Host Erik Fleming sits down with political scientist Dr. Caroline Heldman and journalist Alia Dastagir to explore how survival becomes resistance for women facing harassment, assault, and online abuse. They discuss intersectionality, the limits of Me Too, trans-exclusionary movements, and survivor-led accountability.
The episode also features legal analysis from the Pearson & Pearson team on key upcoming Supreme Court cases involving voting rights, religious liberty in prisons, death penalty appeals, and executive tariff powers.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:06 Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.
00:00:06 --> 00:00:08 I want to personally thank you for listening to the podcast.
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00:01:11 --> 00:01:16 The following program is hosted by the NBG Podcast Network.
00:01:20 --> 00:01:55 Music.
00:01:56 --> 00:02:01 Hello, and welcome to another moment where Eric Fleming, I am your host, Eric Fleming.
00:02:01 --> 00:02:05 And we've got a jam-packed episode today. Ladies and gentlemen,
00:02:05 --> 00:02:07 I have two incredible guests.
00:02:08 --> 00:02:16 And we're going to be talking about a lot of things, but the overall theme of
00:02:16 --> 00:02:20 this episode is that survival is resistance.
00:02:20 --> 00:02:26 And so one guest has dedicated her academic life, not only to political science,
00:02:26 --> 00:02:29 but specifically dealing with women's issues.
00:02:30 --> 00:02:35 And the other guest has written a book dealing with online harassment,
00:02:35 --> 00:02:42 and especially from the stories of women who have been victims of that and who
00:02:42 --> 00:02:44 have survived that, right?
00:02:44 --> 00:02:50 Because we're trying to better ourselves with language all the time.
00:02:50 --> 00:02:57 And one of the things And it's not just with women, but Black people as a whole
00:02:57 --> 00:03:04 to get out of this victim language and talk about survival, right?
00:03:05 --> 00:03:10 And I'll kind of dabble into that in the commentary. Yes, I got something to say.
00:03:10 --> 00:03:14 I'm probably going to have something to say after every episode,
00:03:14 --> 00:03:18 at the end of every episode, because there's so much going on.
00:03:18 --> 00:03:20 But I do want to touch on that a little bit.
00:03:21 --> 00:03:25 You know, as we close out. But again, this is going to be jam-packed show.
00:03:25 --> 00:03:27 And the other reason why it's going to be jam-packed is we're going to have
00:03:27 --> 00:03:32 another installment of your favorite law firm and my favorite law firm,
00:03:32 --> 00:03:35 the internet law firm or Pearson and Pearson.
00:03:35 --> 00:03:40 Yeah, we've got the lady lawyers back to talk about what's getting ready to
00:03:40 --> 00:03:41 happen in the Supreme Court.
00:03:41 --> 00:03:46 So, you know, I need y'all to keep listening.
00:03:47 --> 00:03:51 I need y'all to subscribe. You can go to patreon.com slash A Moment with Erik Fleming, do that.
00:03:51 --> 00:03:55 Or you can go to momenterik.com and do likewise.
00:03:56 --> 00:04:00 But, you know, I'm really, really excited about this show, and I hope that you
00:04:00 --> 00:04:04 will be too once you hear it. So let's go ahead and kick it off.
00:04:04 --> 00:04:08 And as always, we kick it off with a moment of news with Grace G.
00:04:09 --> 00:04:14 Music.
00:04:14 --> 00:04:18 Thanks, Erik. A Utah man was arrested
00:04:18 --> 00:04:21 and confessed to the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
00:04:21 --> 00:04:27 ABC is pulling Jimmy Kimmel Live off the air indefinitely after the host's remark
00:04:27 --> 00:04:30 about the death of Charlie Kirk drew criticism from the FCC chair.
00:04:31 --> 00:04:35 The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates for the first time since December,
00:04:35 --> 00:04:39 with Chair Jerome Powell citing a weakening labor market, particularly for Black people.
00:04:40 --> 00:04:44 The Congressional Black Caucus is calling for a federal investigation into a
00:04:44 --> 00:04:49 series of bomb threats made against several historically black colleges and universities.
00:04:49 --> 00:04:54 Delta State University officials confirmed that the body of a student,
00:04:54 --> 00:04:57 Demar Travian-Reed, was found hanging from a tree on campus,
00:04:58 --> 00:05:01 with police stating there was no evidence of foul play at this time.
00:05:02 --> 00:05:06 President Donald Trump announced his plans to send National Guard troops to
00:05:06 --> 00:05:09 Memphis, Tennessee, to combat the city's high crime rate.
00:05:09 --> 00:05:14 An ICE agent in the Chicago area shot and killed Silverio Villegas Gonzalez
00:05:14 --> 00:05:18 after he allegedly drove his car at officers during an attempted arrest.
00:05:19 --> 00:05:23 A New York judge dismissed two terrorism-related charges against Luigi Mangione
00:05:23 --> 00:05:27 in the killing of health insurance executive Brian Thompson,
00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 but he still faces other criminal counts.
00:05:30 --> 00:05:36 Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years in prison
00:05:36 --> 00:05:40 for plotting a coup to stay in power after his 2022 election loss.
00:05:40 --> 00:05:45 President Trump has filed a $15 billion defamation lawsuit against The New York
00:05:45 --> 00:05:47 Times and Penguin Random House.
00:05:47 --> 00:05:51 Maureen Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey,
00:05:51 --> 00:05:56 is suing the Trump administration over her abrupt firing as federal prosecutor.
00:05:56 --> 00:06:01 And Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis has been disqualified from
00:06:01 --> 00:06:05 prosecuting the election interference case against President Trump after the
00:06:05 --> 00:06:08 Georgia Supreme Court declined her appeal.
00:06:08 --> 00:06:12 I am Grace G., and this has been a Moment of News.
00:06:13 --> 00:06:18 Music.
00:06:19 --> 00:06:24 All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news. And now it is time for
00:06:24 --> 00:06:28 my guest, Dr. Caroline Heldman.
00:06:28 --> 00:06:33 Dr. Caroline Heldman is a political scientist and chair of the Gender,
00:06:33 --> 00:06:37 Women, and Sexuality Studies program at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
00:06:38 --> 00:06:45 She is also co-founder of Stand With Survivors and a political commentator for CNN and CBS.
00:06:46 --> 00:06:51 Dr. Heldman earned her PhD from Rutgers University and a certificate in executive
00:06:51 --> 00:06:53 leadership from the Harvard Business School.
00:06:53 --> 00:06:58 She has published eight books, including Gender, Power, and Politics.
00:06:58 --> 00:07:04 The Fight for Gender Equality in the United States, and that's been through
00:07:04 --> 00:07:05 Oxford University Press.
00:07:05 --> 00:07:08 Her work has been featured in numerous
00:07:08 --> 00:07:12 documentaries, including Misrepresentation and The Mask You Live In.
00:07:12 --> 00:07:16 She co-founded the New Orleans Women's Shelter, the Lower Knife World Living
00:07:16 --> 00:07:21 Museum, End Rape on Campus, Faculty Against Rape, and led the campaign that
00:07:21 --> 00:07:24 overturned the time limit on prosecuting rape in California.
00:07:25 --> 00:07:30 She is the board president of the TEP Center, the first civil rights museum
00:07:30 --> 00:07:36 in New Orleans, and the chair of the board of Alterus Institute,
00:07:36 --> 00:07:40 a nonprofit fighting for a stronger democracy.
00:07:40 --> 00:07:44 Ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a guest
00:07:44 --> 00:07:49 on this podcast, Dr. Caroline Heldman.
00:07:50 --> 00:07:59 Music.
00:08:00 --> 00:08:04 All right, Dr. Caroline Heldman, how you doing, ma'am? You doing good?
00:08:05 --> 00:08:08 I'm doing great. How are you, Erik? I'm doing fine. I'm really,
00:08:08 --> 00:08:12 really honored that you accepted my invitation to come on. And,
00:08:12 --> 00:08:17 you know, I tell people all the time that my objective is to get people doing
00:08:17 --> 00:08:19 the work and all that stuff.
00:08:19 --> 00:08:23 But the main criteria is I get the privilege of talking to people that are smarter than me.
00:08:24 --> 00:08:28 And so I and it's a it's a weekly thing.
00:08:28 --> 00:08:33 So I just I'm honored that I have this platform where I can talk to these these intelligent people.
00:08:34 --> 00:08:39 So what I normally try to do at the beginning is what we call my icebreaker face.
00:08:40 --> 00:08:47 So the first icebreaker is a quote. So I want you to give me a response to this quote.
00:08:48 --> 00:08:54 Women candidates must be properly masculine to be seen as viable leaders.
00:08:54 --> 00:08:59 But the moment they project this, they're penalized by many people for violating
00:08:59 --> 00:09:02 traditional norms of femininity.
00:09:02 --> 00:09:06 They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. And so far,
00:09:06 --> 00:09:11 no woman has figured out how to crack the code on this impossible standard.
00:09:12 --> 00:09:18 Tell me, talk to me about that quote. Well, Erik, that's the double bind of
00:09:18 --> 00:09:22 women's leadership, which I think is especially pronounced for the presidency.
00:09:22 --> 00:09:26 What strikes me is, you know, that damned if you do and damned if you don't.
00:09:26 --> 00:09:32 So because of the ways in which we conceptualize leadership and especially presidential
00:09:32 --> 00:09:37 leadership, which is always a contest of manhood, even when women aren't in
00:09:37 --> 00:09:39 the race, gender is always a component. it.
00:09:40 --> 00:09:44 The moment at which a woman, you know, projects proper masculinity in order
00:09:44 --> 00:09:48 to be seen as a viable presidential contender, in that moment,
00:09:48 --> 00:09:53 she will also be seen as violating norms of femininity, and that will be held against her.
00:09:53 --> 00:09:59 So it's kind of this impossible dance that so far no woman has been able to do.
00:09:59 --> 00:10:02 I will say that different candidates have taken different tacks,
00:10:02 --> 00:10:06 and we've had many, many women run for the presidency.
00:10:06 --> 00:10:12 We've had 21 women run quite seriously, and we've had over 100 women throw their
00:10:12 --> 00:10:16 name in the hat, but none of them have, as that quote puts it, cracked the code.
00:10:17 --> 00:10:22 I think it's interesting to look at Hillary Clinton, who was kind of straddling
00:10:22 --> 00:10:25 the feminine masculine line kind of right down the middle, right?
00:10:26 --> 00:10:28 So she's wearing pantsuits, but she's wearing pearls.
00:10:29 --> 00:10:33 So she's doing a little straddle, whereas someone like Sarah Palin,
00:10:33 --> 00:10:35 if you remember when she ran for the vice presidency,
00:10:35 --> 00:10:40 was doing kind of, you know, hyper-feminine with the clothing and the makeup
00:10:40 --> 00:10:45 that she was wearing, and then hyper-masculine with these photos of her,
00:10:45 --> 00:10:48 you know, shooting a moose and acting quite tough.
00:10:48 --> 00:10:54 And I find it fascinating that in that election, they were both beaten up in very gendered terms.
00:10:54 --> 00:10:59 So even though one was trying to approach this double bind of women's leadership
00:10:59 --> 00:11:03 by being hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine, and the other was kind of doing
00:11:03 --> 00:11:07 more in the middle, being a little bit masculine and a little bit feminine,
00:11:07 --> 00:11:09 both of them were really beaten up in the press.
00:11:09 --> 00:11:14 And Sarah Palin in particular was pornified. So what we have seen is that to
00:11:14 --> 00:11:18 date, women have not been able to overcome this double bind.
00:11:19 --> 00:11:22 And I would say that Kamala Harris had the double bind plus.
00:11:23 --> 00:11:29 She faced misogynoir, right, which is racism and sexism intersectionally aimed
00:11:29 --> 00:11:34 at Black women. So she had an additional kind of barrier to gaining the presidency
00:11:34 --> 00:11:38 because she wasn't seen as a viable contender in the eyes of millions of Americans.
00:11:38 --> 00:11:40 Yeah. All right. So...
00:11:41 --> 00:11:44 I'm going to put a pin on a couple of things that you said in there.
00:11:44 --> 00:11:48 I think some of my questions will fall into part of the response you had.
00:11:49 --> 00:11:52 The next icebreaker is called 20 questions.
00:11:53 --> 00:11:58 So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20. Let's do number 13. Okay.
00:11:59 --> 00:12:04 Do you think there is such a thing as unbiased news or media and why?
00:12:05 --> 00:12:10 So no, there's no such thing as something that lacks a bias because just the
00:12:10 --> 00:12:14 mere fact that you're covering a story, even if you might be covering it right
00:12:14 --> 00:12:17 down the center in a way that's removed,
00:12:18 --> 00:12:21 the mere fact that you're even choosing to cover a particular story is already
00:12:21 --> 00:12:25 to form a bias in the sense that, you know, as media scholars,
00:12:25 --> 00:12:29 we call it agenda setting where you've made a choice about what is important to talk about.
00:12:30 --> 00:12:34 And then other biases come in in terms of priming and framing.
00:12:34 --> 00:12:38 And priming means what aspects of the story you tend to focus on,
00:12:38 --> 00:12:42 and then framing are the stories, like the underlying stories that you tell about it.
00:12:42 --> 00:12:45 And so no, no unbiased media.
00:12:45 --> 00:12:49 Although I don't think my goal as someone who wants good media.
00:12:50 --> 00:12:54 Meaning informative, useful media, I don't think the goal is a lack of bias.
00:12:54 --> 00:13:01 I think the goal is a focus on objectivity through data and a focus on empathy,
00:13:01 --> 00:13:06 which allows us to look at the kind of underlying factors driving a particular issue.
00:13:07 --> 00:13:13 I think that much of what we have today, especially if we're talking like Gateway
00:13:13 --> 00:13:19 Pundit and Breitbart and, of course, the old school Fox News, that's propaganda.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:26 So that is media that is intentionally aimed to persuade people of a position
00:13:26 --> 00:13:32 instead of media that is aimed at telling the truth or even attempting to be objective.
00:13:32 --> 00:13:37 And so I think it's good to be aware and critical and not consume propaganda,
00:13:37 --> 00:13:43 but even media that tries to be objective, I think, you know, it's a great pursuit.
00:13:43 --> 00:13:46 It's not one we can ever truly accomplish and maybe that shouldn't be the goal.
00:13:47 --> 00:13:49 Yeah. All right, so...
00:13:50 --> 00:13:57 You know, one of the things, there's some people I kind of want to know why, right?
00:13:57 --> 00:14:02 So my question to you is, why did you decide, or what made you decide,
00:14:02 --> 00:14:06 to dedicate your academic career to women's studies and gender politics?
00:14:08 --> 00:14:13 Well, I study systems of power, and so I currently hold a position where I'm
00:14:13 --> 00:14:15 the chair of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies.
00:14:15 --> 00:14:21 But as a political scientist, I really focus on gender, race,
00:14:21 --> 00:14:24 ability, sexuality, body size, class, and their intersections.
00:14:25 --> 00:14:30 So, for example, I do a lot of work around fat justice, which I believe is a
00:14:30 --> 00:14:33 form of discrimination that hasn't been talked about enough.
00:14:33 --> 00:14:35 I do a lot of racial justice work.
00:14:35 --> 00:14:41 I push back as often as I can against ageism, and I focus a lot on queer politics as well.
00:14:41 --> 00:14:45 All of this to say, once you understand how one system of power works and how
00:14:45 --> 00:14:52 it intersects with other systems of power and oppression, it's really hard to just focus on one.
00:14:52 --> 00:14:58 I'm definitely very centered around survivor justice, which tends to involve
00:14:58 --> 00:15:00 women, although not exclusively.
00:15:00 --> 00:15:03 And I'll just add that, you know, men who are survivors of sexual violence and
00:15:03 --> 00:15:07 domestic violence have an additional layer of silencing.
00:15:07 --> 00:15:12 And so I think it's important to note that not all survivors are women.
00:15:12 --> 00:15:18 But my work is really aimed at addressing intersectional systems of power and
00:15:18 --> 00:15:25 trying to, you know, you can't take down one without taking down the intersections as well.
00:15:25 --> 00:15:30 So it really is much more of a kind of cohesive fight against multiple systems of oppression.
00:15:31 --> 00:15:37 So do you feel that survival from sexual harassment or sexual assault is a form of resistance?
00:15:38 --> 00:15:43 I do, Eric. That's a great way of putting it. merely talking about yourself
00:15:43 --> 00:15:44 as a survivor rather than a victim.
00:15:45 --> 00:15:48 Obviously, people can choose whatever language fits for them,
00:15:48 --> 00:15:53 but it's a very important kind of signal to say, look, you didn't kill me.
00:15:53 --> 00:15:56 You didn't stop me. I'm still here.
00:15:56 --> 00:15:59 Whatever this injury is that you did to me, I'm surviving it.
00:15:59 --> 00:16:01 So, yeah, I think that language is really important.
00:16:02 --> 00:16:07 Yeah. All right. And talking about intersectionality, in one of your many books,
00:16:07 --> 00:16:10 because you've written at least 10, if I'm correct.
00:16:11 --> 00:16:14 I'm at 11, Erik. I'm at 11. Okay. All right. 11. Okay.
00:16:14 --> 00:16:20 You highlight Sojourner Truth to discuss the historical importance of intersectionality
00:16:20 --> 00:16:22 between race and gender in America.
00:16:22 --> 00:16:27 Why do you think it's still hard for activists, scholars, and even politicians,
00:16:27 --> 00:16:31 to fully commit to intersectionality in the 21st century?
00:16:32 --> 00:16:38 Well, I see a silver lining in the push against DEI, right, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
00:16:38 --> 00:16:42 I see a silver lining pushing back against critical race theory and against
00:16:42 --> 00:16:46 intersectionality, which is when multiple marginalized identities overlap and
00:16:46 --> 00:16:51 create new and unique and more intense experiences of oppression.
00:16:51 --> 00:16:57 And that is that we only see these backlashes when there's actually been a shift
00:16:57 --> 00:17:02 in the social order. And so you always get a backlash whenever you are attempting
00:17:02 --> 00:17:05 to overthrow or shift power.
00:17:05 --> 00:17:12 And what this tells us, you know, the big push against DEI, the big push against
00:17:12 --> 00:17:17 all of these various programs is that they've been effective,
00:17:17 --> 00:17:18 at least to a certain extent.
00:17:18 --> 00:17:23 Now, I will say we have a long way to go when it comes to racial justice,
00:17:23 --> 00:17:25 when it comes to gender justice, etc.
00:17:25 --> 00:17:33 But they wouldn't be trying to outlaw and ban ideas if those ideas hadn't produced
00:17:33 --> 00:17:35 some serious shift in the social order.
00:17:35 --> 00:17:40 And we see evidence of this shift, right? We do see greater inclusion in terms
00:17:40 --> 00:17:47 of social, political, and economic gains in society for traditionally marginalized people.
00:17:47 --> 00:17:52 And so I read this as a moment where the backlash is upon us,
00:17:52 --> 00:17:58 where ideas, a simple thing like an analytic tool of intersectionality that
00:17:58 --> 00:18:01 says, look, the world's complicated, here's a tool to understand it.
00:18:01 --> 00:18:06 Something like that is so offensive that it gets banned. It tells me that we
00:18:06 --> 00:18:09 are on the right path. Let's put it that way.
00:18:09 --> 00:18:12 I think this fight is long from over.
00:18:13 --> 00:18:16 I don't think you can ban ideas, especially when they're really good ideas like
00:18:16 --> 00:18:22 intersectionality that help us get clarity on some really complex topics. Yeah.
00:18:23 --> 00:18:28 It's been nearly 20 years since the Me Too movement began.
00:18:29 --> 00:18:33 Do you think the Me Too movement has changed American political culture to the
00:18:33 --> 00:18:36 point where we celebrate a court victory for E.
00:18:36 --> 00:18:41 Jean Carroll and have true empathies for survivors of the trafficking of Jeffrey Epstein?
00:18:42 --> 00:18:44 Or are we not quite there yet?
00:18:45 --> 00:18:49 Well, I think the Me Too movement did accomplish some things.
00:18:49 --> 00:18:53 I don't think that it was a big shift in our culture.
00:18:53 --> 00:18:56 When I look at social movements as somebody who studies, you know,
00:18:57 --> 00:18:59 the civil rights movement, who studies the gay rights movement,
00:18:59 --> 00:19:02 and movements for liberation over time, especially in the U.S.,
00:19:02 --> 00:19:05 I see that social movements have two primary phases.
00:19:06 --> 00:19:10 The first is to raise awareness about an issue and put it on the agenda,
00:19:10 --> 00:19:14 which, you know, the Me Too movement absolutely did that.
00:19:14 --> 00:19:19 And the second part is to put in mechanisms of accountability so that you can
00:19:19 --> 00:19:20 actually address the issue.
00:19:20 --> 00:19:23 That second part did not happen. We passed some state laws.
00:19:23 --> 00:19:27 We opened some look-back windows so that survivors could come forward even if
00:19:27 --> 00:19:32 they were timed out under their particular state's time limit on prosecuting rape.
00:19:32 --> 00:19:35 But at the end of the day, we haven't seen systemic change.
