Host Erik Fleming speaks with Dr. Laura Chavez-Moreno about her book "How Schools Make Race," exploring how education shapes Latinx racial identities, bilingual programs, and racial projects. He also interviews political strategist Jacquetta Van Zandt on Boston politics, community power, and strategies for advancing Black leadership and Democratic prospects.
The episode highlights how schools construct race through policy and practice, the importance of anti-racist teaching, and the role of organizers and political operatives in reshaping power structures at local and national levels.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:06 Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.
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00:01:56 --> 00:02:01 Hello, and welcome to another moment with Erik Fleming. I am your host, Erik Fleming.
00:02:01 --> 00:02:09 So today, I have a couple of guests on, a couple of ladies who are doing some
00:02:09 --> 00:02:12 things, kind of shaking things up in their own unique ways.
00:02:12 --> 00:02:26 One is a professor at UCLA who has written a book that looks into how students,
00:02:26 --> 00:02:27 especially Latino students,
00:02:28 --> 00:02:36 are educated and some of the issues that they deal with, especially when it
00:02:36 --> 00:02:40 comes to race and being bilingual.
00:02:41 --> 00:02:47 And it's very fascinating. The book is very intense.
00:02:47 --> 00:02:52 And the conversation only really scratches the surface, but I think you'll get
00:02:52 --> 00:03:00 the gist of it. And then the other young lady is a political dynamo in the Boston area.
00:03:01 --> 00:03:07 And so there's some local politics we want to talk about,
00:03:07 --> 00:03:11 as well as her perspective on the national, because she's had some experience
00:03:11 --> 00:03:17 working on Capitol Hill and just kind of profile her a little bit.
00:03:17 --> 00:03:25 She's a fellow podcaster, and so we'll get into all of the good stuff.
00:03:25 --> 00:03:27 It was really, really an engaging conversation.
00:03:29 --> 00:03:32 So I hope that y'all will enjoy those guests.
00:03:33 --> 00:03:39 We're still looking for subscribers, as always. You can go to patreon.com slash a moment with Erik Fleming.
00:03:39 --> 00:03:43 Go ahead and commit to that dollar a month subscription.
00:03:43 --> 00:03:50 And if you want to know more about the podcast, you can go to momenteric.com and do the same thing.
00:03:51 --> 00:03:55 You can subscribe from there, but you can also catch up on some episodes,
00:03:56 --> 00:04:01 find out a little more about me, find out a little more about the show and just
00:04:01 --> 00:04:03 hope that you continue to listen,
00:04:04 --> 00:04:10 and that you extend your support in subscriptions or just spreading the word.
00:04:11 --> 00:04:14 It's been a very interesting holiday season.
00:04:15 --> 00:04:20 Had a chance to meet some good people, you know, during this holiday season
00:04:20 --> 00:04:22 is Christmas party season, right?
00:04:23 --> 00:04:28 And so, you know, just spreading the word about the podcast that way and networking a little bit.
00:04:28 --> 00:04:34 And, you know, so I'm grateful for always those opportunities to talk with people
00:04:34 --> 00:04:38 about face-to-face about what's going on.
00:04:39 --> 00:04:44 And I do have a website, and I haven't really pushed that yet.
00:04:45 --> 00:04:52 It's ericrfleming.net, I believe. I try to buy as many of the domain names as I can.
00:04:53 --> 00:04:57 That's just an old political habit. When you run for office,
00:04:57 --> 00:05:02 especially in this day and age, people, you know, you'll set up your campaign
00:05:02 --> 00:05:07 domain, and then somebody will buy a name similar.
00:05:07 --> 00:05:09 They can't get what you got, but they'll get something similar.
00:05:10 --> 00:05:12 So like if you get .com, then they'll get .net.
00:05:13 --> 00:05:16 And folks will think, oh, wow, you know.
00:05:17 --> 00:05:19 And they're thinking they're going to your site, and it's not.
00:05:20 --> 00:05:22 So it's just a habit of mine.
00:05:22 --> 00:05:26 I bought several, so I would have control over that.
00:05:27 --> 00:05:31 But if you go to erikrfleming.net, you will love it.
00:05:31 --> 00:05:35 I believe that's right, .net or .com. I have to go back and look it up.
00:05:35 --> 00:05:39 Anyway, that's my personal email, I mean, website.
00:05:39 --> 00:05:45 And if you want me to come speak to your group,
00:05:45 --> 00:05:51 I can do that, whether it's Black History or Martin Luther King or whatever.
00:05:52 --> 00:05:56 You know, if you just want me to, I don't know, just show up at your job and
00:05:56 --> 00:06:00 talk to your folks. You know, I'm available to do that.
00:06:00 --> 00:06:06 And I haven't really pushed it that much because, you know, I have a full-time
00:06:06 --> 00:06:10 job and I really have a limited schedule to do those kind of things.
00:06:10 --> 00:06:16 But, you know, if it's out there, and so if people want me to do that,
00:06:16 --> 00:06:17 you can reach me that way.
00:06:18 --> 00:06:25 Yeah, and this might be the only time I mention that. But if you Google my name,
00:06:25 --> 00:06:27 a lot of those websites will come up.
00:06:28 --> 00:06:31 It will probably primarily be the podcast website that will come up.
00:06:32 --> 00:06:36 But my personal website will come up, too. So just throwing that out there,
00:06:36 --> 00:06:40 since people are trying to get 2026 together, I'm doing the same thing,
00:06:41 --> 00:06:42 lining up some good guests for you all.
00:06:43 --> 00:06:48 Right now, I've got guests lined up all the way till June of next year.
00:06:48 --> 00:06:51 So it's very, very promising.
00:06:51 --> 00:06:54 And there's some people who have said, yeah, I want to be on the show,
00:06:54 --> 00:06:57 but we haven't been able to confirm a time yet.
00:06:58 --> 00:07:00 And I think there's going to be some folks.
00:07:01 --> 00:07:04 Well, I know there's one in particular that they're interested,
00:07:04 --> 00:07:06 they're going to have to reschedule and all that kind of stuff.
00:07:07 --> 00:07:11 But, you know, that's the nature of having guests on podcasts.
00:07:12 --> 00:07:16 And I do it in a unique way. I really want the guests to set up their time.
00:07:16 --> 00:07:18 More so to say, I need you to come on this date.
00:07:18 --> 00:07:23 You know, I'm not that big time where I can demand when people come on.
00:07:25 --> 00:07:32 So I want my guests to do that. So if you're interested, you can go to a momenteric.com.
00:07:33 --> 00:07:39 There's a link. If you want to be a guest, there's a link that you can click
00:07:39 --> 00:07:41 on and, you know, I'll review that.
00:07:42 --> 00:07:44 And usually I say yes.
00:07:45 --> 00:07:48 And then it's on you at that point when you want to do it.
00:07:49 --> 00:07:53 But, you know, it gives me a chance to kind of see if it's in line with,
00:07:53 --> 00:07:59 because I have had to turn some people down because what they wanted to talk
00:07:59 --> 00:08:02 about wasn't lined up with what we deal with here on the show.
00:08:03 --> 00:08:08 And it's not an indictment on them. It's just we're trying to save the nation,
00:08:09 --> 00:08:11 trying to uplift black folks in the process.
00:08:12 --> 00:08:14 And some people's agendas are not there.
00:08:16 --> 00:08:20 Right. Anyway, so I got all that housekeeping out of the way.
00:08:21 --> 00:08:28 And just so y'all know, there's going to be one more show before the new year.
00:08:28 --> 00:08:34 And then I'm going to take a week off, enjoy the Christmas, New Year's transition.
00:08:34 --> 00:08:38 And then so you'll hear one more show during the Christmas holiday,
00:08:38 --> 00:08:44 but then it'll be a week and then we'll be back at it.
00:08:45 --> 00:08:48 So maybe it may work out to be a couple of weeks. But anyway,
00:08:48 --> 00:08:55 I'm going to take a little time off during the holiday season just to refresh
00:08:55 --> 00:08:58 and re-energize and go from there.
00:08:58 --> 00:09:02 So, all right. I just wanted to get that out of the way.
00:09:02 --> 00:09:06 And now we're going to go ahead and start the show.
00:09:06 --> 00:09:10 And as always, we kick it off with a moment of news with Grace G.
00:09:17 --> 00:09:23 Thanks, Erik. In a grievance-filled evening address, President Trump defended
00:09:23 --> 00:09:28 his first-year record and blamed the previous Biden administration for high consumer prices.
00:09:28 --> 00:09:32 The person in connection with the Brown University shooting that resulted in
00:09:32 --> 00:09:37 two deaths and nine injuries was found dead in a New Hampshire storage unit.
00:09:38 --> 00:09:42 Fifteen people were killed and at least 40 people were wounded when gunmen opened
00:09:42 --> 00:09:47 fire during a Jewish holiday event at Sydney, Australia's Bondi Beach.
00:09:47 --> 00:09:51 Nick Reiner, the son of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle,
00:09:52 --> 00:09:55 was charged with first-degree murder in their stabbing deaths.
00:09:55 --> 00:10:01 A federal judge blocked an attempt to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to custody
00:10:01 --> 00:10:06 on a new immigration detention order just one day after his release. The U.S.
00:10:07 --> 00:10:11 Government seized the oil tanker M.T. Skipper off the coast of Venezuela,
00:10:11 --> 00:10:15 marking the first seizure of Venezuelan oil cargo under U.S.
00:10:15 --> 00:10:20 Sanctions. A federal judge issued an injunction ordering the Trump administration
00:10:20 --> 00:10:25 to extend the deadline for states to implement new immigration-related food
00:10:25 --> 00:10:27 aid restrictions until April.
00:10:27 --> 00:10:32 Maryland's General Assembly successfully overrode Governor Wes Moore's veto
00:10:32 --> 00:10:37 to establish a commission dedicated to studying potential reparations for slavery.
00:10:38 --> 00:10:42 The U.S. unemployment rate for black workers surged to their highest levels
00:10:42 --> 00:10:48 in over four years this November, reaching 8.3 percent, according to Labor Department data.
00:10:49 --> 00:10:53 FBI Director Dan Bongino announced he will step down next month,
00:10:53 --> 00:10:58 ending a brief and controversial term as the Bureau's second-highest official.
00:10:58 --> 00:11:04 And South Carolina health officials reported an additional 27 new cases of measles,
00:11:04 --> 00:11:09 bringing the total number of infected people in the widening outbreak to 138.
00:11:10 --> 00:11:14 I am Grace G., and this has been a Moment of News.
00:11:21 --> 00:11:26 All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news. Now it is time for my
00:11:26 --> 00:11:29 guest, Dr. Laura Chavez Moreno.
00:11:30 --> 00:11:34 Laura C. Chavez Moreno is an award-winning researcher,
00:11:35 --> 00:11:39 qualitative social scientist, and assistant professor at the University of California,
00:11:39 --> 00:11:49 Los Angeles in the departments of Chicano and Central American Studies and Education.
00:11:49 --> 00:11:55 She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Education
00:11:55 --> 00:11:57 in Curriculum and Instruction.
00:11:58 --> 00:12:06 Professor Chavez Moreno researches, writes, and teaches about Chicanx, Latinx education.
00:12:06 --> 00:12:10 She works at the intersection of education, pedagogy, language,
00:12:11 --> 00:12:17 literacy, and ethnic studies, particularly Chicanx, Latinx studies.
00:12:18 --> 00:12:24 Her research has been published in top-tier journals such as Review of Educational
00:12:24 --> 00:12:31 Research, Educational Researcher, American Educational Research Journal,
00:12:32 --> 00:12:36 Research in the Teaching of English, and the Journal of Teacher Education.
00:12:37 --> 00:12:42 Dr. Chavez Moreno's research has been recognized with multiple awards,
00:12:42 --> 00:12:47 including the American Educational Research Association Division G,
00:12:47 --> 00:12:49 Social Context and Education,
00:12:50 --> 00:12:59 the AERA Latinx Research Issues Special Interest Group, the AERA Bilingual Education Research, SIG.
00:13:01 --> 00:13:05 American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, and the National Association
00:13:05 --> 00:13:07 of Bilingual Education.
00:13:07 --> 00:13:16 Notably, she was a fellow of the 2020-2022 cohort of NCTE Research Foundations,
00:13:16 --> 00:13:19 Cultivating New Voices Among Scholars of Color.
00:13:19 --> 00:13:26 She was awarded a 2022 National Academy of Education Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral
00:13:26 --> 00:13:34 Fellowship. Most recently, the National Council for Teachers of English awarded the 2023 Alan C.
00:13:35 --> 00:13:40 Purvis Award to our article in Research in the Teaching of English,
00:13:40 --> 00:13:49 the Continuum of Racial Literacies, Teacher Practices Countering White Stream Bilingual Education.
00:13:50 --> 00:13:54 Professor Chavez Moreno is sought after as a speaker by school districts,
00:13:54 --> 00:13:57 university organizations, and teacher preparation programs.
00:13:57 --> 00:14:02 She draws from her research and extensive teaching experience across a variety
00:14:02 --> 00:14:06 of educational levels, including elementary, secondary, tertiary,
00:14:07 --> 00:14:10 teacher education, and older adult education.
00:14:10 --> 00:14:14 She served as a high school teacher of Spanish in the Philadelphia Public School
00:14:14 --> 00:14:19 District for five years, wrote district curriculum, and served on boards of
00:14:19 --> 00:14:20 community organizations.
00:14:21 --> 00:14:26 She is deeply committed to mentorship, emphasizing support for students from
00:14:26 --> 00:14:31 underrepresented backgrounds and or those dedicated to social justice causes.
00:14:31 --> 00:14:36 Among her many service activities, she has mentored undergraduate and graduate
00:14:36 --> 00:14:41 students through several organizations, including Hispanic Scholarship Fund.
00:14:41 --> 00:14:48 She grew up in Douglas, Texas, and Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico.
00:14:48 --> 00:14:54 The first book, How Schools Make Race, will be the impotence of our interview.
00:14:54 --> 00:15:02 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest on this podcast. Dr.
00:15:02 --> 00:15:04 Laura Chavez Moreno.
00:15:15 --> 00:15:19 All right. Laura Chavez Moreno. How you doing? Is it Moreno or Moreno?
00:15:20 --> 00:15:24 Moreno. Moreno. Okay. Moreno. Okay.
00:15:25 --> 00:15:30 My tongue doesn't roll that smooth, so I'm going to do the best I can with it.
00:15:30 --> 00:15:33 No worries. I go by Laura or Laura. I go by both.
00:15:33 --> 00:15:36 Okay. Thank you. All right. Well, happy holidays to you.
00:15:36 --> 00:15:42 Thank you. Likewise. All right. So normally how I start off my interviews is
00:15:42 --> 00:15:46 that I do a couple of icebreaker things. So the first icebreaker,
00:15:46 --> 00:15:48 excuse me, it's going to be a quote.
00:15:49 --> 00:15:54 And the quote is, sometimes just being able to dialogue about certain things
00:15:54 --> 00:15:59 and to validate people's feelings and fears is a good thing.
00:15:59 --> 00:16:01 What does that quote mean to you?
00:16:01 --> 00:16:08 To me, that means how to have good relations with people, both people who you're
00:16:08 --> 00:16:10 close to, but then also people who you may not know.
00:16:10 --> 00:16:17 Because validating other people's thoughts, we usually want other people to
00:16:17 --> 00:16:21 acknowledge and validate our own feelings and ideas.
00:16:22 --> 00:16:26 So I think that to me, that means that this is a good practice of being human
00:16:26 --> 00:16:27 and relating with other folks.
00:16:28 --> 00:16:31 Yeah, it's a good thing to relate to human beings, isn't it?
00:16:32 --> 00:16:38 I was just watching the news before we started and it was talking about the
00:16:38 --> 00:16:44 AI And I saw where some woman got married to AI in Japan.
00:16:44 --> 00:16:46 So I'm old school.
00:16:46 --> 00:16:49 I like interacting with human beings. So I appreciate your answer.
00:16:50 --> 00:16:54 Thank you. All right. So now the next one is what we call 20 questions.
00:16:54 --> 00:16:59 So, Professor, I need you to give me a number between one and 20.
00:16:59 --> 00:17:05 Four. All right. How should we balance individual freedoms with the common good?
00:17:07 --> 00:17:08 Can I pick one? I was just kidding.
00:17:10 --> 00:17:14 Okay. How should we balance individual freedoms with the common good?
00:17:15 --> 00:17:20 I don't know the answer. I want to say that thinking about education in terms
00:17:20 --> 00:17:23 of the realm that I teach, there
00:17:23 --> 00:17:27 are some folks who believe that we shouldn't teach about race at all.
