This week Farai Chideya talks with journalists who are changing the world around them. First, veteran journalist Maria Hinojosa on creating a more inclusive newsroom as one of the pioneering Latinas in public radio. Then journalist Wendi Thomas on why she built a newsroom by and for locals in Memphis; and Jenni Monet on decolonizing our news feeds. The New York Times’ Somini Segupta talks about covering the climate crisis. And Lisa Lucas explains how a Twitter hashtag changed her career path, and her goals as a new publisher. Plus, the women behind the Guild of Future Architects join Farai for the second part of their conversation on envisioning our collective future.
Episode Rundown
1:22 Veteran journalist Maria Hinojosa talks about the ups and the downs of her career in public radio and what she’s learned in the process.
5:12 Hinojosa talks about having to defend herself in the newsroom, even as colleagues accused her of having a “Latino agenda.”
6:55 Hinojosa talks about creating the newsroom she wished she had as a young journalist, in Futuro Media Group.
13:05 Tennessee journalist Wendi Thomas on why she started her media outlet, MLK 50, and how she was able to get the funding to make it all happen.
15:40 Thomas recently won an award for her investigative piece about a local hospital suing patients, “whose only mistake was being sick and poor at the same time.”
17:05 Thomas talks about why local journalism is so important in creating change.
18:30 Our weekly Covid update looks into how the pandemic has wreaked havoc on those who were already experiencing hardships before Covid.
20:39 Investigative reporter Jenni Monet talks about her newsletter, called Indigenously: Decolonizing Your News Feed.
24:04 Chideya and Monet reflect on their time at Standing Rock and whether or not people should expect their government to make change.
27:42 Somini Sengupta shares what she’s learned covering climate change for The New York TImes, “I've learned that climate change is not a future risk. It is a now risk.”
32:03 Lisa Lucas, the Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, talks about rising up in the literary world.
35:57 Lucas talks about the tweet that landed her a publishing job.
34:40 Lucas never imagined herself to be a publisher, but has big goals for the position.
38:39 Journalist Sarah Smarsh talks about her piece “Poor Teeth,” which explores the accessibility of dental care in America and how it is an indicator of socioeconomic status.
40:39 Smarsh talks about The Poor People’s Campaign and how it is carrying out the legacy of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
42:42 Why Dolly Parton is an important role model for feminist, working class women.
44:28 Guild of Future Architects founder Sharon Chang explores the importance of imagination in studying history.
46:36 Farai shares a listener voicemail and discusses paths to equitable and accessible care systems with the Guild of Future Architects leaders.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening and sharing Our Body Politic. As you know, we’re new and we're creating the 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.
I'm Farai Chideya and this is Our Body Politic. We've been marching to the drumbeat of political news for the last two months. But here at Our Body Politic we've also been talking to authors and journalists about our present, past and future. These are women who are writing the first draft of history, and looking ahead to the evolution of America, to arts and publishing, race relations and climate. This week, we're bringing you the insights of people, including Maria Hinojosa, Somini Sengupta, Lisa Lucas and Sarah Smarsh, giving us food for thought in a world hungry for answers.
Chideya:
My first guest has spent decades as a journalist working at PBS, NPR and CNN. A decade ago, Maria Hinojosa, founded the production company Futuro Media Group. And since the early 90s, she's hosted the award winning show Latino USA.
Maria Hinojosa:
Estrella's mother gave her an ultimatum, either get married to a woman and live a heterosexual life, or get out and move to the United States.
Chideya:
That's a clip from “Estrella Revisited: Part Two” of a documentary Maria Hinojosa and her team produced. It stuck with me that this is a specific story about the universal striving for freedom. And I asked Maria, why she chose to focus on Estrella.
Hinojosa:
She is the first person that we know of, that is taken by, in this case, undercover immigration agents from a courtroom. This story comes to light not because she was taken, but because the immigration agents lied about being in that courtroom, and that becomes the story. But Estrella is Mexican, undocumented, formerly deported, with a criminal record of fraud, so nothing violent. And they thought, a throwaway, who's going to care about this trans, Mexican criminal. That's exactly who I care about.
Chideya:
Hinojosa's latest book is, Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America. We've been friends and sisters in journalism for years, here's a window into how we're both seeking to process with the art and business of truth telling means to us and to the world.
Chideya:
There has been this idea that journalism is a place where you have no body and no selfhood. And that all of your personal experiences have to disappear before you can write about anything. And now the cracks in that facade are manifest and that whole construct is breaking down. How did it affect your life as a journalist in the early days of NPR? And how did that lead to you creating your own company Futuro?
