This week Farai Chideya talks with WNBA star Layshia Clarendon about their role in pushing the league to engage with politics, and why it’s important for them to proudly share their identity as a Black, trans and nonbinary, Christian person. Marian Liu of the Washington Post examines the shootings in Atlanta, Georgia, that left six Asian women dead, and how race, gender, and immigration underscore what happened. Author Anna Malaika Tubbs shares highlights from her new book about Louise Little, Berdis Baldwin, and Alberta King, the mothers of three important civil rights leaders. And our weekly political roundtable, Sippin’ the Political Tea, welcomes Our Body Politic Executive Producer Juleyka Lantigua-Williams in conversation with Farai and Jess Morales Rocketto, Civic Engagement Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. They discuss the workers who were murdered in Atlanta, the role of Trumpism in rising violence, and what Interior Secretary Deb Haaland intends to focus on.
EPISODE RUNDOWN
0:56 Layshia Clarendon on the grassroots activism in the WNBA
12:19 Marian Liu of the Washington Post discusses the violence in Atlanta
20:32 Anna Malaika Tubbs talks about the powerful Black mothers of civil rights leaders
28:07 Sippin’ the Political Tea: the gender-based violence in Georgia, Deb Haaland’s confirmation as Interior Secretary, and voting rights in Florida
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening and sharing Our Body Politic. As you know, we're only a few months into this show and we're shaping it 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 Podcast 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. This week we're talking about rising anti-Asian violence. Getting to know the powerful Black mothers of civil rights leaders and examining the state of voting rights in our weekly round table. First, activism in sports.
Layshia Clarendon:
We will never shut up and dribble because we refuse to be just used as entertainment, that athletes really do have the power to change the world.
Chideya:
That's a clip from a WNBA video of New York Liberty point guard, Layshia Clarendon, who also speaks on social media about parenting and being non-binary. Last year Clarendon led the league in dedicating the season to Breonna Taylor. They're also a member of the WNBA Social Justice Council.
Hi, Layshia. Welcome to Our Body Politic.
Clarendon: Hello.
Chideya:
Let me start out with this being just past the first year anniversary of Breonna Taylor's death, a devastating moment in American history. And just walk us through how you and the WNBA approached Breonna's death and the aftermath and used your voice.
Clarendon:
Well, we knew we wanted our season to be more than just basketball. We wanted it to be about social justice and Breonna Taylor garnered national attention in a way that we haven't seen a woman do, I think since Sandra Bland, that I can recall. So many players in the WNBA saw themselves in her story. And particularly, as Black women and people who are marginalized by gender, who try and bend over backwards to do everything possible for everyone else and we constantly looked at like, who's marching in the streets for us? and Angel McCoughtry actually had the idea and she played in Louisville to put Breonna Taylor's name on our jerseys and fast forwarding to getting her name on our jerseys and getting to play with her on our back the entire season, it was really powerful.
Chideya:
You and your fellow players have done so many powerful things and you have WNBA Social Justice Council, tell us what that is and what you do.
Clarendon:
We wanted to make sure it was really impactful and left a legacy. And so, that's where the council came into mind of who's going to be thinking about these social justice issues? And so, it's members of the players and then its members from the league. And then we got an advisory board as well of people like Alicia Garza and various folks who are doing the work on the ground every day that, like I said, we're in our field and we're trying to bridge the gap, but then the people who we can look to and say, "Hey, what's really going on? And how do we organize? How do we actually do this work?"
Chideya:
There is a very specific person who certainly knows that you've been doing the work, which is the former US Senator from Georgia, Kelly Loeffler. And of course, people can't see you, but you're smiling right now. You really went all in on Kelly Loeffler who used to own the Atlanta Dream, which you used to play for. Tell us exactly what unfolded there.
Clarendon:
Kelly Loeffler came for the wrong people. That's really what unfolded. We had dedicated our season to Breonna Taylor, to the Say Her Name Campaign and we put Black Lives Matter on the court. As one of the owners of the team, Kelly Loeffler, came out vehemently against this fact and spun it and made it about everything, the fact that Black lives do matter, she just doesn't agree with the politics, the organization, all the very coded and not so coded racist things we've heard people say about why they don't think Black lives matter or why it's about something that it's really not. And so, we clapped back right away and wrote stuff on Twitter, wrote our articles and were like, okay, no, that's not what you're going to do.
