Factually! with Adam Conover - Viral Justice with Ruha Benjamin

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

When the problems facing us are so massive and systemic, how can we ever hope to address them as individuals? This week’s guest, Ruha Benjamin, joins Adam to explain how small actions for justice can become contagious and create change on a larger scale. Pick up a copy of Ruha’s book at http://factuallypod.com/books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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So if all of that sounds good, if you want a big box of delicious snacks like this for yourself, use the code factually for $15 off your first order at Bokksu.com. That's code factually for $15 off your first order on Bokksu.com. I don't know the truth. I don't know the way. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to say. Yeah, but that's alright. Yeah, that's okay. I don't know anything. Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me once again as I talk to an incredible expert about all the amazing shit that they know that I don't know and that you might not know. We're going to have an incredible time. Before we jump into it, I want to thank everybody who supports this show on Patreon.

If you head to patreon.com slash adamconover, for just five bucks a month, you get every episode of the show ad-free. You can join our community Discord. We even do a live book club over Zoom. It's so much fun. Hope to see you there. Patreon.com slash Adam Conover. You'll support the show, and I will thank you for it. Now, this week on the show, we are talking about change, as we often do on this program. You know, the world is a fucking mess, and we want to fix it, and we are often baffled as to how. It's a serious, important question because we're often presented with a really stupid and simple recipe of ways to change the world that do not work. We're often told in the media, by commercials, by politicians, that all we can do is vote, donate money, and buy the

right things. In other words, through individual action, we can change the world. And I believe that that is bullshit, because our biggest problems are systemic in nature. They're systems that were designed to produce the outcome that they do, and if you just make a little change, you can't actually change the system as it stands. I'll give you an example of this. If you think transportation in your city is fucked up, and if you live in the United States, you probably do, well, you can't just do the right thing your way out of it, right? You can't decide, oh, I'm going to take a subway to work if there's no subway running in your area. You can't walk or bike to the local store if there's no local store within walking or biking distance from you.

It's not possible to solve that problem through individual action alone. The only way to do it is to band together and make policy changes at a high level that will cause our world to change in the ways we want it to, to run more buses, to change patterns of development, stuff like that.

In the same way, there is no one-person action that is going to solve climate change or mass incarceration or our other biggest problems. They are simply too big for one person to fix. We need to do them together. Now that's a theme I've been hitting in my work as often as I can for years,

and I do believe it, but I also understand why downplaying the importance of individual action can leave us feeling a little bit emotionally bereft, you know? I mean, yeah, sure, it's all well and good to say. Go join some larger organization that's pushing for systemic change. Try to make a political revolution in your area. Try to change this shit from the top down on a systemic level. All of that is true, but the rest of the week, you know, we're still just humans walking around, making decisions as we make them, at work, at home, when we go to the store, and we often want to know, how do I help make a better world through small actions?

It feels like there must be some way to do it. Surely you can't tell me just to forget it and do whatever. There's got to be something you can give me, right? If only because it would feel good, there's got to be something you can give me, right? Well, as a matter of fact, there is, and on today's show, we are going to be talking about that. We're going to be talking about how small changes, small actions that we take actually can spread and create change on a larger scale. We're bringing back one of my favorite guests from the last couple years.

Her name is Ruha Benjamin. Previously, she came on to talk about technology and how it deepens and reinforces inequality, but today she is here to talk about how we change the world to create the world that we really want. She's a sociologist and a professor of African-American studies at Princeton, and her most recent book is called Viral Justice, How We Grow the World We Want.

Please welcome Ruha Benjamin to the show. Ruha, thank you so much for coming on the show again. It's always a pleasure. It was so much. The last interview we did with you was one of my favorites. I'm really thrilled to have you back. We've been talking on the show over the last couple months a lot about how we actually make change in a world that is supremely fucked up and often feels immune to our desire to change it. You have a new book out called Viral Justice about your concept about how to – what does viral justice mean to you? It's a way of looking at seemingly small efforts that are happening all around us

and actually questioning the smallness of them, the significance of them. And so it comes out of my training as a sociologist where we're looking at the big macro things, social processes, structural inequality, all of this language. And while those are important, I think I specifically got kind of turned away from the role of individual volition and action. And individuals make up systems. And so it's a way of training our attention back at our own power and our own responsibility to link arms and to work for these larger changes. Okay, so let's dive right into this because something that I talk about a lot in all of my work is how we've been often presented as Americans with this myth of individual action that, you know, especially when you watch TV and there's a problem on TV and they're telling you here's how you can change the problem. It's always you can donate money, you can vote, you can raise your voice or something like that yeah and then that's it yeah and a lot of people

i think understandably feel cynical about that they're saying i did all those things about issues like gun control or like the erosion of women's rights or anything else they say i did all those things shit didn't change what do i do now and and what i try to highlight is systemic problems need systemic solutions that we can be a part of. But, you know, talking about the role of mass membership organizations, like if you want to fight the NRA, you got to join something. You need something that big. You can't do it just you holding your little flag. And so that's a drum that I've been beating for a long time.

And I feel it. I have an allergic reaction to any time anything about individual responsibility comes, even until the end of writing the book. I kind of break into hives because everything is boiled down to individuals, but it's often that consumer model. Like how can we buy things differently or give money differently rather than thinking about individual as one part of a bigger unit or a bigger process. And so it's a different way of conceiving the individual as not isolated and cut off from these larger systems, but as implicated and as responsible to them.

So we can still focus on our individual, because what I was going to say is that often the perspective I give often leaves us still feeling a little bit bereft because, hey, I can go to my meeting once a week for my big organization, for my union or whatever it is. But then the rest of the week, I'm still walking around. What do I do in the rest of my time? And so how do you think about that? What is the answer to that question? Yeah, so it's really, you know, part of what I'm inviting us to do is to think beyond kind of these standard models of what activism is. Like we have these kind of prototypes or ideal types of like, this is a real activist,

or this is a changemaker. And so it's really thinking about all of the ways that the problems that we're up against are created. Those are all battlefronts. So those are all ways for us to begin to counteract them. And so one of the examples that I think about is like the sandbox or stay-at-home parents, like what's happening when you might be taking your kids to the playground and you think that's separate from this big world-changing stuff. But so many of the things that then become culture, that become – we socialize, start when we're three, four, five, like the way kids interact and the way that they play, the values that are seeded in those moments.