00:19:35 --> 00:19:41 We haven't seen across the board new policies that will allow us to address sexual violence.
00:19:42 --> 00:19:45 So in that regard, I think, you know, and the movements kind of fizzled and
00:19:45 --> 00:19:48 faded, I don't think we've accomplished that.
00:19:49 --> 00:19:52 And I just want to note, anytime I'm talking about the Me Too movement,
00:19:53 --> 00:19:58 I like to go back in time 130 years to just briefly talk about a history that's been erased.
00:19:59 --> 00:20:04 Black women were the first women in the United States to organize a concerted
00:20:04 --> 00:20:06 effort against sexual violence when Ida B.
00:20:06 --> 00:20:11 Wells and her colleagues got together post-Civil War and pushed back against
00:20:11 --> 00:20:15 the systemic rape of Black women that was being used as a tool of terror by
00:20:15 --> 00:20:18 vigilantes in the state once slavery fell.
00:20:18 --> 00:20:25 We then see another peak with Black women leading up to the civil rights movement.
00:20:25 --> 00:20:29 In fact, we know Rosa Parks for her heroics in the civil rights movement.
00:20:30 --> 00:20:34 But what folks may not know is that 10 years prior to that, she was leading
00:20:34 --> 00:20:40 anti-rape efforts for the NAACP and traveling the country and investigating
00:20:40 --> 00:20:42 and pushing back against sexual violence.
00:20:42 --> 00:20:46 And then we see the third big peak with the rise of, you know,
00:20:46 --> 00:20:49 that is 60s and the 70s and the second wave of the feminist movement,
00:20:49 --> 00:20:54 where we see the opening of rape crisis centers.
00:20:54 --> 00:21:00 And if you actually Google it online, you go and Google anti-sexual violence
00:21:00 --> 00:21:04 work, it will put it at the place where white women enter the conversation.
00:21:04 --> 00:21:09 But I think it's really important to not erase that history of Black women.
00:21:09 --> 00:21:13 And also, in the first peak, Sarah Winnemucca was a Native American woman who
00:21:13 --> 00:21:16 was traveling the country and raising awareness about the epidemic of sexual
00:21:16 --> 00:21:18 violence against Native women.
00:21:18 --> 00:21:22 So when we, you know, I was one of the early architects of the campus anti-right
00:21:22 --> 00:21:25 movement that rolls into the Me Too movement in 2017.
00:21:25 --> 00:21:32 And I can tell you we were standing on the shoulders of great women whose efforts
00:21:32 --> 00:21:33 have been erased, right?
00:21:33 --> 00:21:36 Because oftentimes the efforts of women of color get erased from history.
00:21:37 --> 00:21:41 What do you think is the biggest impediment to the accountability piece?
00:21:42 --> 00:21:48 I think the biggest impediment to the accountability piece is that there are
00:21:48 --> 00:21:52 powerful men who maintain systems, who don't want to give up that power and
00:21:52 --> 00:21:53 don't want to be held accountable.
00:21:54 --> 00:21:59 Who essentially the people in power are not going to relinquish that power.
00:21:59 --> 00:22:03 If you look at who the serial perpetrators are, many of these are men with a
00:22:03 --> 00:22:06 lot of prestige, a lot of resources.
00:22:06 --> 00:22:11 I think, you know, the Jeffrey Epstein case is a perfect example where you have,
00:22:11 --> 00:22:15 you know, the President of the United States mentioned in the Epstein files, as we know.
00:22:15 --> 00:22:18 You have former President Bill Clinton mentioned in the Epstein files.
00:22:18 --> 00:22:22 This is a trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, who was raping little girls.
00:22:22 --> 00:22:25 And he was able to do this for decades, even though it was an open secret,
00:22:25 --> 00:22:29 as we now know from his 50th birthday book.
00:22:29 --> 00:22:34 We know that people were just joking about his, you know, essentially trafficking
00:22:34 --> 00:22:38 in children. And the fact that he was never held accountable,
00:22:38 --> 00:22:40 maybe he would have been, but he wasn't for decades.
00:22:40 --> 00:22:46 And now other famous, powerful men in his circle who may or may not have been
00:22:46 --> 00:22:48 a part of this are also not being held accountable.
00:22:48 --> 00:22:54 I think it's just a really prominent example of what's happening every day behind the scenes,
00:22:54 --> 00:22:59 whether it's the music industry using NDAs, so non-disclosure agreements to
00:22:59 --> 00:23:04 silence the problem and settling lawsuits and paying out lots of money,
00:23:04 --> 00:23:08 or it's Hollywood doing that, or it's the tech industry, you name it.
00:23:08 --> 00:23:12 There are these powerful men in positions of authority who are covering up this
00:23:12 --> 00:23:15 issue, and they have for at least a century. Yeah.
00:23:16 --> 00:23:21 I know you're not a psychologist, but I, you know, I just,
00:23:21 --> 00:23:30 it's an interesting dynamic to me about us men that, you know,
00:23:30 --> 00:23:32 we attain a certain level of power.
00:23:33 --> 00:23:41 We get into a position where we want to expand that into doing whatever we want,
00:23:41 --> 00:23:45 whether it's women, whether it's, you know, whatever.
00:23:46 --> 00:23:51 And I just, you know, the old adage is that power corrupts, but I've always
00:23:51 --> 00:24:00 been curious as to find out why, you know, our interaction with women is part of the corruption.
00:24:02 --> 00:24:05 Well, there's been some interesting research lately by a PhD,
00:24:06 --> 00:24:10 Peggy Orenstein, who looks at what is happening with young people in rape.
00:24:10 --> 00:24:13 And I think it can be generalized across the age groups.
00:24:13 --> 00:24:17 And she finds that young men are actually pretty well aware of boundaries.
00:24:17 --> 00:24:20 They just don't believe that they have to respect it.
00:24:20 --> 00:24:24 And I think young boys, especially those who are being indoctrinated through
00:24:24 --> 00:24:27 the manosphere, which is this white supremacist,
00:24:27 --> 00:24:32 misogynistic space on the Internet, that many of them are getting the message
00:24:32 --> 00:24:36 that they can act with impunity, whether it's, you know,
00:24:36 --> 00:24:40 engaging in acts of violence or engaging in sexual violence.
00:24:41 --> 00:24:45 And so at the end of the day, they know what they're doing is wrong. We know this from data.
00:24:45 --> 00:24:49 In fact, it's about one in three college men say they would rape if they knew
00:24:49 --> 00:24:51 they could get away with it, which is a startling statistic.
00:24:52 --> 00:24:56 At the end of the day, they don't feel as though they, you know,
00:24:56 --> 00:24:59 they don't, they feel entitled, right, to women as bodies.
00:25:00 --> 00:25:04 And I think part of this is the fact that we objectify women.
00:25:04 --> 00:25:07 We normalize the objectification of women in our culture.
00:25:08 --> 00:25:12 We define women by what they look like aesthetically in their bodies,
00:25:12 --> 00:25:14 how appealing they are as sex objects.
00:25:14 --> 00:25:17 So it doesn't matter whatever else a woman accomplishes in our life.
00:25:18 --> 00:25:23 If she's not a valuable sex object, she will not have the value that she should
00:25:23 --> 00:25:27 in our culture. So we raise our little girls to believe their bodies and their
00:25:27 --> 00:25:30 appearance are the most important things about them.
00:25:30 --> 00:25:34 And then we raise little boys to believe that, you know, heterosexual little
00:25:34 --> 00:25:38 boys to believe that women exist for them.
00:25:38 --> 00:25:43 And so it's a terrible social recipe. And one we could shift tomorrow.
00:25:43 --> 00:25:46 All we would have to do is fully humanize women and stop objectifying them and
00:25:46 --> 00:25:52 turning them into sex objects and enforce this idea that men are not entitled
00:25:52 --> 00:25:58 to women, to women's bodies without their permission and to women as bodies as sex objects.
00:25:58 --> 00:26:02 Yeah, I'm going to change the subject because you scared me with that statistic.
00:26:02 --> 00:26:03 You said one out of three.
00:26:04 --> 00:26:09 One out of three men would rape if they knew they would not get caught or punished.
00:26:09 --> 00:26:15 And Peggy Orenstein, that is the woman that, is she still with us as far as
00:26:15 --> 00:26:16 like on this side of the realm?
00:26:17 --> 00:26:22 She sure is. Because I'm going to try to get her on the podcast so I can dive
00:26:22 --> 00:26:24 into that a little more. Thank you. Thank you for that.
00:26:25 --> 00:26:30 Let's get back into the political thing, especially about feminism.
00:26:30 --> 00:26:36 Because you have documented that there are 13 types of feminism.
00:26:36 --> 00:26:43 I want to focus on the TERFs. So explain to the listeners what that acronym
00:26:43 --> 00:26:47 means and what impact are they having in American politics?
00:26:47 --> 00:26:54 So TERFs are trans-exclusionary radical feminists. They have very little influence in U.S.
00:26:55 --> 00:26:59 Politics because they haven't taken hold here, but they have much more influence in U.K.
00:26:59 --> 00:27:07 Politics. And TERFs are a very small but vocal strain of radical feminists who
00:27:07 --> 00:27:12 believe that transgender women should not be considered women,
00:27:12 --> 00:27:17 should not be allowed to use the same restrooms or be in the same domestic violence
00:27:17 --> 00:27:21 shelters or in the same prisons, as it were.
00:27:21 --> 00:27:26 And so it's essentially feminists who are engaging in anti-trans sentiment.
00:27:26 --> 00:27:31 It's been pretty roundly criticized by most feminists, although there are,
00:27:31 --> 00:27:38 you know, a few kind of high-profile women like, you know, the Harry Potter author who, J.K.
00:27:39 --> 00:27:41 Rowling, who a lot of folks are now boycotting.
00:27:42 --> 00:27:49 But in the UK, they have been able to push legislation that essentially marginalizes trans people.
00:27:50 --> 00:27:53 Yeah, because I know Theresa May, when she was the prime minister,
00:27:54 --> 00:28:00 she introduced something to try to address the transgender population.
00:28:01 --> 00:28:04 And, you know, Rowling and a whole bunch of other folks gave her a whole lot
00:28:04 --> 00:28:06 of grief and pushback on it.
00:28:06 --> 00:28:09 And I can't remember, did that get repealed or what the deal was?
00:28:09 --> 00:28:13 But I know she would fall in a category.
00:28:13 --> 00:28:16 What about, when I'm talking about Rowling, we're falling in a category.
00:28:16 --> 00:28:21 What about Nancy Mace? Would she be considered a TERF? Absolutely.
00:28:21 --> 00:28:24 In fact, she talks about being a survivor of sexual violence,
00:28:24 --> 00:28:27 and while she doesn't directly invoke calling herself a feminist,
00:28:27 --> 00:28:32 so maybe she's just anti-trans, but it's that same sort of sentiment.
00:28:32 --> 00:28:40 And you are absolutely right that Theresa May and the TERF lobby in the UK did
00:28:40 --> 00:28:44 rule that trans women are not women in the eyes of the law,
00:28:44 --> 00:28:50 which will now be the basis for a lot of anti-trans legislation moving forward.
00:28:50 --> 00:28:57 But Nancy Mace is, you know, the Exhibit A in anti-trans hatred in the United States.
00:28:57 --> 00:29:02 She uses slurs to describe transgender folks.
00:29:02 --> 00:29:08 She routinely attempts to smear them as being perpetrators and criminals.
00:29:08 --> 00:29:14 And so, yeah, she embodies kind of the turf ethic here in the United States. Yeah.
00:29:15 --> 00:29:21 I mean, you know, if you follow her career, you would think that she was a feminist
00:29:21 --> 00:29:25 in the sense that, you know, she was the first woman to graduate from the Citadel.
00:29:26 --> 00:29:32 She's been very, very vocal about women's rights up until the transformation.
00:29:32 --> 00:29:33 Whenever that happened.
00:29:33 --> 00:29:38 It was somewhere within the Trump first administration, whatever.
00:29:38 --> 00:29:42 But up until that point, she was considered like a champion.
00:29:42 --> 00:29:48 And then, of course, this revised version of her now that wants to be governor
00:29:48 --> 00:29:52 of South Carolina, you know, now all of a sudden it's like she's got a problem
00:29:52 --> 00:29:53 with Representative McBride.
00:29:54 --> 00:29:58 And, you know, it was like the first two, three weeks of the session,
00:29:58 --> 00:30:03 And it was it was all about her and her war against the transgender community.
00:30:03 --> 00:30:09 So I don't know. I just you know, when I saw that, I said, huh.
00:30:10 --> 00:30:13 So Doc is kind of categorized her.
00:30:14 --> 00:30:18 And there's actually a group of women that kind of like feel that transgender
00:30:18 --> 00:30:21 women are a threat to women.
00:30:22 --> 00:30:23 Whether or not, Erik, I am here
00:30:23 --> 00:30:28 to report trans women are not a threat to women. Trans women are women.
00:30:29 --> 00:30:36 It's fascinating to me to see this sort of, to see the hatred and discrimination
00:30:36 --> 00:30:40 that feminism pushes against to then be weaponized by certain feminists.
00:30:40 --> 00:30:46 It's, we're talking about folks who are, I mean, the trans community is really
00:30:46 --> 00:30:50 diverse. But I think we can all accept that gender is a performance.
00:30:50 --> 00:30:52 This is, you know, it's a social construct.
00:30:52 --> 00:30:55 There are many folks who also, you know, look at sex and gender,
00:30:55 --> 00:30:59 sex and sexuality, all three as being socially constructed, meaning that they
00:30:59 --> 00:31:02 don't exist in nature, but we decide what the rules are.
00:31:02 --> 00:31:06 And we've decided that they're binary and that they're natural and biological,
00:31:06 --> 00:31:10 which, you know, no self-respecting biologists would embrace.
00:31:10 --> 00:31:15 Right. We see these as social constructions. And so if gender is socially constructed,
00:31:15 --> 00:31:20 then why would feminists be so afraid of people who choose to construct their
00:31:20 --> 00:31:22 gender in ways that don't align with the binary?
00:31:22 --> 00:31:27 I find it to be kind of fascinating hypocrisy in the sense, not to get too theoretical,
00:31:28 --> 00:31:34 but the binary is what has driven much of patriarchy, meaning the rule of men, for so long.
00:31:34 --> 00:31:38 So I view transgender folks, whether intentional or not, as being on the front
00:31:38 --> 00:31:43 lines of challenging the binary, which I think is so crucial to,
00:31:43 --> 00:31:47 you know, getting rid of our big system of power when it comes to gender,
00:31:47 --> 00:31:48 which is patriarchy. Yeah.
00:31:49 --> 00:31:53 Yeah. And then, you know, another name that always comes up, Riley Gaines.
00:31:53 --> 00:31:57 I call her the biggest loser in American sports.
00:31:58 --> 00:32:05 You know, you want to blame a transgender woman for your loss in a swim meet and you finish fifth.
00:32:05 --> 00:32:13 And really, if it wasn't for a tie, you would be sixth in that race.
00:32:13 --> 00:32:18 There were four other women that were way better than you, but you want to blame
00:32:18 --> 00:32:21 this one particular woman. And it just, yeah.
00:32:22 --> 00:32:26 So anyway, enough about that. Let me get into some other women I'm a little shaky about.
00:32:28 --> 00:32:34 What category of feminism do Erika Kirk or Katie Miller fall under?
00:32:34 --> 00:32:39 Would they be considered like the modern day Phyllis Schlafly's?
00:32:40 --> 00:32:46 Yeah, you know, the sort of trad wife, and I think Erika Kirk and certainly
00:32:46 --> 00:32:49 Stephen Miller's, like Katie Miller, right, Stephen Miller's spouse,
00:32:49 --> 00:32:54 and he's an open white supremacist and very traditional gender role person.
00:32:54 --> 00:32:58 And these trad wife and trad wife adjacent women are not feminists, right?
00:32:58 --> 00:33:02 If feminism—so whether we view feminism as the one in the equality,
00:33:03 --> 00:33:06 political, social, and economic equality of the sexes, which is the kind of
00:33:06 --> 00:33:11 standard definition, or more bell hooks definition of feminism,
00:33:11 --> 00:33:16 which is getting rid of the power over oppression of all forms, including gender.
00:33:17 --> 00:33:21 Neither Erika Kirk or Katie Miller would fit under the category of feminists.
00:33:21 --> 00:33:27 They are pushing for a very traditional, conventional way of approaching gender.
00:33:27 --> 00:33:32 So they're going back in time to the 1950s when the government was,
00:33:32 --> 00:33:36 you know, promoting rigid gender roles in order to get women back in the home.
00:33:36 --> 00:33:41 And what we know is that, you know, choice for women is great.
00:33:41 --> 00:33:45 And I think choice becomes really questionable when you have an entire social
00:33:45 --> 00:33:51 media ecosystem around trad wives that is promoting this idea that women should
00:33:51 --> 00:33:53 be in the home and in the domestic sphere only.
00:33:53 --> 00:34:00 I just find it to be, you know, a kind of laughable throwback if it wasn't playing
00:34:00 --> 00:34:03 so well with young impressionable women and young impressionable men.
00:34:03 --> 00:34:09 Do you do you think this uh you can tell i'm kind of spitballing a little bit
00:34:09 --> 00:34:15 do you think this this recent tragedy is going to have any kind of impact on
00:34:15 --> 00:34:19 this trad wife movement because.
00:34:20 --> 00:34:26 Now Erika is going to be out front you know for at least the next year or two
00:34:26 --> 00:34:30 and you know now people were going on Katie Miller's podcast.
00:34:30 --> 00:34:34 I didn't even know she had one, but, you know, people can make the argument about me too.
00:34:34 --> 00:34:41 But I'm just saying it's like now it seems like these tragic events have kind of put them out there.
00:34:42 --> 00:34:47 And because they espouse these beliefs, do you think that there will be a bigger
00:34:47 --> 00:34:52 uptick in that mindset and, you know, a counter to feminism that way?
00:34:52 --> 00:34:56 That's the reason why I asked, would you consider them modern Phyllis Schlafly's?
00:34:56 --> 00:35:03 Because as I was growing up, she was, you know, the anti-ERA person and,
00:35:03 --> 00:35:09 you know, she was able to build the American Eagle or whatever the name of her
00:35:09 --> 00:35:11 group was that, you know,
00:35:12 --> 00:35:15 were getting all these women to say, no, we don't want equal rights.
00:35:15 --> 00:35:21 And, you know, even when the Republicans were for equal rights,
00:35:21 --> 00:35:25 right, she was leading the charge against that. So I'm just wondering,
00:35:26 --> 00:35:29 are these young ladies about to take that mantle?
00:35:30 --> 00:35:34 Erik, great question. Yeah, so Phyllis Schlafly, for folks who are not familiar,
00:35:34 --> 00:35:40 founded the Eagle Forum in 1972 to push back against the Equal Rights Amendment,
00:35:41 --> 00:35:47 which Alice Paul actually tried to propose as an amendment to the Constitution in 1923.
00:35:47 --> 00:35:50 After finally getting women the right to vote.
00:35:50 --> 00:35:54 After that big push, they immediately turn their sights to the Equal Rights
00:35:54 --> 00:35:57 Amendment, which is simply an amendment to the Constitution that says that women
00:35:57 --> 00:36:00 are fully covered in the Constitution.
00:36:00 --> 00:36:04 And for folks who are surprised that that's not in the Constitution, you should be.
00:36:04 --> 00:36:08 It leads to a lot of things happening that otherwise wouldn't if women were
00:36:08 --> 00:36:11 fully protected by the Constitution as a category.
00:36:11 --> 00:36:17 And so Phyllis Schlafly had all of the trappings of a modern businesswoman in
00:36:17 --> 00:36:23 that she had an office and a staff and travel and an expense account.
00:36:23 --> 00:36:28 So she was living the life of a modern businesswoman while assailing that lifestyle
00:36:28 --> 00:36:30 and saying that women should be in the home.
00:36:30 --> 00:36:36 Her Eagle Forum was heavily funded by right-wing interests, religious interests,
00:36:36 --> 00:36:41 a lot of theocratic interests that were pushing this. And so she and her efforts
00:36:41 --> 00:36:44 were able to defeat the Equal Rights Amendment.
00:36:44 --> 00:36:52 And interesting that you're bringing up Katie Miller and Erika Kirk, both of whom...
00:36:52 --> 00:36:55 Have big platforms, but I think, Erik, you're pointing out they're going to
00:36:55 --> 00:37:01 have even bigger platforms, especially Erika Kirk in the tragic wake of her husband's death.
00:37:02 --> 00:37:06 And just to be clear, political violence is never the answer to anything, right?
00:37:06 --> 00:37:10 Charlie Kirk was, as much as I disagreed with him on pretty much everything
00:37:10 --> 00:37:14 he ever said, he was doing it right. He was going to college campuses and trying
00:37:14 --> 00:37:15 to convince people to his side.
00:37:15 --> 00:37:19 That's how you do politics. It's political persuasion.