Hinojosa:
You're exactly Farai. It was like, how do become Walter Cronkite because somehow white men in this country have taken ownership of the notion of objectivity. So we have to not just leave the body, we have to become like them, we have to see the world through their eyes. And it's like, yo, que paso aqui? Like when did you all become the arbiters of objectivity? I mean, it's been adorable Farai, I've been interviewed by many Latina journalists who are now seasoned journalists. And they're just like, "you were really the first? You were like, the first at NPR, like the first Latina at CNN, like what?" And I understood like I was the first. So there was no way to kind of blend in. I mean, honestly, NPR was incredibly white, and very privileged and very male.
Chideya:
And you sort of talked about a moment where someone's like, "Oh, you must be afraid to go out there in them streets." And you're like, "I'm actually more afraid being right here in this office."
Hinojosa:
Exactly. The beautiful thing of what happened in that moment Farai was that I understood privilege. And the privilege is what forced me to raise my hand up. Literally, I would push my elbow up and just be like, "Okay, keep it up." Because I understood you can't be here, having had all this privilege, and not doing your job representing, bringing up these stories letting people know that the whole world doesn't look like them, or think like them.
And throughout my career, you'd come up with a story idea, and they'd be like, "Oh, that's weird. Well, I've never heard about that. So it must not be important. So let's not report about it." and going home and just like, "Whoa, okay, I can't believe that was said today." Or that happened whether it was the sexism or the undertow racism or outright racism.
So it could have completely kneecapped me. Like my editor from NPR, when I was a reporter already, said to me, "Come on, Maria. Everybody knows about your Latino agenda." And I was like, "What? What are you talking..." He's like, "Come on Maria. Everybody knows we have a Latino agenda." And I was like, "Really?" And thankfully, I was on my toes that day. And I said, "Well, it must mean that you have a white male agenda then." And he said, "It's not the same thing." And I said, "It's exactly the same thing." So that moment could have ended it for me. I could have just been like, "That's it." And I fought back because of that privilege. And I'm really glad I never went away.
Chideya:
Not only did you not go away, you created Futuro Media, which has only grown in strength and power, with Latino USA, In The Thick, radio documentaries. How has your vision for Futuro changed over time?
Hinojosa:
Well, Farai, I mean, you've been with me on this path of... I mean, you are the person who labeled me. My favorite label for me, is the one that you gave me. Do you remember it?
Chideya:
The Queen of Never Giving Up.
Hinojosa:
Wow, when you said that to me? I was like, "Yeah, man. That's it." The creation of Futuro media was born out of frustration, actually and fear. My dream job as I write in the book, I mean, I watched 60 Minutes as a little girl, that was where I wanted to work. It was where do you go to next after you've done documentary work, and won an Emmy for long form investigative, you go there. And they said, "Can you wait until one of these white men gets sick or dies?" I was like, "Is this a joke?" And people had said, "Maybe you should do your own thing. Maybe you should create your own thing." And it's just like, "What?"
I'm so glad that out of that fear I created for Futuro. And the vision, at first somebody asked me, "What was the vision?" Well, I had a vision, I knew I wanted to create the newsroom that I had always dreamed that I would have as a young journalist, where actually moving with ethics and love is possible. I was like the vision was to get to three years. If you made it to three years, then maybe you could make it to five. And if you made it to five, then you know. So now, that vision is real. We have a newsroom that is diverse, which includes white men. Because yes, that's who we are, we include... And we're always working on doing even better. But we are a newsroom that is creating this content where our numbers are exploding Farai.
We just left NPR, we are now being distributed by PRX. I just got an email like a week ago that said, "We've now grown by another 25 stations."
Chideya:
Wow. That's amazing.
Hinojosa:
It's because we have done this work with so much love and authenticity. And with understanding that we don't do what NPR does, which is looking at Latinos, like with binoculars, like "Oh, my God, whoa, those Hispanics, what's the matter with them, they don't vote." That's not how we approach these stories. We are all part of this continuum of holding this country accountable. Because as journalists of color, and journalists of conscience, and you don't have to be a journalist of color to be a journalist of conscience. We understand what our role is in the United States of America. And today, that role is so essential Farai because all of us are living in fear of our democracy disappearing.
Chideya:
I want to just end on talking about your radio doc Estrella Revisited, which to me really embodies this idea of being journalistically excellent and emotionally intimate. So can you tell us who Estrella is, how long you've been covering her and what this latest part of her story is about?