So I'm trying to get us to really broaden our understanding of where change happens, where culture is formed. And it's not just simply in those meetings, if it's even primarily in those places. And so it's just really exploding the notion of where we begin to transform the world and all of the places that the problems are created. Those are potential ways for us to get involved and to begin to reimagine what those can be like. So what's an example of that in the sandbox or in that, you know, raising children? Yeah. And so we think about competition, like we live in a hyper competitive capitalist environment, right? And so we think about big corporations as sites of which this is produced. But the way that we learn to be competitive as opposed to cooperative starts really young when we think about how what happens in playgrounds, but then what happens in schools, how we shape our classrooms.

our classrooms, thinking of us sitting next to someone that we're competing against to win the attention of our teachers, that's a particular way that these larger structures are normalized, that we internalize these structures in the way that we think and treat each other. And so if we want to be able to counteract that and challenge that to move towards a more cooperative society, then we have to really think about where do those values start to get normalized and socialized. And I bet a lot of that would lead us back to our early days playing together and, you know, in the sandbox or on the playground to think about what games do we play? Like play is a really powerful site of how these larger things become normalized and we think about them. But if we're, so to strike a skeptical note, right, if we're talking about

like school, for instance, as a place where we're competitive, I do also think, hey, when we're in school, we're under a system, a system that places us into competition with each other where we're competing for, the thing that comes to mind most easily is we're competing for spots to get into college. So, you know, in matter of actual fact, if you want to go to a good college, you have to compete with those. You're placed into competition with each other. And, you know, what are the options for a parent who says, well, I want to raise my kid more cooperatively, but they can't just, you know, raise their kid in ignorance of the system. It still exists. Yes.

So how do we rectify those? So there's a whole chapter on education. So how do we rectify those? So there's a whole chapter on education. And so we think in that chapter, by the way, is called lies, because so much of our educational system is predicated on a number of different lies. And I give examples of parents. You say this as a professor. I say that as a professor. Right. And so it's so we think about what is what is the role that individuals can take?

I tell the story of one of my colleagues who's in California in the Central Valley. She teaches at UC Merced. And so she's confronted with this kind of hierarchical public school system in which her son could be tracked into honors classes and to get special rewards and kind of special attention. And rather than sort of submitting to that or allowing that, she says, how can I as an individual actually shape what's happening for all children, not just try to get what's best for my kid? And so that involves getting involved with the PTA and parents groups and being a parent, like, you know, staying in the classroom, being one of those parent, you know,

liaisons. And so it's her deciding that rather than just entering the system and trying to get the goods for my kid, how do I look back and think, what's best for everyone here? And it's not to continue to reinforce the kind of, you know, tracking system that then pits kids against each other, but says, oh, I can get involved and actually shape what's happening for everyone. And so that's one of many examples where individuals are making choices not to just become a cog in the wheel, but to sit back and say, OK, how can I work with others to try to change this? So that shift in perspective is one that I'm familiar with because I don't have kids,

but I have friends who do who've told me about how they try to think of, you know, if their kid is from a privileged background thinking, well, my kid could actually be an asset to the other kids depending on, when people make the choice to have their kids in public school when they could have gone to private school, that's the sort of thing they're talking about so it's that sort of that's one that's so that's at the side of parents but a lot of my focus in that chapter and discussion is what's the role of educators and teachers and you know so there's a lot of things at the structural level that have to change that people are working on in terms of how much teachers are paid the kind of benefits and respect they get. All of those things have to be at the forefront. But

there's also things that people could do yesterday that begin to change the experience for kids in the here and now that don't have to wait for policy changes. One of the concepts that I reintroduced there is drawn from Patricia J. Williams, a legal scholar, and she talks about how our educational system, kids experience spirit murder in our educational system by the way that they're treated and demeaned. What does she mean by that? Spirit murder. It's that not only are you kind of like might be disciplined,

but your spirit is crushed in the process of going through school, like your hopes and dreams and possibilities, your sense of yourself is crushed through this process. And that's not an abstract policy doing the crushing. That's the everyday interactions with adults in those buildings that's doing the crushing. And so if that is the case and that is the experience, then the question I want to raise is what's the opposite of that? What could we be doing differently? Is the opposite of spirit murder spirit nurture? And what does that look like? Adults' responsibility to nurture and care. I don't think you can teach someone that you don't care about. And yet millions of young people spend majority of their days in school systems

in which people have a disdain for them. And so, again, it's not saying let's not care about the policies, but it's like, what is your responsibility now to stop engaging in attempted spirit murder? And I tell the stories of my own childhood having that experience of people looking at me as a little black girl, let's say, in a math class and just overlooking me and, you know, not thinking that I have anything to offer, attempted spirit murder. And so I think we can do things yesterday that begin to counteract that. and not thinking that I have anything to offer, attempted spirit murder. And so I think we can do things yesterday that begin to counteract that. That's not instead of the policy changes. It's saying, no, we each have a responsibility to check ourselves and how we're either contributing to the oppressive status quo or how we're beginning to counteract it. So do you aim that argument at like an individual educator? Like,

hey, we're going to do policy changes, but if you're an educator who wants to make a difference, you also have that option daily. Yeah, it's at individual educators. It's also thinking about administrators, what we are incentivizing, like what we value, like what kind of, you know, awards that we give to educators that do X, you know, like the way that schools are, you know, awarded for the test scores of their students, you know, more money, more status. And it's thinking about what are we actually valuing? Like, not in an abstract, you know, but it's like, what are we putting our money behind? What are we valuing in the process? And so a lot of the focus of what's viral in viral justice is looking at the microscopic,

looking at our budgets, looking at where we're putting money as an indicator of what we actually value as a society, as institutions. So teachers is one audience, educators is one audience, but it's also all of us thinking together about like, let's think about where we're actually putting our values. So I wanted to ask you about the word viral. And you said, okay, these are small things like viruses, very small. But I imagine you must make some argument about how if you do this in one spot, it'll spread because that's what a virus does, as we know. That seems like that would be true of education, that a change made by a teacher could, like, spiral outwards in a positive, infectious way. Tell me about that. Yeah.