00:37:19 --> 00:37:24 And now Erika Kirk will be likely taking up a lot of that work,
00:37:24 --> 00:37:26 which will give the trad wife,
00:37:27 --> 00:37:32 friend, a much bigger face, more playtime in mainstream channels and reach more
00:37:32 --> 00:37:35 young women and young men and convince them that this is the way to be.
00:37:35 --> 00:37:41 I do think it's important to expose the fact that there are big donors.
00:37:41 --> 00:37:46 Big religious and conservative donors who are writing checks for tens of millions
00:37:46 --> 00:37:49 of dollars, almost $100 million annually in the case of Turning Point USA,
00:37:49 --> 00:37:52 in order to just push an ideology.
00:37:52 --> 00:37:59 And we don't have something like that in the center. We don't have something like that on the left.
00:37:59 --> 00:38:03 It is a uniquely right-wing phenomenon where you have millionaires and billionaires
00:38:03 --> 00:38:08 getting together and writing big checks in order to have certain mouthpieces promote an ideology.
00:38:08 --> 00:38:14 And I have no doubt that Erika Kirk will be promoting the trad wife ideology.
00:38:14 --> 00:38:18 And of course, Stephen Miller's spouse, Katie Miller, has quite a big platform
00:38:18 --> 00:38:22 given her ties to her husband in the White House.
00:38:22 --> 00:38:30 And so already we see about 40% of evangelical and Protestant women are identifying
00:38:30 --> 00:38:32 as trad wives, and that's a number that is increasing.
00:38:33 --> 00:38:37 And so while we are seeing women make great gains in many places,
00:38:37 --> 00:38:42 we're seeing this absolute backlash and trying to get women back into the home
00:38:42 --> 00:38:45 as we were in the 1950s. Yeah.
00:38:46 --> 00:38:51 All right. So let me close out. Like I said, I wanted to, you know,
00:38:51 --> 00:38:55 I wanted to talk to you about your connection with New Orleans.
00:38:56 --> 00:39:00 It's hard to believe it has been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina.
00:39:01 --> 00:39:05 What do you think has been learned and how has New Orleans changed?
00:39:06 --> 00:39:11 Because I know you You were part of, I guess, the restoration of the city,
00:39:11 --> 00:39:15 you know, after Katrina with some of the projects you were doing.
00:39:15 --> 00:39:21 So I would like to have your assessment on where you think it is now.
00:39:21 --> 00:39:26 I know you're not living there at the moment, but I'm sure you still have ties and connections.
00:39:27 --> 00:39:32 And I'm back and forth to New Orleans and continue to do work in the city.
00:39:32 --> 00:39:37 And I was just there for Katrina 20. And it is hard to believe,
00:39:37 --> 00:39:39 as you point out, Erik, that it's been 20 years.
00:39:39 --> 00:39:43 Prior to Hurricane Katrina, I had not been to New Orleans because I was raised
00:39:43 --> 00:39:47 Pentecostal evangelical. And even though I kind of shed some of that,
00:39:48 --> 00:39:51 I still had this idea of New Orleans as like Sin City, right?
00:39:52 --> 00:39:56 And I just hadn't been there and thought of it as like a den of iniquity.
00:39:56 --> 00:40:00 And when Hurricane Katrina hit, I remember I was flying out to a conference
00:40:00 --> 00:40:03 in Washington, D.C., and on
00:40:03 --> 00:40:07 my way out, I was seeing images of my fellow Americans on their rooftops.
00:40:07 --> 00:40:11 And then four days later, as I was flying back home, I was seeing these same
00:40:11 --> 00:40:15 images of my neighbors, you know, my fellow Americans up on their rooftops.
00:40:16 --> 00:40:19 Stranded, starving, many having drowned.
00:40:19 --> 00:40:25 And I remember being on the flight in particular because there was a roast of Pamela Anderson.
00:40:25 --> 00:40:28 And I don't know if you remember this roast, but she was wearing a revealing outfit.
00:40:28 --> 00:40:32 And so I was walking back. It was a JetBlue flight, walking back from the restroom
00:40:32 --> 00:40:39 and seeing all of these JetBlue little TVs on the back of the seats tuned into
00:40:39 --> 00:40:41 the Pamela Anderson roast.
00:40:41 --> 00:40:44 And no one was looking at the images anymore and
00:40:44 --> 00:40:49 it was so disturbing not only that you know fellow americans were still stranded
00:40:49 --> 00:40:54 but that we had kind of already moved on and so when i got back home i heeded
00:40:54 --> 00:40:59 a civilian call from celebrity sean penn who said yeah come on down with your
00:40:59 --> 00:41:02 boats and so i i borrowed a.
00:41:03 --> 00:41:08 An SUV, an Xterra from a student and hopped in with two other students.
00:41:08 --> 00:41:10 And we drove down and, of course, couldn't fly in.
00:41:10 --> 00:41:14 There were no flights. There were no places to stay. And we had press passes.
00:41:14 --> 00:41:18 And, you know, it's one of those before and after moments where you think the
00:41:18 --> 00:41:19 world works a certain way.
00:41:19 --> 00:41:25 And then you see human beings who have died and are just lying in the streets.
00:41:26 --> 00:41:30 And it's many days, you know, the week that the storm hit, we made it down.
00:41:30 --> 00:41:36 But many days after the storm had hit and there still wasn't food or rescue
00:41:36 --> 00:41:38 efforts, hadn't really gotten fully underway.
00:41:39 --> 00:41:45 And then to learn that this was not only predicted with the Hurricane Pam simulation
00:41:45 --> 00:41:48 a year before, it was preventable.
00:41:48 --> 00:41:52 It wasn't an issue with Hurricane Katrina hitting the city dead on.
00:41:52 --> 00:41:55 It was a Category 5 storm out on the Gulf.
00:41:55 --> 00:41:59 By the time it hit Waveland, Mississippi, which is where ground zero for Hurricane
00:41:59 --> 00:42:01 Katrina. It was a Category 3.
00:42:02 --> 00:42:05 New Orleans did not get a direct hit. It was just strong winds from a Category 2.
00:42:06 --> 00:42:11 And that caused the largest, what would later be called the largest engineering disaster in U.S.
00:42:12 --> 00:42:16 History, which is that the levees breached, right? And they breached in three primary places.
00:42:16 --> 00:42:21 And so most of my efforts and my colleagues' efforts have focused on the lower 9th Ward.
00:42:21 --> 00:42:27 So we immediately did rebuilding and home gutting, which is just removing items from houses,
00:42:28 --> 00:42:32 and set up community kitchens and community lending stations in the Lower Ninth
00:42:32 --> 00:42:36 Ward, and then opened the New Orleans Women's and Children's Shelter and,
00:42:36 --> 00:42:39 you know, continued to work with Common Ground in rebuilding.
00:42:39 --> 00:42:43 And then about five years after, Katrina, I realized it wasn't going to come
00:42:43 --> 00:42:45 back, that there wasn't going to be justice in rebuilding.
00:42:45 --> 00:42:51 And so we opened the Lower Ninth Ward Living Museum in order to preserve the
00:42:51 --> 00:42:56 history of that historic Black neighborhood and then began curating,
00:42:57 --> 00:43:00 the first civil rights museum in New Orleans with Dr.
00:43:01 --> 00:43:04 Leona Tate, who was one of the four little girls who desegregated the Deep South.
00:43:05 --> 00:43:06 I think a lot of people know about.
00:43:07 --> 00:43:11 Ruby Bridges and her heroic efforts at Franz Elementary.
00:43:11 --> 00:43:15 What people may not know is that there were three little girls who were doing
00:43:15 --> 00:43:18 the exact same thing less than a mile away in the Lower Ninth Ward.
00:43:18 --> 00:43:22 And of course, all the white parents pulled their kids out of school.
00:43:22 --> 00:43:25 They were terrorizing these little girls and harassing them.
00:43:26 --> 00:43:32 And so Dr. Tate was able to, many years later, purchase McDonough 19,
00:43:32 --> 00:43:36 which is the school she desegregated, and make it into, you know,
00:43:36 --> 00:43:37 Preserve It is an Historic Landmark.
00:43:37 --> 00:43:43 She's reopened it with the exhibit that we curated, as well as mixed income
00:43:43 --> 00:43:48 housing for older adults and a gathering space for activists.
00:43:48 --> 00:43:50 So we do our annual gala.
00:43:50 --> 00:43:55 This year it's happening on November 14th, which is a Friday night.
00:43:55 --> 00:43:58 It's the best party in New Orleans, probably sold out already.
00:43:58 --> 00:44:02 But I hope that anyone in New Orleans who might hear this will support the TEP
00:44:02 --> 00:44:07 Center, which is named after the last names of the three little girls who desegregated that.
00:44:08 --> 00:44:11 And we continue to, you know, raise awareness about what happened,
00:44:11 --> 00:44:15 but also provide spaces for the community to come together.
00:44:15 --> 00:44:19 Because it's, you know, it's, especially the Lower Ninth Ward,
00:44:19 --> 00:44:26 it's a part of our country that, you know, was flooded because of injustice,
00:44:26 --> 00:44:28 because the levees weren't built right.
00:44:28 --> 00:44:32 They weren't built deeply enough after the breach a breach that happened in
00:44:32 --> 00:44:35 1965 with Hurricane Betsy. It simply wasn't built down far enough.
00:44:36 --> 00:44:40 And this is a neighborhood that was not allowed to come back in any equitable way.
00:44:40 --> 00:44:45 So if anyone's visiting New Orleans, please visit the TEP Center and give them their support.
00:44:46 --> 00:44:50 All right. So thank you for that, Dr. Heldman.
00:44:50 --> 00:44:53 Yeah, you know, I was in Mississippi during that time.
00:44:53 --> 00:44:58 I was actually in the legislature during that time. So, you know,
00:44:58 --> 00:45:03 you were dead on about Waveland being hit, and, you know, our focus had to be
00:45:03 --> 00:45:08 trying to get us back, you know, on the Gulf Coast going on.
00:45:09 --> 00:45:14 We had a lot of people from New Orleans come in, and me and several other legislators
00:45:14 --> 00:45:19 just kind of took it upon ourselves to do the best we could to get them situated.
00:45:20 --> 00:45:25 And, you know, Jackson, Mississippi was a success story as far as people coming
00:45:25 --> 00:45:27 from New Orleans to reestablish.
00:45:28 --> 00:45:32 But when I saw that in your background, I said, well, I got to at least ask her.
00:45:32 --> 00:45:36 And so I'm glad to know that you're still engaged with what's going on down
00:45:36 --> 00:45:40 there. If people want to reach out to you, if people want to,
00:45:41 --> 00:45:45 other than enrolling at Oxyn Oak College, how can people do that?
00:45:46 --> 00:45:51 My email is just my last name, heldman at oxy, O-X-Y dot E-D-U.
00:45:51 --> 00:45:57 And my website is Dr. Caroline Heldman. And you can find me on the everything,
00:45:58 --> 00:46:02 the blue sky, TikTok, Instagram, sort of Twitter, benign account on Twitter,
00:46:03 --> 00:46:05 just sitting there hanging out and Facebook. book.
00:46:06 --> 00:46:11 Well, Dr. Caroline Heldman, it's been really, really a pleasure and an honor to talk to you.
00:46:11 --> 00:46:16 And I greatly appreciate this opportunity to pick your brain a little bit and
00:46:16 --> 00:46:21 do understand that one of the rules here is that once you've been invited and
00:46:21 --> 00:46:25 you accept it and you come on, that you have an open invitation to come back.
00:46:25 --> 00:46:29 And so you don't even have to wait for me to ask you. If you was like,
00:46:29 --> 00:46:32 Erik, I need to talk about something, you're more than welcome to.
00:46:33 --> 00:46:35 We'll we'll make, make, make that happen.
00:46:35 --> 00:46:39 So Dr. Heldman, thank you so much for coming on. I greatly appreciate it.
00:46:40 --> 00:46:45 Oh, it is my honor, Mr. Erik Fleming. You are marvelous. And thank you for your incredible work.
00:46:45 --> 00:46:48 And I look forward to coming back on. All right.
00:46:49 --> 00:46:51 All right, guys. And we're going to catch y'all on the other side.
00:46:52 --> 00:47:10 Music.
00:47:10 --> 00:47:16 All right, and we are back. And so now it is time for my next guest, Alia Dastagir.
00:47:16 --> 00:47:23 Alia Dastagir is a former reporter for USA Today who frequently covers gender and mental health.
00:47:24 --> 00:47:29 She was one of eight U.S. recipients of the prestigious Rosalind Carter Fellowships
00:47:29 --> 00:47:30 for Mental Health Journalism.
00:47:30 --> 00:47:35 She won a first place national headliner award for a series on suicide.
00:47:35 --> 00:47:44 Was the first winner of the American Association of Suicidology's Public Service Journalism Award.
00:47:44 --> 00:47:51 Dastagir has appeared on CNN, NPR, and C-SPAN to discuss her reporting.
00:47:52 --> 00:47:59 She is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing at New York University and her book,
00:47:59 --> 00:48:05 To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person, Words as Violence and Stories
00:48:05 --> 00:48:09 of Women's Resistance Online, was recently published by Crown.
00:48:10 --> 00:48:15 And we're going to talk about the book and a couple other subjects during the interview.
00:48:15 --> 00:48:19 So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a
00:48:19 --> 00:48:23 guest on this podcast, Alia Dastagir.
00:48:25 --> 00:48:34 Music.
00:48:34 --> 00:48:38 All right. Alia Dastagir. How are you doing, ma'am? You doing good?
00:48:39 --> 00:48:42 I'm good. Thank you so much. And thanks for pronouncing my name correctly.
00:48:42 --> 00:48:46 I respond to so many things at this point, but I appreciate that. I'm happy to be here.
00:48:46 --> 00:48:51 Well, I'm one of those folks, too, that it's like if I can cash the check at
00:48:51 --> 00:48:53 the bank, it's all good, right?
00:48:54 --> 00:48:58 Exactly. So, look, I'm honored that you're on.
00:48:58 --> 00:49:02 We're going to talk about your book, But I also kind of want to touch on some
00:49:02 --> 00:49:06 things that's happening, you know, in real time.
00:49:07 --> 00:49:11 And I think because of your background in journalism and all that,
00:49:11 --> 00:49:13 that I think you can handle some of the questions.
00:49:14 --> 00:49:18 The other thing is I kind of start the show off with a couple of icebreakers.
00:49:19 --> 00:49:24 Oh, God. Well, it's not that bad. All right, let's go. So the first icebreaker is a quote.
00:49:24 --> 00:49:28 To be heard as complaining is not to be heard.
00:49:28 --> 00:49:33 Yeah. To hear someone as complaining is an effective way of dismissing someone.
00:49:33 --> 00:49:38 You do not have to listen to the content of what she is saying if she is just
00:49:38 --> 00:49:40 complaining or always complaining.
00:49:40 --> 00:49:44 What does that quote mean to you? I mean, that is a great quote by a scholar
00:49:44 --> 00:49:47 named Sarah Ahmed and from her book Complaint.
00:49:48 --> 00:49:52 That quote, you know, sometimes you read something or you hear something and
00:49:52 --> 00:49:58 you just feel like it is able to give language or crystallize an idea,
00:49:58 --> 00:50:02 like something that you feel is inherently true, but you don't kind of have the language for.
00:50:02 --> 00:50:07 And she writes so directly and so clearly and I think was able to,
00:50:07 --> 00:50:12 I think, you know, articulate she's not talking about necessarily online abuse,
00:50:12 --> 00:50:15 but abuses more broadly, especially in the workplace.
00:50:15 --> 00:50:22 But that quote really speaks to this sort of, you know, the sort of reflex that
00:50:22 --> 00:50:25 we have to dismiss people,
00:50:25 --> 00:50:35 to dismiss legitimate emotions, whether it's, you know, fear or, you know, anger.
00:50:35 --> 00:50:41 You know, whatever that there that that when you're that we have, I guess,
00:50:41 --> 00:50:45 sort of an obligation when we're sort of being in the human community together
00:50:45 --> 00:50:52 to give to make space right for the for the emotion, for the for to give, I guess,
00:50:52 --> 00:50:56 kind of uptake right to the emotion. And we don't do that.
00:50:57 --> 00:51:01 We don't we can't hear it. We can't hear each other. And so I think and I think
00:51:01 --> 00:51:05 that this because, you know, I am obviously writing a book about women or maybe
00:51:05 --> 00:51:08 it's not obvious to your audience, but I wrote a book about women and the harms
00:51:08 --> 00:51:11 and the violence that sort of women specifically face.
00:51:11 --> 00:51:14 You know, I think that this is also, you know, she's talking about something
00:51:14 --> 00:51:16 very gendered there, right?
00:51:16 --> 00:51:21 Which is, it is very easy to listen to somebody, to not hear somebody,
00:51:22 --> 00:51:23 right? To not hear a person.
00:51:24 --> 00:51:29 If you, you know, depending on kind of the, yeah, the way that you sort of,
00:51:30 --> 00:51:34 depending on who the speaker is, right? It's very easy to give.
00:51:34 --> 00:51:37 I think in many cases we give uptake or we give attention or we give,
00:51:38 --> 00:51:43 we legitimize the emotions and the experiences of certain groups and not others.
00:51:43 --> 00:51:47 So, yeah, I mean, I think that that quote for me is just so important to this
00:51:47 --> 00:51:51 issue of online abuse, because I think so many of the times when women experience
00:51:51 --> 00:51:57 online abuse or harm in these online spaces, they are told that they are complaining.
00:51:57 --> 00:52:01 They are told that they are too fragile or too weak or too overwrought or their
00:52:01 --> 00:52:06 emotions are sort of, you know, useless, right, in these spaces.
00:52:06 --> 00:52:10 And I think that that's just such an absurdity and such a shame.
00:52:10 --> 00:52:12 And it's one of the reasons why we haven't been able, I think,
00:52:13 --> 00:52:17 to meaningfully address the issue of online abuse, particularly when it's directed
00:52:17 --> 00:52:18 towards certain groups of people.
00:52:19 --> 00:52:25 Yeah, the thing that came to my mind when I first read that quote was Chicken Little, right?
00:52:26 --> 00:52:29 That you know it's like when
00:52:29 --> 00:52:33 an actually something actually did happen it was
00:52:33 --> 00:52:36 like well you know chicken little you've been saying the sky has been falling
00:52:36 --> 00:52:42 for a while so you know we're not gonna buy into it until oh okay now that sky
00:52:42 --> 00:52:46 is actually falling you actually meant it this time right and i think you know
00:52:46 --> 00:52:52 in the gist of what you're talking about with with online abuse or just any kind of,
00:52:53 --> 00:52:58 And it's an issue that people, because, I mean, you can flip that with Black people, right?
00:52:59 --> 00:53:04 It's like they'll say, you know, we're victimizing ourselves when we say there's
00:53:04 --> 00:53:06 an injustice here and a justice there.
00:53:06 --> 00:53:11 And then when people finally see it, it's like, oh, okay, this is what you were talking about.
00:53:12 --> 00:53:16 But until that actually happens, it's like it's in one ear out the other.
00:53:17 --> 00:53:23 And black people and black, you know, particularly black digital feminists are
00:53:23 --> 00:53:26 such a huge part of this story, too, because exactly to your point, right?
00:53:26 --> 00:53:31 Like these were, you know, they were some of the, you know.
00:53:31 --> 00:53:37 Users online who were sort of loudest about this issue of online abuse and the
00:53:37 --> 00:53:43 weaponization of these platforms and the ability to spread maliciously disinformation
00:53:43 --> 00:53:46 on these platforms. I mean, they were prescient about this.
00:53:46 --> 00:53:54 Now, what, like 15, 20 years ago talking about this and their insights were not taken seriously.
00:53:54 --> 00:53:59 Their pain was not deemed worthy of serious attention. And now we have,
00:53:59 --> 00:54:04 you know, the moment that we're in where these platforms are totally unaccountable.
00:54:04 --> 00:54:10 Disinformation has run rampant. I mean, we the ability for certain people in
00:54:10 --> 00:54:11 this country to be able to speak
00:54:11 --> 00:54:16 freely is, you know, under not even under threat. Right. I mean, we can't.
00:54:17 --> 00:54:21 So so it is it is so true, you know, particularly, yeah, for certain groups
00:54:21 --> 00:54:25 of people. I think that's the whole point with that sort of quote is that that
00:54:25 --> 00:54:28 that people are there is something that needs to be heard.
00:54:28 --> 00:54:35 But certain people in the culture, right, are that their pain is not deemed
00:54:35 --> 00:54:36 worthy of serious attention.
00:54:37 --> 00:54:40 And so then we find ourselves in the position we're in. Yeah.
00:54:40 --> 00:54:43 All right. So now the second icebreaker is what I call 20 questions.
00:54:44 --> 00:54:48 Oh, God. So I need you to give me a number between one and 20.
00:54:49 --> 00:54:51 It's just a lower number. You're going to ask me a few requests.
00:54:51 --> 00:54:53 All right. I'm going to go with nine. Okay.
00:54:54 --> 00:54:59 All right. Number nine. If you were required to be a single issue voter,
00:54:59 --> 00:55:02 what issue would you choose and why?
00:55:03 --> 00:55:07 All right. Well, I guess I would, I would have to say reproductive justice.
