TBG U: Gen Z & The 2024 Election

Published Sep 24, 2024, 7:00 AM

Wait…Can you hear it? The constant political ads, the texts from campaigns you never signed up for, and relentless social media debates mean that election season is here in full force. Seriously though, this may be one of the most important election cycles of our time, and by our, I mean Gen Z. 

Today, we’re diving into the real thoughts, hopes, and frustrations of college students as they navigate today’s political landscape. Joining me for this roundtable discussion are Alexandra Nelson, Gabrielle Cassell, and Jasmine Patrick. A sophomore, junior, and senior respectively, they attend Spelman College and serve as hosts for the school’s collegiate and social justice-orientated podcast, The Blue Record.  

In our chat today, we discuss the issues that matter most to us as students and members of Gen Z, our reactions to the recent televised debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and Former President Donald Trump, and why it’s important to maintain a sense of political imagination when thinking about our future as a country.

 

Where to Find Our Guests

Follow Alexandra

Follow Gabrielle

Follow Jasmine

Listen to The Blue Record Podcast

 

HOMEWORK

  • If you’re attending college in another state and are planning to vote, be sure to go online and make sure your absentee ballot is in order.
  • Discover how you can contribute to your community in ways other ways including through mutual aid, political organizing, or simply having a conversation with a neighbor. 
  • Take some time to look into global issues, starting with places like Sudan, Haiti, The Middle East, and Gaza.

 

Make sure to follow us on social media:

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Interested in being a part of a future TBG U episode or suggesting a topic for us to discuss, send us a note HERE

Order a copy of Sisterhood Heals for you and your girls HERE

 

Our Production Team

Executive Producers: Dennison Bradford & Maya Cole Howard

Producer: Ellice Ellis

Associate Producer: Zariah Taylor

TBG University Host & Coordinator: Jayna Ellis

Get ready because class is almost in session. Welcome to the TBG University podcast, tailored for the twenty something who's packing for a new year on campus, thinking through their gap year, enrolling in a community college, grabbing their souls for graduation, and everything in between. I'm your host and TVGU coordinator Jana Ellis.

Hi, I'm Alexandra, I'm Gabrielle. Hey, I'm Jasmine, and we're on the Therapy for Black Girls University Podcast.

We're in session today discussing the twenty twenty four election as college students.

Wait, can you hear it? The constant political ads, the texts from campaigns you never signed up for, in relentless social media debates mean that the election is here in full force. Seriously, though, this may be one of the most important election cycles of our time, and by are I mean gen z. Today we're diving into the real thoughts, hopes, and frustrations of college students as they navigate today's political landscape. Joining me for this round table discussion are Gabrielle Cassel, Jasmine Patrick, and Alexandra Nelson, a sophomore, junior, and senior, respectively. They attend Spelman College and service hosts for the schools, collegiate and social justice oriented podcasts The Blue Record. In our chat today, we discuss the issues that matter to us most as students and as members of gen Z, our reactions to the recent televised debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, and why it's important to maintain a sense of political imagination when thinking about our future as a country. Here's our conversation. I'm so excited to talk with y'alls, just to meet Spellman girls like I'm just always impressed by y'all. How are y'all doing today, I'm so excited to talk with you.

I'm doing pretty good. Just really excited to be here and really grateful that he reached out and extended the opportunity for us to record with Therapy for Black Girls University. So thank you very much.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

So to kick us off, I'm interested to know what are your earliest memories related to politics and how did those early memories shape your current attitudes towards the political climate.

I think for me, it definitely came through my dad. From the time that I was young. I would watch him watch the news while he was exercising and he always didn't really shy away from explaining wanting us to have the consciousness about what's going on in the world from the time both me and my younger siblings were children. Having those critical thinkings from a young age has really allowed me to come into this election period and this current political climate with a lot more clarity. I grew up like when Obama was president, so that was like a really exciting time. I think looking back, I feel differently about it now, but regardless, it shapes how we view the world, and I think as my politics has expanded even beyond just the two party system or electoral politics, I definitely still appreciate what my dad instilled in me and my younger sibling when it came to understanding what's happening in our political system and in the world in general. Because both of my parents are immigrants, so it wasn't just about what's going on in America, but what is going on in the rest of the world.