I mean, so, again, it's an invitation for us to think about the potential of virality. Thinking about this thing that's basically brought the planet to its heels for a time, something that we can't see with our bare eyes and yet has a pronounced impact. So the question is what in the affirming direction, in the life affirming, how can we make justice contagious? How can we make joy contagious? And so a lot of the book is really drawing on my own experiences and thinking about what has impacted me, the kind of interactions and experiences that someone chose to do one thing and not another. And that had a ripple effect in my own life and sent me on a certain trajectory. And that's a way of things spreading that then I impact my students and they impact their particular work. And so it's trying to make that invisible sense of influence and impact more visible and

valued because otherwise what gets attention is the spectacle is the waiting for this big top-down change rather than us looking again what actually set you off in this direction what actually impacted you for the good and how can we actually amplify it and spread it something that this reminds me of that's that's that i generally don't like is um you hear this sort of thing from it's a very sort of like suburban middle class daytime TV value of like, be kind. Yeah. You know, could we be kind? Kindness counts. Like, please do something nice today. Like that kind of thing. And that always bothered me because I'm like, you know what? Kindness, kindness is kind of overrated. Like kindness is important to kids

and animals and things like that. But like, it's also just a very social value. It's like saying hello to someone in the break room and smiling. Yes. And, and that is like, if someone focuses just on that, I'm like, you're not, you're not doing much. You're, you're being pleasant, but you're not doing anything approaching justice. But you are talking about changes that are that small. So is there a distinction you can draw between? Yeah, absolutely. And so part of it is, you know, the kind of surface pleasantries that you're describing are surface. They're not really a kind of co-presence with each other's pain, grief, all of the emotions that are part of these interactions. childbirth and reproduction as this site that has really pronounced racial disparities, looking at the kind of interactions that happen in hospitals, the kind of disregard,

the demeaning way in which women's autonomy, birthing people's autonomy is not recognized, and giving a counter, an alternative to that, which was my experience with midwives and doulas and birth workers who aren't being kind to me, but they're being present. They're being like, push, come on, do it. They're holding space for everything that I'm going through. And they're being present with my, you know, they're kind of mirroring my. And what's amazing is that in that presence, it actually has a physical effect where when you measure the sort of hormonal levels of people who have a doula or midwife present, their actual experience of pain is lower. And so we are each other's pain relief, which is a much, to me, more significant impact than just being pleasant and kind.

It's actually, no, in me being there and holding space for what you're going through, it actually lowers your pain, you know, and we have measurements of that. And so I provide this whole other model of what that looks like, but say it's not limited to healthcare. It's like, how can we take that doula effect, which is the kind of health term for it, and think about what that looks like in other areas of our life and work and education in our social groups, et cetera. And so it's much less of being a sort of surface pleasant with each other than thinking about what that means for the whole spectrum of life. So a doula is someone who's really being present there for you, really knows what I mean. Please correct me if I'm getting anything wrong. there for you really knows what, I mean, please correct me if I'm getting anything wrong,

but who knows what it is that you're going through and is helping you emotionally and also physically. Absolutely. And is, they're not a doctor. They're someone who is sort of there present for the experience. Yes. So I get how that works in childbirth and how that could be incredibly helpful. What's a person like that in another area? What's a doula is to childbirth as what is to education or something else?

Let's circle back to education where we have all of these examples now caught virally on video of young people being mistreated in classrooms. I mean, there was just last week a student at an HBCU whose white teacher was insisting that the student apologized to her. And when she wouldn't, what was caught on video is the teacher calling an officer to manhandle her and arrest her in the classroom. Similarly, a few years ago, another young woman, Shakara, in South Carolina, she was having some issues at home, foster parents, et cetera. She was on her phone. Instead of being present with what she was going through, foster parents, et cetera. She was on her phone. Instead of being present with what she was going through, the teacher calls the police and there's a video of her being body slammed out of her desk. And so when we think about the fact that in the context of education,

people are bringing their whole selves. You can't just at the door say, okay, all this stuff I'm going through at home, I'm just going to forget about that. But they're dealing with stuff. And so the question is, how do we hold space for that as opposed to use this punitive model of everything in healthcare and education? Our first default thing that we do is call the punishment. Yeah, call in the police as opposed to actually dealing with it. And that is one of the through lines through the book is this idea of abolition, meaning not just what we don't want, what we want to bring down, but abolere. What do we want to grow? What do we want more of? Abolere.

Abolere in terms of the etymology is both in that word abolition, destroy and grow. destroy and grow. And so if we don't want to call the police on students who are having a hard time in classrooms, what kind of relationships, what kind of mechanisms do we need to hold space for all of the things that they're going through? We're talking about in the middle of a pandemic too. That should even be more on the forefront of our minds. But yet we default to the easiest way out, which is let's kick this kid out of the classroom. And we have that last week. We have that several years ago. And so thinking about the doula effect, how do we hold space?

How do we create relationships and structures in all of our institutions that actually aren't defaulting to punishment as the modus? You know, that makes me think of something. It's so trivial, but it was a TikTok that I saw that was and it was a teacher TikTok, which is like you can learn a lot from TikTok. Oh, you can. But there are so many teacher TikToks and I feel almost embarrassed. But there was one

that like really moved me. And it was it was a guy who was showing how he greets students when they come to class at different hours of the day. Have you seen this? So he says that, you know, it says 8 a.m. and he goes, oh, hey, great to see you. Welcome to class. 9 a.m. Hey, good. I'm glad you could make it today. Come take a

seat. We're talking about math or whatever. 11 a.m. Hey, really glad you could come in today. These are all kids who are late. These are all kids who are late. And he's saying they're coming later and later. And he greets them every time. You sort of figure out, oh, the joke here, the thing he's pointing out is that he greets them with welcome no matter how late they are.

No matter what time. And that was so moving to me because I was a kid who was late just because I had ADD and I was scattered. But, you know, I know that feeling of before you even get to the place, you're afraid to walk in the door. And maybe it's through no fault of your own. And then, of course, now as an adult, I know so many many kids who are late it's because they have something going on at home they didn't have reliable transportation they didn't have breakfast that morning they have a they have a parent who's going through something maybe they don't have enough parental or guardian care etc and so he's just saying i'm gonna the first thing i'm gonna do is welcome them yes

and i was like i was I started crying on my phone. But that seems like, it is kindness, but it's deeper than kindness. It's way deeper than just kindness. I mean, kindness is in the mix there. But it's, I mean, the ripple effect of that. So now the kid doesn't feel ashamed. So now they have more space in their brain to take in what they're learning. And maybe what they're learning that day makes them realize, oh, I want to do that.

