This week, Farai Chideya and her guests dissect the aftermath of the January 6th coup attempt at the Capitol. New York AG Letitia James shares the values that guide her work, which includes investigating President Trump. Boston Globe reporter Jazmine Ulloa reflects on her first-hand experience of the Capitol siege. As transition director of Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris’ team, political strategist Minyon Moore expands on Harris’ role in uniting the country. Plus, a new extended segment of “Sippin’ the Political Tea” with contributors Errin Haines and Jess Morales Rocketto.
EPISODE RUNDOWN
0:51 Farai Chideya breaks down what she calls the “Black Cassandra Syndrome” and why she thinks more people should listen to journalists of color.
2:34 New York Attorney General Letiticia James talks about her goal to uphold an equal application of the law, regardless of social status.
5:50 James explains that her humble upbringing and daily interactions with her community encourage her to seek justice for all.
7:55 Lawmakers’ priorities tend to neglect the needs of average Americans, especially minority communities, James explains.
13:12 Journalist Jazmine Ulloa describes what the siege on the Capitol looked like, on the ground.
14:56 Many journalists in the Senate press gallery doubted that rioters could break into the building, Ulloa explains.
17:40 Ulloa has had a career in crime reporting and describes the impact her work has on her community.
21:48 The Covid Update looks at the uptick in daily deaths and the effects of the illness on “long-haulers.”
24:04 Political strategist Minyon Moore gives her insight on the upcoming Biden-Harris Administration.
24:47 Moore’s political career began with the campaign to elect Chicago’s first Black mayor.
28:17 Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris uplifts the voices of everyday Americans and “represents the people,” Moore explains.
29:42 The SPEAK platform takes in input from callers all across the country. This week, one caller shares what they’d do if they were President, on their first day in the Oval Office.
32:31 Our Body Politic’s extended roundtable “Sipping the Political Tea” covers all things news and politics with contributors Jess Morales Rocketto and Errin Haines.
34:03 Chideya breaks down her blog post from four years ago, “The Call to Whiteness,” which dissects and predicts the patterns that result from white supremacy in politics.
37:16 Haines expresses the frustration that her and other Black journalists have experienced over the years when they try to talk about racism and white supremacy.
39:17 Morales Rocketto looks into the motives behind President Trump’s supporters in the Capitol, Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, and their future roles in the Republican Party.
43:19 Haines, Morales Rocketto, and Chideya talk about what in politics has most surprised them most in the last week.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening and sharing Our Body Politic. As you know, we're new and we're creating this show with lots of input from listeners like you. So I want to ask you a small favor, after you listen today, please head over to Apple Podcasts on your phone, tablet, laptop or anywhere you listen, and leave us a review. We read those because your ideas matter to us. Thanks so much.
This is Our Body Politic. I'm the creator and host, Farai Chideya. The first two weeks of January 2021 already feel like a century. There's a lot that's happening that women of color around the country could have predicted, even when most people didn't believe them. I call it the Black Cassandra Syndrome. I wrote about the rise of white supremacy in politics in 2016 and predicted both the outcome of the election and the political violence before either of them happened. Now, I made those predictions based on pattern recognition. I've had to hone it just as a Black woman, also as a reporter and a lifelong learner who studies history, sociology and behavioral economics.
That may feel like an "I told you so," but it's not. It's more like a, "Listen to us next time and every time." On this show, we don't just interview news makers, we're understanding advanced pattern recognition and journalistic exploration, amassing the tools that we all need to survive, thrive and rise. The Our Body Politic team wants to be of service to you as we navigate these trying times. There's a lot on our minds this week, and I am so excited to have our contributors, Errin Haines of The 19th and Jess Morales Rocketto of The National Domestic Workers Alliance on board to talk it out over in our new weekly politics round table later this hour. So stay tuned for that.
Throughout this episode, we'll go over the varied news items and analysis coming out of the aftermath of January 6th. Those include if and how Congress is going to hold its members accountable for their role in the events of January 6th. Some members reportedly gave reconnaissance tours of the Capitol to domestic terrorists. We're going to talk about the second impeachment of President Donald J. Trump, and the overt white supremacist and nationalist violence in the Capitol siege, and the increased security threats ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration less than a week from now.
We'll get to all of that and more. First, a conversation with the woman whose work will shape the historical record about the outgoing president. Letitia "Tish" James was a New York City public defender and a city council member before becoming New York State's Attorney General in 2019. She's the first woman and the first Black person elected to the office. This year, Attorney General James filed a lawsuit aimed at dissolving the NRA, successfully blocked immigration officials from making arrests in and around state courthouses, and is leading a lawsuit against Facebook for stifling competition.