Hinojosa:
Just days after Donald Trump is inaugurated, she is the first person that we know of, that is taken by, in this case, undercover immigration agents from a courtroom. This story comes to light not because she was taken but because the immigration agents lied about being in that courtroom and that becomes the story. But Estrella is Mexican, undocumented, formerly deported with a criminal record of fraud, so nothing violent. And they thought a throwaway, who's going to care about this trans-Mexican criminal. That's exactly who I care about.
Then this update is Estrella's life behind bars as a trans undocumented person in a maximum security men's prison in Texas. We spoke with Estrella, she was clear she knew what was going to happen because she reveals that she is raped. And we talk about this account of a rape in a prison. I mean, has anybody been charged? This is a criminal act, that is now on national news. How come the Texas Department of Corrections has not called me or asked Estrella who did this to you?
Why do I love Estrella and telling the story? Because she is the least powerful person in the country right now. And to me, she is the person who gives me the most amount of hope for life, for survival, for joy as resistance. And Estrella is like, "Wow." Her voice has been heard around the country, the person who was to be the most invisible. And that's what we try to do is to make the invisible, those who feel invisible make them super visible so that everybody understands that they are part of who we are.
Chideya:
Maria, thank you so much for spending some time with us.
Hinojosa:
Farai thank you for also being a Queen of Never Giving Up. We love you.
Chideya:
That was Maria Hinojosa, founder of the Futuro Media Group, host of Latino USA and author of the memoir, Once I Was You, out now. Here on Our Body Politic we want to hear from you.
We've been using a new platform called Speak that gathers and analyzes what's on your mind. Later this episode, you'll hear some of your responses to our current question. Imagine if women of color trusted the society around them and felt truly free. What would you do if you felt truly free and financially secure? You can call us at 929-353-7006 or go to farai.com/OBP and scroll down to find a Google form to respond in writing. That's 929-353-7006 or farai.com/OBP.
Coming up on Our Body Politic.
Wendi Thomas:
The hospital had sued more than 8,300 people over the past five years far more than any other hospital system in Memphis. And it was hauling people into court, hundreds of people every week, suing them for hospital bills they couldn't afford to pay. And these were people, mostly Black women, whose only mistake was being sick and poor at the same time. One of the women, she'd been ordered to pay $100 a month, she would be 90 years old by the time she paid it off.
Chideya:
This week, we're bringing you conversations with journalists and authors changing the world with their work. My next guest Wendi Thomas knows what it's like to do high impact journalism. A longtime reporter for other outlets in Tennessee. Thomas founded her own nonprofit newsroom, MLK 50: Justice Through Journalism in 2017.
Thomas:
When I started MLK 50, Justice Through Journalism, I envisioned it as a year long project. So in the lead up to the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination I really wanted to force Memphians, and really the nation to consider what we've done with Dr. King's sacrifice. So we launched April 4, 2017. We really steered the public conversation toward the issues that Dr. King came to Memphis for specifically wages and workers. It was wildly successful. Funders got behind it. And so we were able to continue. And so now we're well into our third year, growing, hiring. And it's amazing to create the kind of newsroom I would have wanted to work in.
Chideya:
How did you fund the start of this publication?
Thomas:
So I funded it with $3,000 in donations, and then I lived off credit cards while we were raising more money. It was really tough, very risky. I don't really come from money, so there wasn't a lot to fall back on. I spent my Nieman Fellowship in 2015, 2016, incubating what would become MLK 50. And I took a class on social entrepreneurship at the Kennedy School.
Chideya:
This is at Harvard?
Thomas:
This is at Harvard. Yes. And my professor told me that my idea was not viable. There was no business model for it, and it couldn't happen. And so I took that feedback and went back to Memphis and proved him wrong. And so in my draft emails, I have an email to him that I haven't sent yet that just tells him how wrong he was and explains how I was able to make this happen. I don't know whether his dismal outlook had anything to do with my race or my gender. But what do they say? Success is the best revenge. So I'm proud that he was wrong.
Chideya:
You gave a whole bunch of people hope by doing journalism that won you an esteemed award, the Selden Award. Tell us what you did, how it affected people directly and what the aftermath has been?
Thomas:
So I spent all of 2019 investigating broadly, systems that keep poor people poor and what we focused on were the debt collection practices of the city's largest hospital system. Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare. And what we found out, and this was work I did with MLK 50, in conjunction with ProPublica, was that the hospital had sued more than 8300 people over the past five years, far more than any other hospital system in Memphis. And it was hauling people into court, hundreds of people every week, suing them for hospital bills they couldn't afford to pay.