00:17:27 --> 00:17:30 That would be their own individual idea.
00:17:30 --> 00:17:34 I think that when we're thinking about the common good But in that type of context,
00:17:35 --> 00:17:37 I think the common good outweighs that idea,
00:17:37 --> 00:17:43 that individual idea, because the common good for a society that is very racialized, for example,
00:17:43 --> 00:17:49 where we live here in the U.S., the common good would be for us to learn about our society,
00:17:49 --> 00:17:53 learn about how it functions, learn about what race is, what racism is,
00:17:53 --> 00:18:00 and then how to work towards anti-racism and to dismantling those type of structures.
00:18:00 --> 00:18:05 So for me, when we're thinking about weighing the common good in that scenario
00:18:05 --> 00:18:08 versus the individual preference for not teaching about race,
00:18:09 --> 00:18:13 I would definitely say that for me, the common good weighs way more heavily
00:18:13 --> 00:18:16 and is way more important. See, you did good on that one.
00:18:18 --> 00:18:20 That was a great answer. All right. All right.
00:18:20 --> 00:18:25 So as we get started, I need you to define some terms for the listeners.
00:18:25 --> 00:18:30 The first term I want you to define is make race,
00:18:31 --> 00:18:37 Excellent. Thanks. Make race, I mean, that race is not something that is biological.
00:18:37 --> 00:18:43 It is something that society practices and constructs the idea that it exists.
00:18:43 --> 00:18:48 And it is something that exists in our society because it manifests in ways
00:18:48 --> 00:18:49 that, for example, affects people's lives.
00:18:49 --> 00:18:55 How they live, what opportunities they have, what are the type of schools that
00:18:55 --> 00:19:00 they have access to, are their teachers good or not, are their textbooks good,
00:19:01 --> 00:19:03 and updated, things like that.
00:19:03 --> 00:19:09 So race, we make race by the decisions that we make in society,
00:19:09 --> 00:19:13 not through just this biological thing that humans have.
00:19:14 --> 00:19:19 It doesn't exist biologically. It is the decisions that humans make that make race.
00:19:19 --> 00:19:24 OK, now the second term is racial project.
00:19:25 --> 00:19:32 Sure. Racial project is something more academic in the sense that it is something
00:19:32 --> 00:19:38 that has to do with the idea of making race,
00:19:38 --> 00:19:41 but it has to do with also this tie to,
00:19:42 --> 00:19:44 for example, the material aspect.
00:19:44 --> 00:19:48 What are the material conditions of folks?
00:19:48 --> 00:19:52 So, for example, a racial project would be bilingual education,
00:19:52 --> 00:19:58 or for example, gifted education, or any other type of those type of interventions
00:19:58 --> 00:20:03 in schooling in order to provide one group a different type of education.
00:20:03 --> 00:20:08 Racial projects can be both racist and anti-racist.
00:20:08 --> 00:20:16 So, for example, gifted education, when it is in order to put a lot of middle-class
00:20:16 --> 00:20:21 white students into classes segregated from students of color,
00:20:21 --> 00:20:22 that is a racist project.
00:20:23 --> 00:20:28 When bilingual education is trying to provide, for example, Latinx students
00:20:28 --> 00:20:32 an education that is culturally and linguistically relevant,
00:20:32 --> 00:20:35 that is an anti-racist racial project.
00:20:35 --> 00:20:39 Okay And then finally Latinidad.
00:20:40 --> 00:20:45 Okay. So I'll start with the word Latinx. And the word Latinx,
00:20:45 --> 00:20:47 I use the X for four reasons.
00:20:48 --> 00:20:53 The first reason is to challenge patriarchy because the word Latino in Spanish
00:20:53 --> 00:20:57 is pointing to the masculine in terms of men.
00:20:57 --> 00:20:59 So it's challenging that patriarchy.
00:20:59 --> 00:21:04 It's also challenging this gender binary that there's only male, female genders.
00:21:04 --> 00:21:09 Our society has more genders than that. So that's why I choose the X also to
00:21:09 --> 00:21:12 align with trans folks and also the queer community.
00:21:13 --> 00:21:20 The third reason I use the X is because it is different from saying Latin American.
00:21:20 --> 00:21:23 So Latin, the Latin X group in the U.S.
00:21:23 --> 00:21:29 Is not the same type of idea or the same type of group that is Latin American. It's different.
00:21:29 --> 00:21:35 And the fourth reason I use the X is to remind us that the term itself, Latinx,
00:21:36 --> 00:21:42 the Latin, should be problematized because Latin is still a European imposed
00:21:42 --> 00:21:48 term that European elites imposed on people here in what we call Latin America
00:21:48 --> 00:21:49 and the U.S., for example,
00:21:50 --> 00:21:55 Latinos, in order for us to make claim to those groups or to be able to name
00:21:55 --> 00:21:58 them in a way that points towards European ideas.
00:21:59 --> 00:22:03 So those are the four reasons. Now, what is Latinidad, which was your question.
00:22:03 --> 00:22:07 Latinidad is more something that happens in our society.
00:22:07 --> 00:22:11 It's more of an idea than just an identity.
00:22:11 --> 00:22:16 It has to do with what is this idea Latinidad doing in our society.
00:22:17 --> 00:22:23 For example, we would put it in relation with whiteness, blackness,
00:22:23 --> 00:22:25 indigeneity, Asianness.
00:22:25 --> 00:22:27 These are not just identities.
00:22:27 --> 00:22:34 They are concepts that have to do with how we're practicing and engaging in
00:22:34 --> 00:22:35 our society, if that makes sense.
00:22:36 --> 00:22:41 Yeah, so the way I was interpreting it was like culture, right?
00:22:42 --> 00:22:44 So it's like when you say blackness.
00:22:45 --> 00:22:49 Or somebody like me would say blackness, it's like, it's more than just,
00:22:49 --> 00:22:53 you know, the, the, the race classification you put on.
00:22:53 --> 00:22:57 It's like the culture, whether it's rap music, whether it's Kwanzaa,
00:22:57 --> 00:22:58 whether it's soul food, right.
00:22:59 --> 00:23:03 That incorporates blackness. So that's when I, when I was trying to interpret
00:23:03 --> 00:23:07 it myself and reading the book, that's the way I looked at it.
00:23:07 --> 00:23:12 It was like, when you say Latinidad, it means, you know, the Latin or Latinx
00:23:12 --> 00:23:14 American, the Latinx culture.
00:23:14 --> 00:23:19 As far as, you know, different things, contributions that the culture has given
00:23:19 --> 00:23:23 to society and those things. Am I on the right track with that?
00:23:24 --> 00:23:28 I think it's a little different from what I'm saying, but I understand why you're saying this.
00:23:28 --> 00:23:35 And it's because a lot of the times we think of Latinxs as a cultural group.
00:23:35 --> 00:23:41 And a lot of the times that's something that Latinos are said to be like a cultural group.
00:23:41 --> 00:23:44 And sometimes they're not mentioned as a racial group.
00:23:45 --> 00:23:48 And what I'm arguing in the book is that we also should think about them as
00:23:48 --> 00:23:55 a racial group because they do have shared cultures or shared culture,
00:23:55 --> 00:23:56 shared languages, et cetera.
00:23:57 --> 00:24:00 But so do other racial groups in our society, right?
00:24:00 --> 00:24:04 Like you just mentioned really great examples in terms of African-Americans,
00:24:04 --> 00:24:06 some cultural practices that they may share.
00:24:06 --> 00:24:11 So what I'm arguing in the book is that sometimes when we're thinking about
00:24:11 --> 00:24:15 Latinx as just cultural, like a cultural group and not a racial group,
00:24:15 --> 00:24:20 we're not thinking about race in a way that is made.
00:24:20 --> 00:24:24 We're thinking about race in terms of it actually being like a more biological group.
00:24:25 --> 00:24:30 Got you. Okay. So all these terms, ladies and gentlemen, comes from this book
00:24:30 --> 00:24:36 called How Schools Make Race, in which Professor Chavez Moreno has written.
00:24:37 --> 00:24:42 And so the question I have for you, Professor, is what led you to write this book?
00:24:43 --> 00:24:47 Oh, thank you. What led me to write it is the conversations that I was hearing
00:24:47 --> 00:24:51 both at the national scale and then also in the schools that I was observing.
00:24:51 --> 00:24:57 So I heard a lot of talk nationally about whether Latinxs were race or not.
00:24:57 --> 00:25:01 And then it was interesting that I was then in the classrooms observing this
00:25:01 --> 00:25:02 bilingual education program.
00:25:02 --> 00:25:08 And then the students were grappling with questions about what is race and the
00:25:08 --> 00:25:10 idea that the Latinx group was an ethnicity.
00:25:10 --> 00:25:13 But then were they racial were their
00:25:13 --> 00:25:16 race etc so there were these things these tensions going on
00:25:16 --> 00:25:19 in the classroom and they were also tensions that like I
00:25:19 --> 00:25:22 said were apparent in the national discourse and they
00:25:22 --> 00:25:25 were also tensions that then made me question my
00:25:25 --> 00:25:28 own idea of what is race and my own idea of
00:25:28 --> 00:25:31 whether latinx was a race or not because I grew up
00:25:31 --> 00:25:35 in a bilingual bicultural border area
00:25:35 --> 00:25:38 in Douglas Arizona and Agua Prieta Sonora Mexico
00:25:38 --> 00:25:41 I'm originally from Mexico and growing up
00:25:41 --> 00:25:44 in that border area I had when I moved
00:25:44 --> 00:25:47 out etc I had imagined the Latinx group as
00:25:47 --> 00:25:50 a race it was kind of just by default but then
00:25:50 --> 00:25:52 you know years later when I was in the classrooms and hearing
00:25:52 --> 00:25:55 these discourses and hearing these questions I
00:25:55 --> 00:25:58 really had to question whether what I was
00:25:58 --> 00:26:04 assuming was a race was was in fact correct and then that led me to to then
00:26:04 --> 00:26:09 ask well then what is a race and then that question led me to trying to figure
00:26:09 --> 00:26:14 out well what is the process of making race so what the book is showing is for
00:26:14 --> 00:26:16 for listeners who are interested in.
00:26:17 --> 00:26:21 Exploring like when they think about some of the questions or tensions that
00:26:21 --> 00:26:26 they hear in terms of like is this race or is this not a race or whatever the
00:26:26 --> 00:26:29 book tries to show in actual contemporary times right now,
00:26:30 --> 00:26:34 how our society continues to make race and racialized groups,
00:26:34 --> 00:26:36 and then this idea that they exist.
00:26:37 --> 00:26:41 Because they definitely exist in terms of how they manifest in what opportunities
00:26:41 --> 00:26:47 people have and the experiences that they have to contend with in our society. Okay.
00:26:48 --> 00:26:54 Why do you think that your book is the first to use the framework of relational
00:26:54 --> 00:26:58 racialization in education?
00:26:58 --> 00:27:02 I'm not sure if it's the first one in education, but I definitely know that
00:27:02 --> 00:27:07 it's not as used in the field of education than, for example,
00:27:07 --> 00:27:09 in fields of ethnic studies or history.
00:27:10 --> 00:27:14 I know that in those fields, they use that framework way more.
00:27:14 --> 00:27:20 In education, a lot of the times, scholars focus on identity questions,
00:27:20 --> 00:27:24 like how people are forming their racial identities in schools.
00:27:24 --> 00:27:29 So that's more of a question that a lot of education scholars have been grappling with.
00:27:29 --> 00:27:33 They also grapple a lot about racism and how racism manifests in classrooms
00:27:33 --> 00:27:36 and in teaching and textbooks and stuff like that.
00:27:36 --> 00:27:41 What my book is trying to do is not look at individual identity development of students.
00:27:41 --> 00:27:49 What I'm trying to show is more how the group is formed and the boundaries that the group has to,
00:27:49 --> 00:27:54 or how the school program, this bilingual education program,
00:27:54 --> 00:27:57 is forming the boundaries of this Latinx idea.
00:27:57 --> 00:28:05 So instead of it being individualized, it's more systematic is what you're trying to probe.
00:28:05 --> 00:28:09 Yeah, I think that that's correct. I think that I would just add the little
00:28:09 --> 00:28:14 minor focus that instead of being like looking at students,
00:28:14 --> 00:28:19 individual racial like awareness, I'm looking more in terms of how the program
00:28:19 --> 00:28:24 constructs the group or what the idea is of this group. Yeah. Thank you.
00:28:24 --> 00:28:29 All right. So why were the names of the school, city and state given fictional names?
00:28:30 --> 00:28:36 Yes. Thank you. So in the type of research that I do, and then in the type of
00:28:36 --> 00:28:40 permission that I was granted by the people that I was working with,
00:28:40 --> 00:28:43 I didn't have permission to share their real names.
00:28:43 --> 00:28:49 And that's done so that I can protect them from being identified.
00:28:49 --> 00:28:53 And also because in a way it doesn't really matter.
00:28:54 --> 00:29:00 Like saying a specific place makes us think that perhaps that place is particular
00:29:00 --> 00:29:02 or singular or this could only happen there.
00:29:03 --> 00:29:07 But what I'm trying to show is that there's lots of ways that the things that
00:29:07 --> 00:29:12 manifest in the book or what I'm showing in the book also can occur in other places.
00:29:13 --> 00:29:17 Maybe the details are a little bit different, but some of the things that are
00:29:17 --> 00:29:22 happening in our society in this context that I documented also happen in other places.
00:29:23 --> 00:29:26 Yeah, I was doing my detective work. I was trying, you know,
00:29:27 --> 00:29:30 because it's like, Like, I don't know if you're familiar with comic books or
00:29:30 --> 00:29:36 whatever, but like DC Comics, you know, it'll talk about Metropolis or Gotham City.
00:29:36 --> 00:29:40 And you're trying to figure out, OK, well, which one is New York City,
00:29:40 --> 00:29:42 which one is Chicago, you know, that kind of thing.
00:29:42 --> 00:29:46 So when you like saying Red Rock, I was like, what state would be Red Rock, you know?
00:29:47 --> 00:29:50 But I thought that was pretty, pretty interesting.
00:29:50 --> 00:29:54 Thank you. And thanks for reading it so closely. Yes, ma'am.
00:29:54 --> 00:29:59 How did the graduation ceremony affect your observations?
00:30:00 --> 00:30:03 So that was in the, although I put that in the beginning of the book,
00:30:03 --> 00:30:08 the graduation ceremony was something that I observed towards the end of my study.
00:30:08 --> 00:30:14 And it's interesting because I was really expecting for the school to really
00:30:14 --> 00:30:20 play up the success of this bilingual education program because it really was a success.
00:30:20 --> 00:30:27 The community had been advocating for this type of bilingual program.
00:30:27 --> 00:30:30 And the students started that program. They were the first cohort to start it
00:30:30 --> 00:30:35 in elementary school and then take it all the way and graduate,
00:30:35 --> 00:30:39 you know, from high school and go all those 12 years in this bilingual program.
00:30:39 --> 00:30:43 So it was really a big achievement, especially because there's not that many
00:30:43 --> 00:30:48 bilingual education programs or cities that offer that type of continuity in
00:30:48 --> 00:30:50 terms of a bilingual education program.
00:30:50 --> 00:30:56 So I was very surprised that it was not something that the school was really,
00:30:56 --> 00:31:01 like, highlighting in the graduation ceremony. So that was something that was
00:31:01 --> 00:31:03 very disappointing to me.
00:31:03 --> 00:31:09 Yeah, as you say, it was like one student, I think, near the end of the speeches,
00:31:10 --> 00:31:15 acknowledged that the program exists as opposed to, and nobody, Latinx,
00:31:15 --> 00:31:19 none of Latinx students were allowed to, or given the opportunity to speak.
00:31:19 --> 00:31:23 I don't know if they weren't allowed, but they weren't given the opportunity to speak.
00:31:23 --> 00:31:28 So I can understand why you would feel some kind of way about that.
00:31:28 --> 00:31:35 Going back to your definition, how is the public education system in America a racial project?
00:31:36 --> 00:31:41 Ah, definitely. So the book shows kind of like a little program,
00:31:41 --> 00:31:45 like the bilingual education program, making this idea about what is Latinx.
00:31:45 --> 00:31:50 But the big public education system, and also private, private also contributes to this.
00:31:51 --> 00:31:58 The public education system contributes to making race by distributing resources inequitably.