Her office is leading an investigation into president Donald Trump's finances, which she intends to continue after he leaves office and even if he pardons himself. That pardon would only protect him from federal prosecution. Welcome, Attorney General James.
Letitia James:
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Chideya:
You are obviously a New York state official, not a federal official. So how, if at all, do the recent events on Capitol Hill affect what you're doing? Is it speeding things up or pressure, or is it just the same as usual?
James:
It's unfortunate that we all witnessed an attempted coup, an attack on our democracy, and the president and his associates who have questioned the legitimacy of this election have blood on their hands. These wild conspiracy theories that led to these acts of terror and sedition, it was an attempt to basically destroy our democratic republic. And so all of those who are responsible should be held accountable. I've called on the Justice Department to begin an investigation into the attempted insurrection, attempted coup and to hold all of those responsible for their roles in fanning the flames that led to this failed coup.
We are working with Justice to identify those individuals who breached the capital, and we will do all that we can to identify those individuals and to send the message that it will not happen again and it certainly will not be tolerated in the state Capitol in Albany.
Chideya:
Tell us a little bit about the values you hold dear. You've talked about how your work is rooted in your values. What are those values?
James:
Freedom, opportunity for all, equal application of justice, and a sense and a fair and equal administration of justice. For me, it's really all about simple justice, sweet, simple justice for all of us. Regardless of your station in life, your position, how much wealth you have, we should all be treated equally and fairly consistent with the 14th Amendment of our Constitution.
Chideya:
And how did you become the person you are now? You go by Tish, I understand. How did little Tish become big Tish? And who were you as a kid? How does it affect who you are now? We love asking these questions. We've asked it several times of powerful women who we have on the show.
James:
I come from humble beginnings. I know what struggle is all about. I've tasted the pain of discrimination and racism, and I know what it's like to struggle each and every day. And so I'm reminded of that each and every day as I walk the streets of my community. as I worship with members of my church, as I see the pain and struggle of so many individuals in this city and in this state and in this country. I can relate to them. And so, it's important that we have individuals of government who look different, who understand what it's like to struggle, to suffer, and that we just not have a government which reflects those who were born with golden spoons in their mouths.
Chideya:
Yeah. Right now, I'm living in Maryland to be closer to family because that's what pandemic sometimes does to us. But I have lived in New York most of my adult life, and I generally live in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. And I was saying to a friend that just getting up to go to work in the morning, back when we left The House to commute, was painful to me sometimes because I would see so many hardworking people struggling, and then also see a gentleman who sleeps in a doorway near the train, and he went to high school with one of my neighbors and is severely mentally ill. And that's where he sleeps, in the same doorway every day on a pile of blankets.
And every day, to wake up and leave the house, I had to prepare myself to see the suffering. I didn't want to pretend it wasn't there, so every day, I just faced the reality. Why is New York City and so much of America a place with such extremes of wealth and poverty? And how does that relate to application of the law, do you think?
James:
A lot of the policies in the city and in the state are intentional. And so oftentimes, you see the disparate treatment of those who have been invisible for far too long. The question is, why is that young man, who obviously has a drug problem, a drug addiction, and was homeless, why is he sleeping in the subway or in the alley? It's because we've closed homeless beds, we don't have enough hospital beds, we don't have enough treatment beds. Our priorities, unfortunately, really don't reflect the felt needs of New Yorkers and or Americans.
And that's why we have an opportunity as a result of this pandemic, because it has laid bare the racial disparities, it has laid bare the racial defaults, we have an opportunity to reimagine government, invest in the needs of individuals who are struggling under the weight of poverty, those who are struggling with addiction and homelessness, the feminization of poverty, and the list goes on and on and on, suffering from food insecurity. We have an opportunity to address that. We have an opportunity to use all of the wealth of the greatest nation on earth to address the needs of Americans and New Yorkers who are hurting right now.
We've witnessed it all, we've seen it all. And so we, when we come out of this on the other side of the mountain, it's important that we just not return to normal. It's important that we restructure government.
Chideya:
And you've been working on guidance for evictions. Tell us a little bit about that.
James:
Well, there's a moratorium on evictions in certain instances. People are having a difficult time making ends meet, paying their rent, putting food on the table, etc. And so, it was important that we imposed this moratorium. And so we worked with the governor's office, the office of court administration, not only with regards to tenants, but those who are having a difficult time paying their mortgages as well. We worked with the governor on a wide range of issues to address, as I indicated, the felt needs of New Yorkers who were struggling at this point in time, given unfortunately, the economic situation of the state of New York.
