Listeners, I am so excited, honored, and just thrilled for you to hear my conversation today with journalist and Emmy Award winning television producer my friend jamial Smith. Through his work, Jamil explores a range of political and cultural topics, including national affairs, race and racism, politics, identity, police brutality, feminism and gender roles, and pop culture. Jamiale's career has been nothing short of incredible as a journalist and a commentator. He's been featured in The New York Times, Esquire, The Washington Post, Huff Post, and the Los Angeles Times, among others. He's served as a senior editor at The New Republic, launching an hosting the magazine's first podcast Intersection, and he was a senior national correspondent in MTV News. Jamille also worked as a segment producer for NFL Films, earning him three Emmy Awards, after which he went on to join MSNBC, serving as a producer for both The Rachel Maddow Show and Melissa Harris Perry, while he was a senior writer for Rolling Stone at the time of recording. He is now a senior correspondent at Vox and co host of his very own podcast, Box Conversations. Today, I'm sitting down with Jamille to discuss the Black Lives Matter movement, the current climate in America, what it would really mean for us to love each other a little more and so so much more. We began this talk in April. We were I don't know, five or six weeks into the stay at home orders and the beginning of the coronavirus really ravaging America. And as we were getting ready to air this episode, the world shook. George Floyd was killed by the police, and we thought we we can't have had this conversation about uh, the experience of black and brown people in America, about women in America in the midst of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor and not address what's happened to them. And as the summer would have it, this keeps happening. We have seen increases in violence, increases in racism coming out of the White House, increases in dangerous rhetoric. We have just witnessed Jake Blake be shot in the back seven times while trying to get into his vehicle. Um and the rhetoric coming out of that, the the ugly defense of the indefensible. UM. And now Kyle Rittenhouse, a seventeen year old white supremacist terrorist being excused by much of our media after he murdered two people. These are things that we have to address and talk about. So I'm really thankful, um, not only for my friendship with you, Jimial, but that you were willing to regroup to talk about what's been going on, to to talk about the pain of it, and also the history being made Kamala Harris being our first woman of color who is the vice presidential nominee of a major political party. UM, not the first woman of color who's a who's a vice presid cential nominee, interestingly enough in history, but um of of a major political party, not an independent or or you know, as many of us talk about quote third parties. UM. And And so we are, we are in this moment of really seismic shaking as a nation, and I just want to check in, how are you? I am a lot. I feel like that's the way to put it. Uh. You know, we all contain multitudes, uh, as Whitman wrote, and I really do think that, you know, there are various emotions, UM in states that we just vacillated between all day long. That can you know, be due to something we saw on social media. It can be due to the latest conversation with our parents where they need to vent about what's going on in the world because they have seen Jim Crow, they have seen um, you know, the civil rights movement. They have seen these advances uh in their lifetimes, and they know how hard it is to make them and how you know, really urgent it is that we address the fact that they these gains are being reversed with much speed and uh and recklessness. Uh. And not just by this administration. I mean we are reversing them sometimes by our inaction, by our silence, and we need to make sure that we keep speaking up. M I think something when we speak about the Jim Crow era and gains being reversed. One of the things that seems to be the most blaring alarm right now is the fact that all of our Voting Rights Act protections have lapsed. We're witnessing has work voter suppression. And while it's lovely that we're having conversations about perhaps renaming the Edmund Pettis Bridge uh in in the wake of John Lewis is passing. What feels to me like a better way to honor his legacy is to reinstate the Voting Rights Act, the the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, to to make sure that every single person in this country can access their constitutional right to vote, that that is not dependent on your race or your economic status, which is an egregious violation of the Constitution itself. And so I I wonder, in addition to that issue, or or maybe not in addition to I wonder what specifically about voter suppression and the new Jim Crow feels like a sticking point for you right now. The sticking point for me, Sophia, is the fact that it has become normalized, we Republicans to do these things, and therefore we become numb to it. We see Trump and the post most not. We see Trump in the postmaster General, uh, snapping up mailboxes and coming up the works of the postal service, and we recognize that as voter suppression, mainly because I feel like it affects all of us. It is affecting black people, white people, indigenous people, uh, Latinos and Latinos. I mean, we are all being affected by this. Whereas there are still disproportionate effects. Even within this postal service effort, there are still these other regular sort of you know, running the mill voter suppression things that are happening, I mean more than the double states new restrictions uh to you know, make make it harder for people to vote and in particular environment. I mean, we we have to take that especially seriously because really going to vote in person uh literally means risking your life at this point, upon spending upon where you you cast your ballot. And I think that what we need to understand as a country collectively is that voter suppression of particular groups uh leads to uh, you know, frankly worst outcomes for everyone. If you have you know, a particular area that is, you know, there's more carcynogens and less money flowing into it and all these different things. Uh, then you are going less representation overall. You're going to see that area suffer, and that suffering is going to spread throughout the cities, uh, and it's going to spread throughout other kinds of municipalities. People need to understand how much we are all in this together, and and that is that's the foundation of the American project. We're all here. But at the same time, we have to understand that even when these I'd say, well, let me, let me put it this way, the Trump administration, I'd say, if there's anything one good thing that has come out of it, it's only one. Really, is that everyone has gotten a taste to some degree, even if it's just a little of what it is like or what it has been like for marginalized populations to endure discrimination, to do vote suppression, to endure basically, you know, this the spreading of this plague. Uh, you know, disproportionate amounts of disproportioned amounts of COVID yes are being diagnosed in our communities. That being said, I mean we have to understand that it's a you know, yeah, everyone's getting a taste of it. Um. You you understand that this is what it feels like, even if it's just a little bit of aggravation or inconvenience or tragedy. This is what it's been feeling like for marginalized people, African Americans, indigenous folks, lgbt qes, depending upon the the offense. This is what it's been like for us. And yeah, we're really tired, we're exhausted, were mentally spent, and just when we thought that, you know, okay, we can focus on the election, and we can focus on getting Trump out well, and Jacob Blake