Yeah, So, piggyback off Greel's statement, I grew up watching the news with my family. It was a really big thing. It was on every TV every morning at seven am, and I remember being at my granny's house and it would be a bunch of adults in the room and we've been having breakfast and they would be like, Oh, the W folks are at it again, and what are they talking about? And little old me, I mean, I had no clue what they were talking about.

And I hate that I didn't understand.

Until much later, And I asked my grain, who was some W folks that you're talking about? And she didn't want to explain it to me because she wanted to protect my innocence as much as possible. And I realized now when I talk to her about the news and we talked about our current Keennessey race and how racialized the media is right now. They're still in this like binary era whereas white versus black. So, yeah, that's what I learned growing up about politics.

Yeah, when I think about it, I think Martin Luther King was on my first introduction to politics, But at the time I didn't really realize it because I mostly thought about it from a race perspective. And I was really young when I'm talking about this. I'm talking about like five, so thinking about the books that we would read in school. But then I really remember my mom took my sisters and I to see Barack Obama in twenty twelve in Cincinnati at Music Hall, and I don't remember what he was saying because I was nine, but my mom was really emotional and I saw her have hopefulness on her face, and so that was a beautiful moment. That's when I really started to realize, like, what are politics and the emotions people can make them feel. But in my household, Obama was like an uncle, and I feel that a lot of other Black Americans and other just black people had that same relationship with him. He felt really familiar. My parents had the T shirts, swag, all of that, like they were really wholehearted Obama supporters.

I also, similar to Alexandria. I vividly remember the merch of President Obama.

Oh my gosh, it was so cool.

Literally like the T shirts, the buttons. Like now when I go thrifting, I tried to find one to wear as like a vintage piece. But I definitely relate to all of y'all. This next question may be a little spicy, but I'm wondering, do you plan on voting in this upcoming election? Why or why not.

I'm definitely voting. This question is funny because I think back to when I was in high school and I was one of those kids I'm admitting it that was like a vote shamer, and so when Trump was running, I was like, I vote for Trump is throwing away a vote for Pillory. But I realize now that if you weren't voting, then you're just not voting. I still understand both sides of it, but now I'm definitely more so on the side of everybody should vote, especially black people. I mean, this is something that our ancestors and grandparents and great grandparents did not even have the right to do, and so I think it's important to exercise our right that people before us have fought for.

This is definitely something I've been going back and forth on for a long time. Ideally, there would be no issue with just voting, but I think there's the people who have a reason not to vote, with the fact that there's people who believe that voting is continuing to prop up the system that continually fails us and was structured to fail us. So for me personally, I've been having issues with applan for my absentee ballot in the first place. So definitely going to see if that's something I can get fixed. But ultimately, if it's not, I'm not going to feel a loss if I'm not able to vote, because either way, I'm not super excited with whatever the result is going to be, So for me, it's like a neutral thing at this point.

Yeah, I definitely agree.

It's a weird feeling voting in this election because we just see these two figures in their polar offices, but they do have some commonalities and it's like, what are we even.

Looking at right now? Like what is this? I would say for myself, I most definitely am voting.

Our director, I Believe, of the Social Justice Program said quite valiantly a couple of weeks ago that if you don't vote and you talk to her about stuff involving politics, she don't want to talk. And I definitely have that same energy because I feel that if you have the right to vote, which a lot of people do not, they should, why aren't you it's not hurting you. But I think a lot of people are misinformed because we had this whole talk about the electoral party and everybody believes that I either have to be red or blue, and it's like, why can't you just be yourself. Why can't you just vote on the issues that you're concerned about. But people don't understand that. Luckily, I had the privilege of having a teacher when I was in sixth grade and it was our history class, and my teacher broke it down to us because this was during the Obama election, it was during that time period. He broke it down to us very precisely exactly what occurs when you go and put your.

Vote in the ballot.

And more importantly, he pulled me aside whenever I had questions to make sure I knew, as a black woman how important it is for me to vote, not just my local elections, but for everything. Like Gabrielle, I am dealing with stuff with act and tee voting. But I think that's a conversation of why it's so hard for people to because it speak on it.

So I'm curious what were your initial reactions to President Joe Biden dropping out of the race in Kamala being the Democrat nominee.