But then we also quickly realized okay, every time we were saying her name, every time we were mentioning her, this was good for her because she wanted that, she wanted us to come out and show how much she was not like us and didn't agree with that. And then us coming back to her proved the point. It was actually one of the agents in our league was like, "Have y'all heard of Raphael Warnock?" And we were like, "Who is that?" We didn't realize he was running for Senate. First, we met with Raphael Warnock because we were like, all right, this guy's a Democrat. Cool. But what does that really mean? Do we actually agree with what he's saying? We know we don't agree with Kelly Loeffler.
So, we met with him on a private Zoom, invited players to come ask him questions about his politics. He was cool with LGBT community where he was out on abortion, all the issues that we cared about. And we quickly saw just how much more he was aligned with our league, then Kelly Loeffler and so, we got shirts made for every player in the league, decided what day we were going to wear them because we wanted to have the Atlanta dreams back, of course, and we wanted to get this woman out of our campaign. And at the time, Raphael Warnock was trying to get national attention, he couldn't. He was trying to pull higher. And we did something crazy. I don't know, it was six figures that he raised within the first 24 hours of when we came out in support of him, skyrocketed him into the national zeitgeist, so he got the attention that he deserved.
And then it became all of our teams re-posting it, which is really cool too because the W is not supposed to be partisan, but if the players are wearing something, which is what's really cool about the grassroots movements, we're just players, so we all wore the shirts. And then, okay, the Chicago Sky re-posted it because their players, they're just wearing the shirts. It's like New York Liberty's posting it because their players are wearing it and you quickly saw, it was like the whole league was focused on getting this woman subtly, not so subtly out of our league.
Chideya:
And not only did she end up no longer being Senator, she also is no longer part owner of the Atlanta Dream. And we have a little bit of tape of Renee Montgomery, two-time champion, becoming vice president of the Atlanta Dream and part owner.
Renee Montgomery:
I am now the co-owner of the Atlanta dream and I’m so excited. I have so much to say.
Chideya:
What did that moment mean to you, Layshia, when Renee became part owner of the team that you used to play for?
Clarendon:
I think it was big. One, to see a former player. Two, to see a Black woman in our league get to a position of power because you want those people who have played the game, who understand the W, to be in those positions of power. And that's so often what we don't get. We get, come lend your voice, come talk to us, maybe come tell us how the team should run better, but you don't actually see us get to be in those positions. So, I think it's really cool.
Chideya:
You're not only someone who has been doing all this work within the WNBA, you also just by being really open with your personal life to the extent that it's safe on social media, I think that you have really opened up to a lot of people. And when you posted pictures after your top surgery and talked about that on social media, I bet it got a lot of people thinking. So, explain for people who don't know what top surgery is and how you view your gender identity?
Clarendon:
That's a good question. So, top surgery is, it's basically a double mastectomy. I wanted some peck contours. Some people have their breasts removed and they want it to be more of a non-binary look or still look between a boob and a peck. So, there's no one way to do it, but top surgery is basically, remove some breast tissue because you don't want your breast to look that way anymore. And my gender identity is non-binary, I identify as trans as well. Trans is the umbrella term. I identify as both man and woman and neither my gender is on a spectrum, similar to sexuality.
And so, for folks who don't understand the binary, it just means it's very rigid, especially in our country, it's like man on one side, woman on the other side. It's why we throw gender reveal parties for our babies, it's why blue is on one side, pink is on the other side, why the restroom is men and women. And so, I'm a person who's like, I'll flirt with both of them and everything in between and I might like to use this restroom or that restroom or I might be wearing lipstick one day, but also I didn't want breasts anymore. So, people are like, "Wait, why are you wearing lipstick if you don't want boobs?" And like, because I'm non-binary. Because I don't subscribe and I don't fit into any of these rigid binaries, rigid identities that we have.
Chideya:
You once also wrote an op-ed where you wondered if it was possible to be both gay and Christian? So, how have you worked things out since then?