And then they be, you know, so it's like the ripple effect is all beneath the surface. Like you can't see it. But his decision to say, you know what, rather than default to what the principal told me I'm supposed to do or whatever in this and write this, you know, slip or something, he said, no, I'm going to approach this differently. I'm going to be more creative and loving and caring about this. He said, no, I'm going to approach this differently. I'm going to be more creative and loving and caring about this.

And that has a potential ripple effect in the life of that child and makes them actually not turn against people in authority and school in general. And so I love that example of something that seems small but could have a profound effect. And the first thing he's doing is being empathetic, holding space, thinking about if a kid comes in the door late, I'm thinking back throughout their whole morning. You don't know what has happened. Yeah. Yes. But that's what he is.

When he looks at them, he sees that every time. He doesn't just see, oh, here's a kid who's interrupting my lesson. Yes, that it's all about him and what he's doing. Here's a person who maybe had a rough morning. Exactly. And, you know, just making one last connecting back to, like, what does that have to do with the doulas and holding space? It's that when you often when you give and provide plenty of evidence of this, when you are beholden to the structures of, you know, the hospital, you're on their timetable. If you, you know,

the rates of C-section go up during lunch breaks, during shift changes. Everything is according to the institution's timeframe rather than what is going on in that individual case. And that's why I have friends who had, you know, they had bad experiences where they felt pushed around or bullied or they just didn't understand why. It's not about you. They were being told that thing X, Y, Z had to happen right now and they couldn't get an answer. And it's, that's when, that's what happens when you interact with an institution that, that you can't, that can't see you as a person. No. And so many, most don't. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. And so it takes people to enforce that though. So it's not a, it's not a faceless institution. We embody these institutions.

And so that's the kind of thing that I'm just drawing our attention to is that and we can make different choices. We might get penalized for that. Like that teacher might eventually, someone might come and say, you can't do that. You have to send them to detention. And then that might require a bigger sort of effort. Systemic change. Exactly. But at the time, what's happening is he's bucking the trend.

He's going against whatever the protocol is. That's beautiful. Well, we took a really quick break. We'll be right back with more Ruha Benjamin. Okay, we're back with Ruha Benjamin. Before we move on from education, I just want to ask about something you said earlier. You said that our education system has a lot of lies in it.

What do you mean by that? Well, we tout education as the engine of opportunity, as oftentimes when there's some other problem in the world, people say, well, you know, if we just educate people more. We have this kind of enlightenment model. People just have the facts. And yet in our education system, it really is an engine of inequality. It really produces these stratifications that then get mapped onto work and status and other areas, right? And so it's both in the structure and in the content of what we're actually teaching, where we have fights all over the country right now about what books can be taught or banned. And so one of the basic ideas that we look to the budgets of how

schools are funded is that majority white schools receive something like $23 billion more in funding than schools that service students of color. And so based on this history of redlining and the fact that we use property taxes for funding schools. And so just at the very basic level of who's getting what, it's a lie that this institution is producing, you know, is the thing that we can turn to. Unless it's completely transformed, it will continue to be the engine of inequality throughout the world, not just in the U.S. Yeah. And I mean, it's impossible to not for me to not see that when I look at it, that it's does. You know, we have a we have an improvement perhaps from the way school segregation worked in some ways, you know, in the 50s and 60s. Right. So some things have improved. I think some people think that it's backslid in some ways that we have.

I've heard people say we have a school system that's as segregated as it was in many ways. But, yeah, the fact that that resource disparity is so vivid that you can't really look at it and say, oh, that's just an accident. Oh, we just need to fix that a little bit. Oh, geez, we dropped a one on a spreadsheet somewhere and we just need to reroute some of that money. No, we have a real fault in our priority, or that disparity shows our priorities and it shows what the education system is designed to do. And that's a big,

that's a big difference from the way we normally look at it, which is just, oh, well, we're leaving some children behind. Let's make sure we leave no behind. No, we're on purpose, leaving a whole bunch, not just behind, but like over there,

like on a different, in a different building, in a different state. You know, we don't want to look at those children. Yeah, across schools, within schools. You can even look at, you know, seemingly well-funded suburban schools. And if you look closely, as one of my colleagues, LaRue Lewis, has done, he calls it inequality in the promised land. Because on the surface, it looks like, oh, this is a great, but you go beneath the surface and surface and you see oh the way that some students are in remedial regular you know honors classes if you look at you know which students which parents are advocating more to get more for their

young people going back to the example of my colleague then you see that even under a well resourced system new stratifications emerge because of in part it, it's this like dog eat dog, like we're competing against each other rather than thinking about what is the common good. Yeah. But so in terms of viral justice, right, it is, it makes me wonder again, well, that is such a massive system that has existed in America for so long that was placed, you know, from the top federally, but also is enforced in every governor's mansion, in every school superintendent's office, like every layer that priority is expressing itself,

that oftentimes explicitly racist priority. And so, I mean, is the concept of viral justice making a change in the way that, if I were to go work in one of those schools. Yeah. Right. And say, well, I'm going to I'm going to hold space for every one of those kids. Yes. Is does that actually have the power to chip away at that? Or is there is that a change that can only be made in a top down? I think in that case, what we're talking about is thinking about what collective action looks like, the individual's role in collective action.

So rather than think, OK, how can I just be promoted and get all the awards as a teacher on my own? It's like, let me think about actually what kind of organizing we have to do. And so it's about that individual volition to think beyond one's career sort of trajectory, which is, you know, important, but thinking about, okay, so what, in this case, we're in the middle of a fight in the UC system in which, you know, grad workers and teaching. I was about to say you reminded me of unions, teachers, unions, educators. Exactly. And so, you know, it's the biggest strike in the history of U.S. higher education. Forty eight thousand, you know, workers in is which is also where I went to grad school at UC Berkeley. And so in that case,

it's about individuals saying, okay, how can we work together to try to combat this particular exploitation and this inequality? And so it's not simply about sitting home and thinking about what will make me feel good in terms of being a good consumer, but thinking about how to link arms with others rather than think about my own priorities. it makes me think of it's a number of years ago now but the here in la the the teachers union went on strike and their their demands were specifically around class sizes around uh i forgot the community schools uh there was a particular language there um but that was that was like they're like hey we need pay raises too, but we need them for these kids. And they actually, like improvements actually happened at LAUSD.

