mississippi, too. Yeah. We come off the mccain plantation. Yeah. John, im pretty sure were related. Well, who did you do . Well, i mean, who doesnt want to be related to myrlie evers, right. Just the closest thing we got to like Coretta Scott king left you know, he was running for president. He was blotto. He was just like, i oh, god bless him. It Strom Thurmonds maternal uncles name is al sharpton. Theyre from the same little corner, south carolina. All the al sharptons descend from the same al sharpton. When i say like we are family, we are family in ways that are profound. When i went into my parents dna, you know, not surprising in the nile river valley 50,000 years ago, their tribes are pretty close to each other. Right. One goes up the nile river, one comes into west africa. Find expected that what i didnt expect is that theyre actually cousins through english or french royalty because of the slave owners that my grandma that my mom descends from who rape people on the plantation and my dads family. So, you know, were again were taught like black and white are so separate, so distinct. Theres, you know, never the twain shall meet. Its you know, and my parents marriage was treated as such an odd thing when i was researching the re adjusters, the guy who who they beat was running on an antimiscegenation ticket. That means there were enough interracial couples in virginia in 1879 that a guy decided to send her his whole Gubernatorial Campaign around it and to do lost, you know, and the dude lost. So its it was actually quite healing in the midst of covid as i composed this book is 23 speeches to my computer to be processing all this ancient history and actually find reasons why i could be hopeful that we could come together now. Because if confederates and freedmen got together, let alone create a party that was pro workers rights, pro civil rights, pro Voting Rights, and. Then why cant we get together now . You know that answer. You know that answer. And i want to i want to ask you for that answer in a minute, but i want to say this first. A wise man this week, someone at the highest heights said something in an off the record. They said, you know, every 2 to 5 generations, we go backwards. We go back to that cycle. We go through a cycle every 2 to 5 generations. And it looks like were back in that cycle of the 1960s. You know, 1956, 1950s. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. But, but, but yeah, i get you. But go ahead, hammer also. I mean the 1920s. Thats true. You know, when tulsa, the 40 is at least 40 blocks of black wealth, is now half of black sandwiched under an overpass, pushed in by a minor league, Baseball League and the universe. The Research Center is cramming it in. Okay, lets talk about the sixties, though. 1966, the black Panther Party came to be because of Police Brutality. And they came up with a ten point plan. And we are now, as a nation, Funding School lunch programs in School Breakfast programs, right. Were funding free clinics, but it took that push. That was primarily i know the picture of the black Panther Party was black men wearing leather and beret, but 70 of that push was black women. Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah. Were below, like 85. Right, right. But fredricka newton, the widow of huey pin, even tell me that seven. Yeah. So and lets speak of the soup since you just brought up the acp in the book, you said the acp is not black. Its very black. Whats very black . As the former head of the club, i you see, i actually use of time im the incoming executive director of the sierra club. And what i used to say precisely was the acp is not black is very black like the sierra club is not white, its very white. Whats the. Jeffrey right. And heres the irony. Now, im now im leading the one thats very white black me. Thats just black, right . White means its just white like a drinking fountain, like a bathroom. Very just means that its mostly its entrenched in the culture and the history and the strength. Well, yeah, but its a black but i guess im saying is like if a white person walks into the naacp, theres a place for them. Yeah, right. And, and, and they might have to get used to being like in a very black room, but its not an exclusively black room. That was the point. And but, you know, going back for a second, you were talking about the black panthers. Were talking about Police Brutality and like one of the things thats hardest for us to do when the pain is so searing, when our kids are killed by the police again and again and again, is to actually get on the balcony and say, what is happening here in this whole room and to see if theres other corners of the room. I remember, you know, i come right out of the acp, my last campaign and was trying to get George Zimmerman in prison. And i, i got Death Threats and trayvon would have been 28 years old. Yeah. Yeah, 28 years old this weekend. Yes, go ahead. And we had gotten the most serious Death Threats ive ever received. My the police surrounded my house on a swatting thing from a white supremacist juvenile in northern europe. And it was a mess. The police in Montgomery County threatened to kill my wife in front of my daughter. Yeah. Real talk because they got this swatting call. But it was all you know, we had 22 Police Officers with with air fifteens, you know, aimed aimed up at my wife while i was coming home from the naacp convention. So as against that backdrop that i ended up essentially a couple of years later helping Bernie Sanders become president. And we go to detroit and we go to chicago and then im told that were going to missouri and were all