Clarendon:
It's so possible, I would tell my younger self. I now realize being wholly, fully gay, fully myself, fully trans, fully embodying this person I am today is getting me closer to God. For so long I thought that was the thing that was keeping me away. So often trans people and queer people and folks who are marginalized by any identity, particularly ones that are used to disempower us or take power away from us, think that God doesn't love us, that we aren't meant to be this way, when it's actually the opposite. We think it's the wedge that stops us. And so, I've just come to see it like, this is the thing that God gave me as my super power. I've said that's so often. It just sets me apart in the best ways and it gives me empathy and it gives me a new unique perspective. And I've transcended that wedge so far beyond my wildest dreams.
Chideya:
And you and your wife, Jessica, have an adorable baby. What do you want to teach Baby C about the world?
Clarendon:
Oh wow. I want to teach them that so much of their life and their body and their decisions are their own. And I want to teach them that the world is this very messy, beautiful, horrific, stunning place that will break their heart and will give them so much joy. And it terrifies me to think about that as a parent because I've known the heartbreaks and the struggles of living, especially in this country where we have a really tough history and we're fighting and scratching for every inch of equality that we gain, and so I want them to know that their story is their own and that's actually why Jess and I are practicing gender expansive parenting where we aren't assigning them a gender because it's their decision to figure out what their gender is when they get to a certain age. We aren't going to give them a pronoun just because they have been assigned one sex.
And so, a big part of that and a big part of not posting them on social media is to say you have consent over your own body and I don't know if you want your face on the internet. I don't know what your gender is yet. You don't have the words to tell me or to show me with the clothes you want to put on or how you feel and how you identify. So, I really just want them to know that their life and their body is their own, to make decisions at their own time and with their own free will.
Chideya: What kind of world do you hope that they emerge into as a young adult?
Clarendon:
I instantly think politically, I hope there's free college when they're an adult. I hope that Black people aren't getting gunned down and murdered. I hope we stop like stealing land from indigenous people and drilling into their sacred land. I hope so many things for this country and for their life. So, I hope that we've just fought so hard to give Baby C a better world.
Chideya: Thank you, Layshia.
Clarendon: Thank you.
Chideya:
That was Layshia Clarendon, WNBA player for the New York Liberty, Vice President of the Women's National Basketball Players Association and a member of the WNBA Social Justice Council.
Chideya:
The shootings at three massage parlors in Atlanta, Georgia, have raised many lingering concerns. With eight people dead, six of them, Asian women, the specter of a hate crime hangs in the air. There's also the possibility of human trafficking. Around the U.S. and other Western countries, such quote unquote “spas” can serve as fronts for businesses selling sex and places where women might be trafficked. A 21 year old white male has been charged with murder and assault. To some, this is just the latest in a long string of anti-Asian hate crimes and aligns with rising white supremacist movements. Here to talk about it with me is Marian Liu. She's an operations editor at the Washington Post and writes for their newsletter on race and identity called, “About Us.” Welcome, Marian.
Marian Liu: Hi. Nice to talk to you today.
Chideya:
This is, to me, such a huge moment in the life cycle of America. So many people have been trying to track the anti-Asian violence in the country, and you are one of them, as a reporter. What is your reaction to the violence that we witnessed this week, targeting Asians and Asian-Americans?
Liu:
It's horrific. It's heartbreaking. I mean, and it's not anything new. It's been going on. There's been a history of it. There's actually been a history of Asians and Chinese associated with disease. It's gone way back. And actually, at the start of the pandemic, I wrote a story in February, last February, about how it's getting bad and then almost booking it to today, I wrote a story, just recently, about how it's been getting so much worse.
Chideya:
Yeah. I mean, it's really been a lot of community groups that are tracking hate crimes and offering resources and sounding the alarm. Give us your perspective on what you see about sort of, official response and community response.
Liu:
One of the biggest groups is called, Stop AAPI Hate, Asian-American Pacific Islander Hate. And the reason why they started is, they actually asked the California Attorney General for help, and were responded back with, they had no capacity. So, this San Francisco state professor teamed up with several non-profits and started a site, basically where you can input if an incident happened. But that's largely under-reported because there's a cultural... First, there's a cultural tendency to not speak out. There's a saying in the Asian community that, "The nail that is highest tends to be hammered down." So there's a tendency not to speak out. There's also language differences. And on top of that, for something to be a hate crime, it has to rise to a pretty high threshold. The impetus is on the victim to prove that it was racist, and in a lot of these cases, it's a silent crime, there's nothing said. And it maybe ended up charged as an assault. So... And like one case, I talked to a Filipino man. He was getting off the subway, 61 year old senior, getting off the subway in New York, and he was slashed from cheek to cheek with a box cutter. Nothing was said, ended up being assault.
