HOW WE ALL BECOME MINNESOTA: BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM

Welcome to We Can Do Hard Things. This is a crucial conversation with one of the most important activists, organizers, and thinkers of our time, Brittany Packnett Cunningham. She is with us for this hour to help us look at Minnesota and understand the infrastructure and circumstances that have allowed Minnesota to become the beacon that it is for all of us right now. Brittany is going to talk to us about what we need to do right now to not just sit and stare and marvel at Minnesota, but to become Minnesota in our own places so that when our moment comes and it will, we will be ready like they were. And also Brittany is going to talk to us a lot about how for a lot of people, none of this is a surprise and how we might be able to rebuild now in a way that this does not happen again. How we break patterns, American patterns that keep us repeating the same old story in this country, how we write a new one, finally, by acknowledging the truth of the beginning. This is a gift. Brittany Packnett Cunningham is an absolute gift. Let's get to her. Brittany Packnett Cunningham is a leader at the intersection of culture, justice, and policy. Brittany is the founder of the social impact agency Love and Power Works, post and executive producer of the News and Justice podcast Undistracted. A St. Louis native, Brittany was instrumental in the coordination of the Ferguson protest following the 2014 police murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown. After George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis in 2020, Brittany became one of the most visible national movement voices for policy, budget, and electoral change. As the world watched the executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretty by ICE, both within 2.2 miles of where George Floyd was murdered, as well as the execution of Keith Porter Jr. by ICE in California, Brittany is leading us in connecting this police state violence, including the killings of Geraldo Lunes Campos, Luis Gustavo Nunez-Caseras, and Luis Beltran-Yanez Cruz, and more than 50 other deaths in ICE detention toward a collective liberation. Brittany, you are so generous in sharing your voice today. You are the voice we are looking to, as well as those voices on the ground in Minnesota right now to help us to understand and connect this moment to decades and centuries of violence that we're experiencing in this country. We are recording this on Monday, January 26th. This episode will go up on Wednesday, the 28th. Where would you situate us in this moment where people will be hearing this on Wednesday? What do you most want people to know right now? The thing I want people to know right now and always is that there's something for everybody to do. And I probably sound like a broken record about that. If you engage with me on any platform, but that is so critically important to me that everybody understands that because it is easy to look on in horror from afar. It doesn't feel good, but it's easier to do that than to decide to be incensed enough to take action. And we all have to be filled with enough rage or love or some mix of the two. To do something and to do something every day, this is a moment where we have to understand that a singular act on a singular day is not enough. This requires consistent action, consistent education, consistent community building, because we have to build momentum. Momentum is necessary to actually grow the kind of force we need to reverse what we're dealing with now. And so, yeah, I want people to know that they can take action on pushing Governor Walls to institute a statewide eviction moratorium so that people who've had to shelter in place and hide out from ICE are not thrown out from their houses on February the 1st. They're by putting them at even more risk, both in subzero temperatures and of being abducted by ICE. I want people to know that they can take action by calling their senators and making sure that they refuse to fund ICE through the DHS appropriations bill, that they call for Kristi Noem to be impeached, that they call for investigations of the murders of Renee Good, of Keith Porter Jr., of Alex Pretty, and of all of those who have died, both in protest of ICE and in detention centers. I want people to take action in following the organizers and leaders and organizations on the ground in Minneapolis, like Natives, like the Indigenous Food Lab, Minnesota 5051, like Georgia Fort, who's an incredible independent journalist who is on the ground and from there, like Nkema Armstrong, who her and Chantel were arrested for the protest of the church being led by an ICE officer, the Sahan Journal, Hazen Fairbanks, and then following what those folks say to do, right? Don't just puff up the follower numbers, right? Those people are giving you stuff on their stories, on their posts all the time. They're giving you things to share, places to donate, things to donate supplies that are needed, information that needs to be shared out so that we can get in front of the lives of this regime. There is something for everybody to do, and I don't care where you are, we need you to do it. My sister and I were talking yesterday about how one of the things that you and so many of others have been trying to teach us for so long is that what's happening in Minnesota doesn't just happen. It's the result of years and decades of groups who are meeting and working and organizing. It's not just that those massive protests just occur. Every city and state is not prepared like Minnesota was prepared because they have not been doing the everyday work of being part of these groups so that when the call comes, people are trained, people are disciplined, people are connected, people know where to meet, people know where to go. This is the result of the work that's day in and day out. There's not some huge megaphone that somebody gets on and says, everybody go now, right? So, Brittany talked to us about what people mean when they say this is not just about posting and it's not just about protesting, this is about getting involved with your local organizations who will prepare you for the moments like we're seeing in Minnesota. I'm so glad you asked that. There are a million hot takes in this moment, right? I tend to not be in the mood for hot takes when people need to get active. One of the hot takes we keep saying is, wow, I can't believe the revolution is happening in Minnesota, right? I thought that was just a place of like people are nice, they go sledding, right? Midwestern charm. The other hot take that I see a bunch of people giving is, well, they built the infrastructure in 2020. Both of those things are incorrect. Number one, Minnesota itself is an indigenous word. Indigenous people on the land that is now called Minnesota have been resisting for hundreds of years. This is the 250th birthday rather of America, the country, but it is not the 250th birthday of Turtle Island. There were people here, there were strategies here, there were communities here, and those communities stood up. The land holds that memory, the people hold that memory, the language holds that memory, and indigenous people in what is now called Minnesota have been passing that on for generations. And so many of them are the ones holding the line right now, which is one of the reasons why we know that this was never about immigration, because why is ICE rating indigenous spaces? Why