excited because we think missouri we could win. We had just one michigan and we would win missouri, too. But but the but they say missouri, not missouri. Not missouri. Well get you to kansas city or saint louis. Missouri is the ozarks and thats where the plane touches down. And were at this rally in the ozarks and they tell me that im bringing out bernie and im like, are you sure . Because if you see that crowd, like have them in or deer hunting, camouflage and theres like five white and five black people in the room and like 5000 white people in a room. You sure they want to hear the former like. Yeah, and go out to give you a speech. But i went out there, i gave my speech. It was it was about the danger of donald trump. This is back when people would laugh when like two months before george stop. What . Stephanie coppolas cracked up at Keith Ellison saying that donald trump might win the primary. You remember that moment . This is two months before that i was always saying, yeah, i mean, because we have sons and and so and sort of these folks and they love their neighbors. So they were a little afraid of their neighbors. And they saw the way that trumps movement was sweeping through the area. And they responded, great to my speech, but i got to frame and bernie spoke because there was a part of his speech when he called on the police to stop killing unarmed black women and unarmed black men. And if this crowd was at all tepid in their response, it was going to throw me off because i had been dealing with with all of this. We just come from dealing with, oh, it was it laquan mcdonald. I think, you know, and the way that that was covered up and bernie puts out the call and i get real quiet and the crowd erupts. Half the guys in deer hunting, camouflage jump up in their chairs, their fists in the air, making some holler. I imagine they only make in the ozarks and and then it hit me when i was a kid. I spent my summers in west baltimore. My cousins favorite show was the dukes of hazzard because aint nobody going friday night with daisy dukes. No, it was boss hog, because the way that boss hog treated them was the same way that the cops treated us. And then i remembered all the stats from fighting Police Brutality. The thing we havent ever wrap your mind around in this country is that its the class of people who end up in prison, who get beat up by the cops. You walk in a prison, you see it real clearly. Roughly half the men in prison, well, roughly 40 of white men, four 40 are black, 20 are kind of everybody else. But what they all have in common is there are two poor 95 plus percent to poor to afford their own lawyer. And if you look at the stats of unarmed people being killed by the police, theres a surprisingly high number of white folks. But again, they tend to be poor whites. And you say, well, how could it be that that could be happening and we dont see it in the media . Well, there are almost twice as many whites in poverty as black. Theres 16 million. And change whites in poverty is 8 million. Change black looks at poverty. But whose image do you see in the paper . Black folks. Black folks, black folks, black folks, black folks. But if you go to what appalachia . Yeah, you go to south baltimore, youre going to dundalk. Yeah. I mean, you go to six miles from your house. You know, and then you sit at the bar and you ask people like, what are the cops like . You know, out here in dundalk . And you hear about a lot of abuse. And so its important, i think, to understand that because thats the only way anything gets better. And i talk about this in the book, you know, theres a forum in baltimore for decades weve talked about the heroin problem and it was treated like it was a criminal scourge. And the stereotype was that it was black folks. Oh, now, i used to work the financial district in baltimore. Where i could one morning i look to my right, to my left, theres a black homeless guy i had to step over whos nodding off from here. And when i looked to my right, there was a black sorry there was a white finance and an investor. There was an investor. And those guys use it as a performance enhancing drug when they it. And he was nodding off on a bench outside his office dressed to the nines. And then something funny happened in the middle, in the midwest and in the midsouth, the heroin importation in roots suddenly changed. They had been across the caribbean. Theyd been into ports for decades. Nafta was passed. That came right into the middle of the country, right up the middle of the country in trucks, black tar here in washington, places they had never shown up before. And a lot of folks are dying. A lot of sheriffs deputies were burning people that they went to high school with and they were American Free trade agreement. Yes, north American Free trade opens up trucking lanes and those notice that like miami vice is now a nostalgia thing because drugs actually get transported right up. You know, right up. 95. Right up. Yes, yeah. Or whatever at 55. Right. You know, right. Right in the middle of the country. And so they to publish the photos of the corpses and the corpses looked like whatever town because drug abuse is pretty constant across racial groups. So theyre the new thing in the paper where photos all these dead white kids from opiates, from heroin, from pills and what happened . The Public Policy conversation shifted suddenly in america to opiate addiction. Is a Health Crisis that we need rehabilitation to address. How many black folks got locked up in baltimore, you know, with them acting like it was a crime when it was always an addiction. And so thats the