So I was actually I interned in Switzerland this summer, and so I was out of the country for the whole summer. Like following politics from this outside perspective, so I was at a dinner actually when I was on my phone, and like I want to say, it was like five Swiss people and three Americans, and I was like, oh my gosh, Joe Biden dropped out of the race, and we were like, oh my gosh. I was relieved because I was just really feeling frustrated. I was like, there is no way he's not fit to speak in front of these people. He's not fit to govern our country. He's not anywhere close to the relative average age of our country. And I was selected as a twenty twenty four White House Initiative HBCU scholar for this upcoming year, and to be honest, I was having a lot of conflicting feelings holding that title. I'm still not one hundred percent aligned with Kamala's politics by any means, or the structure of our two party system or the White House. But I was like, almost feel comfortable representing the White House. If Joe Biden's still running for president, I'm not posting anything about voting for him. I was not confident in his abilities, and so I was really relieved when Kamala announced that she was running. I was really curious who her VP pick was going to be, but I'm just glad that Joe Biden is not in the race anymore.

I was on an outing with my family when I found out I got in the notification on my watch. I was surprised to an extent, but I was also expected at the same time. I think it was the best strategic choice they could have made, because, to be honest, with how Joe Biden was performing, he most likely was going to lose. I definitely think this is a choice they should have made earlier, but I guess it's better late than never. They want to win, and Joe Biden was not performing at a level despite even how unpopular he was politically, it was clear that he was deteriorating. It would have been very unwise to keep him in the running.

I would say for myself, I'm not totally against Joe Biden running. Obviously, he's not anybody that we want in a position as noble as the President of the United States, but we also don't want Trump, and I think there's like a lot of conversation surrounding like his mental capacity and how it's deteriorating. But I think, if anything, I'm most curious about what led the powerful, rich white man to put his sword down and let this black woman take over, Like, why her? Is it because that he knows that she'll carry out his legacy? Is it because he knows that he's still going to have a hand in the pot, or that she just has that proximity to whiteness that they're looking for for this role. Because let's be honest, I don't really think that they're putting her in this position because she is a black, brown woman. I don't know if y'all have seen it on social media, but they're calling Tim Walks the una reverse card because he represents the civilian people too. It's maximum capacity. But I'm like, Okay, what does that say about Kamala is Kamala Harris? Is she supposed to represent us as well? And if so, in what ways are we supposed to identify with her as a black woman or as a brown woman?

And what does brown even mean for her?

And it's just really interesting. I think this is a conversation of identity, of power, and of course politics.

I don't really expect Kamala to be I think, like you said, like carrying on his legacy, which that legacy to me at least is not necessarily a good thing. So I don't really expect Kamala to challenge anything that Biden did. I feel like there might be a few new things that she makes sure that she does or brings to the table, but overall, I'm not expecting a huge divergence from what Biden's presidency look like, except it'll bring her a character and her identity into the room. But I think you're raising some important questions about representation politics and what that actually looks like, because, at least for me, Kamala does not, although I guess we share the identity of black womanhood, which looks different for me as a fully black person versus her. But besides that, she grew up in a middle class home. I'm not saying she didn't have struggles throughout her life, but I don't feel that her life is necessarily relatable, especially like working class or low income people in this country, especially Black people in this country. So I just thought that was an interesting line of question you had.

For sure, I know for me, I was also with a group of people, and the initial reaction to like Joe Biden dropping out, I remember, like my friends being very emotional. One of those screamed and was like, oh my goodness, did you see like you posted on Instagram And I'm like, I'm not even on Instagram like that, And there were like some tears because there was questions about, oh my god, what does this mean for like everything? I felt like doomsday and we were just like we can't imagine President Trump like being back in office, like we can that, Like I like, we can't do it again. Then I felt like we were going back to the middle school and like learning what happens now? What do you do? And who's going to be the nominee? So I wasn't shocked that it was Kamala, but I do like resonate with a lot of y'all sentiments after like sitting with that news and like seeing, now what does this mean? So thank y'all for sharing that perspective.

Hi, I'm SORRYA Taylor and I'm the TBG podcast production intern. We'll return to Jana right after the break.

So did you tune into the vate between VP Harris and former President Trump? And is there cause for concern as entertainment and politics becoming intertwined?