Chideya:
Right. In this case, there are so many different factors that people are going to examine in the coming weeks and months. One of them are, the reports in Korean language media that the shooter, the killer did, in fact, make statements about killing Asians, which is still developing at the time we're talking to you. And then the other is, the question of gender and the intersectionality of gender and race in this killing. What are you looking at reporting on, as you continue your work on this?
Liu:
It's hard because so many things, like you said, intersect. So like race and gender and sexualization intersect. So you can't talk about Asian female without talking about fetishization. It's like, all put together. So, I've been... Just got off the phone before talking to you, with a trafficking organization. They made a really good point that, a massage parlor in Asia is considered part of health, upkeeping your wellness and your wellbeing. But in America, an Asia massage parlor is... Well, the person told me, "Wink, wink, there's going to be more." They say that most women, it's not a choice. And they end up there, maybe out of debt or as a way to pay off immigrating here. And what's sad is, what a way to end the American dream. It's just devastating.
Chideya:
That is. And as we look at the questions around this case, and also around the larger question of anti-Asian American violence, what do you think Americans need to learn? And what are you trying to do with your body of work?
Liu:
There is not much education on this. I mean, even for me, I had to be informed. There's nothing, you don't learn about this in school. You don't learn that there was a Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, where there were these laws where we couldn't immigrate, we couldn't vote, we couldn't even testify for ourselves. And a lot of this wasn't even changed until the 1950s.
Also what's hard is, Asian-Americans, we don't know about our own history. We have been here for maybe five plus generations, coming back from the railroads, but a lot of us are newer immigrants. For me, I'm the first generation born here, so we won't even know about our history in... our own history in this country. So, it is very important to be informed.
Chideya:
And so, is there anything that you're working on now that we can look out for your work?
Liu:
That's a good question, because I'm working right now on a piece about what Asian-American, the community, can do. My community doesn't usually go out and speak out and seek help. So the story will be resources and what to do if also, your friends are Asian and you want to help them. And I think the very first thing you can do is, if you know somebody who is Asian, ask them how they're doing. Ask us how we're doing, ask us how our parents are doing.
It's been elders, just taking a walk, that's been shoved down on the ground. And a lot of us, how we express love and affection to each other is through family, through eating together. A lot of us have not been able to do that because of the pandemic. And like I said, get informed about our history, that this is nothing new. And if something happens to you, report and talk about it.
Chideya:
Marian, thank you so much for joining us.
Liu:
Thanks for taking time to talk about this important issue.
Chideya:
That was Marian Liu of the Washington Post.
We have been getting so many great voicemails and messages on the speak line. And this week we have one from Trish, a listener from the neighborhood I live in, Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Yes. So we asked, if you had an hour to talk about one topic affecting your local community with your Senator, what would you talk to them about?
Trish:
I would love to see a recovery from this current economic downturn and from COVID that really makes New York a place where everybody can thrive. The Caribbean folks that have been in this neighborhood for 20 years, the older folks who have always lived in this neighborhood, the young people who are also growing up here and would like to be able to go away to school and come back and afford to live here. And even for me, who's somebody that's in my early forties and would love to think about being able to afford to buy a home here someday.
Chideya:
All of us have an origin story, a family, and place in time we come from which shapes us. Anna Malaika Tubbs took on the origins of some of the most powerful men, during the Civil Rights Era, by turning a much needed focus on their mothers. She's the author of the “Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr. Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation.” The lives of Alberta King, Louise Little, and Berdis Baldwin all have lessons that are relevant today. Welcome, Anna.
Anna Malaika Tubbs:
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Chideya:
You yourself were bringing life to the world, as you were writing this book. How did it feel to have that connection?
Malaika Tubbs:
It was beautiful. I found myself pregnant with my son when I was in the middle of doing the research for this book. And I was already so amazed by Alberta, Berdis, and Louise, and felt very connected to them through Black girlhood and Black womanhood. But to go through that experience myself, of becoming a mom and really understanding both, the excitement and the deep love that you have for your child, even before you meet them.