is shot seven but times in the backler and the shot other times. I mean, these happening. And when they get normalized, when least vile normalized, voter suppression gets normalized, start not to pay nearly as much attention, and we start not to care. And we start when you start not to care, we're starting not to make time in your day to make you know, to take action towards any things. Then you know that is exactly what the comfortable and the powerful want. So yeah, it is. It's tiring, but we have to make sure we stay attitude. And there's a couple of things I need to say to people listening, and I hope that what I'm about to go off on can arm you with some facts when you are arguing or debating these issues, because I do get a lot of messages from you guys, and I so appreciate this audience. You will say to me, how do I debate this with my dad, who's a Trump voter? How do I talk to my aunt who voted for this guy? How do I how do I do this? And I'm going to take a moment because it's incredibly important that the explanations of the double standards that black life experiences in America do not fall consistently as emotional labor on our black and brown friends. So I'm not going to ask Jamal to explain this to you. I'm going to explain something to you. When we talk about George Floyd, a man who was suspected of perhaps using a forged twenty dollar bill. We never even heard if that happened. By the way, we don't know that that was a fact. But here's what I'm gonna tell you. Poverty shouldn't be a death sentence. And the folks who were saying, well, he had a criminal record, well, look at these things that he did. I'm going to rebut that and say he was also a father, he was also a friend, He was also a beloved person to the people in his life. And when the folks in your life say, well, he had a criminal record, what I'd like you to say to them is so does the president. The President of the United States, the man who currently sits behind the resolute desk, has been charged with and convicted a fraud on multiple accounts, has had to pay tens of millions of dollars in damages to the people he's defrauded. He has been accused credibly of sexual assault and rape by twenty six women, women who have evidence, Women who told other people what happened to them at the time. So the double standard of well, some people are allowed to, you know, do bad things, and then they learn and then they can do anything that they want when they become a nicer person, include be the president. If that applies to your guy, if he's your guy, that has to apply to George Floyd. Next up, we're going to talk about Brianna Taylor. Brianna Taylor Jamal's incredible piece Uh, if you haven't read it, please do in Rolling Stone titled Brianna Taylor Was Always Essential is an incredibly profound piece of writing and highlights something really important, whereby Black people who get killed have to be sainted essentially in their memory to be valid in society. Brianna Taylor would have been a valid woman whether she was an E. M. T or not, whether she was a first responder fighting on the front lines of COVID or not, but she was. And the fact that a woman who was also a first responder was executed by the police in her home in her bed, and people have said to us, well, her boyfriend had a gun. Here's what I'm gonna tell you. I own a gun. I'm enraged that the other Second Amendment folks who say we've got to have guns, this is our right, we need to be able to defend our homes, have been silent on this. Why am I enraged, I'm gonna tell you because Brianna Taylor and her boyfriend were asleep in their bed in the middle of the night and their door got broken down. No one knocked and said, hey, it's the police, let us in. When their door was busted down. The cops didn't say police, hands up. They just broke their door down. So Brianna Taylor's boyfriend, like anyone would do, like I would do, thinking his home was being broken into by a group of people, fired a warning shot to let that group of people know he was armed, which is legal, that's his Second Amendment right, and to say get out of my house. This is not the house you want to rob tonight. And those those burglars turned out to be a bunch of cops who opened fire on Kenneth and Brianna. She was shot eight times in her bed. The double standard should make you nauseous. It makes me nauseous that people have been unwilling to acknowledge the fact that an American was simply exercising his constitutional right to defend his home and his girlfriend was killed, and everybody says, well, you know, the guy shouldn't have fired a gun. If that happened to me, if that happened to me, if the police broke down my door did not announce themselves, I thought they were a burglar or a stalker, because I've got a few of those, and if you follow me on social media you know that. And I fired a shot to say, hey, motherfucker, not today, I have a gun, and then I was executed in my bed. I promise you you would be up in arms about it. Next up, when we talk about Jacob Blake, a father, a good Samaritan who saw a fight happening on the block and said, you know what, no, no, this need not happen. I'm not going to drive by what's happening on the sidewalk and show my kids that I don't care. So he pulled over and said, hey, guys, whatever it is, this isn't worth it. Don't hit each other, don't do it, don't get the cops called on you. Our communities aren't safe when the police come here, which, by the way, if that agitates you, look it up. Data proven Black people are less safe no matter what when they have interactions with the police. This is a fact. You may not like it. I don't like it either, but it's true. Jacob Blake pulled over to try to stop a violent altercation from happening, and the cops showed up because a neighbor had already called. And he said, I did my duty. I'm getting in my car. The cops tried to stop him, and he's that I don't have anything to do with this. I came to break it up. My children are in the car. This is getting scary for them. I'm gonna get in the car with my kids. And he just kept walking away and explaining why he was not going to stop. And when he opened the front door of his vehicle, he was shot in the back seven times, seven times at point blank range by the people who his taxpayer dollars pay to serve and protect him, And the audacity of people who now say, well, there was a weapon in the car, there was a gun in the car, there was a knife in the car. There wasn't a gun in the car. There was a knife in the car. Do you know where it was? Under his floor mat? Having lived in the Midwest, I can tell you that nearly everybody I've encountered there keeps a knife under their floormat. I can also tell you, having lived in Texas, that a whole lot of people in Texas have rifle racks set up against their back windshields of their trucks, guns out in the open. This is not a reason to kill someone. A knife that a police officer could not see because it was covered by the floor mat of a vehicle is not an excuse to kill someone. As a person who's been through both police boot camp with a city municipality and state SWAT training, I can tell you it is patently against training for officers to shoot someone in the back. The only reason you are ever to fire your weapon is if you fear for your life. You cannot fear for your life because someone is walking away from you, not obeying your screaming commands at them to stop walking, and you do not have the right to execute that person because they prioritize getting in their car and telling their children everything is okay while a bunch of police have their guns drawn, rather than turning around and talking to those police officers who have their guns drawn, this is not okay. I am angry, I am heartbroken, and I'm fucking pissed at people who look like me who are trying to justify our law enforcement executing our neighbors. This is not okay. It is not okay. And I don't know how to not