Yes to all of the above. I did. I had a few friends over, and then my roommate had friends over and so we just turned it into a watch party Why night, and so like that's the part of entertainment and politics mixing. I feel like I see so many people on social media that are talking about playing drinking games with the election, like take a shot every time I'm Kamala giggles or takes shot every time Trump rolls his eyes or does something like this. And I was disappointed by a few things. First, her stance on Israel, which did not surprise me in the slightest bit. I think to be a viable candidate in this country and you're trying to get the majority of the vote, you can't be radically pro Palestine. Even though she called for a ceasefire, it doesn't surprise me that she said she wholeheartedly supports Israel and the US's long standing agreement. I'm also was disappointed that there was no discussion about gun violence in the debate, especially since that shooting that it was scary. It just happened about forty five minutes north of Atlanta, and it's just frustrating because there should be no maximum for how many mass casualties and mass shootings that we should need to have. But I just cannot understand why we're not talking about this, like something has to change. We can't keep having school shootings. We can't keep posting on social media pray for this school, pray for this, pray for this. If nothing's happening, there needs to be policy enacted on this. We need to have better background checks for guns. It just felt frustrating watching the debate. It felt like things that I consider important issues were not touched upon, and I knew they weren't going to be touched upon, but I wanted to watch it just so I could continue to stay politically informed and just see what's going on in the country, because regardless if I'm not the biggest fan of the candidates, this is the context that I live in right now, and so I just think it's important to stay politically informed, whether that's within the binary two party system or community organizing or what's going on locally around you.

I did watch the debate with a friend and to the point about it being entertainment the whole time, and I was like, why am I laughing at something that's supposed to be as serious like political. But similarly to Alexandra, I was overall disappointed in how the debate went. If I was to say one thing that was positive, Kama was definitely much more competent, much more eloquent, much more rhetorically sound than Biden ever was. But besides that, similarly to Alexandra, it definitely brought any remaining hope I had in electoral politics to a zero. Obviously, Kamala's position on Palestine was abysmal, but I didn't really expect anything different. But it was also Trump the xenophobic rhetoric he was spouting throughout the whole debate, spreading that awful anti black xenophobic rumor about Haitians eating cats and dogs, and I was incredibly disappointed that by the fact that Kamala did not combat that in any way. The only thing she mentioned about immigration was how she was prosecuting transnational crime syndicates and was controlling the situation at the border, which I feel continues to affirm the serous rhetoric that everyone coming into the United States, immigrants and refugees, that they're dangerous people, that they're only here to harm the American people. And I would think that as a child of immigrants, she would have had something more substantial to say to combat the xenophobia that he was spouting, and she didn't do that. And I know she's capable of doing that, because when it came to talking about reproductive rights and reproductive freedom, I think that was the only part of her part of the debate that was solid to me because of the way that she humanized women who are trying to get abortions and strongly stood firm on that. But with everything else with Palestine, with immigration, when it came to fracking and to defunding the police, she rolled back her previous statements on both of those things to a much more moderate centrist or even a bit conservative of a take on those because Trump was trying to clung her a radical marxisthich we she absolutely is not, but any somewhat progressive stance that she had she rolled back. And discussing this in class has been frustrating because I feel that there's a cloak over people's eyes that they're so excited by the fact that a black woman is running for president they're not able to see her many flaws and understand that criticizing those flaws is not an indictment of her as a black woman as an indictment of her as a politician and as someone who is asking us for our vote so that she can be the president, one of the most powerful people in the world. I think especially her closing statement where she doubled down on something that she said about America having the most lethal military force in the world. To be fair, this is not particular to her, but the fact that was not something that alarmed people that she is deliberate about continuing America's imperial legacy throughout the world is very concerning to me, and I think every time I've discussed that, people have tried to water it down and dilute it and say, oh, well, it's because America has a lot of existential threats and enemies. But it's like, does that make it okay for us to go out and conquer and murder people all over the world just because someone might do something? So overall, I felt really no positive feelings at the end of the debate.

Yeah, honestly, you guys are so brilliant. I'm in total alignment with everything you both just said. Personally, I watched the debate at the AAC Debate watch party held by the Lowry Institute and no shade to the Lowry Institute. But they were trying to make it a party, and I mean verbato, it was like, this is a party turned up.

We had a dj ou.

It's like yeah, and I'm just like, it's funny.

Are we series right now?

I understand that we're trying to target a specific demographic, that it's the tour is for not voting. That's fine, it's important for us to be at the post now more than ever. But this strategy is so enlightening on both our generation and their generation and how we perceive each other and what we're interested in. Professor kumar At Filman famously is always talking about VP Harris and one thing that she's always talking about in relation to voting, She's just like, guys, do not be voting off the vibes. Let's stop that because we can be voting off of her. At the coffee shop, I'm out, oh my god's chocolate caramel cake, as if she's never seen a freaking cake before, and thinking, oh my gosh.