is ICE detaining people who were here before the people who ICE hired and their ancestors? The same is true with Black people, right? We know Nakeema's name because she had been an organizer in that space for a long time. Robin Wansley, who's one of the city counselors in the Twin Cities, who has been one of the main ones pushing for this eviction moratorium, she's been organizing for years. It is ahistorical to say that folks have just been doing this for the last three, four, five, six years. And when people bring that up, they're not being contrarian, they're not being rude, they're not being mean. They are doing the work of reminding us that if our fights are not inclusive, our solutions will not be inclusive. If we are not intersectional now, then the world making we are doing that world won't be inclusive either. We actually have to practice that stuff now. We have to build the muscle of intersectionality and inclusivity now. So when people tell you, hey, don't just remember Renee Good and Alex Pretty, remember all of the other names that Amanda named and then some, they're not doing it to get on your nerves. They're doing it because they want to make sure that all of us are included in the world that we have to build because when something's destroyed, something is built in its place and we'll either do it by happens to answer, we'll do it intentionally. The other thing though, Glennon, that your question is bringing to mind that I really, really want people to understand is that this is worse. And I actually don't think people are getting that. I think it is convenient to have nostalgia about what you say you were doing in 2014 or 2015 or what you say you were doing in 2020, whether you're actually doing that is a different conversation, but it's easy to have nostalgia about it and feel your activist adrenaline rising again and think that we're dealing with the same thing. As I've been reminding people, when we were on the streets in 2014 in Ferguson, we did not have a friendly local government, but we had a warm federal government. We had in President Obama somebody who wanted to assemble people to talk solutions. Now, they might not have been the solutions that everybody agreed with, but there was an open door. There was a curiosity. There was a question to say, how can we figure this out and how can we figure it out together? Dealing with a warm democratic government is very different than dealing with authoritarians. I would venture to say that dealing with George Bush, dealing with early 2000s Republicans is very different than what we're dealing with now. So if your activist adrenaline is raising up because of what you did to push back against the Iraq war, I need you to understand that it's different right now. Let me just share with you some of the things that I'm hearing from people that I know and that I've been connected to in Minnesota. I want us all to put ourselves in the mind of folks who were born into immigrant families who cannot see their parents, not because their parents are halfway across the world, but because their parents are across town and neither of them can come out of the house because it's unsafe. You cannot go out of the house to go grocery shopping, to go check on your elders, to go get a cup of coffee. I want us to think about those same immigrant families and the parents of those immigrant families who came to America looking for a better life, some of them leaving war-torn countries who are comparing this experience not to 2020, but to the war that they escaped. That's the comparison that they're drawing. I want us to understand that people are being pulled from their cars as they're driving to drop their kids off to school or driving from dropping their kids off from school in discriminative who those people are because plenty of those people have been U.S. citizens, plenty of those people have been green card holders, and I want to be really clear, even if those people aren't documented, nobody should be terrorized like this. I want us to understand that ICE is tracking the license plates of anybody engaged in any kind of activity. So if you are dropping off hot meals, they're tracking your license plate. If you are walking children to and from school to make sure that they do not end up like five-year-old Liam, they are tracking your license plate. If you are showing up at a meeting of clergy members and faith leaders, they are tracking your license plate, and they are doing this while driving around in vehicles that do not have license plates. ICE's vehicles are unmarked, but everyday citizens of Minnesota, because it's happening across the entire seat, their license plates are being tracked. Vellando Castile was murdered after being pulled over for supposedly having a light bulb out on his car, but ICE gets to drive around with masks on, no badges, no identification, and no license plates, meanwhile they're tracking activists and organizers at parents' license plates. We're talking in Minneapolis about a city of 300,000 people, and what's been reported is that 10,000 of those people have been disappeared. 10,000 of those people have been kidnapped. 10,000 families who just woke up one day and their family was gone, who went to work and who came back and the family was broken, who dropped their child off from school and they could not pick them up. That's a lot of people in a city of 300,000. At least 3,000 of those people were sent to other places. Some of those people were taken to a detention facility in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, a place called Whipple, and then released. At least 3,000 of those people have been sent to other states, many of them Texas. So 3,000 people disappeared, sent halfway across the country where they know no one, have no family, can't connect to anybody where they need help. And Minnesota has about 150 lawyers in the state who are capable, who have the proper licensing, and who have the proper authority to file what is needed to get those people back home from Texas to Minneapolis. 3,000 people, 150 lawyers. What we're talking about is wholesale warfare from America's government against her people. This is not 2014. It's not 2015. It's not 2020. It's not Occupied Wall Street. It's not anti-Iraq. It's not anti-Vietnam. There are parallels. There are necessary lessons. There is courage that we need to borrow from those moments for now. And this moment is calling for way more courage from all of us. Activists are not just fearful for their jobs. They're fearful for their lives because they could go outside and end up like Alex Pretty or Renee Good or Chief Porter and not come home. You're talking about this is not 2014 and sounds like the 1700s and the 1800s in the slave patrols. And I know that a lot of people are making that connection, but I think it's really important in this moment because there is what you said at the top where about saying all the people's names and including all of those people and what we're talking about is so important. And I would love to stay there for a second because to me, this feels like the foundation on which we build our next steps. I've read a lot of what you've said about it in Austin Channing Brown about the reason it's important to be able to truly hear what Black people are saying, the deep disappointment and grief when they hear white people say, how did we just suddenly arrive here? What is happening here is because it reveals that we have not acknowledged and