be angry, and I don't know how to not be in tears over this anymore. This is not okay. And black people and brown people have been sharing these things with us for literal generations, and it has taken so many of us seeing these things happen on video. It has taken black and brown pain being turned into trauma porn on the internet for us to go, oh my god, this is really bad. We saw the photos of John Lewis getting his all cracked open marching over that bridge in Selma. We saw the photos of the freedom writers. We saw we saw the video of white women, women who look like me chanting the N word. At at Ruby Bridge is a six year old girl walking into her classroom having to be protected by the National guard I have to ask us us, all of us, me included, every single person listening, what is wrong with us? What is wrong with us? How have we allowed it to get here? How have we, to Jamal's point, how have we normalized this? How have we made the execution of our citizens a partisan issue? We do not if a doctor kills someone, say well, not all doctors. Those doctors are removed from rotation. We do not. When a gymnastics coach assaults five hundred girls, not young women, y'all underage women, i e. Girls. When he is a child molester, we don't say, well, not all gymnastics coaches. He goes to jail. Why are we doing this? I don't want to believe that the people I would call if my home were broken into might kill me. I don't want to believe that either, But this is our reality. Why are we doing this? Why are we making excuses? Why? Why do we tolerate being lied to when the data shows us what the problem is. Why don't we, as a society say we are not going to tolerate this anymore. We expect these systems to be taken apart and put back together. There. Why that, That's where I find myself. Why could any single person watch four police officers put their knees in George Floyd's neck and back and quite literally crush his cardiothoracic cavity, squeeze the life out of his lungs for eight minutes and forty six seconds, and dare to say, well, once he had a drug problem, What the actual fuck does that have to do with anything? With anything? These These are things we have to talk about. And it cannot solely be the responsibility of people like my friend Jamal, who is sitting here on a zoom with me right now, to keep writing articles about to keep asking you to see his humanity. This is not a kaya ah yeah, And I just have to say, I'm so grateful for you because I am exhausted. I am not sleeping. I don't I haven't slept through the night in two weeks. I I haven't slept through the night in a week. What is time? Um? I am? I am emotionally shattered, and I know that my experience, and my sleeplessness and my exhaustion and my feeling broken is proximal. I truly can't imagine how you and so many of our friends are feeling in an America that feels like this today. M hm mm hmm. Yeah. Well first thanks, First, I want to stay thank you, thank you for staying in the fight. Thank you for that sacred rage. Thank you. Um, it's it goes, it goes in waves. Um, it really does, um, because the traumas that we have experienced already mm hmm continue to be reopened. Uh. The scars are cut open and and you know, yes they key lloyd over over and over again, but then they keep getting ripped out. And you know, I'm sure people have seen um, you know, old photographs of um of of slaves who have been whipped um, and you've seen the key Lloyd's on their back from where they're torn their skin open. And that is something that you know, we feel, I feel like, uh, if not physically for Jacob Blake or trade Elerin or any of these other victims of police violence, if we're not um, you know, someone who is experiencing this on a physical level, then we are experiencing on an emotional and its psychological level. Uh. And these scars continue to heal over slowly, but sometimes they have a chance to just keep getting ripped open. More skin is torn off from whatever I guess you might want to call our mental being. And then we are left two flow out for the public and hope that someone cares. And we have to do this while occupied with the stresses of life than everyone experience. I mean, you know, going through a divorce while all this is happening is been extra hard. But I've had to do And so when you think about, you know what other people are going through, you know, I don't have to worry about my next meal is coming from. I'm thankful that I have a secure living. I am thankful that I have a car to drive, and I'm thankful that I live in a city like Los Angeles. Um where I am not you know, I personally am not going to be threatened by an immediate future of the weather. Mm hmm. I live in Lake Charles, Louisiana, live in New Orleans, Louisiana. I don't live in along the Gulf coast that is being assaulted right now by hurricanes. If we have allowed to continue to build strength because of our inaction on climate change. I have not lived in a place where I feel immediately as threatened as some of my brothers and sisters. But that I want to say this to people who are in my position, do not excuse your pain, don't throw would aside simply because nobody else is going through something worse. Yes, strong for them, and I summon that strength, frankly to do my job, but I and to be I mean, I summoned that strength to do my job, and I summer some of it to be there for my family. UM, because some of them have been traumatized by cops. Some of them have seen worse than this. Some of them have experienced worse than this. You know, and we are all human. We all have physical and psychic injuries and psychological injuries. UM. We need to tend to them as if they are injuries, and do not dismiss them. If you can, if you have the wherewithal to do so, get therapy. UM. It's me. UM. I want to emphasize vulnerability, such as what you just showed us and what we're showing each other through our friendship. The vulnerability UM is so essential because you have to be unafraid of being wrong going to take progress for all of us. I am wrong, I've been wronging right, writing, I've been wrong my speaking. But you have to be vulnerable enough and secure enough to understand that you being wrong is not the point. You being wrong is not the point. What is the point is do you learn from it? Can you learn from it? And you show uh that learning or demonstrate that learning in a constructive fashion? And sometimes is that construction is sitting down and listening constructive fashion? Sometimes that CONSTRUCTI fashion, It is sitting down and listening. Sometimes it is action. But you will figure it out. Just ask questions, be open, be vulnerable, because if you are on guard about all of that stuff all the time, it will eat at you and we won't not benefit potentially from what you could have contributed. Goes for people of every color and creed. So my hope is that we can see what is happening in Wisconsin. Uh we're here the news about him being about Jacob Blake being handcuffed to a bed even though he is paralyzed. I just I just that tells me so much about America right there, that you know him walking away for the fear of God and somebody enough to the point where boom boom boom and and or or or let me let me actually rephrase that it him walking away was so scary in some way, whether it was actually about him causing real fear, or his blackness presents a threat. These very existence presents a threat to that officer. I don't know. What I do know is that we need to have systems that make that kind of action impermissible unacceptable in this society. And you know, people like that do not need to be police officers, because we know even that they are makes me not want to call the cops. And if I can't all the cops if I need help, then the social contract is broken. It's broken. And and something I would like to acknowledge is I do not believe. And I watched that video by accident. I don't. I purposefully try not to add