This is so cute.

See this is so demure wet.

The tiktoks very.

Nice, that's very nice for you, But I'm thinking about the people and guys are right now who are literally starving to death. They're waking up tomorrow wondering how in the world did I even get past this, And my stomach has been on empty four a week. I'm thinking about the people who are Haitian in this country right now. And it don't even matter if you're Haitian right now, because we all know that was an anti black statement. It don't matter if you got to act it or not. It was just anti black. And how the people not only in Springfield, Ohio, are about to be stereotype or face discrimination right now. And then we want to sit here and talk about the American heart and how it is open to all the nations of the world and we just want to help the poor and feed the black kids in Africa and hold hands with the kids in the Middle East. I could go off forever with this depicton. I could break it down. I would attend a year long course on it. But it was so reflective of so many issues that is wrong with this government.

You're absolutely right, and I think when I was having this discussion in class, especially about the last comments she made about the most lethal army in the world, people are like oh, it's to protect us and stuff like that. And I think it just speaks to the way in America that we are socialized to be ignorant to what's going on in the rest of the world and to the humanity of people in the rest of the world, specifically in the Global South, because I think we can recognize Europeans as human beings, but people who are in Africa, in South America, in the Middle East, we are taught to dehumanize them, that they're savages, they're terrorists, their drug dealers. So it doesn't matter what America does there, those are not real people. And so I guess if people need to know how this could affect them, For especially us as black people in this country, there's nothing to stop them from turning that lethal force on us, and they've done so in the past. We know, we see how that happened to civil rights movement activists, to the Black Panther Party, to different organizations and the Black Power Movement, the move Organization of Philadelphia, how they were literally bombed. So there's nothing stopping them. You know, if we have to think about how this is going to happen to us, even in Atlanta specifically with cop City and how that's going to affect the lives of poor black Atlantis, and this is happening all over the country. Actually, it's to our benefit to be in coalition with people of the global South. For me, as a Pan African, is to be in coalition with people across the African diaspora because we're fighting the same systems. So I really wish people would be able to understand that and decenter America and Europe in their analysis of the world and of how America functions, and realize that the state the empire that America is is going to be an enemy to us all regardless of whether it's now or later. Because like you were mentioning what's happening in Gaza, it feels so far away because so people you are able to push that out on their mind, and what's happening in Congo Sudan. I'm Haiti. Because we're not there. People are like, well, it's not happening to me, but there's nothing stopping it from happening to you.

You could not have said it better, Gabrielle. It's so frustrating to just see people blindly turning an eye to atrocities in humanity crisis happening in the global South. It's really frustrating. Like Gabrielle said, people seem to have a veil over their head or some sense of blindness where we're just like blindly supporting Kamala and I get it from a black womanhood chance. However, there is so much more that goes into that. How are you just going to blindly support Kamala Harris but like not be worried about what's going on in the Congo or Sudan. But I also think we grew up during Obama and so there was definitely a glorification of him because he was the first black president. And I think a lot of people also did not necessarily learn that it's okay to criticize politicians. And that's something I didn't learn until I got to Spellman. I didn't realize that, oh, I don't just have to vote in this two party system. There's more to politics than Democrat and Republican. There's a history to this. There were radical groups that existed that fought for black liberation. There is so much more to politics than just voting red or blue.

So since her introduction into the public's consciousness, Kamala has been memified for being a top cop for her various antics, dancing, laughing a lot, etc. And so how does this portrayal of Kamala online impact your thoughts on her as a candidate?

To be fair to her, that's not something that's just particularly happened to her people mema by politicians, because again, like we were discussing earlier, politics has become a source of entertainment. I feel two kind of ways about it, because, for one, does obviously take away for a little bit from being able to take her seriously as a politician. But at the same time, she's also a human being, and human beings do strange things. People laugh, people dance, when you can't discount how Massadre Noir works into this and how people portray people. So for me, at first I felt some kind of way about it, But her politics itself is enough for me to make a judgment of her. Those other things have not counted that much into that for my current opinions on her, I would say.