And these were people, mostly black women, whose only mistake was being sick and poor at the same time. One of the women she'd been ordered to pay $100 a month. She would be 90 years old by the time she paid it off. And so, after the investigation published, the hospital announced that it will suspend all court actions. And since the story ran, I think they only sued one person, whereas in the year prior, they'd sued almost 1,500 people. And they also raised nearly $12 million of debt owed by more than 5,300 patients. So it's an outcome beyond my wildest imaginations. It's why I started MLK 50, to make a measurable, tangible difference in the lives of low income people.
Chideya:
Let's turn to something that we are covering every week on Our Body Politic, which is COVID. How is MLK 50 covering COVID? And what are you seeing in Memphis?
Thomas:
So we started basically like a workers of Memphis series. So we invited people whose incomes had been affected in some way by the Coronavirus to write guest columns for us, talking about their experience. We believe that the lived experiences of people are as valid as other people's PhDs. So we hold them both at the level of expert. And we pay these guests columnists $200 to write their piece because time is money. And if people were spending time crafting their stories for us, we wanted to compensate them for that. And now our tagline is MLK 50 Justice through Journalism. We report on power, poverty and policy. And so power can be institutional power, but it can also be people power. So what are we doing in our communities to take ownership, to make our voices heard, or just connecting as a community and fulfilling Dr. King's dream of a more just world in the best way that we can?
Chideya:
Wendi Thomas of MLK 50 award winning journalist, thank you so much.
Thomas:
Thank you.
Chideya:
You can find Thomas's work at MLK 50. That's MLK and the number 50 dot com. Coming up.
Jenni Monet:
Our education system has done an extraordinary job at colonizing the minds of Americans.
Chideya:
Our weekly COVID update gives you the latest on how the pandemic is impacting Americans of color and what lies ahead. According to the Marshall Project, more than 180,000 inmates in state and federal prisons have tested positive for coronavirus and at least 1,400 have died. Incarcerated people, advocates and family members have asked that the jails and prisons make sure they don't hold people in unsafe COVID-era conditions. But that's led to another issue. Bloomberg Businessweek estimated in July that the use of electronic ankle monitors had increased 25% to 30% during the pandemic. People awaiting trial or on parole have to pay hundreds of dollars a month for the monitors. This is what advocate Nicole Hanson-Mundell had to say on The Real News Network.
Nicole Hanson-Mundell:
These are what we describe as the criminalization of poverty. It's you continuing to penalize individuals who are living in poverty.
Chideya:
As we've discussed on previous shows, COVID has produced what some people are calling the female recession. A study from McKinsey found that one in four women are considering downshifting their careers or leaving the workforce. Jess Huang one of the authors of the study told this to CBSN in Los Angeles.
Jess Huang:
And what we're hearing from others is they're taking on a disproportionate amount of work at home in terms of childcare and hospital duties.
Chideya:
So what lies ahead, Dr. Scott Gottlieb is a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. And this is what he predicted last month on CNBC.
Scott Gottlieb:
I think after Thanksgiving, that's going to be a turning point when the infection levels get high enough in many parts of the country, that we start to see a policy reaction and also consumer behavior starts to change.
Chideya:
So will the pandemic hit a peak and then decline after the holidays? Or will rates continue to rise well after Thanksgiving. In part that's up to us and how much we take our own safety and our families into account in who we gather with, when we wear masks and how we distance ourselves. We wish everyone health and safety.
Jenni Monet is an award winning journalist reporting on indigenous rights in the US and abroad. She began a newsletter this year called Indigenously: Decolonizing Your News Feed. Jenni, thanks for being on Our Body Politic.
Monet:
Well, thanks for having me.
Chideya:
Why did you start Indigenously? I learn something, not just one thing, but many new things every time I read your newsletter, why did you start it?
Monet:
Indigenously was a knee jerk reaction, if anything, to just putting words on the page in the week, as things that I saw were relevant, and that weren't getting covered in our mainstream presses, that might not get attention in the tribal presses. There is a yearning for people wanting to understand the indigenous timeline and its significance in this racial reckoning that we're all experiencing right now. But I think that it's also difficult for people to obtain that information. And it's not their fault.
I think it was in one of my first few newsletters where I was apologetic to everyone who was reading that. It's not your fault that you don't have this information, because it's just not taught in public schools. And so I think that if there's anything I've learned in the last couple of years, is that there's a real basic level of education that needs to be laid, because our education system has done an extraordinary job at colonizing the minds of Americans. And it continues to do so.