to the clicks on things like that. And I was following a Twitter a Twitter thread, and then there it was, and and I thought, God, damn it. And then when I had seen it, I thought, Okay, I've seen it, So what I need to do now? And this is so sad, I said to myself I need to analyze it so I know how to rebut the bullshit that I know is coming. And so then I sat there and I really watched it more than once, and it was awful. And what I saw was not fear. What I saw was rage at not being listened to. What I saw was the kind of energy I've been on the receiving end of from certain men who are so angry that I don't obey, who want me to be docile and obedient and sweet and to stroke their ego. It was a a perversion of that same energy, which is, I just gave you a fucking order obey me. I saw that man be so angry that Jacob Blake continued to completely passively and peacefully walk away from him, and I would bet, I would bet that he was saying, I am getting back in my vehicle with my children. I would bet that he just wanted those cops to know I'm not here for this, I'm not doing this. I wasn't a part of this. I was breaking up a fight. I'm getting in the car with my kids, who I would wager we're probably screaming by this point, little children seeing a bunch of adults yelling and shouting and pulling guns. That's terrifying. And for a father to simply want to get back in his vehicle with his children, that's not life threatening and that's not scary. So to anyone who who even wants to offer the the potential of perhaps that officer was afraid, No, he wasn't. You're not afraid of someone who is calmly walking away from you. I saw that anger on his face when he reached to grab Jacob's body and he just started shooting him. You cannot shoot a person you are sworn to protect for trying to ge in their car with their kids. You just can't. And by the way, cops aren't supposed to kill guilty people either. They're not supposed to do that. Dylan Ruth murdered a church full of people and was taken peacefully. Kyle Rittenhouse is a domestic terrorist, by the way, with a record, multiple multiple accounts of misdemeanors and charges for unlawful behavior, drug possession, all sorts of things. Nobody's talking about that. This is not an argument I'm willing to stand for. It's just not you do not. You do not shoot a person in the back if I, a legal gun owner, shot someone in the back who let's say, let's say we go back to that potential hypothetical example of what would happen to me if I were in Brianna and Kenneth's situation, if somebody broke into my home, I fired a warning shot, they went bush at wronghouse and went to leave, and I shot them in the back seven times. I would be charged with murder. And I know that because I've been through sheriff's training on when you can and cannot legally fire your weapon at an intruder in your home. It is illegal. There cannot be a double standard. There cannot. And this is actually the argument. This is what people are talking about in the in the the purposefully agitational phrase defund the police. No, that doesn't mean get rid of the police. What it means is why why is half of the budget, the entire budget of the entire city of Los Angeles given to policing. People think the idea of defunding the police sounds radical. We've been defunding education for decades. What if we put money back into our schools, into computer labs, What if we put money back into our park system? What if we took some of the money that is given to the mill tourrization of our police forces against us, and instead when you called nine one, you would say, do you have an emergency and need the police? Push one? Do you have a mental health crisis and need a social worker push to do you? Is there a a fire to report or a domestic violence issue or a and you would simply push the key for what you needed and then the police would just do policing, and the social workers would do the social work, and the firefighters would fight the fires, and the list would go on. We it doesn't have to be like this, And it doesn't mean we're waging a war on the cops. It means we're asking them to stop waging war on us. Right, I think fear least anger number one. When you think about that anger, the the get over here boy, listen to me. I have authority that kind of anger, right, the kind of angry you know we heard about, you know from you know, from overseers when they would oversee the enslaved um and considering the roots of the profession of policing. Uh, it's really you know, in terms of slave catching, it's really not all that, uh far afoot from where that attitude stems from. And so when we think about that man grabbing him by the shirt before he fires the shots, I mean, you know, it's just an utter, casual, reckless disregard for human life. And if you needed to get his attention, if you needed to make him stop, just I haven't had any training. I know how to I know how to use a gun, but I've never had any police training. But I sure it's heck know that there are other ways to have done that. And so my my thinking is this, when you fear blackness, when you fear not having the authority over someone who looks like me, uh, that can provoke violence. And then what we're seeing large in our country right now with the rise of white supremacist violence, with the rise of Trump, is uh rhetoric um that that feeds these attitudes for the same really not of these people. And that's the funny thing, not of these people. They're not really actually benefiting from it. They are just being made to feel like being white is superior. And so even if my healthcare goes away, even if my job gets wiped off the board, even if covid um ensures that my small business never opens up again, while at least I feel better than this black person over here, this Hispanic person over here, this indigenous person over there. Um. And And we have to something also that you look on that I really wanted to hit. We have to talk about masculinity in this society and how it feels these kinds of racist instance, because listen, there have been shootings that have involved female cops killing black people having in Oklahoma. It's happened. Listen. I'm not saying that it is impossible, but we see a lot of male rage in male entitlement that frankly, you know, I'm a guy. I mean, I've experienced what it's like to be indoctrinated into this notion that you deserve more because you're a man or a boy. And it's something we learned early, and it is something you have to unlearned and and we have to take an active interest. Even if you think you are the most liberal, uh progressive feminist dude out here, Okay, you may think that you have a lot of unlearning to do. I have un learning to do. I'm alost forty five. I have unlearning to do. So we have to take the approach that we have been fed a lot of stuff in the society that someonemes in our phone. Sometimes we ingest it because we enjoy it. It makes us feel better. And there are powerful people who are willing to use that to maintain not your power, but their power. Trump doesn't care about these people. He cares maintaining his power, and he cares paining it really not so that he can serve the working man. He remember, he thought talking about I am you were both. That's what he said the first uh time he was nominated for president. And what has that voice brought them? Hunting mean that dad Americans from this place that he's willing to spread openly and willingly and without any consequence, all for the sake of appearing normal. And then he is, you know, willing to let these problems fester whether or not he wins or loses um because he has managed to build a cult of personality around himself and whole mortality says, Hey, anything I do is all right, Everything I do was fine, Everything I'm doing is for you. And these people believe this stuff. And it's the story, frankly, a white supremacy in this country. I mean, it's it's how this stuff happens. White