Exactly, and I was an LAUSD parent at that time when that happened. And part of it is to think, okay, if you're not an educator and one of the people going on strike, what is your responsibility? And so part of it for parents and for students is to recognize a simple fact, which is teachers' working conditions are students' learning conditions. And so it's seeing the connection between how teachers are treated and then what your student or you actually are experiencing. And that was something really powerful to see in the U.K. context where over 150 colleges and universities, the grad students have been on strike, you know, during the same period right now. And rather than the students thinking, oh, we're losing out, what's happening to us, the effects on us and not getting our grades and so on. It's like, no, our plight is connected to how these educators are being treated. And so part of it is to see the connection rather

than thinking only about like what you're losing out on. And so that, again, is even if you're not on the front lines, you actually have a way of supporting and thinking about, oh, okay, let me shout out this, what's happening. In labor language, we call that solidarity. Exactly. A solidaristic approach rather than a competitive approach. So is that, to help me understand the concept of viral justice a little bit more, is that part of it?

Is that personally, if we can take a solidaritous i love that word solidaritous approach yes that is that is a personal change that we can make in our outlook that can it's part of the change of culture you know it's like so rather than thinking about a hyper individualist or competitive approach it's like how do we seed a culture that's built on solidarity and thinking about how our plights are connected. And I think, you know, it's not simply hyper-competitive and solidarity. There's a whole middle ground in which we have this whole charity culture, going back to kindness. And so this is very different than thinking about, I, as a privileged person, am going to do something for you. It's thinking, no, how is what happens to you connected to me? So it's the idea of linked fate. So I think

too often people think of the opposite of not being an ass, an individual's ass, is let me give to the less fortunate and the less privileged rather than thinking, actually, white people in this country, when you look at the stats around, you know, whether it's mortality or chronic illness or going back to health care, when you isolate white people as a country, their well-being and their outcomes are much lower than many other places that have a more solidaristic approach. And so even the so-called privileged in our society are not doing that good. That is, inequality makes everyone sick. And so that's a way of sort of shifting the lens.

And that can be the basis then of the bigger organizing. Because if you don't feel connected to what's happening, you think, oh, this is only affecting them. You don't realize, oh, actually, your well-being is connected to this rather than doing it for someone else. I mean, what you're saying is literally true. Like even before COVID, the mortality rate for white people in America was declined as a group, I think, for a year or two in a row, which was shocking to demographers. And it was because of diseases of inequality. Actually, we had two scholars on the show who talked to us about that, about, you know, opium, opioid addiction. Deaths of despair. Deaths of despair. Do you remember the name of the author? We had him on the show. Yeah.

I'm going to blank out. Deaton and, yeah. Thank you. Yes. Angus. Yes. And that is true

that those deaths are the result of the same inequality that hurts other people in even larger numbers, even larger degree, but it is the same problem. Yeah,

it's on the same spectrum. I think in the last couple of weeks, I saw a stat around COVID deaths and now white Americans are dying at a higher rate than other groups, whereas it was different. It was the opposite early on. And that's that that kind of disregard for those people is also why there was not a big push for kind of public health, a more solidaristic approach. But now that's boomeranged back to affect the people who are very distant from the problem initially. And so part of it is to get us to understand how that works and that equity is not something that you're doing for someone else. It's not a charity model, right? It's thinking about actually we're connected. If we're thinking

it's literal virus, you know, the air you breathe is the air I breathe. And so if you don't care for me, it's going to come back to hurt you. Yeah. You know? Wow. Yeah, that has the potential to be a really powerful idea. Dying of Whiteness is another good book. We talked about Deaths of Despair, but Jonathan Metzl is the one who looked at three case studies in the U.S. and looked at how the average white American surveyed around certain policies, education, investing in education and health, and how because they thought it was going to benefit black folks, they didn't support these policies.

But then how they were literally dying early and not benefiting from this thing because they thought, oh, it's going to affect them. And so we're seeing again in these COVID stats dying of whiteness because you're thinking of yourself as separate and above other folks. This is like, you know, white people bricking up all the public pools, you know, after the desegregation laws. Yeah. And like, that's true.

But it also means like white people didn't get to use the public pools either. It's not great to do that. Exactly. It's the investment in whiteness is more valuable than thinking about what can you actually benefit by investing in these things that everyone can enjoy, you know? Well, look, speaking of structural racism in America, let's talk about the criminal justice system or the criminal legal system, as some call it. We've actually, our last couple episodes have been with, we spoke with George Gascon,

who's the district attorney of LA here. We spoke about snitching last week, about how that's used in criminal justice. And it, you know, it's very much on my mind and it gives me, you know, an awareness, again, about how that's used in criminal justice. And it's very much on my mind, and it gives me an awareness, again, of the huge weight of the system and how it's a cliche, but it was designed to do what it's doing.

How does viral justice apply to the criminal justice system? Yeah, well, I'll start with a study I read just a few weeks ago that I found quite astounding based here, Loyola Marymount University here did a survey of LA residents to find out, not using the buzzwords of defund and abolition, but saying, what if we took money away from LAPD and put it into more health services and mental health and housing or so on. And what they found first across the political spectrum was something like conservatives and moderates

over 60% agreed with those statements. Let's take money away from this and put it into this. 75% of progressives. But then the stat that was really interesting was that people who lived with an officer in the home, they supported this redistribution, 75% of them. And so already it begins to trouble the kind of polarization. These people agree, these people don't, that often are around those buzzwords and those big campaign slogans. And so thinking about,

looking about what people actually care about and where they think the solutions will arise, more funding and punishment or more funding in the things that actually make us safer, I think is a good starting point to think about what our values are and try to grow the investment in the things that actually make us safe. And so what I do in the book is to point to so many different organizations, past and present, that aren't waiting for the city, the federal to do that, but are already planting those alternatives now, are creating advocacy and creating spaces that reinvest in people and not in punishment. And one of the examples that I end the book on takes us to Seattle, where during the pandemic, over 200 local organizations that had been working

on their own kind of issues, like the housing group, the indigenous sovereignty, the digital this, all these different groups joined together under the umbrella of the Seattle Solidarity Budget and said, over the course of the next few years, we need to actually do this work, not just surveying people, but actually move funds over away from police sweeps and into housing, away from, you know, more digital surveillance to actually community based data centers. And so they did this through town hall meetings, Zoom meetings, showing up to City Hall, building the momentum, talking with their neighbors, bringing in people who didn't quite see how their issues related. And so it's those conversations, it's the kind of everyday sort of group building and movement building that they successfully have done this two years in a row. And so to me, what's striking is what their kind of not slogan, but their reminder is

that a budget is more than a budget. It's a moral document that tells budget is more than a budget. It's a moral document that tells us who and what we value. And it's in the fine print. It's not in the big slogans and we need people on the streets, yes, but we also need the nerds who are sitting there with the numbers.