Chideya:
We both went to Standing Rock, my time there was extremely memorable but far less significant than your time, when you got arrested. But you also had a very specific experience of being brutally mistreated during your arrest and eventually exonerated. Tell us a little bit about that, and what you have taken forward from that into your work today.
Monet:
Prior to George Floyd's murder, I had toured across the country talking about Standing Rock in 2017, mostly. And one thing that I always said in those remarks was that how Standing Rock was this test kitchen for the America that we were all experiencing under Trump. And that was something I said in 2017. Not only racial and justice matters, but police brutality, looking at corporate collusion involved in politics, involved in our everyday lives, misinformation, disinformation. And of course, just a complete lack of understanding for the indigenous narrative and how it plays a very important, vital role in all of our lives today.
A lot of people think native life and death doesn't matter that much. But in fact, when you look at how we treat our most vulnerable people, which arguably are Native Americans, it says a lot about the society that we live in. When I look back and reflect on Standing Rock, I find it an extraordinary place for that uprising to have happened when it did. Because those lands represent in our historical timeline in America, really, some of the last resisters that have taken a stand against colonization and continue to do so even today.
Chideya:
One of the most memorable moments I have is being near the press tent at the very moment when longtime activist and Lakota elder Phyllis young got the news that the Obama administration was going to look back into the environmental impact statement, effectively blocking the immediate procedure to move ahead with the Dakota Access Pipeline. And all these people were cheering and I asked her how do you feel? And she basically was like, "Look, the government breaks its promises all the time." Sure enough, President Trump reversed that. So we recently interviewed Congresswoman Deb Haaland of New Mexico, who was also Laguna Pueblo, and she really spoke a lot about hope. There was also this thing in my mind about Phyllis Young's statement, which is that sometimes the hope is not met with reciprocal action. How do you hold those two things in your mind, in your heart?
Monet:
Well, I think that you've just really captured something that is the indigenous struggle. When I hear someone like Deb Haaland recalling a very personal past with our Pueblo ancestry. I'm Laguna Pueblo, we share an ancestry. It makes total sense to me why she can be so optimistic in that I think that because we are a people who have overcome so much in our historical timeline, that there is this resounding hope. That is what lies at the indigenous struggle not just here in America, but around the indigenous world. The reluctance and distrust in systems. And then also being stuck with the formula that we have to work in these systems. I don't know that there's anyone really in what we call the struggle or the movement right now, that doesn't see that this is an incredible time for Indian country.
Chideya:
Jenni Monet, thank you so much for joining us.
Monet:
Thank you Farai.
Chideya:
You can sign up for Jenny Monet's newsletter Indigenously at indigenously.org and you can listen to the interview we referenced with Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico, on Our Body Politic podcast wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
Continuing our conversations with journalists, we have New York Times reporter Somini Sengupta, she's covered the world, including leading the paper's South Asia Bureau. Now she reports from the US and internationally on the climate crisis and how it impacts people's daily lives. Somini welcome.
Somini Sengupta:
Thank you so much for having me, it's really an honor.
Chideya:
Your work is really... It's tactile to me. And I'm thinking of your piece Inequity at the Boiling Point. And so many other pieces, but just the way that you describe heat is just magnificent and terrifying. Tell us a little bit about your work on heat and social inequality in urban American neighborhoods, heat in India, heat and other parts of the world and how it maps to the stratifications of race, class and caste.
Sengupta:
I think in the last couple years that I've been covering climate change, I've learned, I would say like three really important things. The story of climate change, I've learned is a people story. It's a story, not about parts per million, or degrees Fahrenheit or degrees celsius, it's a story of people.
Second, I've learned that climate change is not a future risk. It is a now risk. And the third thing I think I've learned is that climate change is one of the most profound inequities of our time, in that it punishes the most the people who are least responsible for causing the problem to begin with. So I started the year with a story that looked at what happens to people who live by the ocean, who live in great coastal cities. And how are they affected by sea level rise depending on who they are. So I met families most of them very poor, living in homes built of bamboo and tin in coastal neighborhoods in Manila. Most of them didn't have insurance, it was up to them to sort of borrow money and literally raise the floor of their homes, because the water kept coming into their neighborhood.
And I contrasted that with the kinds of things that the San Francisco Bay Area is doing and homeowners who have fairly expensive real estate on the coast, what they are doing. So, it was my first attempt in the series to show that the story of how sea level rise affects you depends almost entirely on who you are. And whether you are born rich or poor, whether you have insurance or not, whether you have a social safety net in your country or not. Whether you have resources to adapt.
Chideya:
What do you see ahead as possible paths for US policy and also how US policy affects global policy?