00:31:58 --> 00:32:01 So whenever society distributes resources
00:32:01 --> 00:32:04 to one group and then not another group
00:32:04 --> 00:32:07 and then it does that over and over again and then
00:32:07 --> 00:32:09 the people kind of start noticing like okay why am I not getting
00:32:09 --> 00:32:13 this and why is that other group getting this type of treatment that's always
00:32:13 --> 00:32:17 creating and reinforcing the idea that this group exists and is better than
00:32:17 --> 00:32:22 this other group right so public education we can we can say a bunch of examples
00:32:22 --> 00:32:25 and I'm sure your listeners and you could say a lot of different ways that public
00:32:25 --> 00:32:27 education does that all the time,
00:32:27 --> 00:32:32 where it gives this one group a better schooling experience than other groups.
00:32:32 --> 00:32:35 We can talk about, for example, school discipline, bilingual education,
00:32:36 --> 00:32:42 gifted education that I mentioned earlier, access to college preparatory courses, better school lunches.
00:32:42 --> 00:32:46 We can keep going and going and going. So as long as public education is providing
00:32:46 --> 00:32:51 different types of resources that are better to one group, for example,
00:32:51 --> 00:32:56 than another group, it is participating in constructing race in our society.
00:32:56 --> 00:33:03 Yeah, and you saw some other examples like our prison system and other things,
00:33:03 --> 00:33:08 how each institution, religion, whatever.
00:33:09 --> 00:33:15 Can, you know, makes its own contribution or is its own racial project and how
00:33:15 --> 00:33:18 it shapes the dynamics in this country.
00:33:18 --> 00:33:24 Overall, how are Latinx students racialized different than other students?
00:33:25 --> 00:33:29 So this is interesting because one of the things that I say in the book is that
00:33:29 --> 00:33:34 the way that the bilingual education program was kind of setting up this boundary
00:33:34 --> 00:33:36 about what is the group Latinx.
00:33:37 --> 00:33:41 It was kind of promoting this, even if it wasn't explicitly,
00:33:41 --> 00:33:46 but it was kind of like advancing the idea that the Latinx group is bound by
00:33:46 --> 00:33:50 them knowing or should knowing kind of in a way, if that makes sense,
00:33:51 --> 00:33:52 like that they ought to know Spanish.
00:33:54 --> 00:33:57 So Spanish was kind of what would define them.
00:33:57 --> 00:34:01 So if someone used Spanish and then they were seen as Latinx,
00:34:01 --> 00:34:05 they said that they were Latinx and then used Spanish, that kind of gave them
00:34:05 --> 00:34:08 legitimacy to kind of being in the group or not in a way.
00:34:08 --> 00:34:13 So the bilingual education program reinforced that as the boundary for the group,
00:34:13 --> 00:34:16 even though the bilingual education program was racially diverse.
00:34:16 --> 00:34:21 So there were students who were in the program who identified as white or black.
00:34:21 --> 00:34:25 Some of them also identified as Afro-Latinx, although those were very few of them.
00:34:26 --> 00:34:31 So even though the program was racially diverse, it was still kind of advancing
00:34:31 --> 00:34:40 this idea that the boundary of the Latinx group was this imaginary Spanish that they should know.
00:34:40 --> 00:34:46 Yeah, that reminds me, when I was first getting into college,
00:34:46 --> 00:34:50 I was recruited by a lady named Louisa Maria Alvarez Harvey.
00:34:51 --> 00:34:56 And she recruited us. She ran the Honors College at Jackson State.
00:34:57 --> 00:35:02 University. And in her background, it said that she got her bachelor's degree
00:35:02 --> 00:35:07 in Spanish. And I was kind of like, well, that's like me getting my bachelor's
00:35:07 --> 00:35:08 degree in English, right?
00:35:08 --> 00:35:13 That would seem like that would be relatively easy, but it's more nuanced than that, is it not?
00:35:14 --> 00:35:18 Oh, yeah. Because usually when people have a bachelor's in Spanish,
00:35:18 --> 00:35:22 for example, my bachelor's degree is in education and also in Spanish.
00:35:22 --> 00:35:26 We take courses, for example, about like a
00:35:26 --> 00:35:29 literature so we read literature we read texts that
00:35:29 --> 00:35:32 have to do like with historical events for
00:35:32 --> 00:35:35 example but in Spanish so it's not like it's not
00:35:35 --> 00:35:38 just like learning like how do you say like can't go
00:35:38 --> 00:35:41 the restroom you know I mean like it is definitely way more advanced in
00:35:41 --> 00:35:47 terms of like people learning about the language but then also about like the
00:35:47 --> 00:35:51 the speakers of the language and then the culture and the literature and history
00:35:51 --> 00:35:56 and stuff like that yeah yeah all right as a black man I'm somewhat proud that
00:35:56 --> 00:35:59 the Black students in the book were labeled as the cream of the crop.
00:36:00 --> 00:36:03 However, what problems did that cause for the Latinx students?
00:36:05 --> 00:36:09 So it's interesting because one of the things that I mentioned in the book,
00:36:09 --> 00:36:12 you're right that they were labeled as the cream of the crop.
00:36:12 --> 00:36:14 But let me share a little asterisk.
00:36:15 --> 00:36:20 It was the students who were immigrants of African families.
00:36:20 --> 00:36:23 So those were the cream of the crop.
00:36:23 --> 00:36:27 They were compared to, for example, African-Americans who were from the U.S.,
00:36:27 --> 00:36:29 so like generations here in the U.S.
00:36:29 --> 00:36:34 And those were not the cream of the crop. So they, even within the African-American
00:36:34 --> 00:36:38 population of the students, the teachers were making those type of distinctions
00:36:38 --> 00:36:40 in terms of like how they were different.
00:36:41 --> 00:36:45 So it's interesting to think of your question in terms of how that affected
00:36:45 --> 00:36:50 the Latinx students, because within the bilingual education program, it's very like layered.
00:36:51 --> 00:36:55 Because, for example, like I just mentioned, the cream of the crop were the
00:36:55 --> 00:36:59 African, the African immigrant, the black students who were from African immigrant families.
00:37:00 --> 00:37:03 And then there were, for example, other students, but the Latinx students were
00:37:03 --> 00:37:10 seen as also desirable students because their parents were very respectful towards
00:37:10 --> 00:37:15 teachers, never questioned them, never said anything against them and et cetera.
00:37:15 --> 00:37:19 So they saw that it was also nice to have Latinx students.
00:37:19 --> 00:37:22 What I'm trying to show in the book is that people were always kind of putting,
00:37:23 --> 00:37:26 like making comparisons between the two groups, whether...
00:37:28 --> 00:37:33 They were correct or not in terms of their observations, the mere making these
00:37:33 --> 00:37:36 comparisons and like, these are these groups, these are these groups,
00:37:36 --> 00:37:41 et cetera, and then placing them in a hierarchy, it shows how people thought
00:37:41 --> 00:37:46 about them as separate groups and thought about them as also in a hierarchy.
00:37:46 --> 00:37:52 And that's important because some of the people who I've been hoping or some
00:37:52 --> 00:37:59 of the Some folks have been saying that the Latinx group is not in the same
00:37:59 --> 00:38:00 type of racial hierarchy in a way.
00:38:00 --> 00:38:04 So I'm trying to show that that's actually still happening in schools. Got you.
00:38:05 --> 00:38:10 You said that the discussion of race is already happening in schools,
00:38:10 --> 00:38:11 whether people like it or not.
00:38:11 --> 00:38:16 So we should make sure that it's being done in a productive way and in a way
00:38:16 --> 00:38:24 that advances students' understanding about a concept that is something so central to our society.
00:38:24 --> 00:38:30 In this era of Trumpism, how can schools navigate towards a path of promoting
00:38:30 --> 00:38:35 anti-racist ideas and the ambivalence about race?
00:38:36 --> 00:38:41 Thank you. That's a very deep question. So one of the ways that I'm thinking
00:38:41 --> 00:38:46 about this is that you're, I'm so glad you mentioned that one of the main points
00:38:46 --> 00:38:50 of the book is also to share that right now there's this,
00:38:50 --> 00:38:53 or right now, and then like for years already, there's been this debate about
00:38:53 --> 00:38:55 whether schools should teach about race or not.
00:38:56 --> 00:38:59 And what I say is that's the wrong debate to be had. That's actually not the
00:38:59 --> 00:39:02 debate that is productive because schools,
00:39:02 --> 00:39:05 whether they want to or not teachers whether they want to or not are always teaching
00:39:05 --> 00:39:09 about race in implicit ways for example and
00:39:09 --> 00:39:12 one of the things that I show is how that's actually done in
00:39:12 --> 00:39:15 schools so if readers wouldn't agree
00:39:15 --> 00:39:17 with me like hey I don't think that's true or like if teachers will
00:39:17 --> 00:39:20 say like well I could be race neutral etc I would say
00:39:20 --> 00:39:23 pick up the book and read it so that you could see some
00:39:23 --> 00:39:27 of the examples and and I I can show explicitly
00:39:27 --> 00:39:29 like how race is still being taught even if it's
00:39:29 --> 00:39:32 not implicit explicit excuse me so one
00:39:32 --> 00:39:36 of the ways to teach about race productively
00:39:36 --> 00:39:39 which is what your question is is first admit
00:39:39 --> 00:39:43 that this is going on that whether you want to or not you were teaching our
00:39:43 --> 00:39:50 children our students racial ideas so once we take that first step in acknowledging
00:39:50 --> 00:39:54 that then we should decide in my opinion we should decide that then then that
00:39:54 --> 00:39:57 means that we have to teach about race in an anti-racist way right.
00:39:58 --> 00:40:02 And we have to teach about race that is not biological, but it is in terms of
00:40:02 --> 00:40:07 the decisions that humans are, that we're as a society, we keep making that
00:40:07 --> 00:40:08 reinforce this hierarchy.
00:40:09 --> 00:40:13 And that some racial groups are better than others, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:40:13 --> 00:40:18 So when we decide then that we have to do that, then we also have to,
00:40:18 --> 00:40:22 especially now because of the attacks on teachers and teaching our race,
00:40:22 --> 00:40:26 we have to make sure to join with others who also have that mission and who
00:40:26 --> 00:40:28 also are committed to that.
00:40:28 --> 00:40:32 In order for us to have support in a community, because we can't do that work
00:40:32 --> 00:40:35 alone. It's too fraught.
00:40:35 --> 00:40:39 We have to make sure to be in community with others, whether that's in community
00:40:39 --> 00:40:44 and that one in the school that one's practicing or in your district or even online.
00:40:44 --> 00:40:47 And depending on the context, it's going to look different.
00:40:47 --> 00:40:54 Yeah. So the important thing is solidarity as opposed to everybody,
00:40:54 --> 00:40:57 because everybody's going to do their own thing.
00:40:57 --> 00:41:07 But if there is some solidarity in the goal and and the basic foundation and
00:41:07 --> 00:41:09 standard of what what we're trying to accomplish,
00:41:10 --> 00:41:18 then we'll generations from now will have better coexistence amongst people
00:41:18 --> 00:41:19 here in the United States.
00:41:20 --> 00:41:24 And maybe that's too Pollyannaish, but that's why I got out of that answer.
00:41:24 --> 00:41:27 All right. So final question.
00:41:27 --> 00:41:33 What do you want the readers to take away from this book? I'd like readers to
00:41:33 --> 00:41:35 take away from the book that...
00:41:36 --> 00:41:40 Race, we have race in our society because of decisions that we've made,
00:41:40 --> 00:41:44 that our society has made, and that we continue to make, and that we can choose
00:41:44 --> 00:41:47 different ways of being in our society.
00:41:47 --> 00:41:52 So there are teachers, for example, who are being very brave and who are teaching
00:41:52 --> 00:41:55 about race, and we need to support them.
00:41:55 --> 00:41:59 So I think that that would be the number one that I would say. Okay.
00:41:59 --> 00:42:02 All right. So how can people get the book?
00:42:02 --> 00:42:07 Well, thank you. So the book is available in all major booksellers,
00:42:07 --> 00:42:11 including Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, and also the Harvard Ed Press.
00:42:11 --> 00:42:15 And I'd also ask listeners to please ask your public library and your local
00:42:15 --> 00:42:17 bookstore to carry the book.
00:42:18 --> 00:42:22 And it would make a great holiday gift, would it not? It would. Thank you.
00:42:23 --> 00:42:27 So, Professor, if people want to get in touch with you, how can they do that?
00:42:28 --> 00:42:34 Sure. Please visit my website. It is laurachavismoreno.com. And my information
00:42:34 --> 00:42:38 is there about how to contact me and then also some of my other work.
00:42:39 --> 00:42:44 All right. Well, Professor Laura Chavez Moreno, I greatly appreciate you taking the time.
00:42:45 --> 00:42:49 I know we had to try to juggle some things because you're a woman on demand
00:42:49 --> 00:42:51 and trying to close out the school year and all that.
00:42:52 --> 00:42:55 But I greatly appreciate you coming on and doing that.
00:42:55 --> 00:42:59 Thank you so much. I know you're also very busy. Yeah. And much success on the
00:42:59 --> 00:43:01 book, too, by the way. I really mean that.
00:43:01 --> 00:43:06 Thank you so much. And I enjoyed speaking with you and your questions and the
00:43:06 --> 00:43:07 conversation. So thank you so much.
00:43:07 --> 00:43:09 All right, guys. And we're going to catch y'all on the other side.
00:43:28 --> 00:43:35 All right, and we are back. And so now it is time for my next guest, Jacquetta Van Zandt.
00:43:35 --> 00:43:41 Jacquetta Van Zandt serves as the Vice President of Engagement and Mobilization at Partnership, Inc.
00:43:42 --> 00:43:46 She is tasked with developing, coordinating, and sustaining strategic relationships
00:43:46 --> 00:43:49 throughout the civic, political, and business arenas.
00:43:49 --> 00:43:55 In this capacity, the Vice President oversees long-term strategic planning related
00:43:55 --> 00:44:00 to the partnership's connections, aiming to establish systemic and sustainable
00:44:00 --> 00:44:03 influence to advance the organization's mission.
00:44:03 --> 00:44:08 Before her tenure at Partnership, Inc., Van Zandt cultivated her political expertise
00:44:08 --> 00:44:14 on Capitol Hill and Washington, D.C., as well as through various state and federal campaigns.
00:44:15 --> 00:44:19 She has established herself as a respected advocate, contributing to critical
00:44:19 --> 00:44:21 decisions that affect communities of color.
00:44:21 --> 00:44:26 A highly sought-after political strategist specializing in public policy and
00:44:26 --> 00:44:32 diversity initiatives, she has returned to Massachusetts, driven by her passion
00:44:32 --> 00:44:35 for creating equal opportunities for women of color.
00:44:35 --> 00:44:39 Her commitment to making a difference in her community and highlighting critical
00:44:39 --> 00:44:43 issues such as wage inequality, financial literacy,
00:44:44 --> 00:44:49 socioeconomic development, women's empowerment, and diversifying the legislature
00:44:49 --> 00:44:51 lies at the core of today's most pressing challenges.
00:44:52 --> 00:44:57 She played a crucial role in numerous campaigns, notably the successful election
00:44:57 --> 00:44:59 of Framingham's first mayor,
00:44:59 --> 00:45:04 I guess first black mayor, who was also the only woman of color to be popular
00:45:04 --> 00:45:09 elected to that position and in the history of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
00:45:11 --> 00:45:17 Van Zandt initiated a thriving and well-loved podcast named Politics and Prosecco,
00:45:18 --> 00:45:22 Featured on Spark FM, Politics and Prosecco is a one-hour program where hosts
00:45:22 --> 00:45:27 and guests delve into discussions about current events and their effects on daily life.
00:45:27 --> 00:45:32 Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, Van Zandt earned her B.S. in criminal justice.
00:45:33 --> 00:45:38 She currently lives in Roxbury, Massachusetts. As a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha
00:45:38 --> 00:45:42 Sorority Incorporated and the Lynx Incorporated, she also serves in the boards
00:45:42 --> 00:45:46 of Common Cause, the Massachusetts Women's Political Caucus,
00:45:46 --> 00:45:51 the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, and the Environmental League of Massachusetts.
00:45:52 --> 00:45:56 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest
00:45:56 --> 00:46:01 on this podcast, Jacquetta Van Zandt.
00:46:11 --> 00:46:16 All right. Jacquetta Van Zandt. How you doing, sister? You doing good?
00:46:16 --> 00:46:23 I'm well. I am actively watching the news every day, so I'm trying to temper
00:46:23 --> 00:46:28 myself and not get too emotionally involved in what's happening. But all in all, I'm good.
00:46:28 --> 00:46:32 Yeah, that's all of us that pay attention to politics right now.