I think for me at first it was the TikTok sound, but it's like, this is still an election and let's still get serious. Like to Jasmine's point, like it could be very demeir, it could be very cutesy and laughy and like the coconut tree. But also, this is going to be the leader of the free world. This is really important to tone it down a little bit with me refining her it's not that funny. But moving on, under the current administry, we've seen the enactment of several executive orders seeking to expand women's reproductive rights. Still, since the fall of Rob Wade, fourteen states have made abortion illegal. What do you think about this and what hope do you have for the future of women's reproductive rights after this election.

I think this is the handmade's tale reality TV. Everybody keeps saying it, and I know it's funny, No, I honestly feel that's what they're gearing towards. In Project twenty twenty five looks exactly like and if you haven't watched it, please go watch it.

It's quite informative.

I have very complex feelings about this because as somebody who is pro choice, who has not only the medical education of why abortions are necessary, but also looking at it from like a social stance, it's somebody who could be.

Impacted by it. One day.

I don't think this country likes women at all, and I don't think they want to like women. I think that the internalized misogyny is so ingrained to us and is systematic, and I think I'm want to use this question to really speak to the Christian and conservative audience, because that's where I come from.

The Bible does not talk about abortion. It does not.

If anything, if you want to look at history, there are numerous pieces of documentation not to talk about women having abortions and why and how they went about it. More particularly for the black audience. You don't know, but some of your great great great grandmothers practice abortions during enslavement because they didn't want to have the master's baby.

For the nineteenth time.

There's a lot of fear mongering around the subject, and I think it largely comes from an audience who again is misguided on what this looks like.

If we're talking about.

Christianity, for one, we're talking about the Ten Commandments, and we're talking about what is love and what Jesus and bodies what love is. And Jesus does not ask for us to suffer. Go look at Matthew five.

He does not want us to stay around to suffer. If anything, he wants us.

To enjoy prosperity and wellness and health. And I think sometimes people try and use their ethic morality as a shield and it's like, I'm going to stand behind this shield. I'm gonna die on this hill if all hell breaks loose, I'm still holding it. And it's like, how many people have to die behind you because you want to hold on to your ethic morality. What you're saying is you're setting inside your humanity for your morality, and there's a difference between that, and it goes into a larger conversation of what does reproductive rights look like? And it's not just about abortions. It's about, Hey, I just had sex and this person is telling me that they got HIV and now you don't have any services because these lawmakers don't think that you deserve it a human need. And it's so complex and it's so full of different issues, and until we really take a deep dive into what that is going to look like realistically, it's an issue.

I really like what you said about putting your humanity aside for like your own morality, and I feel like you're dealing with people's lives, and like people, we have to make choices. As women, I need to make a decision for myself and my body and my future. So I really like that.

Hi.

I'm Soria Taylor and I'm the TBG podcast production intern. We'll return to Jana right after the break.

So lastly, and this is most relevant to college students and it's the issue of student loan forgiveness. We love this conversation. So President Joe Biden has enacted the forgiveness of seven point four billion and student loan debt, in addition to previous initiatives of the same nature. But this only covers the debt of two hundred and seventy seven thousand bars in a country where forty three million Americans have outstanding federal student loan debt. How does student loan debt impact your livelihood as a college student and what do you think should be the actions of our next president in amending this issue?

As a student who comes from a go working class background, I'm a first generation American. My parents are college educated, but they both struggled with a large amount of student a loone debt, and I'm already in a large amount of student loan debt myself, most of it actually being private. That's the thing that a lot of young people, especially young black people who come from working class backgrounds, have to deal with. So even federal plans to reduce federal loan debt are not helpful. If you have forty thousand dollars in debt from Sally May, who's not held accountable by the government, you're pretty much hold that debt until you pay it off or until you die. So I think overall it just speaks to how education is what we're told we need to do. And education was always something that was instilled in me that I always knew I was going to go to college and get even graduate education, but how it's made so inaccessible, and so it puts you in a conundrum. If you don't have parents who can pay your way through college, or you don't have access to scholarships that will cover most of your cost of attendance, then you know you're stuck, especially out of school that's as expensive as Felman is as a private liberal arts institution. So I just definitely think there needs to be more radical change, not even just about student loan debt forgiveness, because that's not even going to be helpful to everyone, but about making college more affordable or even you know, I don't think it's radical to stay that at least public schools should be free. Period.

What do you plan on doing outside of voting to participate in the civic economy.