Sengupta:
It is a very stark contrast that I'm sure most of your listeners are familiar with. President Trump has not only denied the facts of climate science, he has also pulled the United States out of the global agreement designed to stave off the worst effects of climate change. Joe Biden, in stark contrast, has placed climate change increasingly at the center of his policies. And he's got a fairly large and expensive climate... A budget, a plan for how to address climate change.
You asked a very good question about well, what happens to global policy? Well, currently, the emissions produced by the United States is second only to China. So in order for the world as a whole, to avoid the worst effects, in order for the people of Bangladesh, where some of my ancestors originally came from that part of the world. For the people of Bangladesh to be able to survive. That depends a lot on whether the United States and China drastically, radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions within the next 10 years.
Chideya: Somini Sengupta, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom.
Sengupta: Thank you.
Chideya:
Somini Sengupta covers climate for the New York Times.
Coming up next on Our Body Politic.
Lisa Lucas:
I was really lucky to find books and defined all sorts of things that really nurtured me and made me bigger and saved me.
Chideya:
Today, we're focusing on journalists and thinkers reshaping the world. Joining me next is Lisa Lucas, the Executive Director of the National Book foundation. Starting next year, Lucas is stepping into a new role as Senior Vice President and publisher at Pantheon and Schocken books. And it all started with a Twitter hashtag. Back in June, black authors were using the hashtag publishing paid me to share the book advances, that is the upfront money they received from publishers. These were glaringly lower than payments to non black authors, writers, including Jesmyn Ward, NK Jemisin, and Roxane Gay opened up about what they were paid. I started by asking Lucas about the impact of that tweet storm on her life and career.
Lucas:
So I mean, this conversation is funny. I think it bubbled over into like the whole big wide world this year. But I remember doing a panel in 2012, or 2013, talking about the absolute shocking lack of diversity inside of publishing. But I think that the moment where I saw Jemisin's tweet about how much she had received as her advance was really... And that she had to fight for it, and that she had already won a National Book Award. And that book in question won her second National Book Award, I think, really got me to a place alongside police killings. And the real rigorous discussions with friends and colleagues and family about the fact that cultural suppression causes bodily harm, and that there is a direct correlate between the work that we do, and these extra judicial police killings. Because we hide our reality. So that's a long way of saying that I was outraged to the breaking point in June. And I tweeted at one point, a number of very, very, very sort of pointed tweets directed at the many people who work in publishing who read my Twitter. And one of them was just if anybody wants to hire an actually equitable person to run a publishing house or to run an actually equitable publishing house here I am. And I wasn't really serious. I just was saying there are people here that can do this work. And I got a DM from the woman who will be my boss that day.
Chideya:
Yeah. So you are now a bonafide publishing boss lady. How did that conversation play out going from tweets to reality?
Lucas:
I remember doing it, I was actually on NPR, with Alison Stewart. And she was asking me right after during the reckoning, we'll call it. And she was asking me all these questions what's an advance. What's this? And I remember saying, "I'm not a publisher. I'm not a publisher. I don't know."
I hadn't really said I want to be a publisher. I think I had said some things that indicated that I wanted to help shape the culture, help make the cult culture rather than to react to it. And I think that my limited understanding at that time, was really like, I would like to shape it and to stop reacting, and that money is power, and that gatekeepers are different, depending on where the gates lead to, and that the gates that I was leading to weren't enough in this moment for the kind of radical change I wanted to see. And I think I'm still learning what my role will be. But I also think that this is a really extraordinary opportunity to provide a little proof of concept.
Chideya:
So I'm going to ask you one of those super trite questions that get asked all the time, so forgive me. You clearly are someone who has ambitions. And if you were to write your own obituary, which God willing will not be written for decades and decades and decades, what's the top line of what you want to bring to the publishing industry?
Lucas:
Change. I would like to see that things were different after me than they were before. Simply that. My father was a musician. I talk about this all the time, my father wrote songs and played music on stages, and was a maker. And I never wanted to make anything. I just wanted to... I just loved it. I just loved music, I love dance. I love theater, I love books, most of all, and I just always wanted to help other people participate in those traditions, too. Because I was lucky, I was privileged, I had access, and everyone didn't. And I was really lucky to find books and to find all sorts of things that have really nurtured me and made me bigger and saved me, when I was sad or upset or confused or lost.
Chideya:
Lisa, thank you so much for spending some time with us and all the best in your publishing life.
Lucas:
Thank you.
Chideya:
Lisa Lucas is executive director of the National Book Foundation. Starting in January, she becomes the Senior Vice President and publisher at Pantheon and Schocken Books.