00:46:32 --> 00:46:38 Just seems like a never-ending saga, episode, drama. Hit parade,
00:46:38 --> 00:46:40 I think was the term I was going to use, but same thing.
00:46:41 --> 00:46:44 Yeah. Same thing. Happy holidays to you, by the way. Thank you.
00:46:45 --> 00:46:47 Happy holidays. Happy Kwanzaa, all of it.
00:46:48 --> 00:46:52 All right. So how I normally do this is that I do a couple of icebreakers to
00:46:52 --> 00:46:53 kind of kick everything off.
00:46:53 --> 00:46:57 And so the first is a quote I want you to respond to.
00:46:58 --> 00:47:04 And the quote is, no matter if they look like us, no matter if they are the
00:47:04 --> 00:47:09 same party, everybody is subject to accountability when you ask somebody for your vote.
00:47:10 --> 00:47:14 My first reaction is I agree, you know, all skin folk and kin folk,
00:47:14 --> 00:47:16 especially when they get a little bit of power.
00:47:16 --> 00:47:22 So I certainly, although, you know, and I want to be very clear about this,
00:47:22 --> 00:47:28 I consider myself a community builder, but I'm also responsible to my community
00:47:28 --> 00:47:31 and I hold my community responsible to me.
00:47:31 --> 00:47:37 So, you know, I don't necessarily, even though I do consider myself a feminist.
00:47:37 --> 00:47:43 I consider myself a Black power positioner. I do not agree that everybody who
00:47:43 --> 00:47:48 looks like us and gets up there, even if they're on the Democratic side, belongs there.
00:47:49 --> 00:47:54 So repeat that, because that's one of those things where one of my guests got
00:47:54 --> 00:47:58 us started in that, and I try to highlight those things where it's like,
00:47:58 --> 00:48:01 yeah, say that again so the people in the back here.
00:48:01 --> 00:48:06 Say that again about you're responsible for your community. Say that again.
00:48:07 --> 00:48:13 Yes. I feel like I am responsible for my community, but my community is also responsible to me.
00:48:15 --> 00:48:19 Of, you know, some onus on behalf of the community and stakeholders.
00:48:19 --> 00:48:23 And I certainly believe that, you know, people get into this mode of I've done the work.
00:48:24 --> 00:48:28 And so, you know, you have to listen to me and I begrudge no one,
00:48:28 --> 00:48:32 you know, I would never say John Lewis didn't go to the mat for us,
00:48:32 --> 00:48:35 but do I agree with some of the ways that he voted when he was in Congress? No.
00:48:36 --> 00:48:38 And I hold him responsible for those. Yeah.
00:48:39 --> 00:48:42 All right. So now the next one is called 20 questions.
00:48:43 --> 00:48:47 So I need you to Give me a number between 1 and 20.
00:48:47 --> 00:48:54 13. All right. Do you think there's such a thing as unbiased news or media and why?
00:48:55 --> 00:48:59 No, there's bias in news, and that is intentional.
00:49:00 --> 00:49:05 And look, I feel like integrity in journalism has left the building,
00:49:05 --> 00:49:08 and it becomes really salacious.
00:49:08 --> 00:49:13 And that's how Trump rose. And, you know, I had this conversation on a panel
00:49:13 --> 00:49:18 during CBC Week when I said CNN is responsible for Trump.
00:49:18 --> 00:49:23 When they got into this whole, you know, him being a circus and a clown show
00:49:23 --> 00:49:26 because that was ratings and people were like, oh, my God, what is he saying?
00:49:27 --> 00:49:31 Instead of keeping him off the airwaves, they did it.
00:49:31 --> 00:49:35 They brought more attention to him. So I hold them responsible for that.
00:49:35 --> 00:49:37 I mean, Fox News has always been Fox News, right?
00:49:37 --> 00:49:41 They are never gone to the days where Martin and Liv and Single were on the
00:49:41 --> 00:49:48 Fox Network when they were pro-Black, pro-youth, pro-progressive values to where they are now.
00:49:49 --> 00:49:53 That's not a shock. And don't forget, CNN used to be very conservative.
00:49:54 --> 00:49:58 Yeah very much so yeah um and I I see
00:49:58 --> 00:50:01 but I my my my gripe with CNN goes
00:50:01 --> 00:50:04 all the way back to that show was it
00:50:04 --> 00:50:10 called crossfire when they had Paul Bagala on and then pat began or whoever
00:50:10 --> 00:50:14 oh I don't remember if it was called crossfire it was called something and then
00:50:14 --> 00:50:19 them jokers would you know and it was just like and then him between that show
00:50:19 --> 00:50:23 and then I know tucker Carlson ended up being on that show at some point.
00:50:24 --> 00:50:29 And then with Bill O'Reilly, I always used to say Bill O'Reilly was the guy
00:50:29 --> 00:50:33 at the end of the bar that was drunk and just exposing his opinions.
00:50:33 --> 00:50:37 And they decided, why don't we put a camera on that guy? Right.
00:50:37 --> 00:50:42 And it was like, from that moment on, political discourse to me just started
00:50:42 --> 00:50:44 going straight to the toilet.
00:50:44 --> 00:50:47 Which I don't disagree with. I believe there's room for debate.
00:50:48 --> 00:50:52 I don't agree with everything that, you know, my family or my friends say,
00:50:52 --> 00:50:53 I think there's room for debate.
00:50:54 --> 00:50:57 Where a debate becomes a problem is when you're not even willing to listen to
00:50:57 --> 00:51:01 the other person's views. And I think that's where we're at right now.
00:51:01 --> 00:51:04 It's just, I was talking to a friend, we were talking about D'Angelo and Angie Stone.
00:51:05 --> 00:51:10 And she was of the idea that Angie Stone had groomed D'Angelo,
00:51:10 --> 00:51:14 even though D'Angelo had said on camera that he pursued Angie Stone.
00:51:15 --> 00:51:19 And I showed her the video And she just would not change her mind because people
00:51:19 --> 00:51:20 believe what they want to believe.
00:51:20 --> 00:51:25 And I think that's a dangerous place to be. You have to have an open mind.
00:51:25 --> 00:51:30 I don't necessarily agree with everything that my peers or my friends say.
00:51:30 --> 00:51:34 Sometimes my friends say the most outrageous or ridiculous things.
00:51:35 --> 00:51:39 And I just say, well, I don't agree with that. Here's why. And we move forward or we don't.
00:51:40 --> 00:51:46 But there's room for debate. Yeah, yeah, and I agree with that Why politics and Prosecco?
00:51:48 --> 00:51:51 Prosecco has always been my drink of choice. When I was able to start drinking,
00:51:52 --> 00:51:57 I always drank Prosecco because I like fizzy drinks. I like sweet drinks.
00:51:57 --> 00:52:04 So it became a play on words, but it was my drink of choice.
00:52:04 --> 00:52:09 I think I had first started saying things like the Prosecco perspective,
00:52:09 --> 00:52:13 but then I was like, I don't think anybody, they'll just think I'm just talking
00:52:13 --> 00:52:14 about different drinks.
00:52:14 --> 00:52:18 And I wanted to talk about politics. So when I started the podcast,
00:52:18 --> 00:52:25 which was literally born out of me roasting elected officials here in Boston at my kitchen table.
00:52:25 --> 00:52:30 A lot of them I was friends with. And I would, you know, they'd come over.
00:52:30 --> 00:52:35 This is when I had an apartment in Quincy and I would just roast them and they would roast me.
00:52:35 --> 00:52:38 And that's how the podcast was born.
00:52:38 --> 00:52:41 Because a lot of them were like, you know, people like take your show on the
00:52:41 --> 00:52:44 road. It was just kind of like, you should talk about these things.
00:52:44 --> 00:52:46 I'm sure you're not the only person with this opinion.
00:52:46 --> 00:52:49 And it grew from there. And I didn't even know the media was watching.
00:52:50 --> 00:52:53 I just, this was, it was the pandemic. Everybody was at home.
00:52:54 --> 00:52:58 George Floyd had just been murdered. And so everybody was starting to tune in.
00:52:58 --> 00:53:05 My thoughts about politics were formed well before I started a podcast.
00:53:05 --> 00:53:09 I was always sort of opinionated and I make no bones about that.
00:53:09 --> 00:53:15 That I, you know, I tell this story all is I'm the youngest of five girls.
00:53:15 --> 00:53:19 So, you know, when you have that many different personalities,
00:53:19 --> 00:53:24 you have to navigate, you have to form an opinion and form your own identity,
00:53:24 --> 00:53:26 because you can get lost in the shuffle.
00:53:26 --> 00:53:31 So I, you know, I'd always been a debater, I had always thought about politics.
00:53:32 --> 00:53:36 In my parents' homes, there were always black books, Black art, Black perspectives.
00:53:37 --> 00:53:40 So it wasn't like, you know, someone had to teach me this.
00:53:40 --> 00:53:45 I grew up around a lot of this. And my parents were never people who said,
00:53:45 --> 00:53:48 I don't want to hear your opinion. It was like, tell me why you don't agree.
00:53:48 --> 00:53:52 And I think to their detriment, I became mouthy. So...
00:53:53 --> 00:53:56 So that's where we stand. Be careful what you ask for.
00:53:56 --> 00:54:01 Right. And my parents are very concerned. And they're not progressive Democrats.
00:54:01 --> 00:54:03 They're liberals, but they're not progressive liberals.
00:54:04 --> 00:54:09 They both grew up during the civil rights time. And my mom in segregated Memphis,
00:54:09 --> 00:54:11 my dad in the segregated Midwest.
00:54:12 --> 00:54:19 So their ideas about politics and Black influence was very different from mine.
00:54:19 --> 00:54:21 I didn't have those struggles.
00:54:22 --> 00:54:30 So their radical ways or their idea of radical advocacy differed from mine. I didn't have to march.
00:54:30 --> 00:54:32 You know, we had it a little bit
00:54:32 --> 00:54:36 differently. So I had to find a different tool to use to be an advocate.
00:54:37 --> 00:54:44 Yeah. Yeah, I guess if I had gone with your kind of theme and renaming my podcast,
00:54:44 --> 00:54:47 it would have been politics and bourbon. I think that would have been.
00:54:48 --> 00:54:50 We like a little bourbon liquor every now and then. Yeah.
00:54:51 --> 00:54:54 Yeah, I think I would have done that. And I just listen to you because my friends,
00:54:55 --> 00:55:02 when Donald Trump first got elected, he would say something crazy on Twitter or whatever.
00:55:02 --> 00:55:06 And I was hoovering at the time and I'd pull over to the side and I'd start
00:55:06 --> 00:55:08 venting and recording my vents.
00:55:08 --> 00:55:12 And my roommate was a mass communications major. He said, you know,
00:55:12 --> 00:55:13 you can do a podcast, right?
00:55:14 --> 00:55:17 And you can just put that out there in the air. And he said,
00:55:17 --> 00:55:21 people, because you were elected, people would listen to you.
00:55:21 --> 00:55:24 And I said, no. So here I am.
00:55:25 --> 00:55:28 Podcasting has become the new way people get their information.
00:55:28 --> 00:55:33 If you look at what Kamala is doing now, she's actually not going on a lot of big news shows.
00:55:33 --> 00:55:38 She's going around to different podcasts and doing interviews because what I
00:55:38 --> 00:55:43 think she realized was the DNC does not, they didn't get it right when it came to communications.
00:55:43 --> 00:55:46 They didn't get it right when it came to messaging. She wasn't able to talk
00:55:46 --> 00:55:48 to the people that she needed to talk to.
00:55:49 --> 00:55:54 She didn't need to convince me to vote for her. I was already a well-informed, well-engaged voter.
00:55:54 --> 00:55:58 She didn't need to talk to me about her issues. I was going to vote for her
00:55:58 --> 00:56:02 because I knew what she had done. I knew where she wanted to go and I was going to vote.
00:56:03 --> 00:56:08 Her audience were really these sort of kids who don't pay attention or aren't
00:56:08 --> 00:56:11 doing their due diligence in research. That's her audience.
00:56:12 --> 00:56:16 I say this to Ayanna Pressley a lot. I'm not your audience when it comes to
00:56:16 --> 00:56:22 student loans and, you know, this idea of debt.
00:56:23 --> 00:56:28 I have a different perspective. I don't have student loans. I don't have a lot of debt.
00:56:28 --> 00:56:31 So I'm not your audience. Don't talk to me about it. But let me get you 10 to
00:56:31 --> 00:56:37 20 women in the room who are struggling with student loans and who are struggling with debt.
00:56:37 --> 00:56:42 And so I think when you see people like you and people like me,
00:56:42 --> 00:56:45 we are becoming the new voice being able to be.
00:56:46 --> 00:56:51 Not unbiased, but it's certainly a refreshing way that people can get their
00:56:51 --> 00:56:55 message out to the masses and the people that they normally would not talk to.
00:56:56 --> 00:56:57 We're not going to the View.
00:56:57 --> 00:56:59 Would love to, but we're not going there.
00:57:00 --> 00:57:03 You never know. You might get there when you go. You never know. You never know.
00:57:04 --> 00:57:08 I only want to go if Whoopi invites me personally. I'm not going if anybody else doesn't invite me.
00:57:11 --> 00:57:14 You hear that, Karen Johnson? You have to invite me. Oh.
00:57:15 --> 00:57:21 In your self-description of your political work, you said, I don't just walk in the room.
00:57:22 --> 00:57:24 I rearranged the power structure.
00:57:25 --> 00:57:29 You kind of got into it a little bit earlier, but talk about your journey of
00:57:29 --> 00:57:32 how you became a power structure interior decorator.
00:57:33 --> 00:57:39 So I sort of fell into politics in high school. I went to John O'Brien School
00:57:39 --> 00:57:40 of Math and Science here in Boston.
00:57:41 --> 00:57:46 It was the first place where I understood what diversity really looked like.
00:57:46 --> 00:57:50 And I had an African-American history teacher by the name of Mr.
00:57:50 --> 00:57:56 Hall who was just, it was constant beating us in the head with,
00:57:56 --> 00:57:59 you're important, you're Black, you're powerful. world.
00:58:00 --> 00:58:04 And this was when Clinton was running for re-election. And I got into trouble
00:58:04 --> 00:58:11 and my punishment was detention, but the detention was at this phone banking
00:58:11 --> 00:58:13 with him for Clinton voters.
00:58:13 --> 00:58:18 And once I realized I could persuade people, because these were undecided voters,
00:58:18 --> 00:58:20 I didn't know that at the time, I didn't understand what an undecided voter was.
00:58:21 --> 00:58:26 Once I realized that I can change somebody's mind just by knowing the facts, I did.
00:58:26 --> 00:58:30 And it grew from there. In college, I got an internship with Barney Frank,
00:58:30 --> 00:58:32 and I would go down there for the summer.
00:58:33 --> 00:58:39 He would never pay me. And he said to me, I pay you for the rest of your life in network.
00:58:39 --> 00:58:44 So you build a network, you will always get paid. And boy, is he just, that is the truth.
00:58:44 --> 00:58:47 My network has gotten me job after job after job.
00:58:47 --> 00:58:53 And that's how I met so many people who were for then-Senator Obama So when
00:58:53 --> 00:58:56 he ran for the first time,
00:58:56 --> 00:59:01 I got a phone call and said, come to Iowa I had a white Kia Sephia and a dog
00:59:01 --> 00:59:07 named JD who was a puppy And we drove from Boston to Iowa And when I tell you,
00:59:07 --> 00:59:09 Erik, it literally exploded from there.
00:59:10 --> 00:59:13 Rolled into a job at the White House, then rolled into the re-election,
00:59:13 --> 00:59:16 rolled into a job with Terry McAuliffe, rolled into a job with Steve Grossman,
00:59:16 --> 00:59:18 rolled into a job with Trevor Goldberg.
00:59:18 --> 00:59:23 And from there, with every, and I learned every aspect of campaigning,
00:59:23 --> 00:59:27 strategy, comms, scheduling, because what I knew was there weren't people who
00:59:27 --> 00:59:29 looked like me in campaigns.
00:59:29 --> 00:59:33 There weren't people who looked like me that were at the top of the campaigns.
00:59:33 --> 00:59:38 And I knew if I wanted to be able to change strategy and change power structures.
00:59:38 --> 00:59:43 I needed to understand every part of how campaigns and political offices are run.
00:59:43 --> 00:59:48 So then when I did walk into those rooms, I could speak with authority because
00:59:48 --> 00:59:50 the white boys weren't letting us in.
00:59:50 --> 00:59:56 And many of them didn't have the same skills or experience that I had.
00:59:56 --> 00:59:59 Their daddies were donors who got them jobs.