But you also experience extreme worry and extreme fear. And especially as a Black mother, where it's already so dangerous to be pregnant as a Black woman in the United States, to go into labor and delivery as a Black woman in the United States. But then, even if you do survive that, the experience of yourself and your child in the world beyond your home, is really scary. And so, learning from them gave me, not only hope and inspiration, but very tangible guidance on how you teach your children to be aware of what's happening in the world. But also, to not allow them to be defined by those limitations, but instead, to see themselves as change agents.
Chideya:
I have to say that, of all the stories, Louise's, to me, just absolutely caught my heart. Can you tell us a little bit about her and the arc of her life?
Malaika Tubbs:
Absolutely. And it's so interesting, everybody relates very differently to each of the three, and different stories stand out to each of us. But I think one of the reasons Louise really stands out is that, you feel even more shocked that you didn't already know these things about her.
Chideya:
Yep. That was me.
Malaika Tubbs:
The fact... Yeah. The fact she was born in Grenada, her grandparents were, what are called, Liberated Africans, which means that, at one point, they were enslaved. And then at some point, the law changed and maritime laws, and they were able to gain your freedom. And so, they knew what it was like to be enslaved. And they also held, very strongly, the need to keep their independence, keep their freedom, and taught their children and their grandchildren, again, strategies for maintaining that. That you needed to be self-sustaining, know how to grow your own food, have your own trade, et cetera. And also be aware of this continued fight for freedoms, that it wasn't guaranteed, but we also couldn't lose it.
And so, Louise grows up with this experience. And so she leaves Grenada when she's only 17 years old to join an international movement for Black lives, through the Marcus Garvey Pan-Africanist Movement. And she eventually becomes one of Marcus Garvey's closest confidants. She writes letters for him, she writes for the Negro world Newspaper, she's a branch secretary, just this incredible activist from this very young age. And this is how she meets her husband, which becomes important because they're sent around the United States, joining communities that are already responding to white supremacist violence with this courage that they want to continue to incite.
And so, because of this, the Black Legion, which is kind of like a KKK group, follows them everywhere and really persecutes their family and attacks them in many different ways. And this leads to their home being burned down. It eventually leads to Earl, her husband, being murdered, as well as, her being put away against her will, for 25 years of her life, in a mental institution.
Chideya:
You can't get much more wrenching than that concatenation of events. And of course, her son, Malcolm X, was later firebombed and murdered. And you talk about some of the intergenerational trauma that these three mothers must have experienced in seeing history repeat itself for their children. I mean, how did you process this as you were writing?
Malaika Tubbs:
It's heartbreaking. It's tragic. And I was very intentional to put this fact at the beginning of the book that all three moms are going to outlive their sons. I think we so often talk about the loss of Malcolm X and MLK Jr and James Baldwin, even though it happened later as if it just is kind of a moment in history and we don't process how painful that is. The loss of life, the battle again for our freedoms. And so I say this at the very beginning so we understand the humanity of these families and especially these women, who in many ways sacrifice their sons to something much larger. So the book is a combination and a balance between understanding the very painful realities and also understanding the ways in which Black women still continue to create life, not only through their children, but through their activism, through their art, through their writing to move forward and also progress the country forward at the same time.
Chideya:
There's so much more to all of the stories in this book, but we don't want to give everything away and I'm going to wrap it up. You had this great quote, a very painful quote, but an amazing quote from Audre Lord, "Raising Black children, female and male in the mouth of a racist, sexist, suicidal dragon is perilous and chancey. If they cannot love and resist at the same time, they will probably not survive." And it goes on a bit from there, but that just kind of was a gut punch. How do you, as someone who is a mother and who is someone who has the ability to uplift mothers through this writing and this deep research, how do you process a statement like that? And where do you want to leave your readers?
Malaika Tubbs:
I think that statement is just so poignant because of how real it is. This is what it means to be Black citizens of the United States of America. And I do think it's translatable beyond the United States, but since this is my specific focus: a country where we have been denied our humanity so often and where we know our worth and we know our children's worth, but in order to, again, not only move forward and cope and survive, but to live happily and find joy and still love one another, we have to be aware of the balance that we're constantly living in the middle of. The need to find love, but to also fight and to survive and do what we can to make it easier for our descendants coming after us. So that maybe that doesn't end up being the case for forever.
Chideya: Anna, thank you so much.
Malaika Tubbs:
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Chideya:
That's Anna Malaika Tubbs, author of The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation.