Our Body Politic centers the lives and work of women of color. But insights on race, class, culture, and economics come from people of many backgrounds. I'm an unapologetic fan of best selling author Sarah Smarsh, who speaks from reported and lived experience on how inequality affects white Americans.
Sarah is fifth generation Kansan. In her own words, "Bone of the bone of them that lived in trailer homes." Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, was a finalist for the National Book Award. And now she's got a new book out, She Come by it Natural about Dolly Parton and how women connect to her life and work. Welcome, Sarah.
Sarah Smarsh:
It's so good to join you Farai, thanks for having me.
Chideya:
I remember really first reading your work, and plugging into just the beauty of your language when you did the story Poor Teeth. Can you tell us a little bit about that story?
Smarsh:
Sure. So this was in 2014, which, gosh, seems like a totally different era now. And it was in many ways. And I was noticing discussion around a big show, TV show at the time was Orange is the New Black. And there was a character in that show, who was sort of famous for really bad teeth. And this turned into a kind of a term within the culture, mostly on social media. Maybe people would refer to bad teeth, but through her character whose name was Pennsatucky. So people will be like, "Oh, she's got Pennsatucky teeth."
And I started thinking about what that particular character represented, which was a sort of version of what popular culture has termed over the years, quote unquote, white trash. And how teeth are really a class signifier. Of course that was right around the time that the ACA was getting going and because of compromises with Republicans to get that legislation through, dental health was stripped away from that coverage. So some people today might not realize that folks who get help or tax credits through the Affordable Care Act, there's no provision for caring for their teeth as though they're somehow separate from the rest of their bodily health. Anyway, this essay was an exploration of how did that happen? How did we get to this place we're at in terms of access to dentistry being essentially a line between the haves and have-nots.
Chideya:
My grandmother, God rest her soul had all of her teeth pulled out I think by the time she was 30, because it was cheaper to pull teeth and get dentures than to get dental care. And she grew up poor and so that essay hit home with me on many different levels. There was also a case of a kid in the Baltimore area where I grew up well after I had grown up who died because the infections that you can get in your gums can actually travel in your body and kill you. But I also just wanted to pivot a little bit and turn to your podcast series, the Homecomers. And notably, it featured rural people of different races and one thing that's really on my mind these days is how can we or even can we form coalition's of low income and working income whites, non-whites, Latinos, black people, really, urban, is it even possible to build that type of coalition?
Smarsh:
You know, the Poor People's Campaign is something I point to as a great movement currently led in part by Reverend William Barber, as well as Reverend Liz Theoharris they're sort of picking up the mantle that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Was carrying soon before his assassination when he was sort of shifting his focus toward capitalism. And so the poor people's campaign today. I've like walked in their marches in very unlikely places in deep red state Kansas.
And it's the proverbial rainbow. It's like the white working class dude with muddy work boots walking next to a black single mom and her children. But I will say that the poor people's campaign has not caught on as much as other movements today and I've thought a lot about why this might be and I don't think it's for lack of ability to find enough unity and enough like white allies who will walk hand in hand with people of color and immigrants and so on. I think it's because that movement by definition is about poor folks. Okay? If you have a ground level movement where like everyone's literally broke then it's harder in this wealthy country where everything is structured around college degrees and professional clout for a movement to take hold like that.
Chideya:
So I just want to end with something entirely different. Now I love Dolly Parton. Not just her music, not just her acting, but what she represents. And to me, she represents a kind of hard one joyful independence. You have a new book, She Come by it Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women who Lived Her Songs. So what does Dolly Parton represent to you? And what is your book about?
Smarsh:
Dolly Parton to my mind represents everything that's good about some version of the place I come from, which, yes, is mostly white, it's mostly poor. But it isn't all hate. And I think that Dolly Parton sort of universally represents the opposite of hate in many ways. So basically, I spent a year writing about how Dolly Parton exemplifies a brand of working class feminism, if you will. This was also at the... I was writing it at the dawn of the Me Too movement and Donald Trump was on the scene. So it's very much about gender and class, situated in this moment, and paying sort of homage to women of Dolly Parton's generation on whose shoulders so many of us stand.
Chideya: Sarah Smarsh, thanks so much.
Smarsh: Thanks Farai, this has been great.
Chideya:
Sarah Smarsh's book about Dolly is She Come by it Natural.
What kind of future do we want to live in? If we want to see it happen we better plan it now. And my next guest created an organization dedicated to this kind of powerful visioning. It's called The Guild of Future Architects. Sharon Chang is the founder and CEO and Kamal Sinclair is its Executive Director. Hi, Kamal.