01:00:00 --> 01:00:01 My daddy didn't donate big money.
01:00:02 --> 01:00:09 He was putting us through college. So that was sort of how I approached what
01:00:09 --> 01:00:11 I wanted to do in politics.
01:00:11 --> 01:00:17 And then as my skills got more sharper, I became more vocal about what my values
01:00:17 --> 01:00:20 were. I believed in pay equity for women.
01:00:20 --> 01:00:25 I believed in diversity, equity, and inclusion before it was a buzzword.
01:00:25 --> 01:00:31 I understood how money moved movements. I honed all of these skills and turn
01:00:31 --> 01:00:35 them into sharp tools so that I could rearrange power structures.
01:00:36 --> 01:00:43 Yeah. When you were talking about the donors and all that, I tell people I fooled
01:00:43 --> 01:00:44 a lot of folks when I was young.
01:00:45 --> 01:00:49 When I first got out of college, I would go to all these political fundraisers.
01:00:50 --> 01:00:54 So some of the white folks were pretty much like, who is this guy?
01:00:54 --> 01:00:58 He's always at this fundraiser, like a trust fund. Who is this?
01:00:59 --> 01:01:04 Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just a little kid that just was trying to get into
01:01:04 --> 01:01:06 politics. That's how I was, especially in Mississippi.
01:01:07 --> 01:01:11 And then I really appreciate the fact that you talked about being a scheduler.
01:01:13 --> 01:01:19 Because that was, yeah, it was like, you know, I was the scheduler for a guy
01:01:19 --> 01:01:20 that got elected to Congress.
01:01:21 --> 01:01:27 And so it was like, you know, it was kind of funny in my situation.
01:01:27 --> 01:01:29 It was like I was doing the schedule.
01:01:30 --> 01:01:34 And because I was initially supposed to be the black face for the campaign. Right.
01:01:35 --> 01:01:38 It was like they said, well, we need somebody. He needs to have his day.
01:01:39 --> 01:01:41 So I started doing that and I kind of developed a system.
01:01:42 --> 01:01:47 And so when he got to the general election, they were bringing in some more
01:01:47 --> 01:01:51 people. And so they put this white boy on and his wife called and said,
01:01:51 --> 01:01:54 who's doing the schedule now? He's a little Bubba.
01:01:54 --> 01:01:59 Literally, the dude's name was Bubba. He said, Bubba's doing the schedule.
01:01:59 --> 01:02:00 And it was like, no, no, where's Erik?
01:02:00 --> 01:02:03 What's he doing? And she said, we got him doing it.
01:02:03 --> 01:02:07 Put Erik back on the schedule because I don't know what this man is trying to do with me.
01:02:08 --> 01:02:11 Put Erik back on. So I ended up being the scheduler for the rest of the campaign.
01:02:13 --> 01:02:17 And scheduling is how I got to learn who the stakeholders were,
01:02:17 --> 01:02:22 who the people in the room were, was through scheduling. And I learned their
01:02:22 --> 01:02:23 name. They learned my name.
01:02:23 --> 01:02:27 I would keep, I call it mapping now, but I would keep an Excel spreadsheet. cheat.
01:02:27 --> 01:02:32 Eric is married to Keisha. Keisha has a cat named Dawn. Dawn had surgery.
01:02:32 --> 01:02:38 So when they called, I would have that information. I called it a cheat sheet.
01:02:38 --> 01:02:43 And also, the candidates would get used to me whispering in their ear,
01:02:44 --> 01:02:45 oh, by the way, here comes Erik Fleming.
01:02:45 --> 01:02:49 You met his wife last week. Remember, she just broke her arm.
01:02:49 --> 01:02:50 You might want to mention that.
01:02:51 --> 01:02:58 It's something I do now with just my friends. And it's how I keep myself relevant in spaces.
01:02:58 --> 01:03:00 Because sometimes, you know, people think you're an extrovert.
01:03:00 --> 01:03:02 I'm not really an extrovert.
01:03:02 --> 01:03:06 I just, I don't mind being around people. But sometimes when my battery's a
01:03:06 --> 01:03:09 little low, I rely on that skill. Get in, get out.
01:03:10 --> 01:03:15 Yeah. Yeah. They actually have come up with a new term to that called the otrovert or whatever.
01:03:15 --> 01:03:19 Because I consider myself an introvert and my dad was always amazed.
01:03:19 --> 01:03:25 How how did you even get into politics you don't you don't you know you're not that kind of a person and,
01:03:26 --> 01:03:29 you're allergic to bullshit so I don't know how you got into politics and I
01:03:29 --> 01:03:33 said yeah you know you develop a skill set I mean that's just how it goes right
01:03:33 --> 01:03:39 so that's into politics yeah yeah yeah it is and when I'm listening to your
01:03:39 --> 01:03:41 story I'm like god I'm so glad I'm not alone in this,
01:03:43 --> 01:03:50 so outside of my American history lessons and schools I didn't know a lot about Boston Okay.
01:03:50 --> 01:03:54 But sometime during the 70s, and I did some research, I think it was 76,
01:03:55 --> 01:03:59 I remember an image of a black man in a three-piece suit being hit by a white
01:03:59 --> 01:04:01 dude with an American flagpole.
01:04:01 --> 01:04:06 Yes. So that stuck with me, and I have always been amazed of how black folks
01:04:06 --> 01:04:11 have navigated in that city, leading to an African-American woman being mayor for a moment.
01:04:11 --> 01:04:16 Well, she was an acting mayor. Right, but she was in the position.
01:04:17 --> 01:04:21 She wasn't elected. We can talk about that. Sure.
01:04:21 --> 01:04:28 But so as someone who grew up in Boston, how has black political power evolved there?
01:04:29 --> 01:04:34 No, it hasn't much. I actually just did a three spread op-ed in the Bay State
01:04:34 --> 01:04:37 Banner about why we lack Black political leadership.
01:04:38 --> 01:04:42 And the problem is, Boston is a very transient town.
01:04:42 --> 01:04:48 So there are very few Bostonians. I'm a Bostonian. I was born and raised here. My parents are not.
01:04:49 --> 01:04:53 Like many people, people come here for school.
01:04:53 --> 01:04:58 People come here for the medical field. We own the country and those things.
01:04:58 --> 01:05:01 So a lot of people aren't from Boston.
01:05:01 --> 01:05:06 They're not proper Bostonians. And so when they come here and to build Black
01:05:06 --> 01:05:11 political leadership or just Black leadership in general, they're navigating,
01:05:11 --> 01:05:15 one, being put into the right circles, using a quote on that.
01:05:16 --> 01:05:22 And the right circles are usually governed by people who are from Boston.
01:05:22 --> 01:05:26 They gatekeep those. and then what it is that you do.
01:05:26 --> 01:05:30 Like if you, we have a lot of pastors that come from the South and come here
01:05:30 --> 01:05:34 to, you know, they can become pretty popular.
01:05:34 --> 01:05:39 And not that they lack talent. What they lack is the ability to understand that
01:05:39 --> 01:05:45 in order to build Black political power, you need to be united in your thoughts
01:05:45 --> 01:05:48 and in your values and align them with other Black people.
01:05:48 --> 01:05:51 But when you come from a different region of the country, and I'm sure you know
01:05:51 --> 01:05:57 this, The Southern Blacks have a different perspective and outlook with white
01:05:57 --> 01:06:02 folks as Northern Blacks do, especially those of us who were born in the North.
01:06:02 --> 01:06:08 We don't necessarily acquiesce as quickly as Southern Blacks do to fit in.
01:06:09 --> 01:06:12 That's not saying that we're better, we just do it a different way.
01:06:13 --> 01:06:18 I find it hard to build Black political leadership in a space like Boston,
01:06:18 --> 01:06:22 knowing that we don't have power money circles here.
01:06:22 --> 01:06:26 So we, yes, we have the Black elite and the Black bourgeoisie,
01:06:26 --> 01:06:28 but they're not moving heavy, heavy money.
01:06:29 --> 01:06:35 Like Atlanta, you go to Atlanta, they have a power structure on money in some spaces.
01:06:36 --> 01:06:40 And that's because they have always had a Black community.
01:06:40 --> 01:06:44 Boston had to build a Black community. We were not always here.
01:06:44 --> 01:06:48 Boston is very patriarchal. It's a very Irish town or was.
01:06:49 --> 01:06:55 So the Black and Brown and AAPI community that came here, a lot of these folks were transients.
01:06:55 --> 01:06:58 So they made Boston their home eventually.
01:06:58 --> 01:07:02 But we don't have that power because many of them aren't rooted here.
01:07:02 --> 01:07:07 So they come here, they get their education or, you know, they become brilliant
01:07:07 --> 01:07:09 scientists and doctors and all these other things.
01:07:09 --> 01:07:14 And they're looking to move into higher spaces, whether that's political office
01:07:14 --> 01:07:16 or to become a stakeholder.
01:07:16 --> 01:07:21 But none of them are actually thinking about what is it that Black Boston needs?
01:07:21 --> 01:07:27 We have a Organization here called Boston while black Fabulous organization
01:07:27 --> 01:07:30 run by a girl named Sheena collier who's not from Boston.
01:07:31 --> 01:07:38 And She has been able to tap into Making the space comfortable for people who
01:07:38 --> 01:07:42 come here The reason why boston while black doesn't work for me is because I
01:07:42 --> 01:07:45 live in Boston Proper I live in Roxbury.
01:07:46 --> 01:07:52 I bought a home in Roxbury. I'm not a renter. I'm an owner I went to high school in Roxbury.
01:07:52 --> 01:07:58 My offices for my day job are in the seaport. I live, work, eat, and play in Boston.
01:07:58 --> 01:08:03 My dollar circulates in Roxbury three times before it leaves to go anywhere else.
01:08:03 --> 01:08:08 I am Boston while Black, and I am able to do that because I'm a true Bostonian.
01:08:09 --> 01:08:12 There are spaces that many people don't have that advantage.
01:08:12 --> 01:08:17 And so the reason why we don't have that Black political power is because everyone's
01:08:17 --> 01:08:22 coming with their own agenda about what their definition or barometer for Black is.
01:08:22 --> 01:08:26 You can talk, I mean, this is something culturally as well. You got hood rich
01:08:26 --> 01:08:29 Black folks, and then you got sustainable wealth Black folks.
01:08:30 --> 01:08:35 Hood rich is, I want a BMW, and I live in this apartment building.
01:08:35 --> 01:08:38 And the image is, I look like I have it together, but that's not the truth.
01:08:39 --> 01:08:42 Meanwhile, the rest of us look boring to the rest of the world because we're
01:08:42 --> 01:08:47 not out doing bottle service or traveling to these exotic places only to come
01:08:47 --> 01:08:50 back and pay rent at somebody else's home.
01:08:50 --> 01:08:54 It's the same thing you find in Black political power. If I look like I have
01:08:54 --> 01:09:00 power and people think I have power, then I don't really have to buck up against the status quo.
01:09:01 --> 01:09:04 Meanwhile, the rest of us are like, I don't need to look like I have power.
01:09:04 --> 01:09:07 I'm building power and I'm coming in the room and I got something to say.
01:09:07 --> 01:09:09 And anybody who doesn't like it, that's too bad.
01:09:10 --> 01:09:12 And so that's why I'm able to be vocal.
01:09:12 --> 01:09:15 I went after the mayor very hard this year.
01:09:15 --> 01:09:22 This summer, I just, I was relentless in calling her out for her lack of diversity,
01:09:22 --> 01:09:26 her inability to really promote Black American women.
01:09:26 --> 01:09:31 And I'm intentional about that when I say Black American women.
01:09:31 --> 01:09:37 And so I, when we talk about moving power structures, I don't have any,
01:09:38 --> 01:09:41 I don't owe any debts to anybody in elected office here.
01:09:41 --> 01:09:45 So I can go in there and rename the power structure.
01:09:45 --> 01:09:49 I can rebuild it based on what I believe is Black political power.
01:09:49 --> 01:09:54 Many people who come here don't have that ability. They're still trying to belong,
01:09:55 --> 01:10:02 Yeah, I feel you on that. I think I'm glad you have this positive view of Atlanta.
01:10:02 --> 01:10:06 I don't in the short, because it's a different level.
01:10:08 --> 01:10:14 Yeah, there's more money because Maynard Jackson tapped into a leverage point
01:10:14 --> 01:10:19 and was able to get a higher level of a black middle class.
01:10:20 --> 01:10:24 Yeah. But Atlanta has the largest wealth gap of any city in the United States.
01:10:26 --> 01:10:30 And the political power. Yeah, there's some folks that got some money,
01:10:30 --> 01:10:33 but you ain't from the Cascades. I have a hard time getting elected.
01:10:34 --> 01:10:40 And this is one of the top 10 cities as far as wealth in the United States.
01:10:40 --> 01:10:45 So there might be some black folks that got more money than say black folks in Boston.
01:10:46 --> 01:10:52 But as compared to these white Atlanta folks, they're in the same boat.
01:10:53 --> 01:10:56 It's like in the city proper of Atlanta, you can have that.
01:10:57 --> 01:11:00 When you start venturing out into the perimeter, that's our domain.
01:11:01 --> 01:11:05 And we just really went through that. But again, this is not about me.
01:11:05 --> 01:11:09 It's about you. So let me just let me out myself a little bit,
01:11:09 --> 01:11:13 because even though I go after the black bourgeoisie, there are those who look
01:11:13 --> 01:11:17 at me and know that I am also a part of it. Grew up in Jack and Jill.
01:11:17 --> 01:11:19 I'm a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha. I'm a member of the Lynx.
01:11:20 --> 01:11:24 Like I but those are spaces that, yes, I was born into a few of them.
01:11:24 --> 01:11:28 However, I had to work hard. The Lynx just don't let you in.
01:11:28 --> 01:11:33 You got to prove yourself. So you got to prove that you're worthy and that you're doing the work.
01:11:33 --> 01:11:36 So, you know, I say all this with the authority to say, yes,
01:11:36 --> 01:11:40 I belong to what is considered the black bourgeoisie.
01:11:40 --> 01:11:44 However, I'm in those spaces doing the same thing I'm doing in these streets.
01:11:44 --> 01:11:48 Yeah. Yeah. And that's where we want the voices to come from.
01:11:49 --> 01:11:51 Again, let me not get in the soapbox. Let's get back.
01:11:52 --> 01:11:56 So you mentioned the fact that you were jumping on the mayor pretty hard this
01:11:56 --> 01:11:59 summer. You were working for one of her opponents.
01:12:00 --> 01:12:06 So kind of give an autopsy. What happened? How come your candidate wasn't able to get her out?
01:12:08 --> 01:12:13 So I have a three-pronged approach to this. So let me start by saying I didn't
01:12:13 --> 01:12:15 support Mayor Wu the first time she ran.
01:12:15 --> 01:12:18 So I was not a supporter. I was not somebody who jumped ship.
01:12:19 --> 01:12:24 My relationship with the mayor goes back to when we were both staffers in different
01:12:24 --> 01:12:27 campaigns and in different camps.
01:12:27 --> 01:12:33 And she has said things to me over the years that have bucked up against my identity.
01:12:34 --> 01:12:40 Speaking of the Black middle class and her idea that it doesn't exactly exist.
01:12:40 --> 01:12:49 And my beef with her, how she has wronged Ayanna Pressley and how she wronged Andrea Campbell.
01:12:49 --> 01:12:54 So when I say Black American women, I want people to understand there are white
01:12:54 --> 01:12:58 adjacent ethnicities that have a problem with Black American women.
01:12:58 --> 01:13:03 They don't necessarily have those problems with Black immigrant women because
01:13:03 --> 01:13:08 we are not a monolith and we think of race and diversity in very different ways.
01:13:09 --> 01:13:15 And that's okay. But when you have someone utilizing that as a way to divide
01:13:15 --> 01:13:17 and conquer, I got a problem with that.
01:13:17 --> 01:13:21 So I was not a supporter of Mayor Wu the last time or this time.
01:13:22 --> 01:13:25 Minnie Mouse had run, I would have been in Minnie Mouse's camp.
01:13:25 --> 01:13:28 It wouldn't have mattered. It just happened to be Josh Kraft.
01:13:28 --> 01:13:32 It wouldn't have mattered. I was going to work to get her out of office.
01:13:33 --> 01:13:36 The mayor has the power of incumbency. And here in Massachusetts,
01:13:36 --> 01:13:44 we have voters who are not exactly open to people running against incumbents.
01:13:45 --> 01:13:51 So she had the power of incumbency. She also had the advantage of making Trump
01:13:51 --> 01:13:56 the problem and attaching him to Josh Kraft, who is the son of a billionaire.