New York state is suffering a $14 billion deficit. New York City is facing a deficit. And so in the coming weeks and months, the city and the state and various localities all across the state will be adopting austere budgets. But now that we have a president who is a sympathetic president, an empathetic president, and a wonderful vice-president who shares his values, we could issue stimulus checks to the tune of $2,000, hopefully $2,000. We can pass an infrastructure bill to put people back to work. We can we can talk about our environment. We can talk about reproductive rights and respecting the rights of women. We can defend the Affordable Care Act. We can protect our immigrants.
Those are the priorities. Those are the values that I hold. And I look forward to working with the Biden Administration to make this a more perfect union.
Chideya:
I only have one more question, and that is, what do you do to fill your well? You've mentioned that you go to church. Just give us an example of one other thing, whatever it is, that allows you to keep doing this work.
James:
I walk a lot in my neighborhood, I talk to children, I talk to senior citizens, I laugh a lot. And sometimes I'm in my home and I dance with complete abandon.
Chideya:
Yes, dance like no one's looking.
James:
Exactly.
Chideya:
Yeah. Well, you certainly have a lot on your plate, and we're very grateful that you made time. Thank you. New York Attorney General James, thank you so much.
James:
Thank you.
Chideya:
That was Tish James, Attorney General for the state of New York.
Coming up later this hour, a new politics round table with our favorite political experts.
Errin Haines:
What really struck me is just, frankly, the hypocrisy. When we were on the ground in places like Ferguson and Baltimore and covering the emerging Black Lives Matter movement, we were questioned about whether we could objectively cover this movement even as our lived experience, frankly, gave us an advantage due to seeing that story and to understanding the dynamics of what we needed to be talking about.
Chideya:
You're listening to Our Body Politic.
So many of us were watching on January 6th when right-wing supporters of President Donald Trump violently stormed the Capitol building. Later, the president was impeached by The House for incitement of insurrection, and many are now calling it an attempted self-coup or an attempt by a sitting leader to stay in power longer. Very few Americans were actual eyewitnesses to the siege of the Capitol that blocked a timely Electoral College vote count. One of them, however, is my next guest, Jazmine Ulloa. She's a reporter for the Boston Globe, here to give us her firsthand account of the day and how it plays into her lifelong mission as a journalist. Welcome Jazmine.
Jazmine Ulloa:
Hi, how are you?
Chideya:
I'm doing well. And I've just been really appreciative of your work. What's sticking with you now that we've got a few days distance from this event? What pops to mind as you think about what you did and what you went through?
Ulloa:
I guess now that I've had some distance from it. I mean, I haven't really had a chance to process because things have been moving a mile a minute here in DC. I think it's anger, it's a growing sense of anger. And this is what I'm hearing from a lot of people who were in that building that day, is just that we had no idea just how much in danger we were. I used to be a former crime reporter, so I think I was very laser focused on just doing my job, but of course, it was stunning and it was surreal and it was shocking to be going through it. And at the same time, it felt very, very familiar having covered this administration for the past four years,
Chideya:
Tell us what happened. What was your assignment? Where were you positioned? And then what unfolded?
Ulloa:
I was in the Senate press gallery when the shuffling started among the Senate press aides. And they told us, "We have a plan to lock ourselves in here." It was all very hypothetical. They said, "If the protestors get in, we have a plan to lock the doors." The aides looked tense, but everybody thought, "Oh, that can't possibly happen. It's so hard to get into the building even just with forgetting your badge. It's super hard. So we didn't think, A, that protesters would breach the building, and B, that they would reach the third floor where we were working. Moments later, the Capitol Radio crackled and you can hear the warning coming in saying that you can move inside the building, but please stay away from the windows and the doors.
Moments after that, a reporter bursts through the room and says, Mike Pence, who had been presiding over the electoral vote count, has been evacuated from the room. And everybody just started scrambling at that point. The Senate aides were trying to close the doors and giving us a choice, "You can either stay, or you can go, but it has to be one over the other, we have to lock these doors now." So several of us, and there weren't that many of us that day, it was only a handful because of COVID. So we rushed outside and a couple of us tried to go down the stairs and the, I should say rioters at this point, we're already going up the stairs.
And my mind went right away to El Paso because I had covered the shooting a day or two after El Paso. And I thought, "Okay, well, this one is an armed, but will the next one be?" And so I quickly went back up the stairs and got a better look from the top. You could tell the officers at that point were trying to get us out of the way. They looked just as confused as we were and scared, I'd say. And I'd watch both processions, I'd watch the precession of senators taking the votes in the mahogany boxes, to The House. And then I'd waited and watch them come back after the Arizona objection or the objection to the Arizona Electoral College votes.