heard and grieved what Black people have been saying that they have been experiencing and what they have been experiencing for generations. That is the extrajudicial, the state-sponsored and endorsed killing of their people and then the cover-up like we saw with Renee and with Alex and with Keith of, well, they were bad. There was a reason that we killed them and get on our side real quick. That has been happening for generations. It's so important that we just stay there for a second because it is grief that we have to acknowledge and it is also fundamental because if we don't tie this moment to all of those moments, the solution that we come to the other side with, a proposed solution that only helps us, the white people who have just recently found themselves to be disturbed by this and doesn't help everyone. It's actually not going to be a solution because we're going to need all of us to do it together. Can we just talk about that right now and then can we talk about the parallels and the state-sponsored killings over the history of our nation because it is what this is about? This is not new and the comparing it to Nazi Germany is not correct because Nazi Germany actually studied the US South and to create their Nuremberg laws. They based it on Jim Crow. They based it on one drop in our Asian Exclusion Act and our miscegenation laws. That was based on us. If you're talking about that, you're talking about us and until we're talking about the right thing, we can't solve the right thing. That's right. If we don't make the proper comparison now, if we don't properly historicize what's happening, then we will be here again. That's not the world I'm interested in building for my children or y'alls. The Nazis had a blueprint and that blueprint was the Jim Crow South. The other reason why it's improper to compare it though is because Germany thereafter did its work. They did not put up statues of Nazi Germany war heroes. They did not lionize Hitler. They did not pick up a symbol like the swastika of oppression and make it cool and hip again like they did the Confederate flag here in the 60s and 70s. Their bands weren't playing in front of that in front of the swastika like Leonard Skinner was playing in front of the Confederate flag. They did their work. They made sure that the history was taught to every single child who came through their educational systems. If you spent any time being educated in that country, you knew so that never again was not a wish but a plan. In this country, we've erased the history. We've ignored the history. We've told the people that knew the history, that they were overdoing it, that they were doing too much. We have perverted the history. We've taught the history intentionally and correctly. We've been told that the history makes people feel bad so we can't say it anymore. We can't teach it anymore. We got to get the books out of there and if you think that you're going to be a librarian or a teacher who conveys that information, then say goodbye to your job. That's what we've done and we were doing that before Trump. I want to be really clear. He made it real obvious but the proper people's history of the United States to borrow Zinn's phrase has rarely been taught to most people. That's why a place like TikTok is ripe to be overtaken because suddenly people are learning their real history because in that more democratic space suddenly to your FYP comes a professor of Africana Studies and African-American Studies who's there to tell you the truths that you never knew. There's somebody who I don't know picked up the people's history in the United States and read a page to you on TikTok and suddenly you want to go buy that book too. There are people who bought Michael Harry's Black AF history and said, oh this is interesting. Let me talk to my audience about it and then that thing keeps hitting the New York Times list. That's why people want to squash that particular platform and now the algorithm doesn't work. We can't compare ourselves to the people who got an A on the group project when we keep being determined to not even complete the group project. That lets us off the hook as a country in a way that is deeply violent and problematic because all it does is open the door for us to do this again. In another 50 years for people to say this is not the America I know, this is not the America I have ever known, when did we become this country? And then once again black people have to raise their hands and say, hi we've always been this country. Once again us and indigenous people have to exhaust ourselves to say, have you have you picked up a book? If you've been following any of us for any amount of time, we told you this. The hard thing for people to realize is that if we had listened to black people in the first place we wouldn't be here and this is actually what I want people to sit with because a whole lot of people bought a whole lot of listen to black women totes in 2015 and in 2020 and wore them and then didn't do it. And I mean that very literally. I mean if everybody had listened to the 92% of black women who voted for Kamala Harris we literally wouldn't be in this situation. And you can have critique of her, that's fine we should all have critique of politicians. But what we can't do is allow the flattening that happened across the public square that said that they were both the same continue because this woman is not sending ICE to pull people out of their cars. She's not sending a paramilitary force in the streets to kill a veteran's affairs nurse. She's not doing it, right? So very literally had we listened to black people and been willing to vote for the black woman instead of walking around and saying, oh America will never elect a black woman becoming somebody who made America elect a black woman because you voted for her and you got your neighbors to vote for her, you got your friends to vote for her. If you had done that we wouldn't be here. And now I'm watching people do the same thing to Jasmine Crockett. We say we need the Democrats to win back the Senate. We say well Jasmine can't win because Beto didn't win and Beto is a friend of mine. But people are then simultaneously comparing James Tolarico to Beto but Beto didn't win. So what makes you think that James is going to be Jasmine? But because you lack the political and social imagination to see a black woman win a statewide seat in the state of Texas you have now become the obstruction. You have now become the thing that has declared the self-fulfilling prophecy. Because once you say a black woman can't win then other people say well then there's no point in me trying. And now you've created the future that you determined was a possible and you've proven your own point even though your point didn't have to be proven that way. So we're making the same mistakes again because we're not even willing to learn from recent history. If we had listened to black people Confederates would have been tried for treason. If we had listened to black people people who red-lined communities would not have been allowed to own future property. If we had listened to black people reconstruction would have led to a flourishing of the land and of the economy for everybody instead of getting what we got with Jim Crow which killed the economy in in the south. Because half the people couldn't participate in it. If we had listened to black people we would never have elected a wannabe dictator the first time let alone the second