01:13:56 --> 01:13:59 He is not a billionaire. He is the son of a billionaire.
01:13:59 --> 01:14:05 And she utilized that. She capitalized it. And what folks want to know right
01:14:05 --> 01:14:13 now is how angry they can be at rich white men as opposed to her actually talking about the issues.
01:14:13 --> 01:14:20 So my candidate did not want to attack her the way he could have because she's
01:14:20 --> 01:14:25 a minority, she's a woman, and he just didn't want to do that.
01:14:25 --> 01:14:31 And I said to him, I think that that's the wrong move because you need to be
01:14:31 --> 01:14:35 able to say why she is not capable of being mayor.
01:14:35 --> 01:14:40 You need to take all of that out. And when you consult on races, I'm sure you know this.
01:14:41 --> 01:14:44 Sometimes you have a lone voice in the room because everybody wants the candidate
01:14:44 --> 01:14:51 to like them and to think that they are the trusted voice so they often tell
01:14:51 --> 01:14:53 him or her what they want to hear.
01:14:53 --> 01:14:57 I am not the consultant in the room to do that and I make it very clear before
01:14:57 --> 01:14:59 I sign any contract I'm gonna be honest with you.
01:14:59 --> 01:15:03 I'm gonna be straight with you direct and sometimes abrasive But everything
01:15:03 --> 01:15:05 that I'm saying it's rooted in truth.
01:15:06 --> 01:15:14 I've done this too many times so That was that was the issue with it, but I still kept my.
01:15:16 --> 01:15:21 Vigor at going after her on issues that were important to me,
01:15:21 --> 01:15:26 like the real estate hike that she did, the fact that she had put these bike
01:15:26 --> 01:15:30 lanes in, and I'm not sure, have you been to Boston? I have not.
01:15:31 --> 01:15:36 So Boston has very narrow streets. We still have- From what I've seen on TV, I understand. Yeah.
01:15:36 --> 01:15:39 It's still very horse and buggy here. If you go to Beacon Hill,
01:15:39 --> 01:15:43 you can't even park because the cobblestone streets, it's just very horse and buggy.
01:15:43 --> 01:15:50 And she was throwing up bike lanes, mostly in the neighborhoods of color,
01:15:50 --> 01:15:55 which was narrowing the street, making more traffic for people who don't ride
01:15:55 --> 01:15:56 bikes on a regular basis.
01:15:57 --> 01:16:01 And so I just had issue after issue, and I was vocal about it.
01:16:02 --> 01:16:09 You know, she never countered me because she knew that she couldn't. She knew our history.
01:16:09 --> 01:16:13 And so that's how you know sometimes when you're on the right track.
01:16:13 --> 01:16:17 Sounds like the wrong person ran for office, but we'll get into that a little later.
01:16:19 --> 01:16:25 I recently interviewed former counselor Tania Anderson before she started her prison sentence.
01:16:25 --> 01:16:29 I knew that you helped her when she first ran for office.
01:16:29 --> 01:16:35 So strategy. How did her recent challenges impact you politically and personally?
01:16:36 --> 01:16:39 So politically, it didn't really take a hit.
01:16:40 --> 01:16:45 Personally, it broke my heart. So Tanya and I go all the way back to high school.
01:16:45 --> 01:16:48 We went to high school together, as did her husband, Tanzarius.
01:16:48 --> 01:16:56 And when she called, because he asked her, he being Tanzerius,
01:16:57 --> 01:16:58 said, you should call Jacquetta.
01:16:58 --> 01:17:05 She knows what she's doing. I did that as a favor to friends from high school. I wrote a strategy out.
01:17:05 --> 01:17:13 I tried my best to impart how to best be in a space where you're representing
01:17:13 --> 01:17:20 a predominantly black district in a predominantly white city council and how to do that.
01:17:22 --> 01:17:27 Tanya was very adamant that she didn't want to be told what to do.
01:17:28 --> 01:17:34 So, you know, one of the things that I find disheartening is we can teach people
01:17:34 --> 01:17:38 and pipeline people to run for office, but they have to be willing to learn
01:17:38 --> 01:17:41 how to govern as well because it's two separate things.
01:17:42 --> 01:17:46 And I was so disappointed because she had been warned.
01:17:46 --> 01:17:52 We had warned her before she got up there to temper yourself your first year,
01:17:53 --> 01:17:57 get some grounding, understand how things work up there, and then we can come
01:17:57 --> 01:18:00 up with a plan of attack to take some of these people out.
01:18:01 --> 01:18:05 One, she had hired her son and she got reprimanded for that.
01:18:06 --> 01:18:10 She still didn't listen. After a while, she and I grew apart.
01:18:10 --> 01:18:14 And I just said, look, you can only help people so much.
01:18:14 --> 01:18:20 You can't always keep cleaning up the mess.
01:18:20 --> 01:18:25 And so once I realized that she didn't want anything to do with my team,
01:18:26 --> 01:18:31 my consultant team, and she thought she had it under control, this is the result.
01:18:31 --> 01:18:37 This is what happens when your ego gets in the way. And Tanya's ego got in the way.
01:18:38 --> 01:18:42 Yeah. And that falls in the category for a lot of people.
01:18:42 --> 01:18:47 I was just thinking about when you were saying that you're the consultant in
01:18:47 --> 01:18:52 the room that's not, you know, going to kiss ass, basically.
01:18:52 --> 01:18:57 Yeah. And I remember a conversation I had with the incumbent mayor in Jackson,
01:18:57 --> 01:19:00 and he had asked me to run his campaign.
01:19:00 --> 01:19:04 And he said, Erik, who do you think my biggest because the opponent is.
01:19:04 --> 01:19:06 And I said, the man you see in the mirror every day.
01:19:07 --> 01:19:10 Right. I said, because of some of the things that he had done.
01:19:10 --> 01:19:15 Right. And so, you know, I get that. And, you know, having had a chance to talk
01:19:15 --> 01:19:21 to her directly, and it was by if people judged it, it would be more of a softball interview,
01:19:21 --> 01:19:26 you know, but I wanted people to kind of get to know her.
01:19:27 --> 01:19:32 And I was very, very surprised that she even accepted my invitation to come on.
01:19:33 --> 01:19:38 So, you know, I've contacted her since she's gotten out and she says she's doing
01:19:38 --> 01:19:44 okay. And she'll probably come back on when she's ready to kind of really get
01:19:44 --> 01:19:47 into the meat of what happened from her side of the point.
01:19:48 --> 01:19:50 But I get what you're saying.
01:19:51 --> 01:19:53 She's a smart, smart woman.
01:19:53 --> 01:20:00 The problem is you can't be smart and think you're the smartest person in the
01:20:00 --> 01:20:02 room. If that's the case, then you're in the wrong room.
01:20:03 --> 01:20:09 And she just, I think for her, there was an insecurity of having me there because
01:20:09 --> 01:20:12 it's like, well, I'm the elected official. I should know these things.
01:20:12 --> 01:20:16 And my position is like, sometimes you don't know everything.
01:20:17 --> 01:20:21 And I had had a long history in politics. And I'm telling her,
01:20:22 --> 01:20:23 don't trust this person.
01:20:23 --> 01:20:25 You don't need to go to have a meeting with them.
01:20:25 --> 01:20:31 This person is just going to backfire on you. And if somebody is telling me
01:20:31 --> 01:20:36 that's been in this business for a long time, who I should and shouldn't interact
01:20:36 --> 01:20:37 with, I'll probably listen.
01:20:38 --> 01:20:43 But no, it was just, it's one of those things. You know, the best piece of advice
01:20:43 --> 01:20:46 I got, it was a guy, he's an elected official. Matter of fact,
01:20:46 --> 01:20:48 he's a state representative now.
01:20:48 --> 01:20:51 But I think he was on the city council then, but he was an insurance salesman.
01:20:53 --> 01:20:57 And he came up to me one meeting. He said, Erik, you need some insurance.
01:20:58 --> 01:21:02 And I was like, really, bro, you would, I mean, you're trying to,
01:21:02 --> 01:21:03 you know, so he said, no, hear me out.
01:21:04 --> 01:21:09 He said, you are out there. I mean, you raise hell, you do this.
01:21:09 --> 01:21:11 You done pissed some people off.
01:21:12 --> 01:21:13 You have a family.
01:21:14 --> 01:21:20 He said, if you want to continue to have that, you need to have something to
01:21:20 --> 01:21:24 know that if something does happen to you, your family's not going to suffer for it.
01:21:24 --> 01:21:27 And I said, I see why you're one of the best insurance salesmen in the city.
01:21:28 --> 01:21:34 I get it, you know, but it made sense because it's like a lot of times in politics,
01:21:34 --> 01:21:38 you got to have foundations so you can continue to have your freedom,
01:21:38 --> 01:21:40 whether it's financial or in
01:21:40 --> 01:21:44 the case of having an advisor who's going to challenge you and say, look.
01:21:44 --> 01:21:50 Maybe you shouldn't go down this road. So I, and, and, and, and understand that,
01:21:50 --> 01:21:54 yeah, you don't want to do that, but if you want to be effective,
01:21:54 --> 01:21:59 you might have to swallow that pride just a little bit to get in there.
01:21:59 --> 01:22:02 And I, we can go on and on about that, but. And it's tough.
01:22:02 --> 01:22:05 I mean, there's been moments where I've had to swallow my pride or I've been
01:22:05 --> 01:22:08 stubborn and it's bitten me in the behind.
01:22:09 --> 01:22:13 We all have those moments. I think when you are in a city like Boston where
01:22:13 --> 01:22:15 we don't have enough Black political power,
01:22:16 --> 01:22:22 these are the times where you really need to have one clear message and trajectory
01:22:22 --> 01:22:25 and don't waver from that.
01:22:25 --> 01:22:28 I don't know. I mean, and then when I saw when the news started coming out and
01:22:28 --> 01:22:34 it was like for very little money, I'm like, come on.
01:22:34 --> 01:22:37 Like, it just, it's so unnecessary. So unnecessary.
01:22:38 --> 01:22:42 Yeah. Well, they always get us for the small stuff. That's right.
01:22:42 --> 01:22:47 That's right. You know, it's like I tell people, I'm not encouraging you to
01:22:47 --> 01:22:51 do bad behavior, but I would like to see a black person be a Bernie Madoff.
01:22:51 --> 01:22:54 If you're going to go out, go out like that.
01:22:54 --> 01:22:59 Don't, you know, the nickel. I mean, we had a guy lose his job and his right
01:22:59 --> 01:23:02 to vote, go to jail, over a $500 carburetor.
01:23:02 --> 01:23:06 I mean, crazy stuff. Crazy. Anyway. Anyway.
01:23:07 --> 01:23:10 In a recent speech, you said that they are not targeting the powerful.
01:23:11 --> 01:23:14 They are targeting the vulnerable. They are targeting the emerging.
01:23:15 --> 01:23:17 And quite frankly, they are targeting the Black.
01:23:17 --> 01:23:23 Who is they, in your opinion? And how can Black folks overcome that targeting politically?
01:23:24 --> 01:23:28 So they, for, so they, it's a few theys.
01:23:28 --> 01:23:34 On the national level, they are the people who are behind the desk making the decisions.
01:23:34 --> 01:23:37 So they're the decision makers in government.
01:23:38 --> 01:23:43 And that could look like the Republicans, that can look like MAGA people who
01:23:43 --> 01:23:46 are in positions and agencies, it can look like all of that.
01:23:47 --> 01:23:52 On the local level, the days are the people who are in community,
01:23:52 --> 01:23:55 who talk the game, but don't move anything.
01:23:56 --> 01:23:58 If you're playing chess and you're the only one making moves,
01:23:58 --> 01:24:01 you're not having a game here. So the they's are very different.
01:24:02 --> 01:24:07 In that speech in particular, I was talking about the they's in federal government.
01:24:07 --> 01:24:13 And the they's also can be Black people in positions of power that are not doing anything.
01:24:13 --> 01:24:18 And I think Hakeem Jeffries is a very good example of a they when he made that vote.
01:24:18 --> 01:24:22 You know, the go-along to get along just doesn't work anymore.
01:24:24 --> 01:24:28 And, you know, I understand how politics work. They don't have the power in
01:24:28 --> 01:24:32 Congress right now. But the entire Congress is a clown car.
01:24:32 --> 01:24:37 It is not a group of people who have put their integrity before politics.
01:24:38 --> 01:24:44 I'm watching a documentary now. I don't know if you're a documentary fan. I am. I love Ken Burns.
01:24:44 --> 01:24:49 And Ken Burns is doing, he just released his American Revolutionary.
01:24:49 --> 01:24:52 And so I'm like, I think I'm on episode three.
01:24:52 --> 01:24:57 But say, you know, we can have a whole conversation on the founding fathers
01:24:57 --> 01:24:59 being slaveholders and all these other things.
01:24:59 --> 01:25:04 But I think what I'm taking away from it the most is this idea that they no
01:25:04 --> 01:25:06 longer wanted to be under tyranny.
01:25:07 --> 01:25:13 And their decision to form this new country was based on their own personal,
01:25:13 --> 01:25:17 I don't want to suffer like this, and I don't want to be a part of a structure
01:25:17 --> 01:25:20 that makes other people suffer under this kind of tyranny.
01:25:21 --> 01:25:23 We don't have those kinds of people anymore.
01:25:24 --> 01:25:28 Congress is a part-time job run by people making it a full-time job and getting
01:25:28 --> 01:25:34 kickbacks from speeches and panel discussions, and many of them make more money
01:25:34 --> 01:25:36 than the people who live in their districts.
01:25:37 --> 01:25:41 So you get to talk to me about being poor and staying poor while you're getting rich?
01:25:42 --> 01:25:45 Make that make sense. And I'm not saying that nobody should elevate,
01:25:46 --> 01:25:48 right? I wanted to eat steak, so I went to college.
01:25:48 --> 01:25:53 I was looking to make sure I can have a salary so that if I decide I want to
01:25:53 --> 01:25:57 fly Delta One instead of in the back of Delta. I can do that.
01:25:58 --> 01:26:07 But we are now in a space where the days are, their rhetoric is so harmful and so distracting.
01:26:08 --> 01:26:13 And they utilize that to continue to perpetuate this idea that they're helping
01:26:13 --> 01:26:15 you when they're really just harming you.
01:26:15 --> 01:26:19 You know, women have been paying for this since we got the vote.
01:26:19 --> 01:26:22 When, you know, voting against our own best interests.
01:26:22 --> 01:26:27 How do you vote against family values and you are a matriarch in your,
01:26:27 --> 01:26:29 in your house. How do you do that? So,
01:26:30 --> 01:26:35 just, I'm loving this documentary. Well, I've, I've seen the whole thing and
01:26:35 --> 01:26:38 I'm not going to tell you the conclusion.
01:26:38 --> 01:26:42 I think we kind of know how it ended, but I, you know, it was,
01:26:42 --> 01:26:47 I, I, I got a lot of the same takeaways from what you were talking about.
01:26:47 --> 01:26:50 All right. So last question. Oh, bummer.
01:26:52 --> 01:26:56 So you, you have been engaged in local and national politics for a while now.
01:26:56 --> 01:27:04 What do you think needs to be done for Democrats to gain control of both houses of Congress in 2026?
01:27:05 --> 01:27:08 Wipe them all out and bring in a whole new class.
01:27:08 --> 01:27:14 No, I know we can't do that. I think the issue is I think Democrats need to
01:27:14 --> 01:27:19 get back to the basics of the Democratic Party of the 1980s. Right.
01:27:19 --> 01:27:23 Because let's not forget Democrats in the 40s, 50s, that was Klan.
01:27:24 --> 01:27:30 But the idea that equity looks different for different people and that it's
01:27:30 --> 01:27:33 not one big umbrella that we should be under.
01:27:33 --> 01:27:37 This other idea that they always need to be on the right side of history is
01:27:37 --> 01:27:45 annoying to me because they're so focused on being in history books that they forget to govern.
01:27:45 --> 01:27:49 They forget to, you know, I don't know if you've ever seen Lean on Me,
01:27:49 --> 01:27:50 but there's a great line. And Ms.
01:27:51 --> 01:27:54 Levias says to Jill Clark, well, she goes, you're so busy talking discipline
01:27:54 --> 01:27:55 that you forget to educate.
01:27:56 --> 01:28:00 And I feel that same way in government. Like you're so busy trying to say we're
01:28:00 --> 01:28:04 on the right side of history in this and we're making, I'm the first and the
01:28:04 --> 01:28:08 only that you actually forget to govern because all you're doing is creating
01:28:08 --> 01:28:10 your own blurb in a history book.