supremacy does not feed or help all white people. It helps the powerful white people, and people understand that they actually even left out of this con job that he is operating. I don't know, maybe maybe I have. That's the only thing that helps me maintain hope. Um, and I hope that people. You know, I'm not looking for people to all of a sudden switch their votes and all of a sudden they're gonna be voting for Biden. Not I'm not looking for that because I understand how alluring this white supremacy is. I'm not expecting this to be cured immediately. But when I'm am hoping is that our society can understand that these folks in the Republican Party are pushing an agenda that serves blutocracy and the premising it's necessary for that, But they are not out here caring about folks who are struggling and presentable. You know, I mean he told he said that they should close is the Lord's Town Auto plant, which is right near where I grew up in northern Ohio, because they wouldn't allow them to wear his maga hats at work. You want to close a plant now in that area, you're talking about wading a lot. It's talking about hurting a lot of working class white folks and black folks and other folks all were working at this massive plant and that you know, and and you want to or you want to see all these different things go go down, and then you want to like claim victory because maybe you reopen something that people don't even need. It's this just the massive failure of governance that is in this administration is astounding. And I just really need people to understand that, you know it is. It is not really something that we're going to recover from um easily ement of Biden is elected, and we need This is on us. And you are white, it's on you especially to fix racism. If you are men like I am for a man, then it's on us to fix sexism. And I'm Kelly Sutton and I'm Amber Anderson, and we are the hosts of Country Heat Weekly, the podcast where we run down everything that's hot in country music. I am so excited about all the things that we're covering in Country Heat Weekly, country music news that you need straight for music, girl, We've got the inside scoop We've got artists interviews, the hot seat. We're gonna have somebody sitting in the hot seat each and every week. We're going to talk to some super fans that take vacations just to go listen to their favorite country artists. And then there's our heat index. We get to talk about what's burning up our country heat playlist. I love this because it gives us a chance to spotlight songs that the fans love and we love too. We are going to dig into the Amazon Music archives and celebrate some music we might not have heard in a while. We are going to rediscover some favorites. I want to rediscover some of those artists that maybe got overlooked in the past. This is going to be so much fun because it's all the things that we love already find and followed Country Heat Weekly on Amazon Music. Now. You know, I again, I respect you saying you're you're not looking for it to or you don't expect it to be fixed overnight, or expect people to change their votes. I do m I I desperately want us to reclaim some semblance of decency, some semblance of willingness to look out for each other. You know, I saw this great tweet from a comedian who I love last week, and she said, not liking Joe Biden as your candidate, So deciding you're not voting is kind of like going to Trader Joe's and because they're out of dried mango, you throw yourself into oncoming traffic. But I was like, honestly, that's really great. You don't have to be the most excited. It's there is. There is a real need for us to remember that it's not all about us, it's about our country. And I know for a fact, I've got friends, I've got family. You know, I was in Oklahoma recently. There's a lot of people who are afraid of what they're hearing from right wing media in the middle of the country about the progressives, and you know how how radical this is. And some of our favorite leaders aren't that palatable to them, but Joe Biden is. And guess what, Donald Trump isn't palatable to me, but he might have been palatable to some of those voters who now are willing to vote for Joe. And guess what that works for me? If we collectively get a leader who works for more more of us than not, that's our fucking job as citizens. And then it's our job to get super active in local politics to elect the kind of mayors and congress people and senators who will hold Joe and Kamala accountable to being better representatives for all of us. You know, people who who shipped all over their records really upset me because here's the difference. Trump will double down on his monstrous behavior and say I can do whatever I want, and Joe has said, you know what, we thought we were doing the best we could with the information that we had, and now we know better and we're going to do better. And he does it over and over again. And that's what I want in a leader. There's nobody who's been in politics since the seventies or the nineties who hasn't been a part of something that hasn't been that hasn't turned out great for us. That's not possible. The point is to you to exactly what you said about yourself as an individual. You can look at where you've made mistakes in your writing, where you at the time we're telling the truth in the best way that you knew it, and said, hey, I've since learned, and so I've changed my mind I've since learned, so I've gotten more specific. That's that's the great power each of us has is the ability to consistently evolve, be more educated, no more facts, be more willing to hear about other people's experiences, and be better to each other. So maybe it's crazy, maybe it's inappropriate, but absolutely I have an expectation. I I want to launch a rallying cry for all of us to show up and do the right thing, even if it isn't our favorite thing, because not doing something, not voting, not showing up, this is This is the moment where democracy lives or dies. This is the moment where the United States gets back on track to be held accountable, to live up to her ideals, or we literally become Russia. And we see the quote enemies of the president, the progressives, the people who don't agree with him, wind up getting poisoned. They're already getting killed. We we see elections like just happened in Belarus where the people voted in a new leader and it doesn't matter because the dictator said, no, I'm still the president. We either become that or we we get back on track and we get better. Those are our options. Yeah, I think we really need to understand that everyone. I think to make this progress that we're both talking about that we both want, we need only to embrace a a real collective sense of critical thinking. We need to understand that critical thinking about ourselves, about this country, about everything that is happening, from even the leaders that we vote in ourselves, the leaders who we approve of, we need to be critical about then. And that's one of the reasons why frankly, I love my job so much, because it's essentially it pays you to learn, and it pays you to be critical of everybody. I mean, we're opposed to not mistrust people. I think that's different than being a critical thinker. What you were supposed to do is investigate. What you're supposed to do is be a responsible citizen and be informed. And I live by that Baldwind quote. You know, I love America more than any other country in the world, and exactly for this reason, I just on the right to criticize her perpetually. It's background. Yes, I just talked about this yesterday. Yes, it's my favorite. Yeah, that to me is that that is the quote that animates my work. That is the quote that keeps me going I do my country, and I think that black people, frankly, have shown their love for country more than almost any other group. It's not a competition. I do think that it's astounding the idea that or