Each week on the show, we bring you a roundtable called Sippin’ the Political Tea. And this week part of the tea is that we have a happy birthday to Errin Haines of the 19th, our regular contributor who cannot join us today. And we love that we get to celebrate her just a tiny little bit at the top of the roundtable. And so sitting in for Errin Haines is our very own executive producer, Juleyka Lantigua-Williams, and also we've got Our Body Politic contributor, Jess Morales Rocketto, civic engagement director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Welcome back, Jess.
Morales Rocketto:
Hey, I wish you could have seen the goofy little dance I did for Errin. Happy birthday, Errin.
Chideya:
Absolutely. And Juleyka, it is so great to have you on.
Lantigua-Williams:
Hey, this is awesome! Thank you for having me! So obviously happy birthday, Erin. We love you. We miss you. But I want to get us started with something much more somber, the horrific massacre in Atlanta, Georgia. Here's Vice-President Harris speaking about it.
Kamala Harris:
I do want to say to our Asian American community that we stand with you and understand how this has frightened and shocked and outraged all people. But knowing the increasing level of hate crime against our Asian-American brothers and sisters, we also want to speak out in solidarity with them and acknowledge that none of us should ever be silent in the face of any form of hate.
Lantigua-Williams:
Farai, we've been looking at hate crimes against Asian Americans for the show. You have been keeping an eye on it, and then this happened, what was your reaction?
Chideya:
Oh, I'm just heartbroken. I think that all of us on this roundtable are members of communities that are sometimes demonized and victims of hate crimes. And anyone's pain is my pain. And I'm sure that you feel the same way. And also as a reporter, I've covered racial extremism for 25 years. It's even more complicated in that because some of this violence is really unprecedented, that generations are mourning together. A lot of these attacks are hitting elders. And so just to go to the stats, there was a report released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, that found that last year when overall hate crimes dropped 7%, they rose 150% for Asian-Americans.
And you have to remember that most hate crimes never get reported as such. So this is an epidemic, it's an epidemic within an epidemic because of many factors, including the weaponization of hatred in politics, and also the weaponization of a false narrative around Asian-Americans being the problem with COVID. So, it's tragic, not unpredictable, unfortunately, but tragic.
Lantigua-Williams:
Absolutely. My reaction, the night as the news was breaking was just thinking about my team and thinking, "Oh my God, it's going to be a hard news day tomorrow for us." Because many of us have lived through these tragic events and having to report and having to sort of put on an analytical phase when you're really angry and when you're feeling anxious and when you're literally afraid for people in your lives. And so it's been tough. Jess, you're someone who has seen this kind of violence before in your work advocating for immigrants. How did you feel about the events?
Morales Rocketto:
Yeah. I really echo many of the same feelings you all, both alluded to. And I think the other piece I would just add is I work really specifically on gender-based violence and the ways in which sexism and patriarchy come up in our world all the time. And my boss, Aijen Poo, a Chinese American woman was really talking about how she recognized what it was, of course anti-Asian American sentiment, but also specifically anti-Asian women sentiment. And really targeted at workers who are often sexualized, certainly marginalized, sometimes even trafficked in their work at nail salons or massage parlors. And I think that that part is really, really important, because it is about race absolutely, but it's also about gender. And as you alluded to, Juleyka, the work I do with immigrants, we see this over and over again, a real targeting of women in particular, in the context of hate crimes in the Trump era and of course and beyond. We talk a lot on this podcast about how Trumpism is still alive and well, even though Trump is not the president and I can't think of a more devastating example of that than this.
Lantigua-Williams:
Yeah. Agreed. And you connecting this to the lingering effects of Trumpism is right on. The pot boiled over on January sixth during the insurrection. And we're going to continue to see these effects. It's like an earthquake and we continue to feel the aftershocks months and years later. But so despite all of this mounting evidence, there's still some partisan feet dragging in Congress. Farai, you've also been keeping tabs on this.
Chideya:
Yeah. There's a number of different things happening at once. Of course, there General Russel Honore, who was tasked with evaluating the security of the Capitol came out with some recommendations. But the question is what will Congress actually do? Not just about the security, but about the overall questions about undermining American democracy. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi of the House, of course leader of the Democratic party in the House was really trying to put together a 9/11 style bipartisan commission, but bi-partisan is not selling too well on the Hill these days.