time. And people don't want to sit with that reality because they say I got I got black friends. I got black co-workers. I invited her to dinner the other day. I you know I exercise next to a black woman in my yoga class. There's a black woman who lives down the street. I don't belong to the KKK. I don't belong to the white citizens council but you didn't listen. And if you did listen you kept the truth to yourself. And didn't see it as your job to go and recruit anybody else. Had we listened to black people. Had we listened to indigenous people we very literally would not be here. That's not me bemoaning the past or complaining about where we are. That is me issuing a warning that if you make the same mistake again we're going to end up in the same hell again. If insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result then we're being clinically insane. That's right. It is insane and it's a question of logic for me at this point. There's a lot of issues of repair that need to be done for a lot of us who have been just fine and been fine thinking things were just fine for a lot of time. So that exists in a parallel plane and that work needs to be done. And at this point it is a question of logic and survival. This is the image I keep thinking. If you found yourself suddenly lost in the woods who would you ask to help lead you out? The people who also just suddenly found themselves lost in the woods or the people who have spent generations living, surviving and who know the woods like the back of their hand. You would beg respectfully and humbly for those people who know the woods like the back of their hand to please help you survive. And that is what it feels like. It feels like there's so many. Here's what you would, I'm sorry to interrupt. Here's what you do even better though. You'd simply watch what they are doing to survive themselves and adapt it. Right? Because the thing about it is you're not just lost in the woods by happenstance. I'm lost in the woods because you got in front of me in line and made sure that I was in the back. I can't find my way. We have to understand when black people are like, no, I don't want to go leave because we've been back here trying to survive this entire time. It would be better if you listened to all of the things that we've been saying to each other about how to survive. And the fact that you can do that freely with this thing called the internet means that you actually don't even have to request more labor than anybody's ever offered. We've written the books. We've made the films. We've made the documentaries. We host the podcasts. We opened the nonprofit organizations. We'd lead the congregations, which we did the other translations of all of the faith texts. We've cooked the food. We've sung the songs. We've written the songs. We've composed the songs. We've done all of the things. All you got to do is join the choir. It already exists. But instead, you want to suddenly beg the people that you've been putting behind you for generations to lead you because we know the way out. But if you just follow what we're doing, if you fund what we're doing, if you support what we're doing, if you amplify what we're doing, it'll get done because we already have to survive ourselves. And I think that's the point a lot of people miss and they say, well, I don't know where to start. And I'm like, there are just so many openings, so many invitation. You don't have to follow me. You can follow Nicole Hannah-Jones. You don't have to follow Nicole Hannah-Jones. You can follow Ashley Woodard Henderson. You don't have to follow Ashley Woodard Henderson. You can follow Maurice Mitchell, the head of the Working Families Party. You don't have to follow Maurice Mitchell. There are too many open doors for people to be confused as to what time choir rehearsal is. It's time to join the math choir. I don't care if you can't carry a tune. It's time to lift your voice. And it should be very clear to you what time rehearsal is. Hey, friends. So we are deep in it right now. Spring Sports and your projects, testing seasons, creeping up. This stretch of the school year is a lot. And I know so many of us are trying to keep our kids supported academically without adding more stress to an artful plate. That's why I love IXL. IXL is an award-winning online learning platform that meets kids exactly where they are, whether they're building math confidence, strengthening reading and writing, or reviewing science. Pre-K through 12th grade, personalized and adaptive to your child's pace and level. One subscription covers all your kids, Pre-K through 12th grade. And one hour of tutoring costs more than an entire month of IXL. It's just smart. Make an impact on your child's learning. Get IXL now. 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Visit applegiftcard.apple.com to find the perfect graduation gift today. When we look at Minnesota, we are so amazed at what they're able to do. And I think we think that if ICE invaded any of our communities, that might just spontaneously happen. That we might have and I'm thankful. I'm thankful. I think it was a beautiful thing for the world to see this in Minnesota, to see the rising up, to see what is possible, to expand our imaginations of what could be. And yet they are very differently situated than a lot of communities may be if that happens. So I'm just thinking about the history of Minnesota in terms of the kind of intersectional groups and the different working groups that have been literally hundreds of years in the making in that area with their history of the strikes that led to where 67 people died in their general strikes that led to the new era, progressive improvements that we have, the way that the aim started, the indigenous groups started in Minnesota. They've always had a very, very big overlap between workers' rights and immigrants' rights. They had so many Italians and Slaviks that helped, that they all came together in those movements and it's been existing for forever. So can you talk a little bit about how all of those groups work together? Because you can't just have a pro-democracy group that comes up and leads if you don't have another ecosystem of all of these groups that are working together. So it's really important to have a very healthy crop of all of these groups that are there to all work together. Can you just speak to that? Yeah, I mean, so much of what really builds organizing infrastructure is not the sexy stuff, right? It's not what is happening when national news cameras come to town. It is when your neighborhood is coming together to talk about your tax base because you want to be able to pay for some improvements. Are you trying to figure out how to pay for a new park and a new playground and more trash pickup? Organizing infrastructure is built when people in their houses of faith are choosing to pick their heads up out of whatever book is their guide and look out on the world and act the things out that are in the book for the sake of the world. Those are the spaces in which real infrastructure is built. So that when the crisis comes, the labor crisis, the climate crisis, the racial crisis, the policing crisis, the military crisis, the authoritarian crisis, when those things come, you all have infrastructure, you have trust, you have processes, you have clarity on skill sets and people go and play their position. And that is especially important when more is being asked of people than ever before, which is why