Kamal Sinclair:
Hi, Farai.
Chideya:
Hi, Sharon.
Sharon Chang:
Hi, Farai.
Chideya:
So thanks for coming back to join us again. And we spoke recently about the importance of imagining our liberation, our freedom. And a lot of that conversation was individually focused, I want to imagine my financial security, I want to imagine my careers. Sharon, how do we expand that focus to collective imagining, a collective liberation?
Chang:
At the Guild of Future Architects, we focus a lot on democratizing imagination. Because in order to design a better future for humanity, we need everyone's imagination and participation. So for example, back in April, just after the initial shockwave of the pandemic, we ran a series of futures writers' rooms called 20 decades of 2020. Using this year 2020 as the portal year, we time traveled 10 decades back decade by decade, to 1920. And then also 10 decades forward, all the way to 2120.
And these writers' rooms were open to the public, as we took people on a journey to imagine the past and remember the future. And together we dreamed of a world of shared values by asking radical questions of what ifs. What if there were no prison systems? What if institutions were fully decolonized? And you may ask why looking at history when designing the future? We're often told that history is written by the victors or that history tends to repeat itself. So conventional wisdom might tell us that we should learn from history when thinking about the future.
But it's a lot more than just learning. What are we learning? I would argue that history requires imagination, because it's nothing more than conflicting memories due to different perspectives. So how we choose to understand history is how we choose to understand each other. It is a choice, and how we understand each other is how we design a better future together. So it is all about listening and understanding together.
Chideya:
You know, it brings us back to one of the realities of the question that you gave us to ask through SPEAK. So I wanted to play you something that one of our listeners sent us in terms of response to your prompt.
Listener 1:
Hi, I would like to tell you what I would do if I felt totally liberated. And if I trusted the society around me. I would expand my business, and I would integrate childcare as part of my business model for employees in general. The business that I run in eldercare. And I think that I would like to create a space that cares for people at all stages, including housing, potentially, and childcare.
Chideya:
Kamal on this theme of care and how it relates to money. It really struck me that this is just so critical to our time. How would you speak back to that question of like the future of care?
Sinclair:
I also want to share a story that we did an interview, particularly asking questions around the future of automation and the impact that it will have on the workforce, particularly eldercare is one of those areas that a lot of proponents of artificial intelligence, automation, say like in Japan, they've got care robots and things like that. And so we were looking at the future of work through the lens of these emerging technologies.
And I interviewed a woman named Skawennati, who is the founder of the Indigenous Futures Lab in Canada, who is herself, Mohawk Iroquois woman, and she said right now, the statistics are that if artificial intelligence is used equitably, we will have enough housing, healthcare, food, and education for every person on the planet, with people working four hours a day, four days a week. I mean, that's a crazy statistic. Is that true? Will that be possible?
And she said, "If it is true, let's say that we could get there, in terms of not seeing the hoarding of resources that we've seen today." She said, "Coming from my Mohawk heritage, I would welcome this kind of lowering of daily work in kind of one focus, because then I can go back to a value system, where we balance time with work like providing a service to your community, but also time with family, time in nature and time and creativity, and kind of a spiritual practice."
And I thought that was such a great example of what women of color, indigenous lens brings to thinking about these future landscapes that we are designing right now. And we actually have a shared future, which is a collection of members of the Guild of Future Architects that are working towards a set of goals to realize a vision of a future. There's a lot of room for reimagining how we're thinking about care from cradle to grave.
Chideya:
I really look forward to our shared future in continuing the work of having these conversations about the world we want to live in. We're going to have more to come on different topics and thank you both so much. Thanks, Sharon. Thanks Kamal.
Chang:
Thank you Farai.
Sinclair:
Thank you Farai.
Chideya:
Sharon Chang is the founder and CEO of the Guild of Future Architects and Kamal Sinclair is its executive director.
Thank you for joining us on Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Our Body Politic is presented and syndicated by KCRW, KPCC and KQED. It's produced by Lantigua Williams & Co. I'm 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, Michelle Baker and Emily Daly, are assistant producers, production assistance from Mark Betancourt, Michael Castaneda, Zuheera Ali and Virginia. Laura.
Funder Credit:
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. “Maria Hinojosa on Inclusive Storytelling, and Journalists of Color Creating Newsrooms from Tennessee to Laguna Pueblo Lands.” Our Body Politic, Diaspora Farms LLC. November 27, 2020. https://our-body-politic.simplecast.com/