And so the way that I end the book is to say we need those loud and ferocious world builders, but we also need the kind of quiet and studious ones. We need everyone to figure out like how their skill set is going to contribute and then work together. But that took individuals to do that, even though it's under the big umbrella of the Seattle Solidarity Budget. And there's other kinds of efforts that I'm sure you're aware of all over the world around participatory budget and everyday people just deciding where do we want our money to go you know more policing um that actually doesn't make us safer or into

these other social goods and do you feel that those projects i mean because in many cities they'll be able to get hey let's get a pilot budget to put a hundred thousand dollars into program x you know fifty thousand dollars into program, and sometimes it is taken out of the police budget. Sometimes it's not, right? But do you think that those small changes can ultimately change such a massive system? When you've got police unions, you have white homeowners, you've got all these massive political forces pushing in the other direction. I don't think alone they will.

Part of it is to say we need more investment in that, but often the challenge is people default to, well, what's the alternative? If we don't have this, what are you going to do? So it's their way or there's no way. And so what these projects do is actually allow us to point to no. There are hundreds of different things we could be investing in. So it's a seed that lets us say, if we were to take those monies and if we fight all of these other things, we put it into this and we can grow, we have the alternatives. It's not your way or no way. And so part of it is to build our collective imagination about what that will look like, to say that you have told us this story about what safety is or what education is or what health care is and

put all of the resources into these single stories and let's say what if we actually create other ways of doing things and though this idea of plotting change is both doing things right under our feet but changing the story the plot of what we are as a society and it's not the current kind of master narrative that we've been told. It's providing people with an alternative narrative. Yeah. Honestly, something that I learned in my own work, just from the work of convincing people of things, talking about the backlash effect and stuff like that, that I learned from the scholars who worked on that is that, you know, when someone has a false narrative, if you provide them with a new narrative that's better, more interesting, and also, by the way, is true, then it will replace the old narrative in their mind. And I learned about that. I was like, oh, that's what I've been doing in my work, and I can continue to do that.

Exactly. I love that. And it also reminds me of last year when I was honestly at a very pessimistic point about the prospect for criminal justice reform after, you know, in the wake of George Floyd's murder. We had this moment, and then there was, you know, the moment sort of ebbed and then the backlash seemed longer and more powerful. We had James Foreman Jr. on and I was putting this stuff to him and he said we were talking about, you know, defund the police and these

slogans and I was like, what do you, I mean you know, there's so much made so much hay made over these slogans, what do you think? And he said something that really stuck with me, I thought it was the best answer I ever heard of this question which is that we can't, even if we're abolitionists, we can't lead with what we're taking away because people will feel deprived. They'll feel frightened. They'll feel scared. You have to lead with what you're actually holding space for the person listening to you. Even if you're talking to, hey, there's a scared, affluent white homeowner. Well, fear is real. And they are, even if they're not justified in feeling afraid, they do.

And if you instead say, well, I'm going to do justice to your emotions and not lead with what I'm taking away. But say, don't you want this instead? And they would say yes, as you say that they do when polled. Yes. And they would say yes, as you say that they do on polls. And a very practical arena as part of this big the bigger system is just thinking about the fact that the only alternative we have in most places in the U.S. when we have an emergency or crisis is to call 9-1-1 and call the police. But more and more locales are developing non-police crisis response teams. And so to think about, okay, if we're going to take away this conduit to something that's likely to give, you know, create more violence, especially if someone's

having a mental health break or some other crisis, you have to begin to build up the alternatives that's going to replace that before you say, okay, no more 9-1-1. And one concrete example that I provide in the book, in the chapter on hunted, is in my own town in Princeton, which you don't associate with police violence, is that, you know, there was a 50 some year old vet, a white man who was, you know, in the middle of the Panera bread restaurant on Nassau Street, essentially wielding a gun and asking the police to shoot him. Street, essentially wielding a gun and asking the police to shoot him. And rather than having any other way to talk to him, you know, to deal with that situation, they shot him dead in the middle of Panera on Princeton. And that is not someone who you think about as the target of police violence, but precisely because we don't invest in those alternatives, because we believe that policing is our only way of creating safety. In his case, not the obvious target of this apparatus, but the victim nonetheless.

But what if we had other ways of dealing with this that we had been investing in? It's not something that's going to happen overnight. But it's like we have to understand that we need to invest in other approaches if we're going to be able to deal with this. I mean, you know, in my own work doing like homelessness engagement, like there's a couple of people who I've made relationships with who have had profound mental health episodes where they're it's not safe for them and it's not safe for the people that they're around. And there's literally no one to call but the police. And we end up hoping that, you know, our friend at this point who, you know, is living on the street, we end up hoping like, God, I hope the police, you know, I hope that when someone does call the police that they don't shoot her and that they take her and give her mental health.

Because that's literally the only avenue. And that feels perverse for me to hope that. Yeah, we're hoping against all evidence, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It also makes me think about how, you know, the forces that are against reform, like just taking police unions, which as a union um at the at the end of the day they are they're full of very frightened people who are you know tasked with going and perpetrating a form of justice that is dangerous to the people around them and dangerous to them and that escalates conflict yeah and so to a certain extent, their reactionariness is understandable

because it's people who are being, I don't know, they're being asked to inflict so much pain. They receive so much pain. They're so frightened and angry that I feel like just having some awareness of that. Now look, there's some people in those unions who just like, they love to wield power

and they want to harm and they're attracted to policing for that reason. But a lot of other folks, I think, are, you know, they end up in the siege mentality. Yeah, absolutely. And having awareness of that when we're trying to change policy, does that appeal to you at all? I mean, it makes I mean, again, it's saying that there's humans behind these systems for good or bad, you know. And so the question for us as a society and as people who are funding this is that why under these conditions and we see the outcome of the siege mentality, do we continue to pour more and more money into what is creating more violence as opposed to actually saying, well, you know, there's all of these people in education and social work who learn to de-escalate, who examples that I give in the book of teachers who have a student with a gun and that hug them and the student drops the gun, you know, where there are people actually trained to deal with these critical who start from a position of care and competence and not fear and violence. And so why are they having

bake sales to fund there? And then every year we're giving billions and billions to those who clearly cannot do what the slogan says. And wouldn't the police prefer not to have to shoot that person? I'm sure. And that might also go. The trauma of having to shoot someone who's having a mental episode or just even if you don't think you experience it, I feel that you must and you would ultimately prefer couldn't someone trained go there.