I wanted to really be clear with people that in our modern lifetime, this is worse than what we have seen in America. Now, we've seen across the world, but we've seen in America that infrastructure helps give people the literal space and container for courage to grow when it's necessary. And I think it's easy to look at a place like Minnesota and say, well, it took them decades and years to build that we don't have any time. And that would be unwise, because A, everybody will have to get prepared. That was my saying, Louis coming out. Everybody is going to have to get prepared. Ferguson was a test. Baltimore was a test. Cleveland was a test. LA was a test. New York was a test. Minneapolis was a test in 2020. Kentucky was a test in 2020. This is a test in 2026. They're trying to see just how much they can get away with. Who exactly can they murder? Who exactly can they disappear? Who exactly can they intimidate? Which elected officials can they put the screws to? And exactly how they can do all of those things. How should the attorney general word the ransom letter that is masquerading as official communication? Because telling me if you give me your snap rolls and your voter rolls and you comply with ICE, I maybe might one day think about getting ICE out of your town as extortion. That's a test. In case people missed that, P.M. Bondi did send a letter to Governor Walls saying, we can basically negotiate a surrender in which you stand down and you give us all of your data about all of your people, including all of your voter rolls, which by the way, it's reported, I don't know, Brittany, if you've seen a confirmation of this, that Texas has already handed over all of their voter rolls. Who knows how many people, how many friendly states have already given the government the voter rolls of all of their people so that they can, not if they will interfere and block and take over the election, but how they will. Because I can't believe that anyone's saying will they mess with the midterms. What are you literally talking about? This man? I mean, as long as we have them. He did it the last time. Why the hell wouldn't he do it this time when he has that much more to lose that many more felonies to attend to. That letter did come to the governor. So all of that is happening now and this testing ground is going to be assigned to them of what they can get away with, how much they can get away with it and where they can get away with it. And it gets to, which is why it's important for us to be on it now, both in supporting Minnesota as they push back and in preparing ourselves for not if, but when it comes to our backyards. So you're thinking it took Minnesota decades to build what they've built. The good news is that I guarantee you if you start asking around, if you start doing some research, if you start doing some reading, there are organizations just like that in your own backyard. Maybe they don't have the funding. Maybe they don't have the volunteers. Maybe they don't have the support. Well, that's where you come in. Right. Maybe they're not connected to the other organizations that they need to be connected to. Maybe that coalition table has not been built. If that's the gap that you're seeing, you're seeing it because you were meant to fill it. That's where you come in. Right. If you know that you live across the street or next door or down the block from people that ICE would target, that's where you come in. Do I have your phone number? Are we on the email chain, a text chain, a signal chain? Do we have a plan for if you can't come outside? Who's going to cover your rent? Who's going to make sure your bills are paid? Who's going to drop off groceries to you? Who's going to walk your children to school? That's not us asking you as an individual person to create an entire ecosystem of change. That is me asking you to go knock on your neighbor's door. We are capable of doing that when there's a hurricane, when there's a tornado, when there's a snowstorm. My neighbor from across the street just called us. Right. And when my husband went outside to shovel the snow, he went and shoveled the snow in front of their houses too. He already had the shovel in his hand. What's the problem? If you're already a trader, Joe, go ahead and pick up some extra groceries. We did that when SNAP benefits were threatened. Right. We know how to do that in times of crisis. And then we throw up our hands when the crisis is political and say, I have no idea what to do. Yes, you do. We know what to do. And guess what? All of those other crises were political too. The climate crises are political. We have the stuff that we need to survive this moment. We have the stuff that we need in ourselves and in one another if we are willing to do the very simple tasks of connecting those dots with each other. And that is really clear and decisive action nobody has to wait to take. I think that the ethos of whiteness being individual and disembodied and out of community means that a lot of people listening, they're not going to tell you what to do right now. Like there are leaders and there are artists and we are listening to them and we are taking in there. But we have to go to the park yesterday. We did all of our calls and all of our Instagram activism, right? That was not the important part of the day. The important part of the day was meeting with the group that we meet with in a park for three hours while kids played around us, while people came and reminded us this is how we're going to look out for our neighbors. This is how it was a group of people who get together. There's not going to be like a who down and whoville moment where there's a huge megaphone and everyone says, all the who's come out. It's more of a like a spider web underneath of all of these who now trust each other. And if you feel like you're getting all of your to do next from Instagram, that is not how this is happening. Like this is meeting in person. You're not constantly politically confused about what the hot take is because you're listening to your community leaders and how they're thinking and talking all the time. You are not stunned all the time. And this isn't something that happens once in a while and bubbles up. It's a constant relationship when you are in body, in person, with people in your community. There are the artists and there are the speakers and then there are community leaders in every single neighborhood. But you have to find it. Listen, I know white women, you got to look like you'd look to find the new pillow on the couch. We know how to find shit when we really want something. And sometimes you just show up for the first thing. If you go, a lot of these people, I just found by going to little protests and you are standing next to someone and they're like, here's a thing to put your name on. Have you been? And then you get on these text sheets and then it just happens. It's like woo woo body of Christ shit. It just starts happening if you step in the current. You're absolutely right. I know notes 10 out of 10. And I think that distilling it for people that clearly is so necessary. We talked about this the last time I was on WDW all about the individualism that is, I won't even just say pervasive, right? That is a feature of whiteness. I'm talking big W. I always have to do this for people. I'm talking big W whiteness, not individual white people or even white supremacy. I'm talking about the thing that was constructed to be whiteness as a