01:28:10 --> 01:28:15 Sexy about being the first or the only. There's nothing sexy about it.
01:28:15 --> 01:28:19 There's nothing sexy about you ascending to a space and then closing the door behind you.
01:28:20 --> 01:28:24 Democrats have now all tried to recreate what we saw in 2008.
01:28:24 --> 01:28:25 That was lightning in a bottle.
01:28:26 --> 01:28:31 That was a perfect time for a perfect man. Many of us who were paying attention
01:28:31 --> 01:28:36 understood he was coming because we had Deval Patrick in 2004,
01:28:36 --> 01:28:39 who was the prototype for Barack Obama.
01:28:40 --> 01:28:46 And so for me, ever since then, it has been, well, we had a Black man in it,
01:28:46 --> 01:28:47 and now we got to get a woman in it.
01:28:47 --> 01:28:50 Oh, now we got a woman, now we got to get a Latinx person in it.
01:28:50 --> 01:28:52 Oh, now we got a Latinx person, now we need a gay person.
01:28:53 --> 01:28:57 You don't have to recreate history, or you don't have to make history,
01:28:57 --> 01:29:00 just do what's right, and everything will fall into place.
01:29:00 --> 01:29:03 Politics is not complicated. It's common sense.
01:29:04 --> 01:29:08 I'm sick. You go to the hospital, period. I need health care.
01:29:09 --> 01:29:12 Congress has the best health care in the country. Why do you get to dictate
01:29:12 --> 01:29:16 to me what good health insurance is when you live off the best health insurance
01:29:16 --> 01:29:18 that I've already paid for?
01:29:18 --> 01:29:22 So I think that a lot of it is they have got to get their head out of their
01:29:22 --> 01:29:26 ass and start thinking, oh, this is a children's show, isn't it? Sorry.
01:29:26 --> 01:29:30 No, no. It's not a children's show. No, no. No, but not by any means.
01:29:31 --> 01:29:37 They need to get out of this idea that their importance and their celebrity
01:29:37 --> 01:29:40 is what is keeping them in office.
01:29:40 --> 01:29:45 Because this generation, this Gen Z, they don't care about your celebrity.
01:29:45 --> 01:29:49 Just like millennials didn't care where you went to school or what you had in
01:29:49 --> 01:29:52 your war chest, which is what many people were trying to tell Hillary Clinton.
01:29:53 --> 01:29:54 Nobody cares you went here.
01:29:54 --> 01:29:58 Nobody cares that you have this much money. Millennials did not care.
01:29:58 --> 01:30:02 Millennials put Barack Obama in office, not boomers, not Gen X.
01:30:03 --> 01:30:09 Gen Z is going to change the political landscape of the Democratic Party,
01:30:09 --> 01:30:15 just like their Gen Z voters now have changed what MAGA looks like.
01:30:15 --> 01:30:18 They are radical. They are...
01:30:20 --> 01:30:27 Tyrannical. And many of them are more angry at just being angry and they have
01:30:27 --> 01:30:28 nothing else to fall back on.
01:30:29 --> 01:30:33 So, you know, you see Charlie, the Charlie Kirk and, you know,
01:30:33 --> 01:30:37 all he did was spew rhetoric and people would get upset about it.
01:30:37 --> 01:30:40 I thought the things he said was vile and disgusting, but I could also see a
01:30:40 --> 01:30:47 man who, if all of that went away, he'd just be another, he'd be taught at the club, right?
01:30:47 --> 01:30:49 Like there's, there's just no getting around that.
01:30:49 --> 01:30:57 And so he held on to his celebrity and he just became more, cause Charlie Kirk
01:30:57 --> 01:30:58 did not start out to be that radical.
01:30:58 --> 01:31:02 I don't think people know that. Neither did Candace Owens. I remember when Candace was a Democrat.
01:31:04 --> 01:31:09 So that's what I think. Yeah. Yeah. So who, who do you think Gen Z is going
01:31:09 --> 01:31:11 to elevate as far as running for president?
01:31:12 --> 01:31:18 I think they really do like Jasmine. I think they like her spunk I think they
01:31:18 --> 01:31:22 like the fact that she Appears to be unafraid We don't know yet because she
01:31:22 --> 01:31:27 hasn't really been Into any sticky situations And I think that And I'm rooting
01:31:27 --> 01:31:29 for her running for Senate I feel unfortunate,
01:31:30 --> 01:31:37 That she's being forced to do that Because they eliminated her seat But Essentially.
01:31:38 --> 01:31:43 I think that Gen Z is going to Elevate more Jasmine And also,
01:31:43 --> 01:31:47 if you notice, they are focused on the local races.
01:31:47 --> 01:31:52 What happened in 2009 when the Republicans did their autopsy and started turning
01:31:52 --> 01:31:54 their base red, liberal Gen Zs are doing that.
01:31:55 --> 01:31:57 They're running for office. They're running for school committee.
01:31:57 --> 01:32:01 They're running for city council, state, town council.
01:32:01 --> 01:32:05 They are not playing. And what's going to happen is you're going to start to
01:32:05 --> 01:32:11 see sort of a washout of a lot of these people in Congress. Right.
01:32:11 --> 01:32:15 You won't see Charlie Rangel. You won't see these people who are in Congress right now.
01:32:15 --> 01:32:20 They will not be in Congress until they're 85 years old. It just is not going to happen.
01:32:20 --> 01:32:24 And I know many of them are depending on this. They're depending on this being
01:32:24 --> 01:32:26 their job for the rest of their life.
01:32:26 --> 01:32:31 Like Ed Markey here in Massachusetts, he has never held a real job a day in his life.
01:32:32 --> 01:32:36 He has been an elected official since he got out of college and walked off his mama's porch.
01:32:37 --> 01:32:40 He doesn't own a home in Massachusetts. He's never owned a home in Massachusetts.
01:32:41 --> 01:32:44 The home he has here, he inherited from his mother.
01:32:44 --> 01:32:51 And so, and he has been in office. He's going to be 623 years old and he's running for re-election.
01:32:52 --> 01:32:55 Like that just doesn't make sense. And you know, some people will say,
01:32:55 --> 01:32:57 I'm not an ageist. I'm an ageist.
01:32:57 --> 01:33:02 You're no longer good at your job after 20 years. You're no longer good at your job after 10.
01:33:02 --> 01:33:07 You don't bring anything fresh and new. You have to keep things fresh and new.
01:33:07 --> 01:33:12 The only thing you're good at long-term might be marriage or relationships because
01:33:12 --> 01:33:14 you're in it to win it. I hear you.
01:33:15 --> 01:33:18 Well, I was in elected office longer than I was married, but that's a whole
01:33:18 --> 01:33:20 other conversation for another day.
01:33:20 --> 01:33:27 Look, Jacquetta Van Zandt, I hate to cut it off, but I am so glad that you came on.
01:33:28 --> 01:33:33 I hope you have me back. Oh, well, see, that's the rule. So it's like once once
01:33:33 --> 01:33:38 you've accepted an invitation, you've come on, you have an open invitation to come back.
01:33:38 --> 01:33:42 So, you know, whether I reach out to you or you reach out to me,
01:33:42 --> 01:33:45 we can make that happen. So you're definitely coming back.
01:33:46 --> 01:33:52 Excellent. Well, thank you so much. And I can I tell people where to find me? Oh, yes. Yes. Go ahead.
01:33:52 --> 01:33:57 You can find me on Instagram politics underscore and underscore Prosecco.
01:33:57 --> 01:34:01 That is where you can find my my episodes of politics for cycle,
01:34:01 --> 01:34:05 but also I do videos throughout the week I need to get back on that.
01:34:05 --> 01:34:09 It's been it's been a crazy couple of months To talk about local politics and and national.
01:34:10 --> 01:34:14 All right. Well, again, thank you for doing that. Enjoy this holiday season.
01:34:15 --> 01:34:17 Yes, you too. And keep fighting the good fight, sister.
01:34:18 --> 01:34:21 Thank you so much. All right, guys, and we're going to catch y'all on the other side.
01:34:33 --> 01:34:37 All right. And we are back. So I want to thank Dr.
01:34:37 --> 01:34:43 Laura Chavez Moreno and Jacquetta Van Zandt for coming on the program.
01:34:43 --> 01:34:49 As you can tell, I enjoy talking to both of those ladies. How Schools Make Race
01:34:49 --> 01:34:52 is a very, very, and I said this at the beginning of the show,
01:34:52 --> 01:34:53 it's a very, very intense book.
01:34:55 --> 01:35:04 Not intense that emotionally, but as far as the detail in how Dr.
01:35:04 --> 01:35:11 Silvis Moreno breaks down what was happening in this particular school district
01:35:11 --> 01:35:16 that she was doing research on and the overall impacts.
01:35:17 --> 01:35:23 That race plays in education. And of course, her focus is in the Latinx community.
01:35:26 --> 01:35:31 But it was really, it was just really enlightening, you know,
01:35:31 --> 01:35:37 how even those of us with the best intention still kind of fall into the same traps.
01:35:38 --> 01:35:43 But it's not a judgmental thing, it's just, observing the facts and according
01:35:43 --> 01:35:51 to her it really is a success story if you can fine tune it and make it so that people don't,
01:35:52 --> 01:35:58 That go through these programs and address these issues, you know,
01:35:58 --> 01:36:04 do it and build some self-esteem about it rather than, you know,
01:36:04 --> 01:36:06 feeling isolated or whatever.
01:36:06 --> 01:36:09 So, yeah, it's a good book to read.
01:36:10 --> 01:36:14 If you want to get it for you, you want to get it for somebody that you think
01:36:14 --> 01:36:21 is into that stuff for Christmas, still got time to go ahead and do that.
01:36:22 --> 01:36:28 And then Jacquetta Van Zandt, another sister warrior I have found and have connected
01:36:28 --> 01:36:32 with, along with some of the others I have had the privilege of having on this program.
01:36:32 --> 01:36:41 And I think she is going to be a frequent guest when her time allows.
01:36:41 --> 01:36:49 But, you know, her insights and her her candor are much needed.
01:36:49 --> 01:36:55 It's those are the type of people if you run for office or if you even get elected office,
01:36:55 --> 01:37:00 those are the type of people you need to have in your ear because they're going
01:37:00 --> 01:37:04 to make sure that you're on the right path, that you're going to do what needs
01:37:04 --> 01:37:09 to be done and and keep your ego in check.
01:37:09 --> 01:37:14 Because that's really the most dangerous thing. And I'll get into that a little more.
01:37:15 --> 01:37:19 But that's really kind of the most dangerous thing you can fall into as a candidate,
01:37:20 --> 01:37:23 or even as an elected official, especially as an elected official.
01:37:24 --> 01:37:29 So you want to have people like Jacquetta in your corner who's looking out for
01:37:29 --> 01:37:35 you, but is going to tell you the truth instead of just being a yes man or a yes woman, right?
01:37:36 --> 01:37:40 So it was really, really cool to talk to her. And she is somebody,
01:37:40 --> 01:37:47 if you could tell by the interview, that we could talk forever and we had to constrain the time.
01:37:48 --> 01:37:52 But I hope you got the sense of that and I hope you appreciated what she had to say.
01:37:55 --> 01:38:04 I'm not going to be long this time because I'm outside of these cool interviews I've had.
01:38:04 --> 01:38:08 This week has been really, really bad.
01:38:09 --> 01:38:17 Not for me personally. I mean, I've had some good interactions this week personally.
01:38:18 --> 01:38:26 But watching the news and watching the events that have unfolded,
01:38:27 --> 01:38:33 you know, whether it was the shooting at the Hanukkah celebration in Australia
01:38:33 --> 01:38:37 or students studying for final exams at Brown.
01:38:37 --> 01:38:42 And now we've, you know, somebody else, I think, was killed in a hole in Boston,
01:38:43 --> 01:38:48 I believe, by the same dude who has killed himself.
01:38:49 --> 01:38:56 You know, that and then the president getting up there for 20 minutes saying virtually nothing.
01:38:57 --> 01:38:58 Well, screaming virtually nothing.
01:39:00 --> 01:39:08 You know, it was probably the most unpresidential presidential address I've ever seen.
01:39:09 --> 01:39:14 Yeah. And then, you know, the Vanity Fair article,
01:39:14 --> 01:39:21 then our district attorney here in Atlanta, Fannie Willis, having to go before
01:39:21 --> 01:39:25 the Georgia State Senate, you know,
01:39:26 --> 01:39:31 after the case has been dropped, you know, now they're still trying to rake
01:39:31 --> 01:39:34 her over the coals and she wasn't having it,
01:39:35 --> 01:39:40 You know, and she just kind of reminded them that I'm going to do my job.
01:39:41 --> 01:39:48 Hopefully, eventually you'll do yours. You know, so for people that look at
01:39:48 --> 01:39:53 the pulse of American politics, this was not a great week to brag about who we are.
01:39:55 --> 01:40:01 Now, you know, Susan Wiles, of course, you know, after the article comes out
01:40:01 --> 01:40:05 in Vanity Fair, she's saying, well, you know, they took things out of context.
01:40:05 --> 01:40:12 You talked to this reporter for 11 days. He had 11 separate interviews with this person.
01:40:14 --> 01:40:20 And he recorded everything. So I think, you know, you're trying to save face
01:40:20 --> 01:40:26 and maybe you've got a little Stockholm syndrome, I don't know.
01:40:28 --> 01:40:33 But, or maybe it was a cry for help. I don't know. But what you said, you meant that.
01:40:35 --> 01:40:40 And the scary thing was it wasn't really newsworthy. It just reaffirmed that
01:40:40 --> 01:40:47 people that, even if they're not very political, but a good observer of people,
01:40:47 --> 01:40:49 you erased all their doubts.
01:40:52 --> 01:40:58 You reaffirmed that they're a good judge of character in how they've been viewing
01:40:58 --> 01:41:00 the president and his administration.
01:41:02 --> 01:41:06 Know, and that's where I was talking about like the ego, right?
01:41:07 --> 01:41:12 You can't surround yourself with people that will let you do whatever.
01:41:13 --> 01:41:17 I just, you know, it's a disaster.
01:41:17 --> 01:41:21 And you got to have people to hold you in check.
01:41:21 --> 01:41:27 Even if your intentions are good, you still have to have people hold you in check, right?
01:41:28 --> 01:41:35 So, you know, because you can't just do whatever you want, especially as a president
01:41:35 --> 01:41:40 of the United States, with that power that you can wield, right?
01:41:40 --> 01:41:48 Because I was taught a long time ago that the show of power is not what you
01:41:48 --> 01:41:51 exert, but what you restrain yourself from.
01:41:51 --> 01:41:56 That's the real sign of power, that you have all this before you and you exercise
01:41:56 --> 01:41:59 restraint, that's a powerful person.
01:42:00 --> 01:42:05 The person that just does whatever because they can, it'll be perceived as power,
01:42:05 --> 01:42:08 but it's really weakness, right?
01:42:09 --> 01:42:12 Because you don't have any self-control. You don't have any self-restraint.
01:42:13 --> 01:42:18 And if you don't have anybody in your ear telling you, no, you can't do that,
01:42:18 --> 01:42:20 or no, you shouldn't do that.
01:42:21 --> 01:42:27 Is going to be a disaster, right? And, you know, I'm from the old school.
01:42:27 --> 01:42:32 You know, we run for office. People get elected.
01:42:32 --> 01:42:39 And even if it's the person that you didn't vote for, you want them to do a
01:42:39 --> 01:42:44 good enough job to keep everything smooth and flowing until the next election, right?
01:42:45 --> 01:42:51 And then we go through the process again. You don't want them to fail.
01:42:51 --> 01:42:56 You don't want them to suck at the job, right?
01:42:56 --> 01:43:01 Even if you run against them and you don't, I'm sure y'all don't want them.
01:43:01 --> 01:43:07 If they vote for that candidate anyway, you know, then your job as a citizen
01:43:07 --> 01:43:11 at that point, because you're no longer a candidate, is like you don't want
01:43:11 --> 01:43:14 that person to screw everything up.
01:43:14 --> 01:43:24 And unfortunately, at this particular point, we don't have that luxury now because
01:43:24 --> 01:43:27 everything that we were afraid of,
01:43:28 --> 01:43:32 the worst possible scenarios are happening on a daily basis.
01:43:34 --> 01:43:41 And, you know, I don't know if people are finally getting it or it's all about
01:43:41 --> 01:43:42 self-preservation that they
01:43:42 --> 01:43:46 don't want to be anchored down so they can get reelected. I don't know.
01:43:49 --> 01:43:53 But this is not good where we are.