Absolutely. And I think that also goes back to that statistic of people who live with these officers and see what they have to. And it's like, why are you giving my dad more money to do something he's not trained to do? You know what?

It's a close-up view of this is the wrong investment. You know, this is not where you shouldn't be. He shouldn't be shouldering this. I wish I wish my father or my mother or my loved one didn't have to. Yes. Go through. Exactly. Didn't have to do this.

Yes. Well, we have to take another really quick break. We'll be right back with more Ruha Benjamin. Okay, we're back with Ruha Benjamin. You tell in the book the story of Ron Finley, the gangster gardener. Would you, I just saw that in my notes. I have to hear this. Would you please tell us about it?

So, you know, I grew up partly here in Los Angeles and I start early on the book talking about this idea of growing the world we want. And I said, oh, that's not just metaphorical. You know, it's actually people thinking about food sovereignty and food justice and doing the work of growing these things right in their own backyards and front yards. And so Ron Finley was one of those people who looked around our neighborhood here in Los Angeles. And he said, you know, the issue of access to fresh vegetables is directly connected to the kinds of preventable chronic illnesses that people in my neighborhood suffer. The fact that he was noticing dialysis clinics popping up more than Starbucks and thinking about, OK, I okay, there's big things that

we can do and have to do around this, but there's also something I can do in the meantime right in my own front yard. So he started using that little patch of grass between the sidewalk and the streets. That's all over LA. They call them parkways. And he started just growing like an edible garden. And interestingly, going back to the early part of our conversation, the first thing that happened was the city of L.A.

cited him and threatened to issue an arrest warrant, which tells us that is always the default. An arrest warrant? An arrest warrant. Let me tell you something.

If I did that on my block, and we do have a couple parkways, I don't think I would get, maybe I would get cited. I don't think I would get, they'd say, we're going to arrest you.

Yes. And so again, that's subtext. But then he, neighbors who supported him, both got that law changed. Wow. So that, again, it's legal policy along with doing stuff in your own front yards. And then this just started to spread, like with over 20 of these gardens growing. And then now they have a teaching garden. spread, like with over 20 of these gardens growing. And then now they have a teaching garden.

And the idea is, you know, to provide people with jobs. And so it's like taking something that's just this individual kind of like fed up with something, I'm going to do something and then people being attracted to it, and it's starting to grow and becoming part of a kind of food sovereignty, food justice, a larger movement around starting in our own front yards. And one of the things he talks about is how it moved him that people realized who were like food insecure, that they could just come and take what they wanted for free. You know, like you don't have to pay for it. And so this idea of really revaluing, you know, what is a right? What should we have easy access to rather than everything being commodified? And, you know, going into this sort of particular model of transaction, it's like, no, this is growing. You take it. You need it. And so growing the world you want, it can be very literal like that. and that approach in other areas that don't necessarily mean getting your hands dirty in the ground, but it's saying, yeah, policy, legal change, but I can start right now.

And it was him starting that that created the catalyst for that change. You know what I mean? Like taking the first step. People probably wouldn't know that law existed until he did that, you know. And so it's not either or when it comes to this. I mean, I love that because especially during the pandemic, there was this sort of flowering of the idea of mutual aid of folks saying, oh, we're going to set up community fridges and et cetera. And I loved it. It also sometimes like I was like, I hope folks don't also retreat from systemic change. Yes.

That community fridge is wonderful. And that's a wonderful say, hey, we can help each other, and we can, you know, it's not charity, it's we're working together to provide each other what we need, but we still need to make those systemic changes. I love seeing how the one can lead to the other.

They're connected, and the thing is, to be able to sustain the longer fights, we need to be nourished in the here and now. Like, part of it is that, you know, we can burn out working for something that we never see the fruits for, you know, this kind of generational change that we're working on on these bigger fronts. But we need to see and we need to be nourished. And he talks about how Finley talks about how it's not just about the food, but it's also beauty.

And, you know, thinking about how all of us, we don't just need the physical things to survive, but we need beauty and meaning in order to sustain ourselves. And so too often, I think that gets cast as like soft or frivolous, or that's just about, you know, that's bougie, you know, but it's like, no, actually, if we're really being honest, we need all of these things as individuals and as groups. And it doesn't And it doesn't have to take away from the longer fights that we're up against. But we have to sustain ourselves, right? Yeah, we need that garden. What strikes me about it is that it's a garden in public space.

It's not in a backyard. It's not on a rooftop. It's in a median. I should have talked to you before I wrote the book. I would have made that point. That's exactly right. That's a very deliberate choice to say, no, even by the place we place, where we put it, it tells us who it's for. It's about the collective good, not just my own private collection.

Yeah, and that takes it from being just an act of, hey, I'm going to help out my neighbor and this is nice. Or, hey, I painted a mural. Isn't it pretty? It makes it a political action. Yes, exactly. Claiming, reclaiming the public space. Yeah. So what are some other examples of how we can do this that we haven't talked about?

So we talked about education, criminal justice. We talked about the medical system a bit. Yes. And so there's a whole chapter on work that's called Grind. And we spend so much of our lives sort of grinding in various industries and workplaces. And what I invite us to do is think about the kind of more obvious forms of worker exploitation, whether we're talking about Amazon or the gig economy. And then I bring it back home for myself as an invitation for everyone who's reading to think about what's happening in your own backyard. For me, it's academia, which often we think about as this enlightened, removed ivory tower.

But it's held up by a geek economy. It's not divorced from these larger processes. That 75% of people who teach in a higher education are on contract work that's precarious. They don't know if they're going to have a contract the next year. They're hustling across a number of universities. They're living out of their cars. They're getting food stamps. And so part of my own process and thinking about, okay, this is Amazon. This is these big bad corporates. Like, oh no, my own institution is actually, how is it in relation to the community in its own backyard? And when I did digging, I found, oh, actually, the local black community in Princeton sued the university.