socio-political and economic class of people. If you read the condemnation of blackness by Khalil Muhammad, he talks about how each European immigrant group took a generation or two to be pulled into the umbrella that is whiteness, right? So when you first came here, you were Polish, you were not white, you were Polish. And the good white folk in the community, the wealthy white people, the well-healed white people, the educated white people, they wouldn't mess with you, right? They had all types of names for you. But a generation or two later, the Polish people were white because joining up together and increasing those numbers created political power and protection, which then protected their economies and their families. And that's why anti-miscegenation laws come up because I don't want you to mess up the whiteness by having a brown baby. That's going to destroy our political protection. So what happened for the Poles and it happened for the Germans and it happened for the Italians and it had like, this keeps happening, right? So when I talk about whiteness, I'm talking about big W whiteness, the umbrella that is a political, social and economic protected class. That whiteness has a culture that dominates everything. And I know you all have heard, you all were taking this class already. We've had this conversation many times. That white dominant culture is connected with patriarchal dominant culture, heteronormative dominant culture, cisgender dominant culture, Judeo-Christian dominant culture, I would say specifically Christian nationalist dominant culture, right? Ableist dominant culture. All of those things operate and it's like a smog that we all breathe in. We're all breathing in that smog and that smog is telling us how to be, what to think, how to feel, what to wear, what's cool, what's not cool, what's trendy, what's not trendy. It's culture, which means it's in and on everything. One of the most pervasive elements of that culture is individualism. It is whiteness selling all of us the idea that I'm going to go get mine and you go get yours. And whatever will be, will be. And that if you don't get yours, like I got mine, it's because you weren't fast enough, you weren't pretty enough, you weren't smart enough, you weren't wealthy enough, you weren't educated enough, you weren't cool enough, you weren't dope enough, you weren't skinny enough to make it happen. Instead of saying, well, what are the systems that made it so that this entire group of people who have an immutable characteristic in common can't get the thing I got. Why is it that none of the black people can live in this neighborhood? Why is it that none of the women can come to this school? I don't, actually, let me stop being so obsessed with this individualism piece that I think about collectivism and community. But collectivism and community, those are traditions of cultures and peoples that whiteness seeks to oppress. So collectivism and community is not welcome in white dominant culture. It's a threat, right? Because if we start working together, then we're going to realize actually, we got a whole lot in common because none of these billionaires care about any of us. But you're so busy hating me because I don't look like you, that you don't realize our war is against the same person, right? So that whiteness has been destructive to all of us, including white people, because it's got y'all convinced you don't need anybody else. It's got y'all uneducated in the ways of building something collective. It means that y'all, you all's muscles have atrophied if they were ever developed in the first place about how to link arm in arm with somebody and move together. We expect white women to vote in a particular way and then forget that they want taught sisterhood the same way we were, which we talked about last time. So suddenly I'm like, will you betrayed me? Well, they were never, you were never on my team in the first place because you don't know how to be on 18. Nobody ever taught you that. Nobody ever socialized you to that. I'm not blaming you for it. I'm saying that's your conditioning. You have to be a traitor to that conditioning. Renee Good was murdered because she was a traitor to that conditioning. Alex Pretty was very literally when you watch the video as a white man, he put himself in the way of a woman who had been shoved by ice. So he was in that moment being a traitor to patriarchy, to heteronormativity, to toxic masculinity, to whiteness, to individualism by saying you are me and I am you. And if they hit you, they hit me. So I got to get in the way. I know that asking you to be a traitor to the thing that raised you is hard. I know that expecting you to be traitorous to the thing that has made you feel warm and fuzzy inside for your entire life feels like an impossibility. And yet you are going to keep dying from the same cancer of systemic oppression that I am if you don't. You might not die as fast as me. You may not die as painfully as me, but it's coming for you too. And Minneapolis has shown a lot of people that it's coming for white people too. And in the end, we should be building a world where it does not take people being disappeared and abducted and kidnapped and murdered on camera for us to get that and for us to stop choosing individualism when the only way we're going to get free is together. A lot of white people don't realize that they're not free. Which is why the surprise and then the surprise at the surprise. Like that's what's that is something that is happening right now. Yes. Yes. A lot of people thought that was cool. A lot of people, if I'm standing next to you in the protest, they're coming for me. They are coming for me. Usually they might come for you too. That's a hard thing to swallow. I'm going to need people to go ahead and like not spend too much time being surprised that they don't get to work. Yeah. Exactly. It's kind of a liberatory thing when you're like, okay, the veil is opening and you can actually see it. There's so much work that has gone in generations and generations. When we started, when white people started aligning with black people in pre-Civil War times when they were like, what the hell is going on here? That is when whiteness started being doled out. That is when the privileges started being doled out to be like, oh, wait, we don't want you to acknowledge that. So let's give you a differentiator. Lyski, you will reward and a cookie for staying over here with us. Yes. Right. So there's been so much tremendous work over and over to make that happen that it's kind of this moment where you can see it for what it is. A lot of people are seeing that and it's confusing and it's shocking and that is insulting to a lot of people who have been saying it over and over and yet here we are. And so where do we go from here? And I think that kind of joining in community, joining together with people is the answer. And I just love the fact that it literally doesn't matter where or with whom or what group. It doesn't matter if you're going to support your local one little store protest because you don't like what they're doing or if it's with your church or if it's it literally doesn't matter because that quilt of groups is what makes the whole. You know that voice in your head that tells you you're too much or not enough? The one that makes you shrink right when you were about to take up space? I have spent so much of my life thinking that voice was just me. Turns out it's not. It's a script and there's a podcast that's going to prove it to you. It's called Unfuck Your Brain hosted by New York Times bestselling author Cara Lowenthal. Cara is a two-time Ivy League grad and her work is all about helping women see the invisible scripts we've been handed. The ones about money, ambition, relationships, motherhood, success, the stories that quietly tell us to say less, doubt ourselves, and play small. Cara shows you exactly how this programming is messing with you, then she shows you how to change it so you can speak up for yourself. What Cara does is give you the map back to yourself. She brings in brilliant voices, she brings the science, and she makes you realize that becoming who you actually are isn't selfish. It's the whole point. Unfuck Your Brain is beloved by listeners all across the world with more than 56 million downloads and over 5,000 reviews on Apple podcasts. 