And once the senators had cleared, you could already hear the chants growing louder inside the Capitol rotunda and just echoing across the marble hallways. And a couple of us looked at each other and said, "Wow, that's pretty loud." So we already knew it was going to be a very unusual day.
Chideya:
What drew you to do this work? I know age is relative, but compared to me, you're quite young and you you've been doing some pretty hardcore work for a while now.
Ulloa:
More than four years ago, I really wanted to cover Mexico for a major newspaper and I approached two editors at the South by Southwest conference in Austin. I was covering courts, state and federal courts at the time. And next day, she got back to me and she said, "Actually the position that you'd heard my might be open has already been given to an internal candidate, but you should really consider this position in Sacramento covering state politics." And Donald Trump had already descended down the escalators in New York and launched his campaign, demeaning Mexicans and immigrants.
And so I realized, "Well, there's a really big role I can play here. The story is actually here." My journey into journalism itself started in El Paso. I was a reporter for the high school paper. And women were disappearing across the border from my hometown in what is known as the whitest femicides. And so I first realized I really wanted to dedicate myself to that profession was interviewing mothers who had lost daughters. So I think that that's when I realized words have power.
Chideya:
And you covered the mass killing in El Paso, where people were explicitly killed with a xenophobic agenda of killing Latinos. What was that like?
Ulloa:
It was very hard. I went to high school, five minutes from there. And to be there just a day after this killing, I think in some ways that was harder for me than covering the insurrection in the last few days, because I have the protective shield of a crime reporter, the shield that you get when you're going in into a scene. There were these moments where it was just completely shattered. I'd run into someone I know at the memorial, or the photographer I was with, he was a freelance photographer for The Globe. He was from El Paso, and so things just clicked between us right away because he just felt like I'd known him forever. Things would get very heavy.
Chideya:
What do you do with that? What do you do with that pain that you are witnessing because you have chosen this profession?
Ulloa:
I channel it right into my work. I channel it into my words. I channel it into trying to do better each time. Especially after the shooting, I had a lot of conversations with friends, and just hearing how proud they are of me, it makes me want to cry right now. Yeah. Just hearing how proud they are of me. When I had a friend who would tell me, "You're telling our stories," and I just think about that every time I'm doubting myself.
Chideya:
Well, again, I hope we can speak to you further in the future and really appreciate your work and your time. Thank you, Jazmine.
Ulloa:
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Chideya:
Jazmine Ulloa covers national politics at the Boston Globe.
Coming up on Our Body Politic.
Errin Haines:
The rise of white supremacy as it has been emboldened in these past four years, you know what I mean? That was not a conversation, and it should have been, frankly, it should have been. And I'm glad that folks like you are amplifying it now, because guess what? We were not post-racial in 2008 and we're not going to be post-racial after January 20th. I would hope that for folks who were covering politics going forward, that they have a working understanding of the history of race and racism in this country, because it is absolutely necessary.
Chideya:
Stay tuned for our very own inauguration, by which we mean our new regular politics round table with contributors, Errin Haines and Jess Morales Rocketto. That's coming up later this hour. Stay with us.
Each week, we bring you news from the front lines of the pandemic with a focus on how people of color are fairing. The US broke two painful records already this month. For the first time, they're passing 300,000 new cases in one day. And also, in one day, 4,000 deaths. Some of the hardest hit communities are majority people of color. In one mostly Latino neighborhood in East Los Angeles, one in 10 residents has tested positive. Most of those who get sick recover within a few weeks, but for some, COVID symptoms can morph into chronic conditions that lasts for months, maybe even longer.
Dr. Vineet Chopra of the University of Michigan has studied so-called long-hauler COVID patients. Here he is on the Today Show.
Dr. Vineet Chopra:
The public think about COVID-19 as a disease that you get like you get the flu, you get sick and you get better and you go on life as usual. It's not a one-and-done disease.
Chideya:
There's evidence that COVID infection can lead to long-term heart, lung, or kidney damage, even cause cognitive problems and memory loss. Some patients experience depression, anxiety, or mood swings. Jessica Hulett was diagnosed with COVID in March, and she still has fatigue and memory problems. She spoke to Yahoo News about her experience.
Jessica Hulett:
We're talking a lot to my primary care doctor. She has admitted, she's like, "We don't know. We don't know how long you're going to be sick, we don't know what's going to make you better, we don't know why you're still sick."