the suggestion that black people demanding equal rights, demanding equal treatment under the law, uh, and women in indigenous groups and all these different marginalized populations doing the same thing for themselves is somehow a strike against America. It is we're seeking to improve this country, we're seeking to have it. As Martin Luther King said, be true to what you said on paper. You are ideals in this country. And well, only these people get to take advantage of this ideal. Only these people have the potential to fulfill that ideal within their lives, within their within their existence here. You, on the other hand, do not. You have the opportunity to live up to a certain point of the ideal. And if you're lucky, maybe if you can run a fast forty, or you can dunk a basketball, or you can uh, you know, score hockey goals or what have you, then you are able potentially two taste a little bit of it. But when you leave that baseball field or that boxing ring or whatever feel to play that you may be involved, and then I can still pull you over and I can consider you ana. And that is to me the animating part of not just my word in terms of what I try to do, try to make this push people who are in power to be better. But I mean I saw it this week with you know, with the n A, n B A, the A, MLS, MLB golf and tennis athletes saying, hey, uh we can take a pause NFL practices. You know, got chick. I mean, it gets spread. This is not going to stop. It's not going to be limited to August. Of course, four years to the day that Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during a preseason game to progress and systemic racism. We are not going to see that end just on that day. Yeah, and the layoffs may be back on this weekend. But don't don't get it twisted. They have made it clear that if I am displeased with the state of this country, I will deprive you of my entertainment and and of the corporate profits that that entertainment provides. The irony of Jared Kushner having the nerve to say, well, it must be nice that the NBA players have the you know, money to where they can take a day off. They're not taking a day off, they are striking, and what they are doing is denying the profits they make two corporate owners, corporate sponsors. They are creating a seismic wave in our actual economy in that day, in that moment, on the following days, it matters because if all, if all we seem to care about in this country is capitalism, okay, we can disrupt that. We we can absolutely put a pause on that. And and you know it's also not last I mean, I must just say that this might be good for the folks at home to who need again the AMMO to argue. It's not lost on me that Jared Kushner has the nerve to say that about a bunch of professional athletes when he's literally the son of a criminal billionaire whose daddy paid his way into college, who then became the son in law of another criminal billionaire, who has increased his personal wealth by one million dollars a year working in the White House, which is a clear violation of the emoluments Clause. Uh. And the fact that he has even given a position in the White House despite having not passed a security clearance is criminal nepotism. So he has no right to criticize people who have made themselves the most elite athletes in the world, using their power, spending their privilege to defend their community. That man, that boy means to sit down, shut up, and perhaps learn how to disrupt a system that is not working for people. Because if he perhaps put up any form of protest in the White House, maybe his father in law wouldn't be behaving like a tyrant or a want to be king. But again, you know, and so you have a guy and pushner who says it might must be nice for these millionaires to take, well would take in the last four years of off and and to your point about the cost to us, obviously we're looking at a hundred and eighty thousand dead Americans, which somehow right wing media has made acceptable to apparently six of Republicans they think that's okay. And this is the same media that called for Obama to resign when two people died of Obola. I just want to put that in context. We're we are now having a nine eleven every four days, that's how many Americans are dying it's it's insane. And when you talk about Trump being completely derelict in his duty simply just taking time off. UM. As of last July, Trump's golfing had costed Americans over a hundred and ten million dollars in tax are money he golfs. I believe it's one of every four or one of every five days of his presidency UM a hundred and five million dollars. The estimation that if he's reelected, his golf trips will cost our economy three hundred and forty five million dollars if he's the president for eight years. And this is a man who had the nerve to tell us that Obama was golfing, and he actually at a campaign rally in sixteen talked about his golf course in Miami and said, and I quote, I love golf, but if I were in the White House, I don't think I'd ever see Turnberry again. I don't think i'd ever see Doral again. I don't think i'd see anything. I just want to stay in the White House and work my ass off. So when people want to say that supposedly, by the way, supposedly the president donates his four hundred thousand dollar years salary. He's cost us a hundred and ten million dollars. That was as of last year. Where where do you think we are now? A hundred and fifty million dollars? I don't really care. And Trump also supposedly ran a cancer charity, and then we found out he took all the money and spent it on himself. So I'm not really I'm not confident that the man is donating his presidential salary to charity because we know what that means to him. And so again, you know, when we analyze all of this stuff, you know, top to bottom. You said it earlier, the system is broken. We need we need to we need to see each other. And I know, for me, at least, I'm willing to sit down with anybody. I'm willing to welcome anybody to our side, anybody who says, you know what. I may not know everything. I may not be right about everything I know. I'm certainly not, by the way, but I I want to be on the side of my neighbors, of my community. I wanna I want to figure out how to make the things I love about America the things that everyone can love about America. I want to make sure that whatever privilege I have, everybody gets to have it. Anyone who wants to do that, come on over. You don't have to know everything. We're all learning together all the time. But unless we really get frank and specific in our language and in our acknowledgement of what is happening, we are going to keep making excuses for the toxicity that poisons all of us. All of us are at risk in a system like this. And I share, I share your hope, I truly do. UM, I hope that there are people who understand the greater purpose of America. That America, Yes, may have been founded by you know, a lot of you know, slaveholding white men. Uh, you know, it was largely built to reinforce their privileges and their ability to maintain that institution. That being said, there have been a lot of corrections since then, and a lot of work and a lot of bloodshed to make those corrections. Um, we cannot go forward thinking that we're going to continue to need to see more bloodshed, more bodies pile up in order to make change. Change is easier than this. We can't make it easier if we want to. As a but you know, here you know, power is intoxicating. Racism is intoxicating for a lot of people, certainly intoxicated. UM. And we need to, like you said, get these toxins out, um how we read them. I mean, frankly, I've been wrestling with this a lot, UM because I've interviewed Stacy Abrams a number of times, and you know, I felt that, you know, in her race. I thought that was like, Okay, there's a new pathway to victory. It's not really about catering to you know, these these these Obama Trump voters, These these