00:55:07 --> 00:55:12 I think bottle, I mean, bodily, you know, bodily autonomy, human dignity.
00:55:12 --> 00:55:15 I mean, just bodily autonomy, right? I mean, just being able to,
00:55:16 --> 00:55:20 you know, my identity as a woman. I mean, I have daughters.
00:55:20 --> 00:55:30 This, you know, it feels to me one of the most horrific and brutal and devastating
00:55:30 --> 00:55:34 and dangerous sort of developments,
00:55:34 --> 00:55:40 right, in the last several years, which is to say that it is incredible to think
00:55:40 --> 00:55:44 that I have less rights and my children have less, my daughters have less rights
00:55:44 --> 00:55:46 in some ways than my mother did.
00:55:46 --> 00:55:55 So, yeah, I would say that the reporting on what is happening around abortion
00:55:55 --> 00:56:00 in this country and what is happening to women and their inability or people who,
00:56:00 --> 00:56:03 you know, anybody, right, who can carry a pregnancy is just,
00:56:03 --> 00:56:05 it's incredibly frightening.
00:56:06 --> 00:56:10 And I think that it intersects with so many other sort of human rights issues
00:56:10 --> 00:56:15 and bodily autonomy issues and human dignity issues. And so that's extremely
00:56:15 --> 00:56:16 important to me. All right.
00:56:16 --> 00:56:24 Do you feel that survival from sexual harassment or sexual assault is a form of resistance?
00:56:25 --> 00:56:29 Yes, I do. I think that, yes.
00:56:29 --> 00:56:35 Okay, so let me think how I formulate that. Yes, because I think that the sources,
00:56:35 --> 00:56:42 I think that the things that make sexual violence possible and permissible in
00:56:42 --> 00:56:46 cultures are forces and systems that...
00:56:48 --> 00:56:51 Many of us are trying to sort of resist, right? So when you,
00:56:52 --> 00:56:56 and also I don't want to, you know, make any kind of moral judgment around people
00:56:56 --> 00:56:58 who can't survive those things, right?
00:56:58 --> 00:57:05 Like it is, I mean, violence and harm and oppression is, can be incredibly destructive
00:57:05 --> 00:57:09 and many people don't withstand it, right? Many people don't survive.
00:57:09 --> 00:57:13 And I don't want to sort of moralize around, you know, whether or not that makes
00:57:13 --> 00:57:16 a person sort of stronger, more capable, more resilient.
00:57:16 --> 00:57:19 But I do think yes i think it is an act of resistance because
00:57:19 --> 00:57:23 i think that the source of these of
00:57:23 --> 00:57:27 violence it this oppressive violence that i write about in the book and that
00:57:27 --> 00:57:30 i i think you know you sort of you know also exploring your program i think
00:57:30 --> 00:57:36 the sources of that oppressive violence are you know what make that kind of
00:57:36 --> 00:57:42 like that is what makes violence possible right like a hierarchy or a system that ranks you in life.
00:57:42 --> 00:57:49 And so when you survive, you are sort of sending a message to yourself and to
00:57:49 --> 00:57:55 the broader culture that you will not be, I don't know what,
00:57:55 --> 00:57:56 I don't want to sound trite, right?
00:57:56 --> 00:58:00 But you will not, that these things are, you're going to still continue,
00:58:01 --> 00:58:03 right? You're going to continue to move through life. You deserve a life.
00:58:04 --> 00:58:06 You deserve dignity. You deserve safety.
00:58:07 --> 00:58:11 You deserve these things. And so, yes, I do think that that it is a form of resistance.
00:58:12 --> 00:58:19 So I want you to expound on it a little more in a specific sense as to why is
00:58:19 --> 00:58:26 it such a huge deal for the survivors of the Epstein trafficking ring to come forward? Oh, God.
00:58:27 --> 00:58:31 Yeah. And watching them speak in those moments.
00:58:31 --> 00:58:36 I mean, I think because, you know, the whole sexual violence is,
00:58:36 --> 00:58:39 again, we're talking about what makes it possible, what makes it permissible,
00:58:39 --> 00:58:46 what allows it to sort of flourish is the right word to be so pervasive right in society is because.
00:58:48 --> 00:58:55 Because we feel women feels and survivors and victims feel such shame about what happened to them.
00:58:55 --> 00:58:59 And it is such an incredibly intimate violation.
00:59:00 --> 00:59:03 You know, thinking about to my single, you know, if I was going to be a single
00:59:03 --> 00:59:05 issue voter, right, like that issue of bodily autonomy.
00:59:05 --> 00:59:13 I mean, violations of the body are incredibly profound and it takes so much
00:59:13 --> 00:59:20 to kind of make sense of that and to sort of extricate your own feeling of shame
00:59:20 --> 00:59:23 and responsibility from, you know,
00:59:23 --> 00:59:26 this violence that has been perpetrated against you.
00:59:26 --> 00:59:30 And so I think that, you know, I felt particularly moved watching the survivors,
00:59:31 --> 00:59:37 the Epstein survivors speak at that press conference recently because they also
00:59:37 --> 00:59:38 are putting themselves,
00:59:39 --> 00:59:42 you know, not only are they resisting, right, this sort of culture of silence
00:59:42 --> 00:59:49 and resisting the shame, right, that the perpetrator is counting on them,
00:59:49 --> 00:59:53 right, banking on them feeling so deeply so that they won't speak.
00:59:53 --> 00:59:57 But they also are putting themselves at such enormous risk to speak out.
00:59:58 --> 01:00:05 And, you know, thinking even about, again, my work on this book is about.
01:00:06 --> 01:00:08 You know, in many ways, what is the cost of speech?
01:00:09 --> 01:00:13 Like, what does it cost us to speak and what happens to us when we speak,
01:00:13 --> 01:00:18 whether we're at a press conference or, you know, posting something on X,
01:00:18 --> 01:00:19 right? What is the cost of that?
01:00:19 --> 01:00:25 And in many cases, speaking out about injustice makes you a greater target for
01:00:25 --> 01:00:30 injustice, and particularly when you're expressing sort of public vulnerability.
01:00:31 --> 01:00:36 So I think that, you know, those survivors were, you know,
01:00:36 --> 01:00:40 just the act alone and especially the content of what they were saying,
01:00:40 --> 01:00:43 which was effectively, if you're not going to hold people accountable,
01:00:43 --> 01:00:47 we are going to take matters into our own hands.
01:00:47 --> 01:00:49 It's we have the names. We know what happened.
01:00:49 --> 01:00:54 You know, we're going to it is. And they put themselves at enormous risk to do that.
01:00:54 --> 01:00:59 But they but there's a great recognition that that in order to usher in the
01:00:59 --> 01:01:05 kind of world that so many of us want, our voices are our greatest sort of tools.
01:01:05 --> 01:01:10 Right. So, yeah, I was incredibly moved by that by that press conference. Yeah.
01:01:11 --> 01:01:17 All right. So let's let's talk about this book to those who have confused you to be a person.
01:01:18 --> 01:01:23 How did you come about that title? Yes.
01:01:24 --> 01:01:27 So, and you said it correctly. So that was good.
01:01:28 --> 01:01:30 But I think that's sort of the point, right? That you sort of,
01:01:31 --> 01:01:33 I mean, well, I don't know. When I'm thinking about what I sort of,
01:01:33 --> 01:01:35 okay, well, let's just say it like this.
01:01:35 --> 01:01:39 It's so hard to write a book. I think it's even harder to name a book.
01:01:39 --> 01:01:45 Like it was incredible. Like everything I came up with, then I had another title
01:01:45 --> 01:01:47 and it ended up being a Taylor Swift song.
01:01:47 --> 01:01:49 And that was a big mess. So it's
01:01:49 --> 01:01:54 really, really hard to sort of distill something, right, that you are.
01:01:54 --> 01:01:58 You know, in many ways, my book is trying to complicate something that I think
01:01:58 --> 01:02:04 that people feel that they, not all people, but that many people feel that they understand, right?
01:02:04 --> 01:02:07 And I'm trying to sort of complicate it, to add nuance. And then when you're
01:02:07 --> 01:02:10 asked to sort of name something, to name a book or title something,
01:02:11 --> 01:02:12 even a news article, right?
01:02:12 --> 01:02:16 You're sort of being asked to come up with the simplest way of,
01:02:16 --> 01:02:23 you know, sort of saying, you know, being able to communicate what is in these pages.
01:02:23 --> 01:02:27 And that's very difficult. But for me, the title was sort of born,
01:02:27 --> 01:02:32 I was looking for something that would really speak to the heart of the project.
01:02:32 --> 01:02:38 And this, the issue of online abuse was something I had been thinking about
01:02:38 --> 01:02:43 for years while I was sort of experiencing it and watching other women sort of speak out about it.
01:02:44 --> 01:02:49 But it wasn't until, I guess, like late 2019 or early, maybe early 2020,
01:02:49 --> 01:02:54 maybe late 2019, I started to think, okay, maybe I want to explore this in a more, in a deeper way.
01:02:54 --> 01:03:00 And then early 2020, I'd written a story, ironically, about online abuse of women journalists.
01:03:00 --> 01:03:07 And a user who was ostensibly male sent me a message after reading that story
01:03:07 --> 01:03:14 that said, I'm sorry to those who have confused you to be a person, but you are not a person.
01:03:15 --> 01:03:19 And there were so many things to kind of unpack about that. So when I received
01:03:19 --> 01:03:24 that message, I actually, I had just had a baby and I was breastfeeding the baby in her room.
01:03:24 --> 01:03:29 And there was just an extraordinary amount of dissonance between what I was
01:03:29 --> 01:03:34 experiencing in my body and with my child and what was sort of visible,
01:03:34 --> 01:03:37 right, kind of in that room, right? And what was happening today.
01:03:38 --> 01:03:42 Inside me and what this, you know, what is your cognitively right now,
01:03:42 --> 01:03:45 what was happening and then what this person was, was sort of saying to me,
01:03:45 --> 01:03:47 which is, you're not a person.
01:03:48 --> 01:03:53 And I had just, you know, kind of made a help make a person and I was like keeping
01:03:53 --> 01:03:55 a person alive, like with my body.
01:03:55 --> 01:04:00 So there was such dissonance there. But I think the reason I titled the book,
01:04:00 --> 01:04:04 you know, sort of drew from that to title the book is both because it was in
01:04:04 --> 01:04:08 that moment that I think I, if I recall correctly, that I really was resolved
01:04:08 --> 01:04:11 to write the book or to do something.
01:04:11 --> 01:04:15 I didn't know exactly what shape it would take, but that's when I decided that I would really do it.
01:04:15 --> 01:04:18 And I think that also that sort of,
01:04:18 --> 01:04:24 that message and the sort of sentiment and the difficulty that I have in sort
01:04:24 --> 01:04:29 of processing it also sort of speaks to what I felt was something that was really
01:04:29 --> 01:04:31 important to kind of underscore in the work,
01:04:31 --> 01:04:34 which is that the message doesn't have to.
01:04:35 --> 01:04:40 Have like profanity or death threats or rape threats or be, you know,
01:04:40 --> 01:04:44 sort of really sort of visibly kind of disgusting, you know,
01:04:44 --> 01:04:50 for it to kind of call our attention to it or for it to matter or for it to cause harm, right?
01:04:50 --> 01:04:53 Some of the women that I interviewed for this book were most harmed by,
01:04:54 --> 01:04:58 you know, language that really you couldn't even report to a social media platform,
01:04:58 --> 01:05:01 right, for a violation of their of their roles.
01:05:01 --> 01:05:05 And so I think it speaks to the fact that we experience really
01:05:05 --> 01:05:08 a kind of spectrum of kind of abuses in
01:05:08 --> 01:05:12 in these places and this was an incredibly dehumanizing message but there was
01:05:12 --> 01:05:18 nothing you know explicitly kind of profane about it and I think the final thing
01:05:18 --> 01:05:23 that I that I you know way that I think it speaks to the project is that I thought
01:05:23 --> 01:05:27 about that message for a lot for a long time because it was so.
01:05:28 --> 01:05:32 Grammatically awkward and sort of strange and I think that that's sort of a
01:05:32 --> 01:05:37 missed piece of what these experiences can really be like for people,
01:05:37 --> 01:05:43 which is to say that it's really clear what somebody sending a rape threat or a death threat thinks,
01:05:44 --> 01:05:46 you know, it's clear what that person thinks about you.
01:05:46 --> 01:05:53 But some of these messages really do take up so much more sort of time and labor
01:05:53 --> 01:05:58 in our sort of brains and bodies as we try to make sense of what is being said,
01:05:58 --> 01:06:01 why it's being said and maybe whether
01:06:01 --> 01:06:04 or not we deserved it which we we
01:06:04 --> 01:06:07 don't but i do think that that's a you know sort of an impulse to
01:06:07 --> 01:06:11 be kind of like what did i do like what did i do that this person thinks that
01:06:11 --> 01:06:15 i don't belong in the human community so yeah that's where the that's where
01:06:15 --> 01:06:20 the title came from and people do stumble on it and i do have some self-consciousness
01:06:20 --> 01:06:23 about it sometimes but i really do think it speaks to the heart of the project
01:06:23 --> 01:06:26 and and if it makes somebody kind of, you know,
01:06:26 --> 01:06:29 stop at a bookstore, then I had done my job.
01:06:29 --> 01:06:33 So you mentioned that you interviewed a lot of people.
01:06:34 --> 01:06:40 In compiling this book. And, you know, in the introduction, you know,
01:06:40 --> 01:06:42 I tell people that you're a journalist and all that.
01:06:42 --> 01:06:48 So it seems natural for you to gather stories to put a book together.
01:06:48 --> 01:06:53 The question I have for you is, why did you make yourself vulnerable and put
01:06:53 --> 01:06:57 your story in the mix with all the others? Why did you say you had to do that?
01:06:58 --> 01:07:02 Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, that's a great question because it is
01:07:02 --> 01:07:08 such a departure from what I've been doing in my decade at USA Today,
01:07:08 --> 01:07:11 which is most of the time, you know, I mean, really never.
01:07:11 --> 01:07:15 I think very occasionally, maybe one or two times I wrote in the first person.
01:07:15 --> 01:07:22 I think it had to do both with the genesis of the project and also with ultimately the goals.
01:07:22 --> 01:07:27 So initially I was just going to write about myself, but nobody wanted that book.
01:07:27 --> 01:07:32 And that's good because, yeah, like there was a real sort of narcissism,
01:07:33 --> 01:07:38 I think, involved in that and a kind of myopic idea about what the abuse was
01:07:38 --> 01:07:44 because or and what was driving it because I was only initially kind of trying
01:07:44 --> 01:07:47 to speak from my own experience, and I so deeply misunderstood myself.
01:07:49 --> 01:07:53 Problem. Even, I mean, just thinking about what we were talking about earlier with, you know,
01:07:54 --> 01:07:57 some of these, you know, Black digital feminists who were online,
01:07:58 --> 01:08:01 you know, for years and years and years being abused and speaking out about
01:08:01 --> 01:08:03 it and experiencing certainly,
01:08:03 --> 01:08:10 yes, some of what I experienced as a reporter at USA Today, but we're not necessarily
01:08:10 --> 01:08:14 part of an enormous institution that could stand behind them.
01:08:14 --> 01:08:19 We're experiencing not just sexism and misogyny, but racism,
01:08:19 --> 01:08:22 and misogynoir and all these other kinds of things.
01:08:22 --> 01:08:28 So initially I was trying to write from my own experience, but that wasn't resonant
01:08:28 --> 01:08:30 when I was trying to kind of get this idea off the ground.
01:08:31 --> 01:08:37 And I feel very grateful for that because I think that it forced me to look
01:08:37 --> 01:08:41 at the issue in a deeper way and to look backwards and, you know,
01:08:41 --> 01:08:46 instead of being sort of really preoccupied with my sort of present experience.
01:08:46 --> 01:08:52 But I think that, you know, one of the goals for the project ultimately was
01:08:52 --> 01:09:01 to really kind of try to slow down the experience of being harmed in these online spaces, right?
01:09:01 --> 01:09:05 Because I think sometimes when we talk about online abuse or online harassment,
01:09:06 --> 01:09:11 maybe our minds kind of flash to certain, you know, language, right?
01:09:11 --> 01:09:13 Or certain words or but but I but I really wanted
01:09:13 --> 01:09:16 to explore like what is
01:09:16 --> 01:09:20 that what does it mean to experience it and
01:09:20 --> 01:09:23 not just in that moment right but to kind of carry
01:09:23 --> 01:09:29 it around with you or to carry all of your life into the way that you process
01:09:29 --> 01:09:35 and experience that abuse because obviously we all sit in different places in
01:09:35 --> 01:09:41 the culture and have these very different lives and different resources And, you know,
01:09:42 --> 01:09:46 the women that I interviewed are very diverse in terms of race, class, occupation.
01:09:47 --> 01:09:53 You know, all of these, you know, disability status, all these kinds of sexual
01:09:53 --> 01:09:54 identity, all these kinds of things.
01:09:54 --> 01:09:59 And I think that that's really important because that all impacts how we experience this.
01:09:59 --> 01:10:02 But I felt like I think that there
01:10:02 --> 01:10:04 was also a real there was always going
01:10:04 --> 01:10:09 to be a limit to how intimate I could get with these subjects because it wasn't
01:10:09 --> 01:10:14 as if I was just following a single person you know profiling a single person
01:10:14 --> 01:10:18 and could be with them for hours and hours and hours be with them in their life
01:10:18 --> 01:10:24 and you know go visit them wherever they lived it but that wasn't the project and so I felt that the.
01:10:25 --> 01:10:33 Know, I feel very grateful that these subjects really did let me into their suffering and their,
01:10:33 --> 01:10:37 you know, the sort of, to the extent that they could, like the grappling that
01:10:37 --> 01:10:41 was going on for them internally and physically and physiologically as they
01:10:41 --> 01:10:42 were having these experiences.
01:10:43 --> 01:10:47 But my own experience that there was, I could speak about that with the most
01:10:47 --> 01:10:52 intimacy and the most authority because I could say what that was like for me,
01:10:52 --> 01:10:56 what it was like to be in my body when I was breastfeeding my child and somebody
01:10:56 --> 01:10:59 said that I didn't belong in the human community, right?
01:11:00 --> 01:11:05 So I think it was, it felt important and sort of additive, I hope,
01:11:06 --> 01:11:10 I guess only the readers can say, in terms of being able to achieve that kind
01:11:10 --> 01:11:11 of overarching goal for the project,
01:11:11 --> 01:11:20 which is to slow down and to more precisely and intimately go inside the person
01:11:20 --> 01:11:22 who is experiencing this kind
01:11:22 --> 01:11:29 of harm and to really sort of show how it taxes a brain, a body, a life.
01:11:30 --> 01:11:37 So which out of all those stories, which one resonated with you the most?
01:11:37 --> 01:11:41 Which one, you know, impacted you the most? Yeah, yeah.
01:11:42 --> 01:11:45 So that's a great question. I mean, I think,
01:11:46 --> 01:11:50 I mean, they all, I mean, obviously, you know, all of them feel like they were,
01:11:50 --> 01:11:54 I feel, you know, this is an issue going back again to that quote in the beginning,
01:11:55 --> 01:11:58 my icebreaker question around the sort of notion of complaint, right?
01:11:58 --> 01:12:02 That you can't, that if you hear somebody complaining, they cannot be heard.
01:12:03 --> 01:12:08 You cannot hear that person because you're not taking their pain or the,
01:12:08 --> 01:12:11 you know, whatever the emotion is that they're trying to express seriously.
01:12:11 --> 01:12:17 You're not engaging seriously with that emotion. I think that it's it's very
01:12:17 --> 01:12:22 important to say that I feel an enormous amount of gratitude towards all the
01:12:22 --> 01:12:25 subjects because it is not easy to talk about this publicly.
01:12:25 --> 01:12:29 I think particularly because there is a feeling in the culture that like.
01:12:31 --> 01:12:34 This is just what happens online. This is just what we're going to deal with,
01:12:34 --> 01:12:37 and we're stuck with it, and that sense of inevitability.
01:12:37 --> 01:12:41 And so what is the point? What is the point of lamenting this if nothing is
01:12:41 --> 01:12:45 ever going to change, and this is the culture, and these are the norms?
01:12:45 --> 01:12:50 And I fundamentally disagree with that. I think we human beings built the internet,
01:12:50 --> 01:12:55 and we built language, and we built systems, and we can change systems,
01:12:55 --> 01:12:58 and we can change the boundaries around all sorts of things.
01:12:58 --> 01:13:03 But I think that, you know, all of the people that I interviewed were sort of
01:13:03 --> 01:13:08 speaking in spite of this attitude, I think, that is pretty pervasive,
01:13:08 --> 01:13:11 especially now also as, like, we're talking, the conversation's changing.
01:13:12 --> 01:13:15 Now we're talking about AI and all these things. And even though that absolutely
01:13:15 --> 01:13:19 intersects with the issue of online abuse, I think there's a real sense that,
01:13:19 --> 01:13:24 like, I'm beating, you know, I'm beating a dead horse, right?