Chideya:
Long-hauler COVID is twice as common in women. Also, more people of color do essential work, so they're more likely to get COVID in the first place. They tend to have less access to health insurance and quality medical treatment, so chronic conditions can be devastating. People of color are also less likely to have access to paid sick leave. Chimére Smith is a teacher and COVID long-hauler who spoke to The Washington Post.
Chimére Smith:
I do not know if I am developing chronic fatigue syndrome. I do not know if my brain will ever work again the way that it did before.
Chideya:
In next week's COVID update, we're going to focus on vaccinations and the road ahead in a Biden-Harris Administration. We'll catch you up on what's possible.
My next guest Minyon Moore has been a force in politics for decades behind the scenes. She was a senior political advisor to former presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton during the 2008 campaign. And before that, she served as White House director of political affairs and director of the Office of Public Liaisons under former president, Bill Clinton. Now, she's advising vice-president-elect Kamala Harris as part of her transition team. Hi, Minyon. Welcome to Our Body Politic.
Minyon Moore:
Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
Chideya:
You're someone who has been a through line in American politics, and some people know you and some people don't because you are working your magic behind the scenes. How did you decide to jump into the ring as a strategist?
Moore:
Well, I tell you, it goes back to my roots in Chicago. I literally started my first campaign when we were electing Harold Washington to be the first Black mayor. I gathered up a few of my friends and went down to his office and said, "Hey, we'd like to volunteer for your campaign." And they gave us a table and a desk, and we became his youth coordinators. And that's where I think I got the official bug to work on campaigns. But, what it taught me, to your exact question, is the power of working for and on behalf of your elected officials.
Chideya:
Chicago, of course, like so many cities, like my hometown of Baltimore, is a city divided by race and class. And of course, our whole country is. Some people see it, some people don't, but I think everybody sees it now. And looking at what just happened at the Capitol Building, insurrection, domestic terrorism, how do you believe that your perspective of being from Chicago and just being a Black woman and a political strategist gives you the ability to see what's going on? And describe how you are processing this moment.
Moore:
Chicago as you know is a very activist city, and so I was involved in boycotts and movement building, especially through Operation PUSH, then it became Rainbow. And so fighting on behalf of disenfranchised people and making sure that I see a 360 view of the world has been a part of my life and my fabric. I think if you transport the spirit to today, and frankly, if you look at the way our current president use that office to insight and to demean, and to really set a tone for this country that has been highly unusual, not only is this sad, it is dangerous. And we saw the vulnerabilities of our members of Congress.
I think what people forget about this Washington DC, we have co-equal branches of government. The President of the United States is one branch, Congress is another branch, and what he did was destroy or help to destroy and insight, and destroy a branch of our government.
Chideya:
There is a new administration coming in, and you have been working with Vice-President-elect, Harris. Can you tell us a little bit about your role and relationship?
Moore:
Sure. I've known her since her days as a district attorney, and we were friends for many, many years before I decided to take on the role of transition director for her. But I will say to you, what is amazing about her is not what you see on TV is what Dr. King used to say all the time, the measure of a person is not what you see in daylight, but it's what you see when the lights are out. And she has been a voice in these rooms with her colleagues, with President-elect Biden. She tends to bring up points that are probably thought about, but she voices them.
And I laughed with her last week and said, "You know, if I need somebody in the foxhole with me, I think I'm taking you." What I know when she's in that room, she is representing the best of who we are, she's representing women well, she's representing Black people. She's representing people of color, she's representing people because the one thing that I know about her is that she is adding to not to subtracting from.
Chideya:
Before we let you go, I just want to bring up a book that you wrote. It was really with what I think of as a super group of Black female political strategists, Donna Brazile, Yolanda caraway, Leah Daughtry, and yourself, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics. And of course, with the assistance of the ace writer, Veronica Chambers. If there are people listening who are those colored girls who have considered politics, give them one short thing to keep in mind.
Moore:
Be true to yourself. And I go by this ethos of Maya Angelo, if you get in a room, take courage with you because without that, you won't speak up.
Chideya:
Those are wise words, and I would expect nothing less. Minyon, thank you so much.
Moore:
Thank you.
Chideya:
That was political strategists, Minyon Moore.
Each week we invite you to participate in our show by calling into the SPEAK platform. We've been asking you, if this was your first day in office, meaning, as president, what would be your top priority and why? This is what one of our panelists had to say.
SPEAK caller:
If this was my first day in office as president, my top priority would be corralling the governors into a weekly cadence whereby we make progress on the progress of the COVID-19 vaccine. And that would free me to do whatever we need to do to cope and heal and move forward from what happened on Wednesday.