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And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com slash podcast. Just go to indeed.com slash podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast indeed.com slash podcast terms and conditions apply hiring do it the right way with Indeed disclaimer. This is a paid endorsement. I want to say to anyone who's thinking about doing this, just I'll give you a little bit of my experience. I think that we're used to showing up places and people just tell us things to do. That is not my experience here. Okay, it's less of a list of things to do and more of a place and people to be with. And then it's like slow and then suddenly you become part of it and then the directions get clearer and clearer. But you have to go and just be. But it's worth it though. It's all that's worth it. It's the only thing that feels it's the only thing it's the only place in the world where I feel alive. To me, that's where I feel like I power up when I go into these communities and be with people when we go to protests and I'm feeling less alone because my algorithm is freaking me out and I'm want to pull my hair out and when I go and I see other people also feeling the same way, that actually empowers it. It literally I can feel my energy get stronger. I think all the time of Heather McGee's book, The Sum of Us, which everybody should read and she talks about what she's dubbed drained pool politics. And it's from me, one of the most clear examples of why we all have to be in this together. She talks about the social investments that the American government was making mid 20th century in neighborhoods. We're talking about recreational centers, school improvements, library system improvements. And one of the major things were these big, bright gleaming Olympic sized pools and that these free community pools were opening in regular neighborhoods all around the country. And we're not talking about like a little dinky pool, right? We're talking about like the pool. You remember the movie The Sandlot? Yeah. And everybody goes, my brother and I watched that movie every single Christmas Eve. The pool, right? Where Wendy Pfeffer corn is the lifeguard, like the pool. Everybody is there. Now The Sandlot is, you know, a children's movie is a Disney movie. So the one black kid on the team is at the pool with them. In most communities, the black kid is not in the pool, right? The black kid is on the other side of the gate watching everybody else swim in the nice pool. And they got to go swim in the dirty pool if their community has a pool at all. Because it probably doesn't. Part of the reason why a number of black people for generations did not know how to swim, because the places where everybody else learned to swim, we were not allowed. So these big, bright, gleaming pools, the pool is built in your community. And that's where you spend your days every single summer. That's where you build your friendships. That's where you learn how to swim. That's where you learn how to lead. Those are some of your greatest memories. And then one day your mom tells you, you're not going to the pool this summer. Well, why not? Well, the pool is shut down. Oh, is it shut down for temporary maintenance? No. No, the pool is shut down permanently. Well, why is the pool shut down? Because we don't want black people to swim. So you would rather drain the entire community's pool. Shut down everybody's favorite spot on a hot summer day that you got to use for free than have black people swim next to you. Well, now everybody hot. Now everybody's bored. Now nobody has any place to go. This is what I mean when I say white people thought they were free. But the scourge of systemic oppression harms you too. Even though it benefits you, but the benefit is temporary because that house of cards will come crumbling down on you too. Especially when you have to look at your kid and say, you can't swim in the pool because the whole thing is closed. That drain pool politics is how we are where we are, is why we are where we are now. Deciding that we're going to build a pool, keep it free, that everybody can come and swim in it. And if you need a free bus route or a free swimming lesson in order to avail yourself of it, then we'll do that too. That's the kind of world building I'm interested in. And we practice that world building now by how we fight together, by how we build together, by how we push back together, by how we make sure that the people with the most privilege are at the front of the line not to tell other people what to do, but to protect the most vulnerable. That's what being with each other helps us do. If we were together at the pool, maybe we wouldn't be here right now if we knew how to be together. And that's not no kumbaya, let's all hold our hands and sing together. That is me and all of us understanding that there are real life consequences for structural choices. And the consequence for us is that we don't know how to fight to win because we've been divided from each other and we've accepted that division. That's blowing my mind because that's what, when I say in these spaces, it's kind of just like you're being together. It's the time and the being together that then makes you, makes it a no-brainer for the people of privilege to go up front. That makes it a no brainer to show up for each other because you've been at the pool together. And so you become family and you become, it becomes second nature to protect each other instead of it being foreign and scary to protect each other because you don't know each other in the first place. And of course, that's why I mean, the people who are trying to enforce these structures, of course, know that is true. And so of course, that is the same way in the U.S. South, the same way in apartheid South Africa. That's why the separateness was absolutely everything. That is why you have to convince your church, your community, your whatever that you can't be next to that person. It's not because they didn't want you next to that person. It's because they know what happens when you get next to that person. It's that you both get yourself free and they can't have that. They need it to be separate because they need to keep an underclass and an overclass in order to maintain the systems that they need to be maintained for the benefit of a handful of people. It is in us and also what is in us is the thing that makes it inevitable that if we actually do connect, we will do what needs to be done. So, Brittany, when you're... I mean, I know what your days look like actually. I