01:13:24 --> 01:13:28 So I feel very grateful to every subject because it's not easy to speak about this.
01:13:28 --> 01:13:32 It's not easy to speak about this honestly, especially when people are just
01:13:32 --> 01:13:35 going to accuse you of complaining and tell you that nothing's going to change.
01:13:35 --> 01:13:40 But I do think that because most of this book was written prior to the 2024
01:13:40 --> 01:13:47 election, I have been now reflecting over the last, you know, almost year.
01:13:48 --> 01:13:50 Thinking about the book, thinking about the political moment we're in.
01:13:50 --> 01:13:56 And there is a story, there is one story that I think about often because of
01:13:56 --> 01:13:59 just a single quote, like just like one thing that they said that,
01:13:59 --> 01:14:04 you know, just those things stay with you. And it's in chapter two of the book.
01:14:04 --> 01:14:09 Each chapter profiles a person who has experienced online abuse and then kind
01:14:09 --> 01:14:14 of uses that story to explore some sort of larger issue, sociological,
01:14:14 --> 01:14:16 political, psychological.
01:14:16 --> 01:14:20 And then it kind of drills down to how that person coped with the experience.
01:14:20 --> 01:14:26 And in chapter two, I profile a feminist comedian by the name of Maria Dakotis.
01:14:26 --> 01:14:31 And she, it was so interesting because, because she's a comedian,
01:14:31 --> 01:14:34 I think I had an idea in my mind of how that conversation was going to go.
01:14:34 --> 01:14:38 And I thought she would be very, I don't know, I thought we were discussing,
01:14:39 --> 01:14:42 I thought we would discuss something serious, but there would be a lightheartedness
01:14:42 --> 01:14:43 to it. I don't know what I was thinking.
01:14:43 --> 01:14:47 It was not, she wasn't, there was no laughing. It was not funny.
01:14:47 --> 01:14:49 Like she was very disturbed.
01:14:50 --> 01:14:53 By what happened to her, you know, essentially in her roles,
01:14:53 --> 01:14:58 you know, in her work as a female comedian, she gets a ton of harassment online and off.
01:14:58 --> 01:15:04 And, you know, you sort of sometimes the same scholar who wrote that,
01:15:04 --> 01:15:07 you know, that has that quote from that book Complaints, Sarah Ahmed,
01:15:07 --> 01:15:12 also writes about this idea of the feminist snap, when you just can't take it and you snap.
01:15:12 --> 01:15:17 And then the problem being that that that whatever you do when you snap becomes,
01:15:17 --> 01:15:22 you know, it gets sort of pointed out as the problem rather than whatever the
01:15:22 --> 01:15:25 violence was that made you kind of snap in the first place.
01:15:25 --> 01:15:29 And so Maria had gotten basically a bunch of.
01:15:30 --> 01:15:34 From a male user, unsolicited, you know,
01:15:34 --> 01:15:41 graphic pictures of this man's genitals and posted it on, decided to post it
01:15:41 --> 01:15:45 on Instagram and on X for different reasons.
01:15:45 --> 01:15:50 Some of it was related to safety. She was scared this person was going to find her and hurt her.
01:15:50 --> 01:15:53 And she was like, there was something about wanting to expose this person,
01:15:53 --> 01:15:58 this username and get that out there. And also she was so sick of it.
01:15:58 --> 01:16:03 She was so sick and tired of every time that she tries to make art or that she
01:16:03 --> 01:16:06 does make art or she shares art that somebody,
01:16:06 --> 01:16:11 some guy comes in and, you know, sends her a picture like this or calls her
01:16:11 --> 01:16:15 a slur or tells her that she's not funny and not in that way.
01:16:15 --> 01:16:18 Right obviously in a much more like you know sort of terrible brutal
01:16:18 --> 01:16:20 and graphic way but one of the things that she said to me
01:16:20 --> 01:16:26 that has stuck with me so much in the last year it was that she she says at
01:16:26 --> 01:16:31 one point to me that when we're talking about the antagonists and like kind
01:16:31 --> 01:16:35 of why they do this and that's not the focus of the book at all but she was
01:16:35 --> 01:16:40 saying that you know they want they want They want me to disappear.
01:16:41 --> 01:16:46 They want me to take it upon. They want us to take it upon ourselves to disappear.
01:16:47 --> 01:16:52 And I think that that notion of disappearing is just very much been on my mind.
01:16:52 --> 01:16:54 And I'm sure on other people's minds, you know, whether it's,
01:16:55 --> 01:17:00 you know, somebody who gets deported for writing something in a college newspaper
01:17:00 --> 01:17:05 or, you know, just everything that's going on with ICE right now.
01:17:05 --> 01:17:11 Or people, you know, just not being, not only not being able to speak,
01:17:12 --> 01:17:14 but the consequences for speech, right?
01:17:15 --> 01:17:18 Being that we're going to hide you away.
01:17:20 --> 01:17:23 Families can't even find you, right? There's so many things kind of happening
01:17:23 --> 01:17:29 here. But I think that that idea of not only are you not going to be part of
01:17:29 --> 01:17:32 public or civic discourse, but like you're going to disappear completely.
01:17:32 --> 01:17:39 And I think that's just a very scary and not sort of outsized fear. Right.
01:17:39 --> 01:17:44 Kind of in a moment like this. So I think her that quote, really,
01:17:44 --> 01:17:49 and what she said was just feels very prescient and very true,
01:17:50 --> 01:17:51 I guess, to the to the moment. Yeah.
01:17:52 --> 01:17:56 All right. So I got a couple more questions. In chapter seven of the book,
01:17:56 --> 01:18:01 you delve into the intersection of online harassment, misogyny and white supremacy.
01:18:02 --> 01:18:07 Can you explain how these systems of oppression work together to shape women's
01:18:07 --> 01:18:09 experiences of online violence?
01:18:10 --> 01:18:12 Yeah, you say you want me to elaborate. Okay, yes.
01:18:14 --> 01:18:20 Yeah, I mean, I think it was really, I don't think it was very important in
01:18:20 --> 01:18:26 this project to say really out the gate that we're not just talking about misogyny.
01:18:26 --> 01:18:29 Like, that's just not what we're talking about. And I think that,
01:18:29 --> 01:18:32 you know, so often, and there's been research on this, you know,
01:18:32 --> 01:18:37 particularly around Gamergate, which is now, gosh, you know, over 10 years ago now.
01:18:37 --> 01:18:41 But that was a huge sort of cultural inflection point in our understanding of online abuse.
01:18:41 --> 01:18:48 And a lot of the mainstream coverage of that moment was very much around misogyny.
01:18:48 --> 01:18:53 And so when a lot of people were getting their first kind of real education
01:18:53 --> 01:18:58 on how toxic the internet is for women, it was very much a conversation about
01:18:58 --> 01:19:02 misogyny. And I think also about certain kinds of perpetration, right?
01:19:02 --> 01:19:08 So men, certain kinds of men coming for, you know, in that case with Gamergate,
01:19:08 --> 01:19:13 it was mostly the victims that were most visible were white women.
01:19:13 --> 01:19:16 And so I think there's been a real, I
01:19:16 --> 01:19:22 mean, there has been a real sort of misunderstanding around what this is.
01:19:22 --> 01:19:26 And obviously now online abuse is a problem that sort of spans the ideological
01:19:26 --> 01:19:28 and political spectrum, right?
01:19:28 --> 01:19:31 But my book is very concerned with online abuse that,
01:19:32 --> 01:19:37 that perpetuates hierarchies, right? Hierarchies of power, online abuse, it ranks human life.
01:19:38 --> 01:19:46 And so it was very important for me out the gate to try to offer,
01:19:46 --> 01:19:50 I guess, a corrective to that idea, right?
01:19:50 --> 01:19:54 Because again, if we think about some of the people who were,
01:19:54 --> 01:19:59 you know, I mean, now, you know, we see that Black women are disproportionately
01:19:59 --> 01:20:01 targeted for online abuse.
01:20:01 --> 01:20:04 I mean, there's stats all over the book, like about, you know,
01:20:04 --> 01:20:07 black female politicians, journalists experiencing, you know,
01:20:07 --> 01:20:10 much higher rates of harassment than their white female counterparts.
01:20:10 --> 01:20:15 If we think about some of the people who were, I guess, the quote unquote canaries
01:20:15 --> 01:20:17 in the coal miner talking about this issue.
01:20:18 --> 01:20:22 You know, long before it had entered, you know, sort of mainstream consciousness,
01:20:22 --> 01:20:26 we're talking again about many black women who were calling out the way that
01:20:26 --> 01:20:32 these platforms can be weaponized to spread disinformation and misinformation, which has had huge,
01:20:33 --> 01:20:38 huge, huge consequences for the political process, for the democratic, you know,
01:20:38 --> 01:20:41 for the experiment, the democratic experiment, right?
01:20:41 --> 01:20:47 Like, so I wanted to very early on say, you know, yes, it's a problem of misogyny,
01:20:48 --> 01:20:56 but this is also an issue of white supremacy and all of the systems with which that intertwines,
01:20:57 --> 01:21:01 which is why I wrote a book about women, because that was the experience that
01:21:01 --> 01:21:04 I could speak to, again, with the most intimacy and authority.
01:21:04 --> 01:21:08 But this is a problem that, again, is disproportionately affecting certain groups
01:21:08 --> 01:21:13 of people online, marginalized people online, women, people of color,
01:21:13 --> 01:21:15 you know, queer folks, trans folks, right?
01:21:15 --> 01:21:22 And so actually chapter one profiles a young black woman who had an experience
01:21:22 --> 01:21:26 of online abuse while she was studying dance at a predominantly white liberal
01:21:26 --> 01:21:29 arts college in the Northeast.
01:21:29 --> 01:21:33 And I think it was really important to use her experience to show that,
01:21:33 --> 01:21:35 you know, the things that people were saying to her.
01:21:36 --> 01:21:41 Yes, of course they were sexist, but they were calling her the N-word.
01:21:43 --> 01:21:49 And the reason she was being called that was because she had experienced what
01:21:49 --> 01:21:54 she perceived to be racism in her dance program,
01:21:54 --> 01:22:00 wrote an op-ed about it for her school newspaper, and then was abused by essentially the student body.
01:22:00 --> 01:22:06 And they were upset that she was a Black woman in a predominantly white space
01:22:06 --> 01:22:11 who was not following the rules for how or the norms of behavior,
01:22:11 --> 01:22:16 right, around how Black people and particularly Black women are supposed to
01:22:16 --> 01:22:21 behave in those spaces in order to be safe,
01:22:21 --> 01:22:25 right, or to be respected or to be able to be allowed in those spaces at all.
01:22:25 --> 01:22:28 And so so yeah so i i think it was it was very
01:22:28 --> 01:22:31 important in this project as a whole but especially just kind
01:22:31 --> 01:22:34 of right out the gate which is why i do profile this young black
01:22:34 --> 01:22:37 woman in chapter one to to sort of stress that yes
01:22:37 --> 01:22:41 this is misogyny but this is so much bigger
01:22:41 --> 01:22:44 and more than that which is why this is
01:22:44 --> 01:22:48 you know this is an issue that doesn't this is why you know you write a book
01:22:48 --> 01:22:53 right not just a story because this is just such a huge issue that that again
01:22:53 --> 01:23:01 sort of intersects with so many systems of oppression yeah so when when people
01:23:01 --> 01:23:02 finish reading this book.
01:23:03 --> 01:23:06 What do you want them to take away from
01:23:06 --> 01:23:09 it yeah I mean I had I actually
01:23:09 --> 01:23:12 read like a I was gonna say I was gonna say one
01:23:12 --> 01:23:14 thing and then I read somebody like a reader had like
01:23:14 --> 01:23:18 written a review on Goodreads that said something positive about
01:23:18 --> 01:23:22 the book but then at the end was kind of like you know this the the solutions
01:23:22 --> 01:23:27 she you know she writes about her like a kind of flimsy like she and i was like
01:23:27 --> 01:23:31 you know let's kind of like i'll take it because the truth is that in many ways
01:23:31 --> 01:23:36 the point of this book and what i wanted people to take away from this was was really.
01:23:37 --> 01:23:45 For them to feel very deeply to to to deepen their understanding of the experience
01:23:45 --> 01:23:48 of the abuse Like that was the primary goal.
01:23:49 --> 01:23:55 And so or or to and to really validate the experience of the abuse for people
01:23:55 --> 01:24:00 who've who've been, you know, who've been harmed in these in these spaces and to see those stories,
01:24:01 --> 01:24:05 you know, sort of part of, you know, a much larger kind of narrative. Right.
01:24:06 --> 01:24:11 But then you feel sort of I think you do feel cynical and frustrated,
01:24:11 --> 01:24:13 you know, at the end of something like that.
01:24:13 --> 01:24:18 And so I think I did feel like a compulsion to be like, OK, here are some things we can do.
01:24:19 --> 01:24:25 And I don't and my book is not a book that delves very deeply into how we can,
01:24:25 --> 01:24:31 you know, sort of break down, improve, reform the systems. There are other books about that.
01:24:31 --> 01:24:38 This book, I hope, will serve as, yeah, I think to really give a language and
01:24:38 --> 01:24:40 a vocabulary to the experience.
01:24:40 --> 01:24:47 And then I think because I don't think you can agitate for demand the reforms,
01:24:47 --> 01:24:53 you know, unless you really feel like there is harm being created in these spaces
01:24:53 --> 01:24:54 that's worth addressing.
01:24:54 --> 01:24:57 And so maybe that's what I hope people will do.
01:24:57 --> 01:25:01 You know, we'll sort of walk away from the book with this idea.
01:25:01 --> 01:25:07 I hope they will walk away with the belief that this is not an acceptable way to live,
01:25:07 --> 01:25:16 that in the long run, we're not going to get to the kind of world society that
01:25:16 --> 01:25:23 we sort of deserve if we allow abuse like this to flourish in these spaces.
01:25:23 --> 01:25:28 And so I guess that would be the hope that people feel who've experienced it
01:25:28 --> 01:25:34 feel seen, that people who haven't experienced it can see more clearly what
01:25:34 --> 01:25:35 is happening in these spaces.
01:25:35 --> 01:25:42 And that ultimately it plants that seed of maybe doubt that these things are
01:25:42 --> 01:25:49 inevitable, that they are immutable, because I don't think that they are. All right.
01:25:50 --> 01:25:52 So Alia Dastagir.
01:25:55 --> 01:25:57 Thank you for coming on.
01:25:58 --> 01:26:03 I really, really enjoyed the discussion, and I can tell that we could go on
01:26:03 --> 01:26:06 for a long time if we were allowed to.
01:26:06 --> 01:26:11 The name of the book, again, is To Those Who Have Confused You to Be a Person.
01:26:11 --> 01:26:17 How can people get the book? How can people reach out to you? All that kind of stuff.
01:26:17 --> 01:26:22 Yes. So I have a website, aliadosteyer.com. You can send me a message there.
01:26:22 --> 01:26:29 Reach out to me there. I recently left X. I feel very, very good about it. So I am on Blue Sky.
01:26:29 --> 01:26:33 But the best way to reach me is my website. The book, you can hopefully buy
01:26:33 --> 01:26:37 anywhere books are sold, but I encourage you to visit your local bookstore,
01:26:37 --> 01:26:39 an indie bookstore, even a library.
01:26:39 --> 01:26:43 And yeah, if people read it and have thoughts about it, I would love to hear
01:26:43 --> 01:26:47 from them all the things that they felt the book did well and all the things,
01:26:48 --> 01:26:49 you know, the complexities that maybe escaped me.
01:26:50 --> 01:26:54 I would love to hear from folks. Well, I told a couple of people that you were
01:26:54 --> 01:26:58 going to be on the podcast, and those people said, oh, yeah,
01:26:59 --> 01:27:00 somebody told me to read that book.
01:27:01 --> 01:27:07 So the word is getting out there, and hopefully this will help continue to get the word out.
01:27:07 --> 01:27:12 But again, I just want to thank you for what you're doing, the work that you've
01:27:12 --> 01:27:19 done in the past dealing with mental illness and suicide prevention has been exemplary.
01:27:20 --> 01:27:24 And, you know, maybe we can, you know, one of the rules is that once you've
01:27:24 --> 01:27:26 been on, you have an open invitation to come back.
01:27:27 --> 01:27:31 Oh, awesome. So maybe, you know, we come back, we might need to delve into that
01:27:31 --> 01:27:36 aspect of your expertise a little bit, but just keep doing what you're doing.
01:27:36 --> 01:27:40 And I'm glad that you took the time out of what you are doing to come on the podcast.
01:27:41 --> 01:27:43 I really, really greatly appreciate that.
01:27:43 --> 01:27:46 Oh, Erik, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor to be here.
01:27:47 --> 01:27:49 All right, guys. And we're going to catch y'all on the other side.
01:27:51 --> 01:28:10 Music.
01:28:10 --> 01:28:18 We are blessed again with another appearance of the internet law firm known as Pearson and Pearson.
01:28:19 --> 01:28:26 Yes, Dr. Tracy and Melba are back, and we're going to talk about some cases
01:28:26 --> 01:28:31 that's going to be coming up in the upcoming Supreme Court docket,
01:28:31 --> 01:28:33 which will start in October.
01:28:34 --> 01:28:38 You know, Dr. Tracy Pearson is a legal, political, and cultural analyst and
01:28:38 --> 01:28:42 strategist who appears weekly on the Popular and Smart and Entertaining radio
01:28:42 --> 01:28:44 program Tell Me Anything with Dr.
01:28:44 --> 01:28:51 John Fuglesang, which airs on Sirius XM Progress 127. And Melba is an attorney
01:28:51 --> 01:28:55 specializing in civil rights and criminal law with an emphasis on policy.
01:28:56 --> 01:29:00 She is the director of prosecution projects at the Gordon Institute for Public
01:29:00 --> 01:29:05 Policy and a co-manager for the Prosecutorial Performance Indicators Project
01:29:05 --> 01:29:10 based in Florida, based at Florida International University.
01:29:10 --> 01:29:14 And she just got some other kind of title distinction.
01:29:14 --> 01:29:18 I'll let her explain it when they come on. But ladies and gentlemen,
01:29:18 --> 01:29:28 it is my distinct honor and privilege to have back on the Internet Law Firm of Pearson and Pearson.
01:29:31 --> 01:29:41 Music.
01:29:38 --> 01:29:41 All right, ladies and gentlemen, you wanted them in their back,
01:29:42 --> 01:29:44 the law firm of Pearson and Pearson.
01:29:44 --> 01:29:48 Melba, how you doing? I'm doing well, Erik. How are you?
01:29:49 --> 01:29:53 Fine. I need you to explain your new title and stuff.
01:29:54 --> 01:30:00 Oh, so I am the chair of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association,
01:30:00 --> 01:30:04 which is the largest voluntary bar association in the United States.
01:30:05 --> 01:30:11 And my section, the criminal justice section, I am basically the leader of 14
01:30:11 --> 01:30:16 attorneys who practice or are somehow connected to the criminal justice space.
01:30:16 --> 01:30:21 Of course, I'm speaking to you in my personal capacity, but this was an amazing
01:30:21 --> 01:30:26 honor, and I'm just thrilled to be able to be in this role, especially at this
01:30:26 --> 01:30:28 very pivotal time in our democracy.
01:30:29 --> 01:30:31 Well, congratulations on that. Dr. Tracy, how you doing?
01:30:32 --> 01:30:37 I'm doing great. I don't have any new titles. I'm still at SiriusXM as an analyst
01:30:37 --> 01:30:41 on Tell Me Everything with John Fuglesang, and we have a lot of everything to
01:30:41 --> 01:30:45 be told because of everything that's going on right now. Yeah.
01:30:45 --> 01:30:49 Yeah. We we were talking, ladies and gentlemen, we were talking off air about Jimmy Kimmel.
01:30:50 --> 01:30:53 And, you know, it's, you know, I'm probably going to say a little something
01:30:53 --> 01:30:55 about that later on in the podcast.
01:30:55 --> 01:31:01 But I got the law firm on because Supreme Court is convening in October.
01:31:02 --> 01:31:08 And I wanted to to talk about a few cases that's going to be on the docket.
01:31:10 --> 01:31:13 And, of course, have people smarter than me talk about it.
01:31:13 --> 01:31:19 So let's get right into it. I'm going to go in the order of which they're going to have the arguments.
01:31:20 --> 01:31:25 Okay. So the first one is going to be the Louisiana electoral districts.
01:31:26 --> 01:31:31 The courts will hear arguments for a second time in a dispute involving a Louisiana
01:31:31 --> 01:31:34 electoral map that raised the number of black-majority U.S.
01:31:35 --> 01:31:39 Congressional districts in the state. The court signaled on August 1st that
01:31:39 --> 01:31:43 it will assess the legality of a key component of the landmark Voting Rights Act,
01:31:44 --> 01:31:48 potentially giving its conservative majority a chance to gut a provision enacted
01:31:48 --> 01:31:53 60 years ago that was intended to prevent racial discrimination in voting.
01:31:54 --> 01:31:59 Justices heard the arguments in the case on March 24th, but on June 27th,
01:31:59 --> 01:32:01 ordered that the matter be argued again.