Chideya:
To share what you do on your first day in office, leave us a message by calling 929-353-7006. That's 929-353-7006, or go to OurBodyPolitic.show and scroll down to find a Google form to respond in writing.
Coming up next-
Jess Morales Rocketto:
There's not going to be more security or harsher dictates on all those white supremacists. It's going to be on people like me, who are fighting against in favor of immigration reform and clean air and water and the Breathe Act for criminal justice reform, that's actually what's going to happen. And I have even in the past had members of Congress aid me in getting inside a room or knowing about what time of hearing was going to start, stuff like that, but I've also had members of Capitol police stop me in the Capitol building in the Hart Senate building and say things to me like, "You've been here every day this week, what are you doing here?"
Chideya:
Because you fit the profile, right?
Morales Rocketto:
If you don't know what I look like, I'm actually very light-skinned. So the fact that I'm getting stopped means that dark skin, Latinx people, Black folks there, I can only imagine what's happening to them.
Chideya:
Our new weekly round table sipping the political tea with political experts, Errin Haines, and Jess Morales Rocketto.
Okay, folks, I am going to just tell you that today is like Christmas, New Year's Eve and Super Bowl Sunday for a political junkie like me. I am so excited to introduce a brand new segment to Our Body Politic of full length politics round table, Sippin the Political Tea. Each week starting today I have the pleasure of inviting two stellar political ninjas to help us dissect the news. Errin Haines is a veteran political journalist and editor at large at the 19th News. She's also a regular on Our Body Politic. And Jess Morales Rocketto is the Civic Engagement Director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
She's the co-founder of and was the lead digital political organizer for Hillary Clinton and Stacy Abrams. 2021, I just don't even believe it's a thing. And now, Errin. Hey, Errin?
Errin Haines:
Farai, I'm definitely canceling my trial subscription to 2021, this is not working out.
Chideya:
Exactly, exactly. And hey, Jess!
Jess Morales Rocketto:
Hey, there. I'm feeling optimistic. Maybe I'm the only one.
Chideya:
No, I'm feeling optimistic about the long run, not so much about the short run.
Morales Rocketto:
Farai, I've been avidly watching your Twitter account over these last couple of days and you had some really important discussions on your social media about efforts that you've made in newsrooms to cover white supremacy. And obviously, white supremacy and how journalists cover it, it could not be more hot off the press right now. How can the media do better? Because I think that you all, the journalists, are really making sure that the public is informed about a real threat that exists in our country right now.
Chideya:
Yeah, so just to give a little background on what I've done, I've worked at places including Newsweek, CNN, NPR, ABC, produced my own independent radio documentaries during which I interviewed Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, who really built the infrastructure of weaponizing attacks on Mexicans to get votes. And so I was working during the last election cycle, 2016 at 538. I tried to do my job and I didn't get to do my job as well as I would like, and it really made me sad. And so I ended up writing right after the end of the 2016 election, I wrote this blog post 4,400 words called, The Call to Whiteness, basically.
And the subtitle talked about how there was an inadequate establishment whiteness response. And what I meant by that was that people who consider America meritocracy and whiteness to be of no particular influence on that meritocracy, we're not challenging the dominance or the rising dominance of the white nationalist narrative to establishment whiteness. Basically, white nationalists are like, "No, it's not a meritocracy. We need to have an advantage and we will do it by force if we need to." And so I won't go too deep into that rabbit hole, but this is not just a failure of white supremacy and white nationalism, it's a failure of what I call establishment whiteness to take a threat to their own cultural dominance, seriously.
I was there to say, "Look, American politics has many different types of political organizers. White supremacists are political organizers." They're political organizers and have been since the beginning of our democracy. So let's stop putting them in this little box as, "Oh, those weird people doing those weird things off in the corner." They are your lunch lady, your teacher, your congressperson. Adam Serwer has a piece called “The Respectables”, which we may talk about more later, about how Olympic gold medalists and active military members have been arrested for sieging the Capitol.
Haines:
That's such a good point that you are making Farai. And it is worth pointing out here as we are transitioning from the Trump administration to this new Biden administration, because of the Black journalists that tried to talk about the role of race and racism in our politics and our democracy that we have seen over the past at least eight, if not 12 years in terms of modern politics, what really struck me is just, frankly, the hypocrisy. When we were on the ground in places like Ferguson and Baltimore covering the emerging Black Lives Matter Movement, we were questioned about whether we could objectively cover this movement even as our lived experience, frankly, gave us an advantage to seeing that story and to understanding the dynamics of what we needed to be talking about.