power. One of the ways that we heal as we got to insist that the media show the full face of the problem. You know, Middle America was very upset. That was one of the most pressing issues in the campaigning during Hillary Clinton and Donald Trumps fight for the white house. That was one of the biggest issues. But im going to go to questions. And if you have a question, please go to the mike. I will. I want a question, not a comment. Please, but never forget our people were always free reading this book and and understanding your history. Who you are youre an activist through and through. Whether youre a journalist, whether youre a father, whether you are in finance, whether youre running. Governor yeah. And it is so interesting that story right there, he ran for governor a serious attempt and one of the strongest people that was behind him in his run for governor happened to be a man called wes moore, whos now governor of bailed out in a crazy well, i mean, let me tell you how that happened. And let me just jack, can you say hi to everybody . Can you smile . This this is my son, jack. He sat in a few of these and he found three great books downstairs. So hes hes enjoying those. You, wes, in baltimore, were proud to have five black men who have been rhodes scholars and that birth order im third west, fourth. Kurt schmoke is one of them. Absolutely. And we frankly, kurt was inspired by Paul Sarbanes because the pecking order in baltimore, if a greek guy can break through, maybe a black guy can break through next. And so west calls me two years ago and he says, you know, youre in the polls and the primary this morning. Are you going to run and i said, well, you know, i just told my daughter that im only going to run if you dont run. So i just told my wife the same thing. So whos running . I said, you ask his wife, try his daughter. I was like, brother, im a single dad. I got a daughter in high school. Your kids will be just fine. My kids need me at home right now. You and then, Anthony Brown and i did something. I dont think any two black men have ever done before. We had both won the democratic primary, and we called west over to my house. We agreed to back him of. And then we sat down. We explained to him exactly how you win that primary because he was about to start in fourth, just like i started in fourth and we walked through every step and we lined up some meetings for. Him but i dont think youve ever had three black men win a democratic primary for governor in a row, and then two of them sit down with the third one and say, okay, this is how you win. And he was at 1 at one point. Yes. Yes. And look at where he is now. Yeah. Hes one of the shining. He and you talk about the parable of american healing. He one of those shining spots that people are hoping that will be part of the healing of this. Yeah of this nation thats going through major growing pains. Yes. Major growing pains. Yes. Thank you. This is real life. This is this is its okay. Okay. If i can just start with a brief story and then ask a question, because this is really i know we got to we got to stop here time. We can make a and then a question short. My familys very diverse. My husbands black. I worked for a number of years, over a decade in maine, rural maine, working with schools, a lot of really poor white kids who were struggling in similar ways to black kids in various places. Right. And that was my work. I went to a very fancy school name at harvard and was in some law classes and in some law classes related to civil rights. I tried to make the point like with all these hundred students, you know, that that while they didnt have the racial component, many kids in the schools that i worked with, the poor white kids felt as disenfranchized felt as which is what i think you were saying. They were trapped in their world and we were trying to give them a way to see a brighter future. And it was different because they could put on a suit and they could pass. But in their own mind, they felt like they were trapped. And i was trying to make that point at a very fancy school with a lot of really progressive people. And i was eviscerated. I was eviscerated because one person actually said to me, well, they dont riot in rural america. And i said, they dont have enough people to riot. But that didnt mean that the people that were there were not suffering. So i guess my question and comment is that i feel like theres also a gap or a a need for progressives to understand the struggle of white, rural, poor. And thats why when you started with this comment about Martin Luther king not being killed until he started to try to unite people, and thats when i felt back in the 1980s, when i went through all of this, that there was an attempt to try unite poor folks who were out of the mainstream, who were being punished. But theres an extra layer with race and class, but there is also theres a commonality and that the unity of that would have been a lot more powerful. So my question, i guess, is how do we help progressives myself included, understand the need to think about poor white people as victims . Again, one leg, everyone under the right wing, everyone. Just think about poor white people. Thank you, maam, because. Because thats because thats where it starts. Theres a as i discussed in the book, theres a researcher named john powell at uc berkeley who studies public support for everything public and the images of whos poor at the time in the great depression, the images of the poor were almost exclusively white. They ignored black poverty and public support for everything. Public was through the roof. The Civil Rights