01:32:02 --> 01:32:06 State officials and civil rights groups have appealed a lower court's ruling
01:32:06 --> 01:32:09 that found the map laying out Louisiana's six U.S.
01:32:09 --> 01:32:14 House representative districts with two black majority districts up from one
01:32:14 --> 01:32:18 previously violated the Constitution's promise of equal protection.
01:32:18 --> 01:32:21 The arguments are scheduled for October 15th.
01:32:21 --> 01:32:25 So this is going to be the first one that's going to generate some news.
01:32:26 --> 01:32:30 So who wants to be the first one to talk about this?
01:32:31 --> 01:32:36 I mean, I can jump in super quick on this because voting rights is definitely
01:32:36 --> 01:32:37 something that's very close to my heart.
01:32:38 --> 01:32:42 I'm very concerned as to what this conservative majority is going to do,
01:32:42 --> 01:32:47 because, first of all, the reason why we have the Voting Rights Act was because
01:32:47 --> 01:32:50 of the fact that people of color, specifically Black people,
01:32:50 --> 01:32:52 were disenfranchised for so many years.
01:32:52 --> 01:32:57 And so when you have a state like Louisiana, which is pretty much a majority
01:32:57 --> 01:33:03 minority type of state where there is, you know, large concentrations of African-Americans,
01:33:04 --> 01:33:08 their vote should be able to count the same way as anyone else's.
01:33:08 --> 01:33:12 But the whole thing about gerrymandering is that you're basically drawing a
01:33:12 --> 01:33:17 map in all weird squiggles because you want to make sure that certain people
01:33:17 --> 01:33:20 are able to preserve power at the expense of others.
01:33:20 --> 01:33:27 So this map was redrawn to protect the incumbents who may or may not be serving
01:33:27 --> 01:33:28 all communities equally.
01:33:28 --> 01:33:35 And so this is very dangerous in terms of people not having a voice and being
01:33:35 --> 01:33:42 able to truly pick who they want to represent them versus having representatives thrust upon them,
01:33:42 --> 01:33:46 which is completely contrary to everything we hold here in democracy.
01:33:47 --> 01:33:51 I couldn't have said that better. I totally, totally agree.
01:33:51 --> 01:33:56 And it is a problematic case because we, frankly, I don't, we don't,
01:33:56 --> 01:34:01 I don't know what this court ever is going to do generally. I mean,
01:34:01 --> 01:34:03 I've seen weird things come out of it.
01:34:04 --> 01:34:08 And it's a, it's a, I hate to say the word weird time because it's not,
01:34:08 --> 01:34:09 that's not an accurate statement.
01:34:09 --> 01:34:16 You know, we see how much the White House is putting pressure on institutions
01:34:16 --> 01:34:22 and private industry in ways that, frankly, in my lifetime, I have never even conceived of.
01:34:22 --> 01:34:29 And it's working to a degree. So it's frightening because, you know, being a lawyer,
01:34:29 --> 01:34:36 being somebody who used to respect the Supreme Court, I really am somewhat perplexed
01:34:36 --> 01:34:38 as to how they're going to handle this.
01:34:39 --> 01:34:43 And that's in relation to another issue that's coming up, which I don't know
01:34:43 --> 01:34:47 if we're going to ever get to on this episode, but because it's going to contradict
01:34:47 --> 01:34:49 things they've done, they've actually done.
01:34:49 --> 01:34:55 But in particular, this situation is an example of the weaponization process,
01:34:55 --> 01:35:01 because the court said, add this extra district, and they appealed,
01:35:01 --> 01:35:06 and they're saying that that violates the Constitution because it's based on race.
01:35:06 --> 01:35:12 And so it's really one of these situations where, you know, they're handing
01:35:12 --> 01:35:17 this conservative court on a platter something that they can crush.
01:35:17 --> 01:35:24 Absolutely. Yeah. And that can't work. That can't stand because we all have
01:35:24 --> 01:35:27 a right to have our vote counted and counted equally.
01:35:27 --> 01:35:34 And when you're doing that sort of gerrymandering to try to disenfranchise people
01:35:34 --> 01:35:38 who are already disenfranchised in so many, many, many ways,
01:35:38 --> 01:35:42 it is unconscionable that the court system would be participants in that.
01:35:42 --> 01:35:48 See, and this is just a political person speaking.
01:35:48 --> 01:35:54 I think the court's going to approve a map with two black congressional districts
01:35:54 --> 01:36:00 because since the voting rights people in Louisiana were not happy with the
01:36:00 --> 01:36:04 map and the Republicans are not happy with the map,
01:36:05 --> 01:36:10 the Supreme Court's going to find out a legal way to piss both of them off and
01:36:10 --> 01:36:12 just approve a map that's got two.
01:36:12 --> 01:36:18 Now, just from the trend I'm watching with this court, if it's a way for them
01:36:18 --> 01:36:21 to come across and say, and see, we're not totally racist.
01:36:22 --> 01:36:24 See, we're not totally insensitive to the Voting Rights Act.
01:36:25 --> 01:36:28 We're we're we're allowing an increase in representation. Right.
01:36:29 --> 01:36:33 Knowing that both sides are not happy. I think they're going to,
01:36:33 --> 01:36:38 you know, I don't know what it was that made them decide they wanted to hear it again.
01:36:38 --> 01:36:46 But that's just I think they're going to be contrary that's the best non-legal term I can use laughing.
01:36:48 --> 01:36:52 I don't know, because one thing has been for sure in these last,
01:36:52 --> 01:36:57 and I still can't believe it's only really been like eight months,
01:36:57 --> 01:37:03 but in the last eight months, the one thing is for sure is that they are retreating
01:37:03 --> 01:37:06 from all the things that we could rely on them for.
01:37:06 --> 01:37:11 So the Supreme Court, the federal courts generally, but the Supreme Court especially,
01:37:12 --> 01:37:17 were always that place of respite for marginalized communities and being like,
01:37:17 --> 01:37:20 listen, this is in violation of the first, the 14th, the 5th,
01:37:20 --> 01:37:22 the 6th, whichever amendment you want to pick.
01:37:22 --> 01:37:27 And usually the Supreme Court will be the ones to give that relief.
01:37:27 --> 01:37:32 Now we're not seeing that. And since they have a lifetime appointment,
01:37:32 --> 01:37:35 to use the colloquialism, who's going to check me, boo?
01:37:35 --> 01:37:45 Right? Like, they literally can execute the Project 2025 plan without any hindrance.
01:37:45 --> 01:37:49 So I feel like this might be the death knell for the Voting Rights Act.
01:37:50 --> 01:37:54 The same way that we've seen it, sorry, but the same way we've seen it in,
01:37:54 --> 01:37:58 you know, Citizens United and some of these other cases where they're gutting
01:37:58 --> 01:38:01 provisions that were put in place ages ago to protect people.
01:38:01 --> 01:38:06 They're gutting all that now. So I'm less hopeful. But Tracy, what do you think?
01:38:06 --> 01:38:10 Yeah, no, I agree. I think one of the things that we think about and I think
01:38:10 --> 01:38:14 that we just do it intuitively as attorneys is we understand a question presented.
01:38:14 --> 01:38:19 And when it goes up to the Supreme Court, there's a question or questions presented
01:38:19 --> 01:38:20 to the court that they have to answer.
01:38:21 --> 01:38:26 And so the type of analysis you're talking about, Erik, is something that the
01:38:26 --> 01:38:28 district court would contrive of.
01:38:28 --> 01:38:32 But the Supreme Court either creates their own question, as we've seen,
01:38:32 --> 01:38:39 or they have, and it's the traditional way of doing it, is that you give a question
01:38:39 --> 01:38:42 presented for them to answer and try to hem it in.
01:38:42 --> 01:38:46 And so the question presented is, did Louisiana's remedial congressional mount,
01:38:46 --> 01:38:50 which created a second majority black district after the old map was struck
01:38:50 --> 01:38:54 down, comply with the Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
01:38:54 --> 01:38:59 or did it cross the line into unconstitutional racial gerrymandering under the
01:38:59 --> 01:39:00 Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment?
01:39:00 --> 01:39:06 So what they have done is they have flipped this and they have weaponized the
01:39:06 --> 01:39:12 Voting Rights Act and the concept of racial gerrymandering as if to protect white votes,
01:39:12 --> 01:39:16 not what was intended under the Voting Rights Act.
01:39:16 --> 01:39:22 Yeah, yeah, the old switcheroo. Just a fun fact before we go to the next one.
01:39:22 --> 01:39:29 The first person that was charged with racial bias under the Voting Rights Act
01:39:29 --> 01:39:32 was a black man in Mississippi. Just so y'all understand.
01:39:32 --> 01:39:38 There you go. All right. So the next case is considered a death row inmate.
01:39:39 --> 01:39:44 The court on June 6th decided to hear an appeal by Alabama officials of a judicial
01:39:44 --> 01:39:50 decision that a man convicted of a 1997 murder is intellectually disabled.
01:39:50 --> 01:39:55 A finding that spared him from the death penalty as they press ahead with the
01:39:55 --> 01:39:57 Republican governed state's bid to execute him.
01:39:57 --> 01:40:03 A lower court ruled that Joseph Clifton Smith is intellectually disabled based
01:40:03 --> 01:40:07 on its analysis of his IQ test scores and expert testimony.
01:40:08 --> 01:40:15 Under a 2002 Supreme Court president, executing an intellectually disabled person
01:40:15 --> 01:40:19 violates the Constitution's 8th Amendment bar on cruel and unusual punishment.
01:40:19 --> 01:40:24 The arguments are scheduled for November 4th, Election Day. Okay.
01:40:27 --> 01:40:29 Dr. Tracy, you want to jump on that one first?
01:40:29 --> 01:40:37 Oh, gosh. Yeah. So the 2002 decision was sort of the basis, the base.
01:40:37 --> 01:40:40 And then there were some refinements that happened along the way.
01:40:41 --> 01:40:48 And there was a 2014 case that dealt with Florida striking down rigid IQ tests.
01:40:48 --> 01:40:53 There was other cases that said that Texas couldn't rely on outdated stereotypes
01:40:53 --> 01:41:04 or any layperson sort of opinions or concepts about individuals who may fit into this category.
01:41:05 --> 01:41:08 And so there was a lot of cases that came after Atkins.
01:41:08 --> 01:41:14 But where this is, the IQ test matters, and it has what is called an error rate.
01:41:14 --> 01:41:20 And it is designed, these tests are not, tests are not, you know, cut and dry.
01:41:20 --> 01:41:24 They have an error rate to them because of how they are given,
01:41:25 --> 01:41:28 how they are scored, et cetera, and so on.
01:41:28 --> 01:41:31 I mean, I could talk for hours on this. I have a doctorate in education.
01:41:31 --> 01:41:36 But the crux of it is that it has a plus or minus five-point error rate.
01:41:36 --> 01:41:45 And the issue here is, you know, is this fuzz factor that you might consider,
01:41:45 --> 01:41:46 sort of think of it as a fuzz factor.
01:41:47 --> 01:41:51 Is that in accordance with their law?
01:41:52 --> 01:41:56 Is it considered to be, you know, cruel and unusual punishment?
01:41:56 --> 01:42:01 And can you stop the state from doing what it wants to do under their own laws,
01:42:01 --> 01:42:02 under these circumstances?
01:42:03 --> 01:42:10 And so, you know, you've got somebody's life on the line. All right. I occupy this space.
01:42:11 --> 01:42:14 Somebody's life is on the line. I absolutely am opposed to the death penalty,
01:42:15 --> 01:42:18 I think it's absolutely aberrant and deplorable.
01:42:19 --> 01:42:27 That aside, when you have someone's life on the line, are we really going to fight about this issue?
01:42:28 --> 01:42:31 Are we really going to fight about this fuzz factor? Are we really going to
01:42:31 --> 01:42:33 fight about these error rates, which are real?
01:42:33 --> 01:42:40 You've got somebody who may, in fact, he has been adjudged as not having basically
01:42:40 --> 01:42:47 the cognitive of reasoning skills that would be necessary to make that punishment,
01:42:47 --> 01:42:51 which is the severest punishment,
01:42:51 --> 01:42:53 appropriate under the circumstances.
01:42:54 --> 01:43:03 And these cases make me absolutely insane because it's a human being.
01:43:03 --> 01:43:06 I mean, I never understand the concept of, you know,
01:43:06 --> 01:43:09 let's say you kill somebody so we'll kill you oh what
01:43:09 --> 01:43:13 the heck is wrong with people like i just don't i don't i just don't sit in
01:43:13 --> 01:43:19 that space and so but at the core of it is is is you know what kind of factors
01:43:19 --> 01:43:28 can they take into consideration and you know as if people are robots as if tests are perfect.
01:43:30 --> 01:43:36 And just to piggyback on that, I mean, here's the margin of error we're talking about.
01:43:36 --> 01:43:40 So the person in this case scored 72.
01:43:41 --> 01:43:46 The cutoff is 70 in the state of Alabama to be deemed to be intellectually disabled.
01:43:46 --> 01:43:51 So the plaintiff here, sorry, the person involved here, three,
01:43:52 --> 01:43:54 two, one, the person involved here scored 72.
01:43:55 --> 01:44:01 And the judge found that with the margin of error, it could be considered a 69.
01:44:01 --> 01:44:06 But even with that being said, he took into consideration the totality of this
01:44:06 --> 01:44:10 person's circumstances of, you know, their upbringing of their lack of education
01:44:10 --> 01:44:15 of, you know, exposure to abuse, things like that. And so he's like, you know what?
01:44:15 --> 01:44:18 I'm going to err on the side of this person being intellectually disabled.
01:44:19 --> 01:44:22 And as such, this person should not be put to death.
01:44:22 --> 01:44:27 But it's so interesting to see this bloodlust that you're so like,
01:44:27 --> 01:44:30 oh, my gosh, like we just got to fry everybody.
01:44:30 --> 01:44:36 Right. Like that seems to be the mindset versus, OK, like benefit of the doubt.
01:44:38 --> 01:44:42 Let's deem this person intellectually disabled because the alternative is the
01:44:42 --> 01:44:43 person spending their life in prison.
01:44:44 --> 01:44:48 So it's not like the question is, do we execute them or do they get out, right?
01:44:49 --> 01:44:52 The question is, do they spend life in prison or are they executed?
01:44:52 --> 01:44:56 Either way, they're not going to be part of the community.
01:44:56 --> 01:45:01 There's a worry about recidivism or are other people going to be harmed?
01:45:01 --> 01:45:05 That's not an issue other than in the prison context. And there's protocols
01:45:05 --> 01:45:07 for dealing with that as well.
01:45:07 --> 01:45:11 So if your whole thing is about making sure the community is safe,
01:45:11 --> 01:45:13 well, the community is safe.
01:45:13 --> 01:45:18 So is executing this person who in all likelihood is intellectually disabled,
01:45:18 --> 01:45:23 who is that truly serving other than a governmental bloodlust?
01:45:23 --> 01:45:27 Well, you know, the truth of the matter is, is that, you know,
01:45:27 --> 01:45:31 and, you know, this is not a big secret for anybody that knew my political career.
01:45:31 --> 01:45:35 I introduced bills to eliminate the death penalty in the state of Mississippi.
01:45:36 --> 01:45:38 And the argument was that, one.
01:45:39 --> 01:45:45 It's actually more cost-effective to have that person spend the rest of the
01:45:45 --> 01:45:49 time in jail than it is to go through all these different appeals and all that
01:45:49 --> 01:45:51 stuff in a short period of time.
01:45:51 --> 01:45:56 The money that's spent on the litigation piece actually costs more than just
01:45:56 --> 01:46:02 giving this person, you know, three meals and a cot for the rest of their life.
01:46:02 --> 01:46:06 And then the other piece is it's not a deterrent.
01:46:06 --> 01:46:10 If it was a true deterrent, then people would have stopped murdering folks a
01:46:10 --> 01:46:14 long time ago. It is not a deterrent. So that's a, that's a fallacy.
01:46:14 --> 01:46:22 And so, you know, but to me, it's just, the first thing I think about when we
01:46:22 --> 01:46:24 have cases like this is of mice and men.
01:46:24 --> 01:46:27 And I don't know if y'all remember that book or not, but you know,
01:46:27 --> 01:46:31 it was like, it was pretty clear that the, and I forget the character's name
01:46:31 --> 01:46:36 now that's been that long ago, but you know, The kid, the big kid,
01:46:36 --> 01:46:39 didn't know what he was doing. All he wanted to do was play with his rabbit.
01:46:40 --> 01:46:42 You know what I'm saying? And he ended up killing a human being.
01:46:42 --> 01:46:45 And it's like, so we want to execute that person?
01:46:45 --> 01:46:50 I mean, you know, that's, like you said, I don't understand the bloodlust.
01:46:50 --> 01:46:53 I don't understand the desire.
01:46:53 --> 01:46:55 But anyway, that's my soapbox. Go ahead.
01:46:56 --> 01:47:03 Well, and, you know, not to, well, to delve into the politics behind it is I sit here right now.
01:47:03 --> 01:47:09 And I think, you know, I, the level of contradiction that is going on right
01:47:09 --> 01:47:13 now, I, I struggle to process it.
01:47:13 --> 01:47:18 I'm, you know, you've, you're trying to execute somebody down in Alabama. We both, we all agree.
01:47:18 --> 01:47:23 We all agree more expensive death penalty, less expensive life in prison.
01:47:24 --> 01:47:26 And, and people can't wrap their heads around that sometimes.
01:47:27 --> 01:47:31 And, and so, but, and you all want to save money and you're all about smaller
01:47:31 --> 01:47:36 government, you're all about doing things for cheap and cutting services from
01:47:36 --> 01:47:38 people so that you can save money.
01:47:38 --> 01:47:41 I don't know, are you giving my tax money back? But that aside.
01:47:43 --> 01:47:45 You're going to spend more money,
01:47:46 --> 01:47:50 It's not going to provide any peace to the family that suffered the loss.
01:47:51 --> 01:47:53 There is no closure when you lose a family member.
01:47:54 --> 01:47:58 And, you know, oftentimes these folks are like, yeah, you know, I just want this to stop.
01:47:59 --> 01:48:03 Sometimes they're not. Sometimes they are. In fact, you know, they should try.
01:48:04 --> 01:48:07 But it never brings the family peace.
01:48:07 --> 01:48:12 It destroys another family or other family members on the other side.
01:48:13 --> 01:48:17 And, you know, in some of these places, they go pick, I think it's in Texas,
01:48:17 --> 01:48:19 they go pick up somebody off the, you know, who's willing to volunteer to go
01:48:19 --> 01:48:23 do the execution, you know, to press the button or whatever it is that they
01:48:23 --> 01:48:26 have to do behind the curtain.
01:48:26 --> 01:48:30 And, you know, they pay them like 50 bucks or something. I mean, it's historically,
01:48:31 --> 01:48:35 it's just a, we used a certain word earlier, but it's a vile,
01:48:35 --> 01:48:42 It's a vile process that is so contradictory to what these people say.
01:48:42 --> 01:48:47 You know, Rachel Maddow says, watch what they do, not what they say. And it is really that.
01:48:47 --> 01:48:51 It is, you're spending all of this money to kill somebody. Are you okay?
01:48:52 --> 01:48:58 Like, what is wrong with you? And so that's where I am from just trying to make
01:48:58 --> 01:49:00 sense of it. Because I know folks out there are trying to make sense of things right now.
01:49:00 --> 01:49:04 They really are just reeling. We are reeling as a nation, as individuals,
01:49:05 --> 01:49:06 trying to make sense of everything that's happening.
01:49:07 --> 01:49:12 And it's happening federally, and it's happening locally in your states.
01:49:12 --> 01:49:14 And this is an example of that.
01:49:15 --> 01:49:19 All right. So elections have consequences. Yeah, that's exactly right.
01:49:19 --> 01:49:24 So let's I want to say that this is I was going to go to that one,
01:49:24 --> 01:49:26 but I'm going to go to the tariffs now. OK.
01:49:27 --> 01:49:32 All right. So the court on September 9th agreed to decide the legality of Trump's
01:49:32 --> 01:49:34 sweeping global tariffs, setting
01:49:34 --> 01:49:39 up a major test of one of his boldest assertions of executive power.
01:49:39 --> 01:49:42 This has been central to his economic and trade agenda.
01:49:43 --> 01:49:47 It took up the Justice Department's appeal of a lower court's ruling that Trump
01:49:47 --> 01:49:52 overstepped his authority in imposing most of his tariffs under a federal law meant for emergencies.
01:49:53 --> 01:49:58 The case implicates trillions of dollars in customs duties over the next decade. The U.S.
01:49:58 --> 01:50:03 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington ruled that Trump overreached
01:50:03 --> 01:50:10 and invoking a 1977 law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs.
01:50:10 --> 01:50:16 That ruling came in challenges by five small businesses in 12 U.S. states.
01:50:16 --> 01:50:21 The arguments also will include a separate challenge brought by a toy company.
01:50:21 --> 01:50:25 And there's no set date for that. They just said the first week in November for those arguments.
01:50:26 --> 01:50:31 Who wants to start on that one? I'd be happy to rant about that for a minute.