And so there has never been a question in these past four years about whether white folks could be objective about covering whiteness as identity politics. The rise of white supremacy as it has been emboldened in these past four years, you know what I mean? That was not a conversation and it should have been, frankly. It should have been, and I'm glad that folks like you are amplifying it now because guess what, we were not post-racial in 2008 and we're not going to be post-racial after January 20th. So I would hope that for folks who are covering politics going forward, that they have a working understanding of the history of race and racism in this country, because it is absolutely necessary to cover this democracy and to cover our society going forward.
Chideya:
Yeah.
Haines:
There's been a lot of talk about Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri who was seen with his fist raised in support of riders last week, both Hawley and another Republican Senator, Ted Cruz of Texas, who of course, ran against Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primary before becoming an ally of the president. Neither of them backed down from their objections to the certification of Biden's presidency even after the violence of January six. So Jess, I'm going to come back to you, can we assume that Cruz and Hawley are posturing themselves as the figurehead for Trump supporters and their resentment?
Morales Rocketto:
Yeah. I feel like it's really important to remember that there's Trump himself as a figure. And then there's also a Trumpism is part parcel with what the Republican Party is now. And Ted Cruz has been frankly a Trump-ism follower for a long time, even before the 2016 election. But you see now Hawley trying to get in the mix there and make his bones as like an heir to Trump and Trumpism. But I think even more than that, the person that I really think is trying to be a figurehead chairman of his supporters there is actually Mitch McConnell. He doesn't do the press in the same way, but all the tenants of Trumpism are absolutely there
And he's way savvier than Cruz or Hawley. We are in a very precarious moment right now, and our country's leaders, they're literally not safe, like walking around in the United States Capitol, which is scary.
Chideya:
Completely agree, Jess. I would say that one framing that I want to put on the table is that I do think I understand a little bit about some of the motivations. People are getting high off of this and there is an emotional high. Human beings are a chemistry experiment within a biological construct. We're getting serotonin and cortisol and all these different things happening, and some people get a rush from doing things like storming the Capitol. And this was a planned siege. And just imagine all of the chemicals running through people's bodies, and it comes out of a belief system that they are doing the right thing.
We can never forget that in that framing, they were doing the right thing for democracy. And once you begin to at least understand that framing, you understand why people are willing to risk death, risk arrest, and risk democracy.
Haines:
Well, and also what their understanding of democracy is. And that was something I wrote about in my piece after the insurrection, because it is not a coincidence that this came on the heels of the Georgia Senate runoffs where you saw Black voters, again really showing up and showing out to overcome voter suppression. And there had just been this ongoing drum beat from the president in claiming voter fraud, claiming a rigged election claiming, illegitimate votes. The votes that he was talking about were Black votes. And so the idea that the election was somehow not legitimate because this many Black and brown voters had participated in the election that he lost, that was fueling what we saw.
And so rebelling against that was as much a part of what we saw as anything. And so what I basically wrote was, while yes, we can talk about this as being an attempted coup or an attempted insurrection, the other piece of this is that this had the air of a public lynching in a lot of ways.
Chideya:
There was that actual hanging noose-
Haines:
Yes, the gallows out there. Absolutely, there was gallows, but also just the atmosphere, just the way that they were roaming the halls of the Capitol looking for folks to hold accountable and not just the vice-president, but some of the lawmakers that the president has frequently invoked and demonized, had those people been found, who knows what would have happened, but wanting to make examples out of those people, so that folks who were thinking about exercising their access to democracy, again, going forward would be intimidated and maybe not do. That is a very real component of this.
Chideya:
I want to jump in and talk a little bit about the aftermath of the storming of the Capitol and exactly how we saw white nationalism and supremacy weaponized in politics to the risk of loss of life for members of Congress. We know that people did lose their lives in the siege, but in addition, the panic buttons and Ayanna Pressley, Representative Ayanna Pressley's office were ripped out prior to the siege. We are now hearing reports, including from a sitting member of Congress that some of her fellow Congress people may have given reconnaissance tours to some of the insurgents' domestic terrorists, and that's all playing out right now.
So we do know that representative Pressley and her husband knew that they had lost the ability to communicate about the threats. Jess, what are you tracking from all this?
Morales Rocketto:
One thing that is so clear, I think from this moment, both that members of Congress potentially aided in helping people understand the lay of the land and how aggressive it got, how large it was like, this is not the fringe. Members of Congress don't have to act on behalf of anybody really, but themselves and their constituents. And so I think there's two things here that really scare me. One, that members of Congress would act on behalf of people that they potentially knew were going to be armed in the United States Capitol, because folks did say that they were coming with guns and stuff like that.