Movement and beyond. The images of poor have been almost exclusively black or black and brown and public support, certainly amongst whites has gone through the poor. And one of the most important things that newsrooms can right now is to show the white poor. And there are almost twice as many as black folk. So you will a hard time finding them. The but again you wonder you know one of the the through lines in this book was that theres been rebellion after rebellion after rebellion of poor whites and poor blacks, indentured servants and enslaved people. The American Revolution itself, the boston massacre. This is the boston massacre. Theres two records created by bonafide for father were Founding Fathers of this country of the boston massacre. One is paul reveres etching, which depicts everybody as white. The other is john adams defense of the redcoats. He was the defense lawyer for the redcoats who killed those young americans. And how did he described the crowd . Was mulattos and jack tars, jack tar is a term for the poorest white sailor, the guy whos tarring the deck. But the other two are descriptors for black folks. Now, first of all, it goes to what conversation . Earlier he was trying to excuse Police Brutality by saying that the crowd had black folks in it. But the other thing is thats exactly what we were not taught about the American Revolution. We act like boston is the whitest place in the world. Its a port town. Its always been diverse. And we act like Crispus Attucks was the only one, like he was some anomaly. But there was enough there that that john adams used two different descriptors for black. There was a diversity of black people. There. And so, you know, 1660s gloucester and bacons rebellion, 1776, 1880 is, you know, 1960s. Its a through line in our history. Its part of what gives me hope. The middle of the century will be hard. The middle of american century, these are almost all basically all have been hard. But im hopeful about when we get to the end of the century, our children will be in a much better place because that magnetism between the poor, which is frankly just needing a Better Future for the family and the kids, keeps pulling people together and thank you for your front line teaching in maine. Poverty in maine is crushing. You have people whose career is harvesting worms. Its a state where they only got rid of potato week like a decade ago because there were still people who said yes for a month to harvest potatoes for for the winter. Because in the in the timberlands and stuff, you know, people ask me to describe me because my dads from there. I was like, its basically georgia without black people, but real quick, before we go to the next question, one thing that we forgot and then you know this Coretta Scott king, the widow of dr. Martin luther king when she was alive, said one of the reasons why they killed dr. King is because he was able this one black man was able to galvanize so many the powerful. And his focus was going to shift from race to poverty. With bobby kennedy, with bobby kennedy. And if both of them had lived, they would have dealt with the issue of poverty for white. But for everyone. So it was money. It was money. It was about money. And what we see today play out, i believe, from this crazy perch that i sit in, i believe that theres so much upheaval or unrest this ease, if you will, in the spirit, because you feel like youre not touched, as you said, by government. Youre not seeing your cast away and theres some theres got to be some kind of i dont know, maybe with the hope that you have, you know, there needs to be an umbrella for all because some people feel left out you know, with each party or each person that comes in, theres always someone who feels left out. When do we make sure that we have everyone under that umbrella . Well, you know, the theres a theres a sermon that i refer to in the book. And well get to the question. But i think its very appropriate for the times that were in. It was a sermon of a man who was a methodist preacher and became a klansman participated in a lynching and lost his mind and to regain his sanity, he decided he had to choose jesus over the klan and he left the klan and he moved his family in the early 1950s in alabama, before brown in 52 into the Civil Rights Movement. And some are going to be one of the founders of snick. And this and the sermon that he gave was this. Hed say. In a man who has is any white man who has is his hand on the neck of a , keeping him down in the ditch needs to recognize that hes down in the ditch with him. And then he would say, im a rich man, walks down the middle of the road and laughs at both men in the ditch. The black one and the white one and the again, you know, we have to really discipline ourselves to ask, frankly, whos struggling with what im struggling with, because in a democracy, thats how you make change happen. And when i was head of the acp, we were able to shrink the prison system in georgia and in texas by working with great organizers and in georgia with Stacey Abrams from her post as minority leader. In texas, there was a woman named ana yanez correia, the texas girl justice coalition. But ultimately, stacey and i, nathan deal, pulled together a coalition with the help of Newt Gingrich. That was the acp plus the tea party making it in run around moderates in the democratic republican and shrunk their prison system. And in texas we did the same thing because the moderates, both of them sets were taking money from the from the private prison industry. But we were able to get the activists in both parties to create a majority in