01:50:33 --> 01:50:38 Okay. I actually drew a little drawing. It was probably out on Blue Sky of like,
01:50:38 --> 01:50:41 if somebody could just put this in front of his face, this might help.
01:50:41 --> 01:50:42 And it was like stick figures.
01:50:42 --> 01:50:46 And it's, we pay the tariffs. Okay. We pay the tariffs.
01:50:46 --> 01:50:51 And so the prices go up. So let's just put that aside. But so basically it comes
01:50:51 --> 01:51:00 down to whether whether Congress has has delegated their authority to tax because tariffs are a tax,
01:51:00 --> 01:51:04 whether Congress has delegated their authority to tax to the president through
01:51:04 --> 01:51:08 this particular statute, which is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
01:51:08 --> 01:51:13 And the courts have said, no, no, that that that hasn't happened.
01:51:13 --> 01:51:18 And I want to call and raise attention to, there were some cases last term about,
01:51:18 --> 01:51:22 I think it was the Environmental Protection Agency, but you can correct me if I'm wrong,
01:51:22 --> 01:51:27 about how they were very, very specific in this particular statute that Congress
01:51:27 --> 01:51:29 had not delegated its authority to do certain things.
01:51:29 --> 01:51:33 It had to do with rulemaking. And so in this situation,
01:51:34 --> 01:51:38 the real issue is, has Congress, not in practical terms, okay,
01:51:38 --> 01:51:40 not like, you know, I don't know, the Republicans don't care,
01:51:40 --> 01:51:48 but in actual terms, have they delegated their actual constitutional authority to tax?
01:51:48 --> 01:51:52 Because there's an issue having to do with major questions.
01:51:52 --> 01:51:56 And there's this major question concept out there, which is that when it's a
01:51:56 --> 01:52:03 major question, is the justification for the behavior,
01:52:04 --> 01:52:15 so the justification for these tariffs, so ambiguous and vague that it doesn't over...
01:52:15 --> 01:52:23 It doesn't exceed or stop the authority that exists in other areas of law.
01:52:23 --> 01:52:31 So it doesn't overcome the statutory requirements and details in that statute.
01:52:31 --> 01:52:33 And so that's what this court is going to have to decide.
01:52:34 --> 01:52:40 And I think that, I mean, it's pretty darn clear that Congress is the purse.
01:52:40 --> 01:52:42 I mean, at least that's what I learned in elementary school.
01:52:42 --> 01:52:48 Maybe it's changed. and that he can't just willy-nilly write these stupid...
01:52:48 --> 01:52:52 I'm trying not to curse here. I can curse on SiriusXM really fiercely...
01:52:53 --> 01:52:58 They can write these really silly, stupid, guppy-ish sort of executive orders
01:52:58 --> 01:53:07 that are not the kind of law that is enduring and effective and just change
01:53:07 --> 01:53:09 whole swaths of how we operate.
01:53:09 --> 01:53:13 You can't modify the Constitution with your pen, Mr. President.
01:53:14 --> 01:53:19 It takes a whole lot of effort to do that. And so his whole effort of being
01:53:19 --> 01:53:25 a, quote, strong man who is very weak with these tariffs and imposing his will
01:53:25 --> 01:53:27 on other people and other nations,
01:53:27 --> 01:53:29 you've got some guardrails.
01:53:29 --> 01:53:33 And the Supreme Court's going to have to decide whether they've got they've
01:53:33 --> 01:53:37 got the cojones to to say, no, Mr. President, you can't do that.
01:53:37 --> 01:53:42 And the sad part is they should be able to because, again, it's a lifetime appointment.
01:53:42 --> 01:53:47 And that's why the justices on the Supreme Court have a lifetime appointment
01:53:47 --> 01:53:50 to insulate them from politics, from agendas, from administrations.
01:53:51 --> 01:53:54 So they need to use that power wisely and accordingly.
01:53:55 --> 01:53:59 Let's see what happens. But my thing is here, what's the emergency?
01:53:59 --> 01:54:03 Because this is under the Emergency Powers Act. What's the emergency?
01:54:03 --> 01:54:07 There was no, we weren't at war. We weren't in the middle of a famine.
01:54:08 --> 01:54:11 There wasn't pestilence. Like we were going through revelations,
01:54:11 --> 01:54:15 like, you know, like locusts.
01:54:15 --> 01:54:19 You know, so there was no. There's some that work in the White House, but no.
01:54:21 --> 01:54:27 But what emergency justifies putting in place 50 percent tariffs,
01:54:27 --> 01:54:30 25 percent tariffs, starting trade wars?
01:54:30 --> 01:54:35 Like, I understand the political. OK, maybe, you know, you want to leverage
01:54:35 --> 01:54:38 something so you can get better, you know, rates or whatever.
01:54:38 --> 01:54:41 OK, fine. I get that as a general premise.
01:54:41 --> 01:54:47 But an emergency power means like there's literally a problem and it's only
01:54:47 --> 01:54:49 for a short amount of time.
01:54:49 --> 01:54:52 So once the emergency passes, then
01:54:52 --> 01:54:56 the power goes back to whoever it's designated, in this case, Congress.
01:54:56 --> 01:55:00 So in my opinion, there was never an emergency. But even if you said there was
01:55:00 --> 01:55:04 an emergency, eight months later, it's not still an emergency. Right. Or whatever.
01:55:04 --> 01:55:07 Three months, four months later. Right. It's not still there's no emergency
01:55:07 --> 01:55:10 that's pending that would have required that. So there's that.
01:55:10 --> 01:55:15 And then secondly, we just have to look at the whole separation of powers.
01:55:15 --> 01:55:19 You've got the executive, you've got the legislative and you've got the judiciary.
01:55:20 --> 01:55:25 Right. And three very separate branches of power who operate as checks and balances on each other.
01:55:25 --> 01:55:30 And if you have a situation where the president is overreaching and putting
01:55:30 --> 01:55:37 his hands into that of the legislative branch or that of the judiciary branch, well,
01:55:37 --> 01:55:42 that negates that whole concept of checks and balances. So, again.
01:55:43 --> 01:55:47 Are we a country with separation of powers as set forth by the Constitution
01:55:47 --> 01:55:54 and, you know, 250 years of precedent, or are we about to abandon that and become
01:55:54 --> 01:55:55 a whole different country altogether?
01:55:55 --> 01:56:02 And on top of that, you know, this is why I love talking about the U.S.
01:56:02 --> 01:56:04 Supreme Court and these issues.
01:56:04 --> 01:56:07 But simultaneously, I'm a trial lawyer at heart.
01:56:07 --> 01:56:11 And so trial lawyers are, you know, it's sort of jungle rules out here.
01:56:11 --> 01:56:14 We can make all sorts of arguments. And one of the things that just keeps ringing
01:56:14 --> 01:56:18 in my head like a red blinking light is, dude, you made agreements with many
01:56:18 --> 01:56:21 of these people in your last term. What are you doing?
01:56:22 --> 01:56:26 Like you made these agreements and now you're just like, oh,
01:56:26 --> 01:56:27 no, now this is terrible.
01:56:27 --> 01:56:31 And it's like, well, OK, then you're terrible. Great. We both agree on that.
01:56:31 --> 01:56:36 But this is just outrageous that, I mean, the prices have gone up so massively.
01:56:36 --> 01:56:41 And in fact, I bought something the other day and the invoice accounted for
01:56:41 --> 01:56:44 the tariff. It put a line in for the tariff.
01:56:44 --> 01:56:54 If every freaking company out there right now changed their pricing signs,
01:56:54 --> 01:56:55 say in the grocery store.
01:56:55 --> 01:56:58 Okay, so the price of your cereal is X.
01:56:58 --> 01:57:02 The tariff is this. And this is what you're actually paying for it.
01:57:03 --> 01:57:05 Oh, we would see a response.
01:57:05 --> 01:57:09 Well, Amazon tried to do that. And the president called him,
01:57:09 --> 01:57:12 I talked to my good buddy, Jeff Bezos.
01:57:12 --> 01:57:16 And, you know, we're not going to do that. That was just, and then Jeff Bezos
01:57:16 --> 01:57:18 comes out. Oh, that's just something was an internal discussion.
01:57:18 --> 01:57:25 It really got, everybody gets on their back and wiggles. They're like, come scratch my belly.
01:57:26 --> 01:57:32 And they just capitulate. And again, it's sad because it would have really broken
01:57:32 --> 01:57:35 out and hit home with people.
01:57:35 --> 01:57:39 How much more they're spending, because maybe you don't remember how much eggs
01:57:39 --> 01:57:42 were when you went to the grocery two weeks ago, right? And you don't really
01:57:42 --> 01:57:44 have that frame of reference.
01:57:44 --> 01:57:46 But you're like, dang, everything just kind of feels higher.
01:57:47 --> 01:57:52 But when you have that line item, where it's like these flip-flops are $10,
01:57:53 --> 01:58:00 and because they're coming from China, $5 for the tariff, so now your flip-flops are now $15,
01:58:00 --> 01:58:05 now people understand that this wasn't just some political talking point,
01:58:05 --> 01:58:12 this has real impact in your life and nobody else is paying the tariff except for you, us, all of us.
01:58:13 --> 01:58:16 If the Supreme Court allows this to happen...
01:58:16 --> 01:58:22 What the retailers are going to do is they're going to have these sales.
01:58:23 --> 01:58:26 They may even try to say, you know, a line item or whatever,
01:58:26 --> 01:58:30 but they're going to have a sale say, oh, you know, we're going to have a tariff,
01:58:30 --> 01:58:33 you know, tariff, tariff discount.
01:58:33 --> 01:58:37 If you sign up for this email or whatever, then they'll just I mean,
01:58:37 --> 01:58:38 they'll just it's just a game.
01:58:39 --> 01:58:43 And then the whole deal with with the manipulation of these tariffs,
01:58:43 --> 01:58:46 he's trying to he's trying to make money.
01:58:46 --> 01:58:50 That's all this is for him is a grift in the stock market. You just watch how
01:58:50 --> 01:58:54 the stock market reacts to how he's pushing tariffs and pulling them back.
01:58:54 --> 01:58:59 It's all manipulation to him. The only emergency is he's still broke in his
01:58:59 --> 01:59:01 mind and he's trying to get more money.
01:59:01 --> 01:59:07 That's the only emergency I see. But again, let's move on because I want to get to this one.
01:59:08 --> 01:59:12 And this particular case, it's fun for me.
01:59:12 --> 01:59:16 It's a serious case, but it's fun for me because it deals with religion. Right.
01:59:17 --> 01:59:22 And and and, you know, it just as somebody that has worked in the correctional
01:59:22 --> 01:59:25 system, it was all is always this.
01:59:25 --> 01:59:28 Oh, really? So we got to do this. Got to do that. So this case,
01:59:28 --> 01:59:34 the justices on June 23rd took up a Rastafarian man's bid to sue state prison
01:59:34 --> 01:59:39 officials in Louisiana after guards held him down and shaved him bald in violation
01:59:39 --> 01:59:41 of his religious beliefs.
01:59:42 --> 01:59:46 Damon Landor, whose religion requires him to let his hair grow,
01:59:46 --> 01:59:50 appealed a lower court's decision to throw out his lawsuit brought under a U.S.
01:59:50 --> 01:59:54 Law that protects religious infringement by state and local governments.
01:59:55 --> 01:59:59 The lower court found that this law did not permit Landor to sue individual
01:59:59 --> 02:00:01 officials for monetary damages.
02:00:02 --> 02:00:07 The law at issue protects the religious rights of people confined to institutions
02:00:07 --> 02:00:08 such as prisons and jails.
02:00:09 --> 02:00:12 And the arguments are scheduled for November the 10th.
02:00:12 --> 02:00:16 So, Melba, you want to take the lead on this one? Oh, you already know.
02:00:17 --> 02:00:22 Because while I don't identify as a Rasta, I do wear locks.
02:00:22 --> 02:00:28 And, you know, there's a lot from the Rastafarian culture that resonates with me.
02:00:28 --> 02:00:31 So and then, of course, as someone who's worked for the, you know,
02:00:31 --> 02:00:38 American Civil Liberties Union, like this is like because this is textbook First Amendment.
02:00:39 --> 02:00:43 The freedom of religion, and that the government shall make no law abridging
02:00:43 --> 02:00:47 the freedom to practice your religion.
02:00:47 --> 02:00:50 And so, you know, there's no safety issue here.
02:00:51 --> 02:00:55 You know, the gentleman involved in this case had, this was his third correctional
02:00:55 --> 02:00:57 facility where this happened to him.
02:00:57 --> 02:01:01 The first two, he actually had a copy of the ruling in his hand being like,
02:01:02 --> 02:01:03 hey, this is part of my religion.
02:01:04 --> 02:01:07 Here's the law around that. And the first two were like, cool, I do your thing.
02:01:07 --> 02:01:11 He literally had three weeks left on his sentence and
02:01:11 --> 02:01:14 he goes to this third facility and that's where he's degraded
02:01:14 --> 02:01:18 because that's what it is it's degraded he was violated he was physically violated
02:01:18 --> 02:01:23 i can't even imagine it's almost like biblical when you're thinking you know
02:01:23 --> 02:01:29 just kind of just being held down and being violated in that way and just like
02:01:29 --> 02:01:32 you know your your crown has been stripped from you.
02:01:32 --> 02:01:36 And that's literally what it is from that context.
02:01:36 --> 02:01:40 So I just, you know, I'm heartbroken for him, number one.
02:01:40 --> 02:01:45 And, you know, the fact of the matter is, the same way we have these battles
02:01:45 --> 02:01:49 over making sure people who are of the Muslim or Jewish faith,
02:01:49 --> 02:01:52 you know, get kosher meals or halal meals while in prison,
02:01:53 --> 02:01:56 you know, not trying to give pork to somebody who,
02:01:56 --> 02:01:59 you know, again, that's against their religion, but the guards are doing it
02:01:59 --> 02:02:00 because it's entertainment for them, right?
02:02:01 --> 02:02:06 It's about making sure that, number one, people's rights are still preserved
02:02:06 --> 02:02:08 in the correctional system.
02:02:08 --> 02:02:14 But number two, again, what does the First Amendment look like in 2025?
02:02:14 --> 02:02:20 Because we're already seeing attacks on freedom of speech and not ending well, right?
02:02:20 --> 02:02:25 So if we're crossing off freedom of speech, no, we don't need that anymore.
02:02:26 --> 02:02:28 Freedom of the press? Oh, we don't need that anymore.
02:02:29 --> 02:02:31 Now we're going to attack freedom of religion. So basically,
02:02:31 --> 02:02:34 we're just going to rip up the First Amendment. Better yet, just rip up the whole Constitution.
02:02:35 --> 02:02:39 Because if you can't get the first one right, if you can't get the rights under
02:02:39 --> 02:02:45 the First Amendment right, the rest of the Constitution is going to fall away
02:02:45 --> 02:02:48 the same way. So that's where my mind goes to.
02:02:48 --> 02:02:53 And again, my heart is just broken for him because to me, it's the same level
02:02:53 --> 02:02:58 of degradation than if you took a Muslim woman who wore a head covering and
02:02:58 --> 02:03:00 ripped it off in front of a group of men.
02:03:00 --> 02:03:04 It's the same level of degradation where you're just like, you know,
02:03:04 --> 02:03:10 basically in your mind and naked and just your sense of security,
02:03:10 --> 02:03:15 your sense of identity has been ripped from you in the most violent way possible. Yeah.
02:03:15 --> 02:03:20 And, you know, Dr. Tracy, before you respond to that, let me just say,
02:03:20 --> 02:03:25 and this is maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it seems like the issue was not
02:03:25 --> 02:03:30 that the fact that his rights were violated is the issue.
02:03:30 --> 02:03:36 It's the fact that they don't want him to be able to go after the guards who cut his hair off.
02:03:36 --> 02:03:39 But to me the two are agreed but
02:03:39 --> 02:03:42 to me the two are still interrelated because the slippery
02:03:42 --> 02:03:45 slope is as follows if you're like well you can't
02:03:45 --> 02:03:49 get any kind of restitution or
02:03:49 --> 02:03:55 any kind of closure for your religious rights being violated then that empowers
02:03:55 --> 02:03:59 bad actors to keep doing this over and over again because there's no accountability
02:03:59 --> 02:04:06 and then that in turn abridges people's rights to be able to practice their religion freely.
02:04:06 --> 02:04:12 So to me at all, even though the surface issue is about who they can sue,
02:04:12 --> 02:04:14 the underlying issue, no matter
02:04:14 --> 02:04:17 how you cut it, is what First Amendment is going to look like in America.
02:04:18 --> 02:04:24 I, yes. I mean, any, it's a religious case and it's a First Amendment case.
02:04:24 --> 02:04:28 Absolutely. But anybody who is listening to this podcast, I want you to imagine
02:04:28 --> 02:04:30 somebody shaving your head against your will.
02:04:30 --> 02:04:34 Just sit there and imagine what that might feel like and
02:04:34 --> 02:04:37 and and how what action you might want to take and especially if you didn't
02:04:37 --> 02:04:42 have any any power agency in the situation like you know you can't fight back
02:04:42 --> 02:04:48 you can't hit them you can't you know you can't get out of the building it is
02:04:48 --> 02:04:51 it is it just sit there with that feeling for a second.
02:04:52 --> 02:04:56 And so, yes, the issue here is whether, in this case,
02:04:56 --> 02:05:04 is whether this plaintiff can obtain money damages against the individual people
02:05:04 --> 02:05:08 who were employees of the government who did this.
02:05:08 --> 02:05:14 And it goes to a law that exists, which is the Religious Land Use and Institutional Persons Act of 2000.
02:05:15 --> 02:05:20 And what Congress said in that law is that, no, no, there are no money damages
02:05:20 --> 02:05:22 available. And it has to do with
02:05:22 --> 02:05:27 whether a government is able to receive federal money. You must do this.
02:05:28 --> 02:05:31 In other words, respect religion, let's say. And if you don't,
02:05:31 --> 02:05:34 then you can't have federal funds to go help, let's say, build your prisons.
02:05:36 --> 02:05:40 And so that's what this case at its core in front of the court at the issue
02:05:40 --> 02:05:42 presented is dealing with.
02:05:43 --> 02:05:46 And I want people to think about this from the perspective of,
02:05:46 --> 02:05:51 look, if you're employed, if you're employed for a company, that company indemnifies you.
02:05:52 --> 02:05:56 In California, there's actually a statute that says you are indemnified for
02:05:56 --> 02:05:59 any actions by your employer.
02:05:59 --> 02:06:04 So if somebody sues you, the company has to indemnify you.
02:06:04 --> 02:06:09 And in this situation, when it comes to these circumstances,
02:06:10 --> 02:06:15 Congress said, we're not paying money damages to people who have this issue.
02:06:15 --> 02:06:21 This is about us trying to enforce religious freedoms, okay, religious liberties.
02:06:21 --> 02:06:26 And you know, they didn't mean this religious liberty. And so I think that one
02:06:26 --> 02:06:30 of the things that I would love to see, and this is sort of a side note,
02:06:30 --> 02:06:33 is that I would love whoever's going to be the next president,
02:06:33 --> 02:06:36 besides restoring all of the, you know,
02:06:37 --> 02:06:40 norms, I would love for somebody, I don't know why this hasn't happened,
02:06:40 --> 02:06:46 and maybe you can help with this with the ABA, is that I would love to see somebody
02:06:46 --> 02:06:49 go through every single statute that we have and find the gaps that exist.
02:06:50 --> 02:06:54 Because these things are made, it's like watching Post-its get slapped up on
02:06:54 --> 02:06:58 a wall. And it's just like, ooh, new policy, slap up a Post-it.
02:06:58 --> 02:07:00 Boop, another new one. And they're all on top of each other.
02:07:00 --> 02:07:04 And they don't really work together a lot of the time.
02:07:05 --> 02:07:09 And they're written by people who, at least these days, aren't actual attorneys.
02:07:09 --> 02:07:13 Back in the day, the folks that were writing stuff were actual lawyers.
02:07:13 --> 02:07:17 And things were written a little bit better, I dare say. But in this situation,
02:07:17 --> 02:07:22 what we're dealing with is exactly this, whether this person is entitled to
02:07:22 --> 02:07:24 damages, money damages, whether,
02:07:24 --> 02:07:30 you know, like you sue your, and it's a separate issue, but you sue your employer for bad conduct.
02:07:30 --> 02:07:33 The way they make you whole is to pay you.
02:07:33 --> 02:07:37 Either the jury orders it, the arbitrator orders it, or you come to a settlement.
02:07:38 --> 02:07:43 This person doesn't have that right according to decisions that have been made.
02:07:44 --> 02:07:46 And we need to find out what the final answer to that is.
02:07:47 --> 02:07:51 Yeah. And I think that, you know, the reason why I say it's a fun case because,
02:07:51 --> 02:07:56 you know, these are the kind of cases that made me want to be a lawyer,
02:07:56 --> 02:07:58 especially a constitutional lawyer.