And also that they felt like they could do that, that they felt like it would be okay with their constituents. They weren't worried about anybody finding out about it or being against it. And to me, that is really quite scary because that means it's not just those people. I am of two minds about this though because I am a person who plans a lot of protests, including at the United States Capitol. And what I know about these situations is there's not going to be more security or harsher dictates on all those white supremacists. It's going to be on people like me, who are fighting against, in favor of immigration reform, and clean air, and water, and the Breathe Act for criminal justice reform, that's actually what's going to happen.
I have even in the past had members of Congress aid me in getting inside a room or knowing about what time of hearing was going to start, stuff like that, but I've also had members of Capitol police stop me in the Capitol Building, in the Senate Building and say things to me like, "You've been here every day this week, what are you doing here?"
Chideya:
Because you fit the profile, right?
Morales Rocketto:
If you don't know what I look like, I'm actually very light-skinned. So the fact that I'm getting stopped means that dark skin, Latinx people, Black folks there, I can only imagine what's happening to them. And I feel like what I don't want to happen is as we head into this new Congress and the need to move forward on an agenda that helps move us past this Trump moment, that there's just going to be a huge crackdown on people speaking on behalf of our democracy. And I think that's the important distinction they have to be speaking on behalf of our democracy.
These folks were not doing that, they're speaking on behalf of white supremacy and racism. And the lengths that they're willing to go to are really scary. And that deserves investigation by Congress, journalists to talk about it, people to consider it.
Haines:
Yeah. I'm wondering to both of you, anything in the last week in our politics has surprised you. What about you, Farai?
Chideya:
No. I hate to say this, but I've been done called this as we like to say, it doesn't give me joy that my essential predictions turned out to be right, but I will also say, I'm not surprised by any of it.
Haines:
Yeah. No, look, Black women, I think Black women journalists especially, we're trying to report on this long before the events of January 6th, but anyway, Jess, let me bring you into this. What do you think, anything surprised you in the last week?
Morales Rocketto:
I'll take it in a totally different direction. I've been really getting into TikTok as a source of joy, and a thing that really surprised me is the Zoomers. The kids on TikTok were so clear about the politics of this moment and they were funny, but also very sharp about what was happening, they were calling folks in, but then also being satirical about it. And I needed that, both the incisiveness of these little TikTok commentators, but also the reminder that what's happening is temporary. I do think that this is the last gasp of white supremacy and the way that it currently exists in the world.
There are people who understand what's going on and what this urgency is, and they're high schoolers and new very young adults. And that's great because those are the people who are going to be in charge sooner rather than later, I think.
Chideya:
I couldn't agree more, Jess. I'm getting all choked up because we haven't left the world in great shape for them.
Haines:
Look at us, we are ending, that is surprising that we were able to end on a high note.
Chideya:
And Errin, any quick final thoughts on where you or others might take the story from here from a journalistic perspective?
Haines:
Well, look, I think that the concerns raised by Congresswoman Pressley and Ocasio Cortez and others in the wake of this insurrection really do underscore the need for a full airing of what happened, public hearings, testimony and a full investigation. That is what we would do if this had happened in any other workplace in this country, and that is what we should do in this case.
Chideya:
I want to thank you both for joining me for our inaugural political round table, sipping the political tea. So excited. Errin Haines of the 19th and Jess Morales Rocketto of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, will be joining me each week on Our Body Politic.
Morales Rocketto:
Thank you.
Haines:
Thank you. Let's do it again next time.
Chideya:
And I want to thank all of you listeners for joining us on Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week and everywhere you listen to podcast. Our Body Politic is presented and syndicated by KCRW, KPCC and KQED. It's produced by Lantigua Williams & Co. I am the creator and host Farai Chideya. Juleyka Lantigua Williams is executive producer. Paulina Velasco is senior producer. Cedric Wilson is lead producer and mixed this episode. Original music by Kojin Tashiro. Our political booker is Mary Knowles. Our producer is Priscilla Alabi. Michelle Baker and Emily Daly are assistant producers. Production assistance from Mark Betancourt, Michael Castañeda, Sarah McClure and Virginia Lora.
Funding Credits:
Funding for Our Body Politic is provided by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. Empowering world-changing work.
CITATION:
Chideya, Farai, host. “AG Tish James Seeks Accountability for President Trump, the “Black Cassandra” Syndrome, and Why Journalists of Color Need to Be Heard.” Our Body Politic, Diaspora Farms LLC. January 15, 2021. https://our-body-politic.simplecast.com/