people who stay there on the fence, but actually when they go on the booth when everything's quiet, they end up pulling the lever for the Republican UM. And they just can't see themselves voting for say, a black woman to be governor of Georgia. UM. I think that, Yes, I think mobilizing as many people on our side and animating them too, you know, get go forth and defeat this menace, uh is I think the priority. But yeah, we'll take converts. But they just have to be like I, like I said before, critical thinkers, UM, and and be willing to understand that. You know, they're going to make some stakes, and and that has to be okay. And I think, to your point, if we can apply the same kind of willingness to be introspective about our own lives, you know, we we are living in a time where mental health and self care are being acknowledged in better ways than ever. And so if we talk about how do I take care of myself? How do I analyze my experiences and whatever trauma I've gone through, how do I how do I grow? How do I be a better friend, lover, partner, daughter, son, parent, sibling, You know, we can do the same thing with how we fit into America. We can acknowledge that to your point, yes, a bunch of white men who owned slaves founded this country, but in their ideation of what this country could be, they actually saw past themselves, past their own limitations. They sent goals for this place that were bigger than what they were capable of seeing because of the time and place and prejudice they were born in. And that's the gift for us. That's how we hold both. That's how we say this is the way those men failed our ideals, and they also created them. That's how you know me and Brittany pack Nick Cunningham and Mina Harris can talk about the the hundredth anniversary of women's suffrage and acknowledge that it was an immense win and also a failure because it didn't protect all women both and the real way to participate in society and also push it to be better is to hold its incredible promise and inspiration and success and also acknowledge the ways in which it falls short, so that every year from now and hereafter we can push it to catch up for the falls. We can make those falls smaller and smaller. We can create a more equitable society. We can build a bigger table, we can grow the economy. The irony here is that everyone's in this scarcity mentality where they're scared that if women get power, or black people get power, or brown people get power, what's going to happen to them? And the reality is that everyone just has more power. Right, It's truly not. I mean simply in my experience as a woman just analyzing looking at the analysis and research around the data that comes from what would happen if women were actually paid equally to men. The United States economy would grow by two trillion dollars. We wouldn't actually be in this financial suffering. We wouldn't be trying to figure out what we can afford as a country, because we'd be able to afford it all. So imagine if every single person who has been held back was suddenly made whole. Imagine the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars that our economy would be bigger. You know, there's there's quite literally enough for all of us. We can grow it together. And that's why I lament quite a lot about what a this might sound like an on term to apply to it, but what a wasted opportunity the COVID has been because here is a disease that we can all catch, that we can spread like wildfire if we do not collectively take action, and or that we are protecting one another by wearing our maths, by by being isolated, by staying at home, and being responsible by not to bars uh and to into other places of business that we have no business being in while there is a raging you know, pestilence in our society. Uh. You know, it can wait, folks, it can wait. And you would think that people would understand, Hey, we have an opportunity here to have some to to have some healing, because everybody can catch this, So it's not good if black people catch them. It's not good if Latina and Latinas catch us. It's not good if insues people catch this and it spreads like wildfire in their communities. It's not good for us because we could be around them, okay, and everyone can be as around each other, So we should be making sure that we are taking care of our neighbors. But instead, what we've seen from way too many people, and we're getting back into how masculinely feeds us. We've seen way too and in particular not wearing their masks because I guess they feel like, you know, our our chromoomes protect us. I don't know, and like no, men are getting sick from this thing, um and they feel like they just need themselves. Uh, you know that, like we need to live our lives. Well, yeah, you can live your life. Just put a mask on. Put a fucking mask on, like I I know, you know from my parents are gonna hear that now said. But the point is is that upsetting. It is that upseting. Uh, you have with a chance to take at least the minimum amount of collective responsibility within this society. How art is it to stay home and not do anything if you have the privilege so and by the numbers, we know that it is more white people who have the privilege to do this than people of heller disproportionately throughout this throughout our society. So if you cannot stay home and put on a mask, and instead you feel the need to march into a statehouse, for instance, where a a high powered weapon of war and demand your right to kill yourself and other people, then again the social contract is broken. How am I supposed to respect anything that tells people are saying or offering to the economy of ideas when they don't even care about my basic survival and I see it manifest not merely in their support for for a particular candidate, or their encouragement of police violence, or their exacerbation of this termination in any particular arena, they are showing it to me by not wearing a mask, because that's really I mean, it's it's become to me a symbol of utter disregard for our lives, either Black Lives matter put on a mask. Mm hmm, yeah, it's it's no. The irony is not lost on me that the anti mask crew has now hijacked ah the women's phrase my body, my choice. I'm like, oh now now it's your body your choice? Is that really because you tell you tell women they have no right to say that, But now you're saying okay, okay. So again we have work to do to eradicate double standards, and I think they right now when when ideally would be all all about these mass well they're also only pro birth, their pro forced birth or not pro life. Because what I realized a couple of years ago is that I was going to stop having this debate with anyone who said to me, I am pro life, and I am pro early childhood education access, paying for childcare, making sure there is affordable rent, making sure there's food access for families. I am pro increasing snap and welfare, and I'm I'm pro making sure people can afford to have families. I would respect those people. I've never met a single one. I've never met a single person who says I'm pro life and also pro the social programming that makes life livable and achievable for people, And so I just won't debate it anymore. Yeah, if you if you say pro life pro safety net. You know, we can automatically understand that you are not a person to be taken seriously. And and and at this point, we don't have a time to you know, I mean this, this may sound harsh. We don't have time and a lot of ways to deal with people who are not serious. Um and this, this president is not serious, these these administration is not serious because it's all about building this false reality in which none of them are racist or sexist. I've never seen so much time devoted to explaining that a person is not a racist or sexist when obviously so much evidence that you mentioned is to the contrary. And then, you know, it's just how am I supposed