And so it seems as if that whole plan to have a bipartisan commission may end and there will be since the House and Senate are controlled by the democratic party, though, very thinly in the Senate, since it's technically a split. The Democrats will control these commissions likely to emerge. And it's very likely that Republicans will say, "Oh, you got the narrative wrong." And we're already seeing a lot of, sort of, not just retrenchment, but defiance. Lawmakers saying, "Oh, I would have been much more scared if these were Black Lives Matter protesters, but I feel comfortable with the people who entered." Let's see. So they defecated on the floor of the Capitol, which people of color then cleaned up and they stole things, including assets that can be national security threats. And you're okay with that? Honestly, the level of discourse right now, should be scary.
Lantigua-Williams:
So what is the average voter to do? What is the response that could potentially get our lawmakers attention, Jess?
Morales Rocketto:
I have to be honest, usually I'm like, there's always something to be done and I'm not totally sure that there is here. I think if you live in a district where there is a Republican who is against this bill, then you are so powerful right now. And it's very, very worthwhile to call your congressperson, to tweet at them, to write a comment on their Facebook page.
If you live in a district where folks are supportive, I think that there isn't a ton to be done. However, I do feel like what's really important is continuing to talk to other people about this. And it really does matter how Congress responds to it. Especially because as we've seen, there are more, I would definitely consider this in the vein of the hate crime that we were just talking about in Atlanta, because it really is about trying to stand up against perceived threat to white authority and white autonomy. And one thing that really concerns me about this is if members of Congress, when it happened literally to them, literally at their house, can't do something about this when it directly affected them, it's going to be tough for me to feel like they can protect us when it happens in Atlanta or wherever else it happens next. So it is important for us to continue to vocally oppose what happened and call for our leaders to actually follow up all their rhetoric with action.
Lantigua-Williams:
Yeah. Well, from where I'm standing, it looks like part of Congress wants to just put the insurrection behind them and just get back to typical Congress business, such as slowing down nominations. I mean, Deb Haaland barely got confirmed as Secretary of the Interior this week, with key GOP senators, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine breaking with their caucus, days before the vote, to announce that they would support Haaland. This is not a good sign for how this administration is going to reach bipartisan consensus on the things that are most important to the American people. So I'm going to go to you again, Jess, what can voters do?
Morales Rocketto:
Yes, we definitely can expect more of this. Republicans are basically doing everything they can to slow down all of the cabinet nominees, and Haaland was definitely one of the nominees where there was going to be the biggest fight, I would say her and DHS Secretary Mayorkas, so it's a great sign that both of them have been confirmed, albeit more slowly than they ought to have been. However, I do think that Secretary Haaland's nomination to this seat was as a result of grassroots organizing. It really was people calling for her specifically and calling attention to the fact that there had never been a native woman in the interior seat, and so this is a really big deal. What people can do around this is really making sure that they are, um, being supportive, outwardly supportive of these nominees. President Biden's cabinet is actually, I think, quite a bit more racially diverse, but also progressive then people had expected. And we really do have to give political cover, especially to moderate Democrats, um, uh, for supporting these nominees. In particular, we have to pressure moderate Democrats and so-called moderate Republicans, I don’t know if there is such a thing, but if there is. Murkowski and Collins are definitely in that camp. And they really need to continue to feel the pressure on every single nominee because there's a lot of pressure not to break Republican ranks.
Lantigua-Williams:
So, Farai, Haaland has clearly stated that her top priority is to help execute the climate plan that the administration has put out. Do you think that this is part of why it was so difficult to get her confirmed?
Chideya:
Oh, 110%. I mean, Native Americans and other people of color are the people who pay the most for whatever happens with the climate. There's been Somini Sengupta of the New York Times, who we had on, talks quite a bit about how being a person of color in the US or abroad or a lower income person puts you in the hot zone for the effects of climate change. And I think that Secretary of the Interior Haaland represents someone who will take into account intergenerational transfers of protection of the land. When she came on our show, she talked about being a 35th generation New Mexican. Before New Mexico was New Mexico, the Laguna Pueblo were there. And it's part of her, not just her heritage, but her philosophy, to take into account where she comes from and who is going to get what in the future, and I think that that's extremely healthy, but some people don't.