texas. We did that 52 times. Rick perry only vetoed two bills. Thats how went from 150 years of only opening up new prisons and refurbishing ones to shutting down 12. Thats what happens when we get together . We can actually make big things happen. Yes, maam. Well, i dont know if my question is in there, but i just wanted a quick remark during covid when the federal government was issuing checks. There were some articles about whites reactions to receiving those checks that were very positive and there was no stigma to those checks. There werent welfare, but it was just remarkable. I dont know if anybodys done some very Sensitive Research there, but i just wanted to feed that and know my question is about sierra club and i dont know if you can talk about it because you really havent begun. Yeah, yeah. Its starting to. But i was just wondering how it fits. Oh, sure. That i can talk about. No, no, thank you. You know, i was with lou gossett junior at the image awards cheer. Yeah, it was 2012, maybe 2013, i think was probably my last year. And lucy said, you know, ben, ive been in this fight for Racial Justice my whole life. Sometimes i feel like, well, were fighting over whos in first class. Somebody needs to look out the window and realize that the plane has lost like 25,000 feet of altitude in the last 3 minutes and said, if we did that, then we would spend the last time fighting over first class and more time running back and forth in the airplane, trying to figure who is the smartest person to get into the cockpit so we can regain altitude because whoever flying this plane is, theyre drunk, asleep or dead. Ben and i said to lou, thats your beautiful brother. What are you talking about . Oh, and he said, the planet band, the planets dying. It dont matter whos in first class on the dead planet. Oh, right. Well, you know, as you see, you know, when i was president , the naacp, our young people were on fire to end climate change. They led me to making my first order of business when i started launching our Climate Justice program. Every time there was a disaster, it seemed like we would get called it a partnership with the red cross around resilience and around responding to these disasters. And then once there was a flood in the iowa river and i said, oh, i dont have to go this time, its an help. And theres a few black folks in iowa and the ones who are there live in the flood plains. And so we organize things for iowa the the way that this fits to me is ive spent my life building big uncomfortably large coalitions. I was blessed to be trained by at least three of dr. Kings for dr. Kings proteges. And at least two of them said to me the same thing, that king would say to them first, if you if you cant say in 25 words or less, come back to when you can, because nobody can remember what you just said. The second thing he would say was was, if youre comfortable in your coalition, your coalition is too small. And so this is the biggest challenge of my life. Its that i think, you know, at the end of the day, its the most existential crisis for the planet and for everybody on it and for me, its just an extension of a life spent building uncomfortably large coalitions. I just did Newt Gingrichs podcast for 45 minutes. It was actually kind of a warm reunion because he he gave me a two page letter of endorsement for the entire acp criminal justice agenda without demanding one. Add it to our agenda, Grover Norquist would endorse half. He was like, im cool with shrinking these prisons. But the other half of our agenda was, take the money you saved from prisons and send it to the public university. These Newt Gingrich is one of the few conservative leaders who remembers a poor white people exists in a visceral way. And he understood the transformative importance of public universities for them to. I only got to agree with you on one thing in order to be your friend. You know, in politics, i was taught that by general powell, and its in it served me well. General, you know, im content to fight with newt 99 of the time. But the one time we actually figure out something, we agreed. We got a lot of good stuff done. Yes, sir. And i was im a Frederick County democrat. So you had my support. 18. Thank you. And we did good work out there. We flipped that county absolutely we did. So you left us hanging. You mentioned kurt and then you and then west as the as three road scholars from baltimore. Who who are the others are the other side. Go. Thank you. Yes. Yes. So were west and i have three or four. Kurts one, bradburys a pastors number two and west is chief of staff who was actually an editor on my book. Fagan harris is is number five. Hes a good friend of aprils do Amazing Things yes hes his chief of staff i saw him at the inaugural. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This has been such a wonderful time. Any more questions . I mean, come on up. We got time. But either way, as people are making their way, dont be shy because were not shy. Were not. No, were not. Not at all. And this is. Come on up. Come on. Come on to the mic. Come to the might. Come to the mic. This has been a really good evening, but as i was saying backstage, it says, never forget our people were always free. Im thinking about this for the book that even if we werent free physically were free in our minds to effectuate freedom. That was the the that i was unraveling in this book over here a question and then ill tell you about the onion. Its partly a comment and a question. Im a teacher in inner wendell county. Thank you. Actually, im a school librarian, so no book. Bans yet. Thanks. Fiction, the books. And