01:43:53 --> 01:44:00 And there's no way that we can really work toward anything progressive when it's this bad.
01:44:01 --> 01:44:07 And so Jaquetta was joking when she said, well, everybody's got to go,
01:44:07 --> 01:44:13 but maybe the voters will not be joking come the first Tuesday in November of 2026.
01:44:15 --> 01:44:20 In some of the primaries that will be going on from March till August,
01:44:21 --> 01:44:25 there'll be some house cleaning going through, I think.
01:44:26 --> 01:44:31 And, you know, and then there's going to be some backfire, right?
01:44:32 --> 01:44:38 Because, you know, people are criticizing Jasmine Crockett for running for the U.S.
01:44:38 --> 01:44:44 Senate in Texas because Texas hasn't elected a Democrat in a long time statewide.
01:44:44 --> 01:44:47 Wide and, you know, it's tough.
01:44:47 --> 01:44:52 But in this time, if she makes it out of the primary, because she's got a tough
01:44:52 --> 01:44:58 opponent in the primary in James Tallarico, she makes it out of the primary, she might win it.
01:44:59 --> 01:45:01 Because people are tired of the same old stuff.
01:45:02 --> 01:45:07 They're tired of the reality show that's happening in Washington.
01:45:07 --> 01:45:10 They want some semblance of normalcy.
01:45:12 --> 01:45:18 And no matter how you feel about her style or her demeanor, it's pretty obvious
01:45:18 --> 01:45:21 that her character and her heart are in the right place.
01:45:22 --> 01:45:26 And if they hadn't played the games in Texas to redraw the district,
01:45:27 --> 01:45:31 she probably would have just ran for reelection and let James carry the water for the Senate.
01:45:32 --> 01:45:35 But since you did her dirty, she's coming.
01:45:36 --> 01:45:40 And it's not going to be anything against James if she beats him in the primary.
01:45:40 --> 01:45:42 Because he's not the enemy.
01:45:45 --> 01:45:54 She's coming for Cronin and Abbott and Paxton and Hunt and all the rest of that
01:45:54 --> 01:46:03 bunch that basically took her district away because they were trying to play games.
01:46:04 --> 01:46:08 So that might bite you back.
01:46:10 --> 01:46:13 You wanted to get her out of Congress. Okay, you got her out of the House,
01:46:13 --> 01:46:15 and now she's your U.S. Senator.
01:46:15 --> 01:46:18 I mean, that would be poetic, right?
01:46:18 --> 01:46:25 And Jasmine is one of six or seven black women that's running for the United States Senate.
01:46:25 --> 01:46:32 I know there's one in Mississippi, Emmett Till's cousin, and got two in Illinois,
01:46:33 --> 01:46:38 a former congresswoman and former chair of the party, Robin Kelly.
01:46:38 --> 01:46:43 And then the current Lieutenant Governor, Juliana Stratton, they're going to
01:46:43 --> 01:46:46 be running. So only one of them can win.
01:46:46 --> 01:46:52 And then I think Lindsey Graham's going to have a sister running against him.
01:46:53 --> 01:46:57 I don't know if she's got a primary opponent or not, but we know there's a black
01:46:57 --> 01:46:58 woman running for that spot.
01:46:58 --> 01:47:03 So we got a sister running for Mitch McConnell's seat in Kentucky.
01:47:03 --> 01:47:08 So we got some folks out there.
01:47:09 --> 01:47:14 That, you know, not only they're trying to make history, they're trying to make a difference, really.
01:47:16 --> 01:47:22 And it just all depends on how the voters gravitate to them.
01:47:24 --> 01:47:28 If they're talking about the issues that need to be discussed,
01:47:29 --> 01:47:33 if they really sincerely have a platform that's going to help their particular
01:47:33 --> 01:47:39 states and the nation move toward a stabilization on prices,
01:47:40 --> 01:47:46 making things more affordable, more progressive agenda toward health care and
01:47:46 --> 01:47:48 education, then, you know,
01:47:49 --> 01:47:51 then they're going to get the support.
01:47:52 --> 01:47:57 I mean, mayoral like Mamdani kind of showed the path of where we're going now.
01:47:57 --> 01:48:00 It's like you've got to talk to people about what's impacting them.
01:48:01 --> 01:48:06 If they want to have more grocery stores, you know, in New York City,
01:48:06 --> 01:48:07 then he said, I'm for that.
01:48:07 --> 01:48:10 If you want to have free public transportation, he said, I'm for that.
01:48:11 --> 01:48:15 And not only that, but I actually have a plan to make that happen.
01:48:16 --> 01:48:19 Now, whether he's able to execute the plan once he gets sworn in,
01:48:19 --> 01:48:22 that's a whole different conversation, right?
01:48:22 --> 01:48:27 But the people said, we like what he's proposing, so we're going to put him
01:48:27 --> 01:48:29 in. That's normally how that works.
01:48:30 --> 01:48:35 And the challenge of governing is being able to say, okay, this is what I said in the campaign.
01:48:35 --> 01:48:40 How am I going to make that happen, right? And, you know, and then you have
01:48:40 --> 01:48:48 to remind people, whether you won by one vote or you won by 12, 30, right?
01:48:48 --> 01:48:54 You got to convince that legislative body, whether it's a city council or a
01:48:54 --> 01:48:56 state legislature or the Congress,
01:48:56 --> 01:49:03 hey, I ran on this and I need y'all to pass some legislation to make that happen.
01:49:05 --> 01:49:13 At least let's have a discussion, right? And so, you know, and then the game is afoot, right?
01:49:14 --> 01:49:19 But that's how the process works, supposedly, you know?
01:49:19 --> 01:49:24 And my biggest disappointment out of all of these people, right,
01:49:24 --> 01:49:26 because there's some people I'm not disappointed.
01:49:26 --> 01:49:32 I knew that they are who they said they were, in the immortal words of Dennis Green, right?
01:49:32 --> 01:49:39 They are who they thought we were. They are who we thought they were, right?
01:49:42 --> 01:49:49 But the biggest disappointment to me is the Speaker of the House and the U.S.
01:49:49 --> 01:49:50 House of Representatives, Spike Johnson.
01:49:51 --> 01:49:57 And I want you to understand, I'm not, I mean, we would never agree on anything.
01:49:57 --> 01:50:03 I don't think we would agree on what checkers we're going to choose,
01:50:03 --> 01:50:06 you know, or chess pieces or whatever.
01:50:06 --> 01:50:09 I just, you know, that's a bishop.
01:50:09 --> 01:50:14 No, that's a knight. I mean, we just, I just think that if I was a colleague
01:50:14 --> 01:50:16 of his, we would never see eye to eye on anything.
01:50:17 --> 01:50:23 However, he has been given the incredible job of being Speaker of the House
01:50:23 --> 01:50:25 of the United States House of Representatives.
01:50:25 --> 01:50:31 That position is so important that if something happens to the president or
01:50:31 --> 01:50:35 the vice president of the United States, the Speaker of the House has to step
01:50:35 --> 01:50:38 in to become the president.
01:50:39 --> 01:50:43 Fulfill and finish the term. There's no special election.
01:50:44 --> 01:50:47 It's like if something happens to the president and the vice president where
01:50:47 --> 01:50:51 they can no longer serve in those positions, because the natural succession
01:50:51 --> 01:50:54 is the vice president will step in if something happened to the president.
01:50:55 --> 01:51:00 But if something happens to the vice president too, then the next person in
01:51:00 --> 01:51:06 line is the speaker of the House, which means that as that person,
01:51:07 --> 01:51:15 you have autonomy politically, even though you might be lined up with the person
01:51:15 --> 01:51:17 that's in the White House, right?
01:51:18 --> 01:51:20 Y'all ran on the same party ticket.
01:51:21 --> 01:51:27 You have the constitutional authority, obligation, however you want to look
01:51:27 --> 01:51:30 at it, to tell the president, no, I'm not doing that.
01:51:31 --> 01:51:34 And that'll be okay because you're the Speaker of the House.
01:51:35 --> 01:51:39 If there's anybody in Washington, D.C. that can look the President in the eye
01:51:39 --> 01:51:43 and say, that's not happening, it's the Speaker of the House.
01:51:44 --> 01:51:49 By virtue of the power of succession, by virtue of the power of that job,
01:51:49 --> 01:51:53 because he or she, as Nancy Pelosi has proved,
01:51:54 --> 01:52:00 is over a body of 434 other individuals.
01:52:01 --> 01:52:06 Whereas in the Senate, which is why the president pro tem of the Senate is behind
01:52:06 --> 01:52:09 the Speaker of the House, right?
01:52:09 --> 01:52:14 Because in the Senate, that position is more ceremonial than anything else.
01:52:14 --> 01:52:22 It's like, you know, but you have to elect one because if it's a tie on the
01:52:22 --> 01:52:25 vote, the Vice President of the United States has to step in, right?
01:52:25 --> 01:52:30 But amongst the colleagues, usually the senior member in the Senate gets to
01:52:30 --> 01:52:31 be the president pro tem.
01:52:33 --> 01:52:38 Likely of the same party that has the majority, but is the most senior member usually.
01:52:39 --> 01:52:45 And, you know, but it's the majority and the minority leaders that run the agenda
01:52:45 --> 01:52:48 on the Senate side, right?
01:52:48 --> 01:52:56 So the president and pro tem of the Senate is not as powerful as the Speaker of the House.
01:52:57 --> 01:53:03 So, therefore, Mike Johnson has totally abdicated his role by just, you know,
01:53:04 --> 01:53:11 and it's getting tired when something happens and he say, Speaker,
01:53:11 --> 01:53:12 what's your opinion on that?
01:53:13 --> 01:53:17 I didn't see that. I didn't know. I mean, what are you doing?
01:53:18 --> 01:53:20 You couldn't get Tip O'Neill to say that.
01:53:22 --> 01:53:24 You know, any speaker, Nancy Pelosi, any of them.
01:53:25 --> 01:53:30 Rayburn, any of these people, if they said, hey, what do you think about the president doing this?
01:53:30 --> 01:53:34 Well, I don't know. We're feeling that way in the House.
01:53:35 --> 01:53:38 That's especially if it's controversial. That's normally how that goes.
01:53:39 --> 01:53:43 Now, if you agree with it, then you say, well, I'm with the president 100 percent.
01:53:44 --> 01:53:50 But you don't say, I don't know. I didn't see that. I wasn't paying attention.
01:53:52 --> 01:53:56 How did you get through law school if you don't know when you didn't pay attention, right?
01:53:57 --> 01:54:01 How did you get elected if you don't know it? How did you get married and you
01:54:01 --> 01:54:04 don't know and you didn't pay attention, right?
01:54:05 --> 01:54:08 How did you get to be speaker and you don't know and you didn't pay attention?
01:54:09 --> 01:54:11 See, the American people are not stupid.
01:54:12 --> 01:54:19 They're not. You know, there might be degrees of intellect, but they're stupid collectively.
01:54:20 --> 01:54:23 And so, you know, when you constantly, that's your go-to.
01:54:24 --> 01:54:27 Anytime something controversial happens, people kind of figure out,
01:54:27 --> 01:54:29 well, you ain't about shit.
01:54:29 --> 01:54:34 You don't, you, if you're really not paying attention, why are you even in that job?
01:54:34 --> 01:54:38 When are you going to pay attention? Maybe if you paid attention,
01:54:38 --> 01:54:41 maybe some things will get done, right?
01:54:42 --> 01:54:49 That's the huge disappointment to me. You know, if there's anybody in the magosphere
01:54:49 --> 01:54:54 that has a license to tell the president, yeah, now that's not going to happen,
01:54:55 --> 01:54:56 it's the Speaker of the House.
01:54:57 --> 01:54:59 And he's from a southern state. He's from Louisiana.
01:55:00 --> 01:55:04 And if you've ever been to any of these southern states and watch how the Speakers
01:55:04 --> 01:55:09 of the House and those respective state legislatures roll, bruh,
01:55:09 --> 01:55:14 ask any governor, is the Speaker of the House your friend? on some days.
01:55:17 --> 01:55:22 Because they understand the power that they wield in that legislative body.
01:55:23 --> 01:55:28 And Mike Johnson has that same power, even more so because it's a national body.
01:55:29 --> 01:55:32 It's the National Congress. It's the National House of Representatives.
01:55:33 --> 01:55:37 And he was the compromise candidate when all the chaos broke out,
01:55:37 --> 01:55:39 you know, with McCarthy.
01:55:40 --> 01:55:45 He was the one after 13, 14 ballots, whatever. He's the one that said,
01:55:45 --> 01:55:47 okay, we can all agree on this guy.
01:55:48 --> 01:55:54 And you don't think that you have the ability to tell the president no in public or in private?
01:55:55 --> 01:55:57 I don't know if he's from the school where it's like, well, I just,
01:55:57 --> 01:56:00 I don't want to say anything negative about the president.
01:56:00 --> 01:56:04 I don't want them coming after me and all this stuff. Bro, you were the Speaker of the House.
01:56:05 --> 01:56:08 All the PACs that give money to all these different congressional,
01:56:08 --> 01:56:12 they all got to come through you. I mean, that's how the game is played.
01:56:14 --> 01:56:20 You are the biggest fundraiser for the members in your own party to get reelected.
01:56:20 --> 01:56:26 You. If you don't understand that, talk to Ms. Pelosi. She's still there till January.
01:56:27 --> 01:56:32 You know, well, I guess she's going to finish out the term. So she'll be there.
01:56:33 --> 01:56:37 2026. You can pull her aside and say, how did you do that? Right.
01:56:37 --> 01:56:39 How did you tell President Biden
01:56:39 --> 01:56:44 or President Obama? No. How did you do that? if you don't have a clue.
01:56:45 --> 01:56:49 But at some point, if you want people to respect you, you want to go down in
01:56:49 --> 01:56:53 history as a decent Speaker of the House,
01:56:54 --> 01:56:57 I'm going to need you to expand your vocabulary beyond, I don't know,
01:56:58 --> 01:57:01 I didn't see that, I wasn't paying attention.
01:57:02 --> 01:57:09 That's got to change. You know, that would be an incredible gift for the nation
01:57:09 --> 01:57:11 since we're in the spirit of giving.
01:57:13 --> 01:57:17 Just bow up and just tell the president, no, I don't think that's how we should
01:57:17 --> 01:57:20 do that. Because you have the position.
01:57:21 --> 01:57:27 He may have given the blessing and said, okay, yeah, I'm with Johnson. I think he's a good guy.
01:57:27 --> 01:57:31 All right, great. But now you got the gavel. You got the position.
01:57:32 --> 01:57:37 Even the justices on the Supreme Court, every now and then tell the president, yeah, no.
01:57:38 --> 01:57:42 Yeah, we can't. We can't. The law of the Constitution doesn't allow us to go
01:57:42 --> 01:57:45 with that. Right? They understand.
01:57:47 --> 01:57:52 May agree with them 80% of the time, but there's 20% they're going to say,
01:57:52 --> 01:57:59 no, you are the Speaker of the House and you are going 100% with what the President is saying?
01:57:59 --> 01:58:03 That's abnormal. That's not what that job does.
01:58:04 --> 01:58:09 You are a circuit breaker, not a power line. You're a circuit breaker.
01:58:10 --> 01:58:12 If it's too much, you shut it down.
01:58:13 --> 01:58:18 That's what your job is. And if you don't understand that, then either you can
01:58:18 --> 01:58:22 voluntarily give it to somebody else that does.
01:58:23 --> 01:58:27 Or you can ride it out till the first Tuesday, November, 2026,
01:58:28 --> 01:58:32 and realize that you won't have that job. Let's go around.
01:58:33 --> 01:58:37 But if you want to give your people a chance to stay in the majority.
01:58:38 --> 01:58:41 You're going to have to learn how to say no to the president.
01:58:42 --> 01:58:46 You ain't got to take my advice because I'm a Democrat and all that stuff. That's fine.
01:58:46 --> 01:58:51 I'm just telling you, somebody that's taking an open office to serve,
01:58:52 --> 01:59:00 if you want to save the Republican majority in 2026, you need to expand your vocabulary to say no.
01:59:01 --> 01:59:04 All right, guys, that's all I got. Merry Christmas, everybody.
01:59:04 --> 01:59:12 And, you know, I hope that you have or continue to have a festive holiday season.
01:59:12 --> 01:59:17 And then we'll be getting into Kwanzaa and then we'll be into 2026.
01:59:18 --> 01:59:25 So y'all stay safe, have fun, be respectful, enjoy each other's company.
01:59:25 --> 01:59:29 And I thank y'all for listening. Until next time.