Lantigua-Williams:
Oh man, you just hit home for me with that point, because I remember when I was studying journalism two decades ago, I'm from the Bronx where historically, we have had astronomical rates of asthma among residents, especially children, and where, up until gentrification in the last five years, it was a hundred percent Black and brown people. And I remember very distinctly choosing between political journalism and environmental journalism, because I thought, who's going to do something about this? Who's going to write about this? It's not in the New York Times. It's not on CNN. I'm going to do something about this. And let me tell you, there are still days when I read about the environment and I say to myself, you should have chosen to be an environmental reporter because you could have been part of this conversation. And so I'm hoping that someone like Secretary Haaland being in such a position of authority will motivate a lot more people, because the environment is not a vague concept. It is quite literally where we live and we exist, and it is impacting all kinds of populations and especially very active voting populations across the country.
Let's talk about some of the things that we're learning coming out of Florida. So about 47,000 Floridians, mostly people of color, had to follow up with election officials about their ballot to make sure that their vote would not be disqualified. How does that even happen?
Morales Rocketto:
Oh my goodness, this is one of the things that makes me so mad. This is such a ridiculous form of voter suppression. This idea that your ballot needs to be cured, first of all, it means something about your ballot was sick. It's like we are sick or messed up or something. Oh my gosh, it just drives me, just everything about this just gets me so angry. But what happens is, this is really about signatures, and also about filling out the form. The form is designed to be as confusing as possible, and the way that the signature works, it means that you have to match your signature every single time, and that is, in some seats, like a stroke by stroke situation. So as you, you don't sign your signature the same every single time always, and even if you did, it doesn't matter because all of this is about these bureaucratic voter suppression, of making it as difficult as possible for you to fill out a form correctly and then have that forum counted. It really is truly reminiscent of the sort of literacy tests that used to be given. It's very much that in modern times. So the fact that this has... In some ways, this report I think is an exact evidence of that, which is who were the people who had a problem? Of course they were young people. Of course they were people of color, because that's who it's designed to suppress. And this doesn't just happen in Florida. It happens in Georgia, it happens in a lot of other states. Fighting back against this now is really important because we will see this roll out to more and more and more states.
Lantigua-Williams:
So Farai, you have definitely been keen on watching what's going on with voter suppression around the country. What are some of the lessons that we need to heed from the past year?
Chideya:
Well, one of the lessons that we can take away is that essentially, some people don't like democracy. Putatively, we wanted people to vote, and right now what we're seeing is that some people have literally said, some politicians have literally said, not everyone needs to vote. That is straight up Orwellian. So advocacy groups like All Voting Is Local are really pushing back against the trend of doing things like taking away drop boxes for ballots and requiring people to follow protocols that are not designed to actually protect voting, but that are designed to restrict voting to certain categories of people who have different levels of access to democracy.
Lantigua-Williams:
Yeah. I'm sure we're going to be talking about this for a while, so let's wrap it up there. Thank you so much again for inviting me. This was really fun. I'm such a political junkie and I love hearing you guys just give me the goods every week. Jess, you're hilarious. Farai, you're brilliant. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Morales Rocketto:
Thank you. Yeah, this was so fun.
Chideya:
We will do it again. And once again, happy birthday, Errin. We miss you and you're the best, but you'll be back with us very soon. And that was Jess Morales Rocketto of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, and Our Body Politic executive producer, Juleyka Lantigua-Williams.
Thank you so much for joining us on Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Our Body Politic is produced by Lantigua Williams and co. I'm the creator and host, Farai Chideya. Juleyka Lantigua-Williams is executive producer. Paulina Velasco is senior producer. Jen Chien is executive editor. Cedric Wilson is lead producer and mixed this episode. Original music by associate sound designer, Kojin Toshiro. Our producer is Priscilla Alabi. Julie Zann is our talent consultant. Michelle Baker and Natyna Bean are assistant producers. Production assistance from Mark Betancourt and Sarah McClure.
This program is produced with support from Craig Newmark philanthropies, from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, from BMe community, a network designed to build caring and prosperous communities inspired by Black people, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.
CITATION:
Chideya, Farai, host. “WNBA Star Layshia Clarendon Gets Political, the Anti-Asian violence in Georgia, and the Lives of Black Mothers of Three Civil Rights Leaders.” Our Body Politic, Diaspora Farms LLC. March 19, 2021. https://our-body-politic.simplecast.com/