im a proud resident of Montgomery County, which has a very progressive i dont know if youve read it, a Climate Action plan. And a dear friend of mine was one of the coauthors of that. And the one thing that he realized two years into that action plan was that the poor people had not been consulted in making this action. And so now they have created a Climate Action justice academy. So maybe the sierra club can reach out to Montgomery County. It might be a start, but the kids are involved. Theyre pretty young. Yeah, theyre not right now. But i know that theyre not. But i you know, i really am happy youre taking this next step because its truly the logical step for you in terms of what youve done in your work. So and your question my question is, please reach out and have the sierra club. Oh, sure. Use these communities because because poor people are ones who are suffering the most. No, thats exactly know that when youre in large ways. But we also dont realize it in very small ways. So anyway, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we did a report for. Wes moore. Yeah, yeah. Hes great. I love wes. I dearly, you know, when i was at the naacp, we did a report just on that. We took the u. N. Social Vulnerability Index and we overlaid it. The parts of the country most vulnerable to climate change. And it was like a hand in a glove. It really. And that includes poverty, includes poor White Communities to. But the onion of the book, the ill never forget, are people just imagine yourself a black kid growing up grandma. You know three out of four her grandparents were in slavery granddad all of his great grandparents were enslaved and your grandma keeps one want, you know, whenever you try to ask a sensitive question, its like well never forget. Our people were always free. It just made my brain hurt and then i got, you know, whatever. And thats for far enough into puberty. I thought, i can front my grandma and i was like, what are you talking about . Three of your grandparents are born in slavery one of them your own sister says was a rapist who was free. Grandma. The rapist. And she just gave me this look like she just patted me. It was as if an atheist had challenged a nun and said mary couldnt be a virgin. Whats your what else you got right. Like like it was like one of those types of moments where its like, you just dont mess with my faith. Right . That was a rough example, and it a rough example, but this was a rough moment. This was this was this was a rough moment. Ive seen an atheist try to do that once. Its not pretty. Yeah. Sister rosa. And watching nights when we were organizing together and and so so i took a step back and i said, grandma, where did you get this from . Well, my mom used to say it. My grandma used to say my great grandma used to say, well, grandma and great grandma were both enslaved. So i started peeling back. And a first i was like, never forget our people were free. Well, my grandma is cousins to to Thomas Jefferson. She descends from his grandma. Maybe this is her summation of the preamble to the declaration of independence and now maybe this is you know, all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness that was said in the context of a monarchy and feudalism. So maybe this is that. Well, dig, dig, dig. We figured out where her maternal line began and this was echoing down the maternal line. And when we figured that out, we figured what this meant. And it blew my mind. It took a lot to get that far back into history, to find the very first in a slave person on her maternal line. But when we figured that out, who that woman was, the rather unique circumstances of her enslavement, how it started it made all the sense in the world. And it was like the biggest gift my grandmother said that. Her mother said that. Her grandmother said that my sister, my mom, im convinced not because it made sense to them, but because of how it made them feel way it made them stand up straight. But in the beginning, it was a call to insurrection and even when they forgot the woman who first said it, and even when they forgot where she was from and what her story was, they kept repeating it because it gave them the the strength to push against jim crow, to push against slavery. Its so interesting that you say this. And then were going to go to our next question. But its so interesting. You talk about the lineage i have been really trying to find mine. Ive been on ancestry dot com. I did. What is it. Two. What is it. Two, 3 23 a. M. B yes i was two 324 yes 23 amy and im going on african ancestry so i know where your in is so interesting when youre on these things you see cousins from texas that dont look like you. Like how your fifth cousin you know and i want you white im not cheneys relative yet but im its an elite club. Anyway, i anyway. Ben jealous you dont want to know who my family members are, you know. Anyway, yes. When im next. Next question. Thank you so much. Youve got jokes. Always got jason. Thank you. Im im an attorney with the with all def Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund its in new york city and asianamericans in new york city have the highest rates of poverty. Theyre also facing a lot of antiasian violence. Yes. And were struggling because were trying figure out, you know, on one hand, you know, we see the value of things like matthew shepard, james byrd, hate crimes act. Right. It recognize as is a hate crimes against a Community Like an assault against one person. That community is an assault against the whole community. Its recognizing a hate crime. These were thinking are hate crimes. One one elderly asian