to take this opposition party seriously when that is the the gas lighting that continues to flow out of their mouths. I just will, honestly to have an opposition party that I takes seriously, I would love him with uh, you know, Conservatives where I know that hey, look, you know your for small government. That doesn't necessarily mean you're against my life. Conservatism has more in to a to to such a state that I you know, they espoused these positions that I know, at the end of the day or against or contrary to my continued survival. And we've got to again, we've got to we've got to tighten it up, and we've got to write the ship. Because if we could get back to a point where humanity was not up for debate and we could simply debate policy, we could debate financial funding for programs and figure out where things go, and we could actually have healthy debate with people who have different opinions to actually get via critical thinking to the best possible outcome, that would be great. That's the kind of opposition and debate. I'm looking for this who deserves to live and who doesn't? Who who is a full human and who isn't? You know, I thought we got past that, and and now it seems that we're back, and so we we have we have work to do. But what's good, though, my friend, is that you are learning that we are not past that. And not only you're learning that, you're not saying like, wow, that's really bad and then going on with your day. You are using your platform and you are using your time two advance to educate yourself and to educate others. And that is one of the many reasons why our friendship this year had one of the shining lights of a really really shitty, shitty So thank you right back at you man. Truly, I'm so grateful to have the relationship that we do and to be able to you know, like d d M the funny political memes and also talk about how we fix you know, the world and might encourage people to see each other a little more clearly and kindly and with more empathy. It's it's really something I cherish to have, you know, the friendships that our group of friends is so lucky to have, where these are the ways that we love each other, it's pretty special. Yeah, And so I think it's it's good that we touch on love because I think, you know, obviously we're not getting anywhere without that. And I know it's sound odd for a journalist who writes about you know, racism and you know sexism government all day, uh, to want to talk about something like that. But I've had a lot of love in my life and I think gratitude is such an important part of my day now. Um, And it hadn't been uh you know, going through rough times this year, but I started my year and in Buddhist temple in Tokyo. That's where I brought the New Year and the yeah and the the thing that they wanted to emphasize the theme of the night was gratitude. And they handed out the old cards with the Japanese character and the end, which gratitude. And that is a reminder that I try to turn to every day. UM. And you know, whether it's in me in the course of meditation, whether it's in the course of what I call my sanity drives up the pc H when I just need to get in my car and go somewhere, um, and it let everything else go. UM. I don't simply dwell on the anger and the hurt and the void. I have to think about what I'm filling into. And so UM, I'm thankful for you know, my mom who just called in the middle of our taping. I'm thankful for had Uh and his health and and and thankful about my my dear sister and all these wonderful friends and chosen family, as my good friend Chen has uh, it's termed it chosen family that I have in my life. Yeah, me too, Yeah, So UM, I just I am thankful um, and again specifically for the ability um for this country to realize where it is, um, you know, in Clearland dark way. And though it has taken such tragic and events for us to gain that clarity, we now have it. So what are we going to do? Um? My job, I feel like as a journalist and as an analyst and essays is too simply introduce a perspective into the world, UM that I hope people find useful, and to tell a story that I feel are important about how the things that I care about the most are getting fixed and how we are how we can all, you know, play our part. And I don't you know people have said, oh, that sounds like activism. Well I don't think so, because I know activists. I know people who are community organizers, people on the ground, people like you said, like Brittany and and and folks who are doing that work. And what I hope to do is tell their stories a little bit more, Uh, tell me and what those human beings are, like, what kind of are they going through? What kind of laughter do they have in their life? Um? You know, let's see all of the people who are working to advance this country as full human beings. Let's get to know these patriots for who they are. Um, and I can do that with an objective. I I can do that with a subjective. I. UM, you know, I don't need to I'm talking new fellow journalists here. I don't need to ton it to tell you that. H. You know, we need to understand that we have the capability to tell these stories, but we should do so responsibly. And and I just helped to keep doing that. Um. And Rolling Stone has given me a great form for that. And I'm I am grateful every day. Yeah, I love that gratitude. The gratitude help to refuel the tank in times like this. It really does, It really does. And I am thankful for new people have come into my life because I see people like, oh, I have enough friends? Really do you have enough friends? Do you have enough? Because these are there like a quota. I would love to know what enough friends feels like, because I don't have friends, because if I had thought that. You know, there's a lot of wonderful people who just this year alone, present company included, I would never have met and never having And you know, uh, it's it. This is one of the loneliest times I think maybe in America has probably ever experienced. All of us have probably hit with that feeling of loneliness in ways maybe that we have not particularly been familiar with. And so man, like you said, make those connections. We gotta see each other. We gotta find ways, even if it's by video, if it's you know, how you're someone's on a stupid Brooklyn and you're standing on the sidewalk, just be socially, just a community, you know what I mean. Um, you know, if you're standing and they're standing on their front porch and you're standing on the on the tree lawne, you can still shout and and and be a community. UM. It's it's it's really important for us to be around each other and to embrace that notion that we can in fact realize these ideals that were put Um, America is worth fighting for. And however you do that, UM, it's up to you. UM. I feel like I'm in my lane. I feel like I'm happy doing what I'm doing, and you know, whatever you know comes forth, we'll see. But I feel like, um, overall, uh, you know, all these calamity in the world cannot quash my feeling of belonging and happiness. Good here here, Yeah, let's let's keep let's keep that community going, and and and and and frankly, keep listening to UM, two wise people and auditing our horizons. I try to listen to a new album a week, UM, something that something often that I had, you know, the genres that I've never would have considered, you know, country. I'm not a country fan. UM, not a you know, death metal guy. But you know, if there's an album I was like, Okay, now that's interesting. I'll listen to the whole thing. And okay, I've experienced that. Great. Let's make our life about these experiences, you know, and UM, and let's make space. Let's make space for each other. Indeed, indeed, and whether that's in a d M or you know, hugging somebody in person. UM made space for people, space for people in your life. And welcome possibility. Welcome possibility feels like a good kind of motto to take out into the world. Amen.