watch. But when you're laying in bed at night. Not sleeping. Yes. Yeah, not sleeping. Some of that is because of life. Some of that is perimenopause. But keep going. Oh, listen, that's a whole nether. I just saw this thing that said that the HRT is backed up and I thought, if I were the government, if I were this fucking government, that's the first thing I would fix. You do not want a bunch of hostile anger women coming at you. If we also don't have our estrogen, it's... I mean... Good luck. Anyway, good fucking luck. Brittany, when you're laying in bed at night, what are you dreaming happens next? I mean, we were talking about, okay, the huge national general strike and my sister's like, that's why we have to be organized constantly. You can't just have a general strike without the infrastructures that will protect the businesses that will go down first. We have a general strike without that infrastructure. Man, the people and their lost wages and all that. Yes. All the things. So, like, what are you dreaming next happens? I do dream when I get to sleep. But let me tell you what I'm praying for. I used to be a teacher, which y'all know. And so I'm a backwards planner. I always think of the end first. And then I think about how we plot a path to the ultimate goal. And I'm really glad for that part of my professional background because it matches very much my spiritual and ancestral background around understanding the importance of radical imagination. I understand that my existence is because enslaved Africans in this country envisioned a freedom that did not exist for them that is very literally nearly reason why I'm here because they envisioned that they imagined it, they prayed for it, and then they worked for it. And they plotted a path backwards from that goal to where they were. And they rebelled and they protected and they kept safe and they passed the word and they passed the story and they passed the song and they passed the faith. That is why I am here. I am here because two of my ancestors, James and Ebenezer, fought in the Civil War on the US colored troops to free themselves. And then when both of them died before seeing emancipation, one of them who was captured and re-enslaid, one of them who was killed on the field of battle, when both of them died, it was their pension from the US colored troops that went back to the Dixon family on my mother's side that held three generations that my four-time great-grandmother Joanna managed to keep together through enslavement and into emancipation that pension is what funded them. So I am very clear on the power of seeing what is not as though it is and then matching my works with my faith. And so everything I get up and do every day, everything I get up and pray about when I ask God to tell me and show me what to do that day, who to talk to, what to pray about, what to not do, what to not say. When I have that conversation, I am always trying to make sure that it is in service of the thing I can most radically dream. And that is us building a world that protects and respects and is so grateful to be enriched by the genius and the joy of my children. I'm raising two black boys until and unless they tell me otherwise. And I look at them every day. I mean, we're snowed in right now, right? I got an 11-month-old and a fresh four-year-old. Jesus. And it's chaotic around here, but they look at the snow and they're just like enamored. They're like, this is the most amazing. You mean it comes from the sky and then it coats the ground, then I get to go make a snow angel and I get to, but what is this soft stuff? I don't, what, this is incredible. That wonder, that innocence, that joy is so pure. And I want a world that sees that and knows it's made richer by that, not a world that wants to crush it, not a world that sees its task as extracting from that, but a world that sees its task as enriching that. When my child, my four-year-old makes up a song about snow, I want to build a world that sees that as like literary genius, right? And musical beauty. It sounds so far-fetched. It sounds so ridiculous. It sounds so loosey-goosey, woo-woo, whatever. But if I'm not daring enough to build that world, then I will not act in ways that rise to that expectation. I will act in ways that rise to a middling expectation. If I dream a world that just doesn't pull my sons over when they turn 16, if I dream a world that doesn't just make my, my sons afraid to read in front of the class, if I build a world that just says, hey, I don't want them to end up in the same place that Philando Castile did. So make sure your tail lights are always fixed. If that's all I dream of, then that's how I'll ever act towards. And I want more for them. My ancestors wanted more for me because they were daring enough to dream that I'd be free. And then they worked toward it. They didn't say they want me to be on a plantation with a nicer master. They didn't say they wanted me to, you know, maybe be able to marry somebody of my choice. They said they wanted me to be three. I have to be that daring all the time, every day. I have to be deliberate about it. I have to be strategic about it. I have to be thoughtful about it. I have to be consistent about it because that's what my children deserve. That's what my dreams deserve. That's what the abundance that my ancestors inherited from me means. That's what the freedom they earned me means. And so that's what I dream about. That's what I pray about. And people can tell me it's far fetched and impossible. And I will tell them it always seems impossible until it's done. Because that's what Nelson Mandela said. And look what happened in South Africa. Oh, Brittany. Oh, planet. I want to just say this. You all have been, how am I trying to say this? I've known you all for a little while. And I've seen the evolution. I've also seen a lot of the things you do in the very quiet moments. And I really appreciate the consistency of community that you all have been building. Because we all know a whole lot of people said they got woke six, seven, eight, nine, ten years ago. And then they went right back to sleep happily. And the shock that some people are feeling now is not because they never woke up, but because they didn't dare to stay up. They didn't dare to stay woke. And I know we've all got work to do on ourselves and with each other. But I am glad that we can do hard things is always a place where y'all are willing to have this conversation. And now for nothing, I can do hard things is one of my favorite things for that our four-year-old says to himself when he's struggling. So he's gonna be very excited to read the name of the podcast. And now that's what I was up here saying to my top doing. Well, that makes me very happy. Thank you, Brittany. We know in our bones that you are one of the most crucial organizers and voices in this nation. And we do not take for granted this. I mean, I'm just watching you and the energy that you have just given us, the wisdom you have just given us, the gift you have just given us, I do not take it lightly. I know what it means. And I'm so grateful for you always. I mean, I come as one, I stand as 10,000 and I'm grateful for the 10,000 who are out in the streets making it happen every day. So thank you. Thank you, Brittany. All right, y'all. We'll see you next time. We Can Do Hard Things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us at We Can Do Hard Things on Instagram and at We Can Do Hard Things show on TikTok.