02:07:58 --> 02:08:06 Because I think in order to make sure that people are truly, truly protected,
02:08:07 --> 02:08:14 that you have to have a certain, I don't know, vigor, a certain passion.
02:08:14 --> 02:08:19 And I just want to see the arguments. I just want to.
02:08:20 --> 02:08:25 This is the one I really wanted, like, who's representing Mr.
02:08:25 --> 02:08:29 Landor. I want to see how vicious they go at it and how they,
02:08:29 --> 02:08:30 I shouldn't say vicious,
02:08:30 --> 02:08:33 but going up against this court, maybe that's an appropriate term,
02:08:33 --> 02:08:39 but how they go after it and how you're going to respond to Alito and Thomas
02:08:39 --> 02:08:44 and Gorsuch and Barrett and how they're going to try to justify saying that
02:08:44 --> 02:08:50 this man shouldn't get compensated for that and that law should be upheld.
02:08:50 --> 02:08:54 I just, that's the reason why I said kind of save this one for last,
02:08:54 --> 02:08:59 because I think this one is going to be the actual one where if it is an ACLU
02:08:59 --> 02:09:00 attorney or somebody of that.
02:09:02 --> 02:09:05 I think this should be a this would be a fun case to watch.
02:09:06 --> 02:09:12 We may not like the result, but I think it'll I think it's going to generate some interest.
02:09:13 --> 02:09:17 And I don't know. But maybe that's the nerd in me. I don't know.
02:09:18 --> 02:09:21 No, I think there's also there's it's there's a parallel to this,
02:09:21 --> 02:09:25 which is there's another case that that's going to be coming down the line here,
02:09:25 --> 02:09:29 which is that Pete Hegseth has issued a memo that has said that service members
02:09:29 --> 02:09:31 who do not shave their face.
02:09:31 --> 02:09:37 And keep their face cleanly shaven are going to be discharged from the service in a year.
02:09:37 --> 02:09:41 You have a year to resolve this problem. And this disproportionately impacts
02:09:41 --> 02:09:46 Black men because the way the curl pattern works with the hair on their face.
02:09:47 --> 02:09:50 And so there was a ban a long time ago.
02:09:50 --> 02:09:56 The ban got lifted and they were allowed to not we're not talking ZZ Top Beards
02:09:56 --> 02:10:01 here. We're talking about managing a condition in their face that causes pain
02:10:01 --> 02:10:02 and infection and whatnot.
02:10:03 --> 02:10:08 And so Pete Hegseth has decided that the most appropriate way to deal with this
02:10:08 --> 02:10:14 and to continue his war on marginalized groups, including Black people and people
02:10:14 --> 02:10:17 of color, is to, yeah, force you to shave your face.
02:10:17 --> 02:10:23 And if you can't fix that problem, which is a condition of your body that does
02:10:23 --> 02:10:27 not impact your ability to do your job, by the way, and it is not narrowly tailored.
02:10:27 --> 02:10:31 So it's not people in the theater. It's people who anybody, if you're sitting
02:10:31 --> 02:10:34 at a desk in Iowa, if you can't shave your face, you're out in a year.
02:10:35 --> 02:10:38 And so, you know, I hope that these things are all going to come,
02:10:39 --> 02:10:44 you know, in a mad rush, you know, and so that we can actually see it because
02:10:44 --> 02:10:48 it gets dripped out over time. We see this case and then in the future we'll see another case.
02:10:48 --> 02:10:52 This stuff needs to stay in the public consciousness because this is a war on
02:10:52 --> 02:10:53 anybody who is not white.
02:10:54 --> 02:11:01 And don't forget our, you know, Muslim brothers who may keep their beard as
02:11:01 --> 02:11:05 part of their religion, right? And we're back to religious freedom.
02:11:05 --> 02:11:09 And so, again, I mean, there was a similar case, I want to say,
02:11:09 --> 02:11:14 here in South Florida, where a police officer ended up either losing his job
02:11:14 --> 02:11:19 or something along those lines because he was Muslim and he didn't want to shave his beard.
02:11:19 --> 02:11:24 And apparently that ran afoul of some of the, you know, whatever requirements
02:11:24 --> 02:11:27 or whatever they had within the department. And he was victorious.
02:11:28 --> 02:11:34 So, you know, there is precedent there in terms of if this is part of your religious
02:11:34 --> 02:11:38 identity and it's not interfering with your job or anything like that,
02:11:38 --> 02:11:40 Can the government tell you,
02:11:40 --> 02:11:43 again, that you can't exercise your religion?
02:11:44 --> 02:11:49 First Amendment. Yeah, it's fascinating. Well, look, I'm going to have to let y'all go.
02:11:49 --> 02:11:54 I'm not going to let you, I'm not going to do any predictions about these cases
02:11:54 --> 02:11:56 because I think it was Dr.
02:11:56 --> 02:12:00 Tracy said, we don't know what these folks are going to do. We ain't got no, we ain't got no clue.
02:12:04 --> 02:12:09 But I greatly appreciate, you know, and I say this every time,
02:12:09 --> 02:12:15 but I greatly appreciate y'all's incredible knowledge and able to dissect what's
02:12:15 --> 02:12:17 happening and explain to the listeners what's going on.
02:12:18 --> 02:12:24 So I would say that this is another successful meeting of the Pearson and Pearson law firm.
02:12:24 --> 02:12:30 And I greatly appreciate y'all's time for coming on and doing this.
02:12:31 --> 02:12:33 Thank you so much for having us as always, Erik. You're the best.
02:12:34 --> 02:12:37 Erik, we love talking to your listeners and to you.
02:12:37 --> 02:12:42 And this is probably one of my favorite podcast conversations that I have and
02:12:42 --> 02:12:47 so I'm grateful that you have us both on here and I absolutely love talking
02:12:47 --> 02:12:50 with you Melba and having these,
02:12:50 --> 02:12:53 idea generation sessions. They're just Yes!
02:12:56 --> 02:13:00 Same, same, same. All right guys we're going to catch on the other side.
02:13:02 --> 02:13:13 Music.
02:13:13 --> 02:13:20 All right. And we are back. So let me try to close this out quickly. But I do want to thank Dr.
02:13:20 --> 02:13:24 Caroline Heldman and Alia Dastagir for coming on.
02:13:25 --> 02:13:32 Please get Alia's book and, you know, and do what you can to support her and
02:13:32 --> 02:13:34 her work as well as Dr. Heldman.
02:13:35 --> 02:13:41 She's going to be somebody she's been around for a while and you know as you
02:13:41 --> 02:13:46 listen to the interview if you're in Los Angeles or New Orleans you know all about her,
02:13:47 --> 02:13:52 and like I said both of these ladies have been on CNN and all that so you know
02:13:52 --> 02:13:57 again it's always cool to get people like that to come on the show,
02:13:58 --> 02:14:05 and really stress the theme about survival is resistance right And then,
02:14:05 --> 02:14:09 as always, to have my good friends Melba Pearson and Dr.
02:14:09 --> 02:14:13 Tracy Pearson to come on and do an installment of Pearson and Pearson.
02:14:14 --> 02:14:19 It's really, really a blessing to have two very astute attorneys,
02:14:20 --> 02:14:25 despite our crazy schedules, to be able to come together and make that possible.
02:14:25 --> 02:14:29 And hopefully that's, you know, those segments are very educational for you
02:14:29 --> 02:14:35 all to understand what's happening. I mean, we could talk for a long time about
02:14:35 --> 02:14:38 cases before the Supreme Court and other legal stuff that's going on.
02:14:39 --> 02:14:44 And, you know, some of our conversations offline are incredible, too.
02:14:44 --> 02:14:51 So, again, I just want to thank everybody that participated in this episode for doing so.
02:14:53 --> 02:15:03 So, another hellified week in the news. We're still dealing with the blowback from...
02:15:05 --> 02:15:11 The murder of Charlie Kirk. And, you know, people are getting fired from their
02:15:11 --> 02:15:13 jobs. Their shows are getting canceled.
02:15:13 --> 02:15:22 You know, the vice president and Stephen Miller have decided to go after every liberal in America.
02:15:23 --> 02:15:29 But they want to put us all in jail or whatever. Want us all unemployed and all that stuff.
02:15:29 --> 02:15:34 Although they might want to talk to the president because he got his wish.
02:15:35 --> 02:15:38 He got his wish. The Fed decided to lower the interest rates.
02:15:39 --> 02:15:43 But but one of the reasons why they lowered is because black folks are not getting hired.
02:15:44 --> 02:15:49 Right. So if you go after the liberals, gentlemen, if you want us all to be
02:15:49 --> 02:15:55 unemployed, that's not going to help with the with the numbers the president's
02:15:55 --> 02:15:58 trying to boast about in the economy.
02:15:58 --> 02:16:02 So just keep that in mind as to which hunt is going on.
02:16:02 --> 02:16:07 And then, of course, you hear the disturbing news from Mississippi.
02:16:10 --> 02:16:17 Demar Travian Reed, a young man who was found hanging in a tree on the campus
02:16:17 --> 02:16:19 of Delta State University.
02:16:19 --> 02:16:25 For those of y'all who are not from Mississippi, Delta State is in Cleveland, Mississippi.
02:16:26 --> 02:16:29 It's in the Delta, Mississippi Delta region.
02:16:30 --> 02:16:35 You know, it's one of two state universities up there. The other one is Mississippi Valley State.
02:16:37 --> 02:16:41 And if you've been a follower of the podcast, you might have heard me mention
02:16:41 --> 02:16:46 my fondness for Delta State because of their mascot, the Fighting Okra.
02:16:46 --> 02:16:51 Although they're officially called the statesman, you know, those of us from
02:16:51 --> 02:16:55 around those parts know them as the Fighting Okra.
02:16:56 --> 02:17:02 And, you know, my family, a good bit of my family is from the area near Cleveland,
02:17:03 --> 02:17:04 Mount Bayou to be specific.
02:17:05 --> 02:17:09 So I'm very familiar with the campus and very familiar with,
02:17:10 --> 02:17:16 well, I was very familiar with the student body and, you know,
02:17:16 --> 02:17:19 and just the town and all that kind of stuff, Bolivar County.
02:17:20 --> 02:17:25 And it's just, it's shocking to hear it anywhere, but it's really shocking to
02:17:25 --> 02:17:28 hear it there and at that institution.
02:17:28 --> 02:17:34 Right now, you know, the police still haven't figured out what exactly happened.
02:17:35 --> 02:17:36 You know, some people are trying
02:17:36 --> 02:17:40 to say, don't jump the gun and say it's a lynching and all that stuff.
02:17:40 --> 02:17:46 But it's just, it's shattering to the student body, it's shattering to the community,
02:17:46 --> 02:17:53 it's shattering to those of us who are black in America that that imagery is still there.
02:17:53 --> 02:17:58 Can you just imagine the police officers that had to respond to that or the
02:17:58 --> 02:18:00 students that saw that, right?
02:18:00 --> 02:18:04 And then the Reed family, you know, my condolences are out to them.
02:18:05 --> 02:18:10 It's bad enough to lose a child. It's bad enough, it's even worse to lose a child in that fashion.
02:18:11 --> 02:18:17 So, you know, that's something that I had to deal with along with other members of the Black Caucus.
02:18:17 --> 02:18:22 When I was in the legislature, we had a situation in southwest Mississippi,
02:18:22 --> 02:18:29 and it turned out the young man who died in that situation was a distant relative of Emmett Till.
02:18:31 --> 02:18:37 So, you know, that wasn't, and, you know, eventually that was ruled a suicide
02:18:37 --> 02:18:42 instead of a homicide, which a lot of people to this day,
02:18:43 --> 02:18:51 some 20 plus odd years later still are not convinced it wasn't a lynching.
02:18:52 --> 02:18:55 Because there were a lot of factors in that story that just didn't make sense
02:18:55 --> 02:18:58 why he would take his own life, right?
02:18:59 --> 02:19:03 But yeah and that's a whole nother episode i
02:19:03 --> 02:19:06 could do on that and you know some
02:19:06 --> 02:19:12 people tell they do these podcasts about you know stories you know crime investigations
02:19:12 --> 02:19:18 all that that might be worth a podcast worth doing you know the all the stuff
02:19:18 --> 02:19:24 that led up to that incident 20-some odd years ago, excuse me.
02:19:24 --> 02:19:33 But yeah, just terrible news. So, you know, in summation, we're in a bad place.
02:19:33 --> 02:19:37 And I don't have the time to delve into it. So maybe next week,
02:19:37 --> 02:19:44 looking at, you know, who's scheduled and all that, I might go into a little
02:19:44 --> 02:19:49 more about something that has a religious connotation to what we're going through now,
02:19:49 --> 02:19:51 at least from my religious perspective.
02:19:52 --> 02:19:55 And so I'll dive in that a little more.
02:19:55 --> 02:20:01 But in short, if it was, I'll just say this.
02:20:02 --> 02:20:07 If what happened to the young man at Delta State, Mr.
02:20:07 --> 02:20:15 Reed, was related to this Charlie Kirk thing, just like we're seeing the accusations about.
02:20:17 --> 02:20:22 Rhetoric from the left or liberals or Democrats and, you know,
02:20:23 --> 02:20:29 the witch hunt and the ripping of garments and the beating of the chest of the
02:20:29 --> 02:20:33 conservatives and the MAGA folks, right?
02:20:33 --> 02:20:41 You know, I think at some point in time, people need to have a soul-searching moment.
02:20:43 --> 02:20:46 And let's deal with the facts that we know.
02:20:47 --> 02:20:55 We know that one person shot Charlie Kirk from 142 feet away.
02:20:57 --> 02:21:05 That person has been arrested. That person has confessed to everybody but the police that he did it.
02:21:06 --> 02:21:12 And so let's focus in on who he is and why he did what he did.
02:21:12 --> 02:21:15 We may not find that out till the trial, right?
02:21:16 --> 02:21:18 So that might be a year or so away.
02:21:19 --> 02:21:28 So until that moment, I would advise people to just kind of stay focused on
02:21:28 --> 02:21:32 governing, right? I have an opinion.
02:21:32 --> 02:21:37 Everybody else that's got a podcast has an opinion. People that have talk shows have opinions.
02:21:38 --> 02:21:42 People that are guests on talk shows will have opinions, yada, yada, yada.
02:21:42 --> 02:21:46 And that's really what this is. The First Amendment is all about.
02:21:47 --> 02:21:50 And, you know, there have been people saying, well, you know,
02:21:51 --> 02:21:55 the left canceled such and such and they canceled this and canceled that.
02:21:55 --> 02:22:01 See, I'm old enough to remember when one woman wrote a letter to Fox.
02:22:02 --> 02:22:09 TV folks. And she wrote a letter to advertisers.
02:22:09 --> 02:22:14 One woman wrote a letter to advertisers that were on Married with Children,
02:22:14 --> 02:22:19 said she had a problem with them advertising their product on that kind of show.
02:22:20 --> 02:22:22 And those people started pulling their advertising.
02:22:23 --> 02:22:26 One woman did that, right?
02:22:27 --> 02:22:30 Now, you know, there's a lot of people that weren't even born that's commenting
02:22:30 --> 02:22:34 on what's happening now and all this stuff. But I remember that.
02:22:34 --> 02:22:38 And I was just amazed because it was like when we were complaining about stuff,
02:22:38 --> 02:22:42 I mean, we as black people, and it was like, well, you know,
02:22:42 --> 02:22:44 we're going to do this and do that.
02:22:44 --> 02:22:49 And, you know, they were listening to us, but they weren't really hearing us. Right.
02:22:50 --> 02:22:53 We kind of touched on that in one of the interviews. And so,
02:22:53 --> 02:22:56 you know, we didn't seem to have that power.
02:22:56 --> 02:23:07 Or when Tipper Gore got mad at NWA and single-handedly pushed for labels to be put on albums, right?
02:23:07 --> 02:23:14 So this is not a new phenomenon, what's going on. This has been going on for a long, long time.
02:23:16 --> 02:23:23 And, you know, people now saying, well, you know, they tried to cancel Dave
02:23:23 --> 02:23:27 Chappelle, and they tried to cancel this person and that person, all that stuff.
02:23:28 --> 02:23:36 Okay, so individuals complained, but it's a whole different conversation when
02:23:36 --> 02:23:39 the federal government is saying, shut that show down,
02:23:40 --> 02:23:44 shut this show down, don't write this article, whatever.
02:23:45 --> 02:23:51 That's a different level. As a matter of fact, that is exactly why the First Amendment was written.
02:23:52 --> 02:23:58 So that government would not interfere in the exercise of free speech.
02:23:59 --> 02:24:05 So when the chairman of the FCC decides he wants to play mob boss and say,
02:24:05 --> 02:24:09 well, if you don't take this person off the air, we'll have to deal with that.
02:24:10 --> 02:24:13 That's the exact reason why the First Amendment was written.
02:24:13 --> 02:24:18 Now, this, you know, was an individual like that woman way back in the day that
02:24:18 --> 02:24:21 wrote the letter to the advertiser saying don't advertise on that person's show.
02:24:22 --> 02:24:25 Well, you got to, you know, if the advertiser decide to do that,
02:24:25 --> 02:24:27 that's on them. You know what I'm saying?
02:24:29 --> 02:24:32 But, you know, as an individual, OK. OK,
02:24:33 --> 02:24:37 but when you work for the federal government, when you are representing the
02:24:37 --> 02:24:41 federal government and you are doing that, you're challenging TV stations,
02:24:41 --> 02:24:46 radio stations, podcasters, newspapers. That's a problem.
02:24:47 --> 02:24:52 But like I said, we'll dive into that a lot more next week. But I just wanted to get that out there.
02:24:54 --> 02:25:02 Nobody wants violence. but nobody should want the federal government to shut things down either.
02:25:02 --> 02:25:09 Like I said, they're trying to play a long game. And I saw a clip of Tezlyn
02:25:09 --> 02:25:16 Figaro and she was challenging Scott Jennings on CNN and she basically told them to stand in it.
02:25:17 --> 02:25:22 Now, Scott may not have understood what she was saying, but she was basically
02:25:22 --> 02:25:26 saying, if this is the way you want to play, let's play.
02:25:27 --> 02:25:30 This is the way you want to fight. Let's fight.
02:25:30 --> 02:25:39 Or as people of a slightly older, but younger generation than me would say, knock if you buck.
02:25:39 --> 02:25:41 Right. It's time.
02:25:42 --> 02:25:46 She's basically said, if that's why y'all want to fight, then let's fight.
02:25:47 --> 02:25:49 If y'all don't want to talk no more, let's go.
02:25:50 --> 02:25:53 If you want to throw hands, we can throw hands. That's what she was saying.
02:25:54 --> 02:25:58 Now, I'm hoping that it doesn't get to that point.
02:25:59 --> 02:26:02 But ladies and gentlemen, that threshold might have been crossed.
02:26:02 --> 02:26:05 If you understand history, you understand what's been going on in the world.
02:26:06 --> 02:26:12 Things are being used to try to excuse actions.
02:26:14 --> 02:26:27 Tragedies are being used as logs on the fire to create an inferno that none of us signed up for.
02:26:28 --> 02:26:32 Those of us that are in America. Right. There's a lot of people.
02:26:32 --> 02:26:37 I don't agree with a lot of stuff they say, especially if you're on X,
02:26:37 --> 02:26:41 especially if you're on Instagram, especially if you're on TikTok. Right.
02:26:42 --> 02:26:47 But they have the right to do that. And the government has no right to shut that down.
02:26:47 --> 02:26:59 You know, we talked about stochastic terrorism last week, stochastic terrorism last week, right?
02:27:01 --> 02:27:07 And, you know, using words to incite violence. We're not cool with that.
02:27:08 --> 02:27:14 But as far as just saying stuff that I may think is stupid, or I say stuff that
02:27:14 --> 02:27:16 people may think is stupid, right?
02:27:17 --> 02:27:21 You know, we got the right to do that. We got the right to respond and say it's stupid.
02:27:21 --> 02:27:27 But the federal government is not supposed to be an active participant in that game.
02:27:28 --> 02:27:32 They're not, they're supposed to be neutral. They're not even supposed to be referees.
02:27:33 --> 02:27:36 Maybe they shouldn't even be in the stadium. They just might need to be passing
02:27:36 --> 02:27:39 by and acknowledge that a game is going on, right?
02:27:40 --> 02:27:43 That's the safest thing for the government to do. until it gets to the point
02:27:43 --> 02:27:48 where it's like, okay, well now people are actually getting killed or people
02:27:48 --> 02:27:49 are actually fighting in the streets.
02:27:49 --> 02:27:52 Yeah, we may need to say something.
02:27:53 --> 02:27:58 But outside of that, it's not cool. But again, time's a constraint.
02:27:58 --> 02:28:04 You've been very patient and very attentive if you've gotten to this part of the program.
02:28:05 --> 02:28:11 So I'm not going to hold you any longer, but yeah, stay tuned because we've got to address this.
02:28:12 --> 02:28:15 And, you know, and I, and fortunately I'm not the only one that's,
02:28:15 --> 02:28:19 that's talking about it, but yeah, we need to address it.
02:28:20 --> 02:28:22 All right, guys, thank you for listening until next time.
02:28:25 --> 02:29:10 Music.