I personally am really interested in community organizing, and so I think it's really important to have conversations that explore political imagination and just explore outside of the binaries of voting. I think it's important to have these conversations with your friends, with your family, and also just making sure that you're educating people. Yes, this is the presidential election, but local elections are what's going to more so impact you than the president, because let's be honest, the president's more of a figurehead for the US. And so just staying up to dating, educated, researching what issues are important to you, and then also creating movements if it's something that you're passionate about, you don't have to join something that's already existing, Like you can do your own research. You can go out of your way to really be having calls and to be discussing what are some things that I want to put on the political agenda, whether it's national level or like a local level.

Yeah, similarly to Alexandra, you know how I feel about it is that electoral politics will not save us at all, So it's really just something to fill the gap right now. But I just at this point am divesting from the whole world around the two party system because it's not sustainable. This is something that they've known from the beginning of when the two party system began in the first place, that it was not going to be sustainable because it was always going to be a struggle for power between these two parties and everyone else was going to get lost in the gap. So for me, community organizing, political education, building care, infrastructure, mutual aid, doing survival work. Looking at the example of the Black Panther Party with the survival programs that they had and where they were literally while they were spreading their political agenda, were actually taking care of the low income black people in their communities that were struggling to survive today. But overall, to me, eventually this whole system needs to complete dismantling and a complete transformation, and we have to have that radical imagination to be able to imagine a world outside of the system. That we have because even third party candidates, even though that would be a good reform to have more options, that still won't save us at the end of the day. So I think we really have to take things into our own hands and not expect black faces and high places won't save us. So if Kamala does win, which I will say, obviously, I prefer for her to win over Trump, but I'm not expecting anything transformational to happen from her presidency, and so I hope if that does happen that people won't just go quite and say, oh, we're good now because we have a black woman in office, because we're not, and things we're going to continue getting progressively worse until we decide to make our collective power it mean something.

Thank you for asking that question.

Well, I will say, as a woman, is my perspective on my civic responsibility in engaging with my keymunity is simply talking to them. I know, in the Blue Record podcast, it gives us a platform as students to talk about issues that are dear and close to our hearts. But I'm also an English major and I'm also anthem minor, and a lot of our lecture styles require talking if we don't talk, and it bothers me insanely. And I love to see other people's perspectives and I like to immerse myself within their lens of society, and that's something I hope to do as a researcher in the future. I think it all starts with talking, because I think it is a disservice to not be vocal about what you think, and especially in this generation, we have to get rid of that habit of keeping things inside our minds.

So, yeah, that's what I'm doing for sure.

I don't know if y'all have seen that TikTok trend about like this and yap, but we need politics, and yeah, we need more yapping about politics in our community.

Politics, critical thinking.

Critical thinking, yapping, and action maybe more as more.

Yeah, there's a lot of intersections. I think that needs to be there.

Yes for sure. Okay, so where can we find you? What are your social media handles?

You all can find me at my Instagram. It's at Alexandra nd R a aaa after Alexandra, so it's like Alexandra dra if that makes sense.

You can find me on Instagram at my full name, Gabrielle Cassel. Yeah, I post all kinds of weird and quirky things on there.

Y'all can find me on Instagram. My Instagram is Jazz x Patrick, Jasmin and s and E and then also Mi Grassoo's organization, She Speaks Safety. You can also find me a LinkedIn at jasin Patrick.

So, I want to thank y'all so much for indulging me in your opinions. Spellman has some amazing minds on their campus and I was in awe of y'all, so to thank you so much for just showing me more about the political sphere. I really appreciate it.

Thank you.

This is an amazing opportunity.

Yeah, thank you for this invitation.

Thank you.

I want to thank the hosts of the Blue Record podcast for this episode. Class is over for now, but here's some homework to take with you. If you're attending college in another state and are interested in voting, be sure to go online and make sure your absentee ballot is in order discover how you can contribute to your community and other ways in voting, whether it be through mutual aid, political organizing, or simply having a conversation with a neighbor. Take some time to look into global issues, starting with places like Sudan, Haiti, the Middle East, and Gaza. To learn more about the work we're doing or to do more research on this topic, be sure to visit Therapy for Blackgirls dot com slash TBGU. This episode was produced by Elise Ellis Inzara Taylor. Editing is by Dennison L.

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Therapy for Black Girls

The Therapy for Black Girls podcast is a weekly conversation with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, a license 
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