person is pushed down and a whole community of elderly asians are staying in their house, afraid to come out to get their food, because theyre all afraid theyre going to push down whos pushing them and theres a big concern, you know, that is other poor people in the city. I mean, about the things that i see on videos are like, you know, commuter suburban whites, theyre coming in and doing doing these horrible acts. But thats not all of it. A lot of it is people with Mental Illnesses and a lot of it are are brown and Black Brothers and this is a problem of were really struggling with the over prosecution, the over criminalizing and the over incarceration of people. And were really struggling with how do we respond to this. We dont want more policing. We want like more like support in the community, in the infrastructure. Yeah, but how. Yeah. And thats were just trying to figure this out and i want to get what, what are your thoughts on this . You know, thats the policing issue is happening now because you dont want more policing because it could lead to other things, correct . Yeah. So and the George Floyd Justice in policing issue right now, it doesnt look like its going to pass again because tim scott and cory booker, its in the senate and they cant meet on the accountability of police. So we have to wait and see. But what is as someone whos a white person who has dealt with accountable city, who has dealt with communities being brutalized and stereotype and and just throwing thrown away, how do you answer her for this . Because this is very real in this moment. Asian hate is very, very real. Well, it is real. And, you know, i what i would say is i think the best hope for it. I saw my parents do this in monterey county, california, is to start where we should have been all along, which is getting all the Community Leaders to the table. The whole rainbow folks to the table, and. And and admitting that we share a common problem and figuring it out. After 911, i was leading hearings on racial profiling across the country there were some asianamerican communities where they didnt want to testify because they basically didnt want the association. I was told that you and i had vietnameseamerican leaders say to me, just straight up like, well deal with the cops ourselves. Theres no profit in us being there with blacks and latinos and poor white folks and anybody else. And so but in and that shocked me in a way, because i grew up in a community where the oca had been active for a long basically came out of the struggle of Chinese Railroad workers. The jesse well, ive been active for a long time. It came out oh sorry. The chineseamerican. Yeah, it is american citizens like the , their American Cities like predated, internment but obviously came out with a certain militancy. And in monterey county, because the antiasian hate is something thats kind of always there, just like racism against blacks is always there. Theres nothing new. It flares up and it goes down. But but truly, when when when there was attack against one community, all those leaders acted like it was an attack against their community. I remember working with carver in new york city in the nineties, the center against antiasian violence, Something Like that coalition against antiasian violence and it felt like it was, you know, again, it felt like there was a lot of bridge building that had to be done in the moment. And here we are, 30 years later, and its a crisis again. And and i think you know, part of the solution has to be saying admitting were going to make you know, were going to find a way to make progress. And yet this isnt going to completely go away and the coalition of people that we feel like we need having our back now, we got to start organizing that right now because were going to need them ten years from now, and itll be what i would also say is that the history of what i would also say is that the history of cooperation, and solidarity between the black and asianamerican Community Going back to Frederick Douglass opposition to the chinese exclusion act and, you know, its not a story thats really told in either communities, and that story needs to be told. And, again, in the california in california, west baltimore, california theyve told and retold this story, and theyre rededicated to that solidarity. And it made a difference, because people werent as isolated. The last thing id say is it pains me, you know, the situation with the police in this country that were dealing with is a crisis of authoritarianism. Weve beenn recruiting authoritarians to be police. Weve got to change that. If that wasnt an issue, youd have more options right now, and we need to deal with it. Thank you for your question. And we thank all of you for your time. This has been a wonderful session, a wonderful session. Rf yeah, this was fun. Its been fun. You took us down historys lane. Your family kinships, your i cant waitou to hear about your picnic, your family picnic with the cheneys [laughter] all of you go together and just have a good time. I would love to be a fly on that wall. But anyway, i want to thank you, ben yellous, for this amazing ben jealous, for this amazing book, never forget our people were always free. It takes you down the lane of history in so many ways, and also it takes us into your life. An activists activist, i guess you will. He is politician, activist, author, now the head of the sierra club. We a thank you. And all off you, please, get ths book. Please get this book. And dont forget black history is so important, and you are walking and living black history. History period, the black histor