Some people went on the record because they don't pay taxes, obviously. They pay payments in lieu of taxes that don't come close to what they would if they actually paid for the property taxes. And yet there's a lot, even though it's a nonprofit, it's making a lot of money for individuals and the universities. And so a number of locales are beginning to challenge that model and to say, you know what, you are a profit-seeking enterprise and you're going under this label of being nonprofit. And so you need to pay up the goods. And one person said this, it's a hedge fund that offers classes. And so in doing that, I thought, okay, how are individuals, groups, there's that legal case, but then I went to Philly and found, oh, you know, Jobs for Justice in Philly is creating a shift in the relationship of PEN to the local community. And so there's these different examples of organizations and groups,

both within the academy. So we're talking about the kind of people on strike. So it's what's the inequalities within, but it's also the relationship of these universities to these local communities. And that's beginning to be challenged and unseated. In the same way, I think everyone has to look at the industry, the context in which you work, and to think about what's happening under your own nose,

how you benefit or how you're harmed by it. And then I think the next step is to look around. Probably if you look, you'll find people already working on that front. You don't have to start something new. You need to support the people and the groups that are already fighting that front. You know, you don't have to start something new. You need to support the people and the groups that are already fighting that fight. And so as opposed to that kind of entrepreneurial mindset, you see a problem and you think, I can create an app for that, or I can do, you know, I can create some new, you know, thing for that. No, just take a step and look around. There's

probably people working on that. And so that's exactly what I found when it comes to groups like Tenure for the Common Good that's beginning to challenge that kind of gig economy model of academia, jobs for justice in Philly, and on and on there are people who are fed up with the status quo. And it's not just these big elite white universities, even at a place like Howard University, HBCU, which takes a little space in the book. You have these big star professors and yet the vast majority of lecturers have been mistreated for years, where if they teach there for seven years, devoted, great teachers, great evaluations. where if they teach there for seven years, devoted, great teachers, great evaluations, the policy is that they will be fired after seven years no matter how good their teaching record is. And so, again, it's to look at those kind of things, and then they've created a lecture union that's begun to create a better contract there.

And so in some cases, that's what it looks like. and so in some cases that's what it looks like and so the grind I think the last thing I'll say about this is not just about better work conditions but it's about valuing rest as well and and and really thinking about how so much of our identities are caught up in what our titles and what we do at work but it's like no you you, what you do in your leisure and your rest is actually, that's part of our discussion about justice. Well, our careerism, our focus on our work can sometimes distract us from the bigger picture that, you know, well, I'm a lawyer or I'm a web developer or I'm a comedian, whatever I am. And that's, that's myself. But, you know, taking, taking the step in the workplace to fix things to organize or unionize

or anything often starts with you saying well i'm not actually my job title i'm a person exactly and so is everybody else who's here and we have a life to go home to a lot of times when people have kids they have this realization because they're like wait there's another thing in my life it's not just this and and my work needs to make space for this. And it needs to make space for everybody else. I want to return to something that you said in the middle of that wonderful answer, though, which is you said rather than having the entrepreneurial mindset, joining the people who are already working. And, you know, I'm the sort of person where I do often think I should start something. We should do this. I'm going to start

getting some people together and I have to take a step to realize, wait, maybe instead of starting something, I should join something. Let me find the thing I can show up to where people will say, oh, thank you for coming to the meeting. And I tell people a lot of times about my own experience going to groups and saying like, okay, I want to be a part of this. And then you're at the meeting and then you raise your hand and say, I think we should do X, Y, Z. And someone goes, that sounds great. You should do it. Like, please, okay, start a subcommittee. Like, you're on the subcommittee now and we're going to email you about it. Like that, that thing of, of being willing to put the work into something to work that other people are

already doing. Exactly. I think it's huge. And it comes out of my, I mean, being at an institution where young people are being trained to see all of the issues in the world, but then the line from that to then you need to start some new thing. I'm going to start my project where I go to Africa and I build a school or whatever, that kind of thing. I'm going to start my project where I go to Africa and I build a school or whatever. Exactly. That kind of thing. And so in part, I'm kind of resisting that kind of entrepreneurial approach to change and to say, actually, there's probably people working on that from before you were born. Let's see how you can support that. And within that, that might be what you just described.

Like, yeah, start that new thing within this larger movement or this organization, but learn before you start to try to make yourself the answer to anything. Well, and the thing that I was, I was really, I don't know if this connects to what you're saying or not, but it came to mind is I was volunteering with this homelessness group that I volunteer with. And they said, oh, would you please come to our end of year meeting where we talk about all our ideas at the end of the year? And everyone was like i think we should do x i think we should do y and then at one point the the woman who is the you know sort of executive director at the time was like that's all great everybody ideas are so cheap you know and we need people who can actually do there we go you know there we go and that was that was like a real yes checking myself moment where i was like, oh, ideas are cheap. Yeah. Like I had been

showing up going, I'm going to I have some great ideas for what to do here. And ideas are great. But what you need is people who can do the work and follow through and follow what the organization's priority is or what we've all collectively decided. And that's a little bit less glamorous and it's not what is depicted on, you know, television as activism, but it is what needs to be done. Boots on the ground. So what do you, do you have any, you know, call to action at the end of how people can start to, you know, build this different frame of mind. Yeah. So part of it is just really, if you haven't already, to find your plot, to find the thing that you makes you that pisses you off most that, you know, keeps you up at night, that really, you know, boils your blood and then think about, OK, now that I have tapped into this, who is already working on that? And how can I connect

with that? How can I best support that? And so for a lot of readers, they might just have, I mean, you know, a general disillusionment or skepticism or, you know, anger with the world in general, but no way to channel that. And so part of it is to say, okay, let's figure out like, what do you, what can you do? You know, and so whether it's cooking, feed the people, whether it's data science, you know, let's figure out how to crunch those budgets, you know. So part of it is to really appreciate what we all bring to the table and figure out what your plot is and then work with others that are working on that front. Yeah. I mean, I think that is the antidote to cynicism, because until so many people are cynical because they no one has ever told them to do this. No one has ever told them that the option is available to them, that if there's an issue you're concerned about, there's like there's some group in your neighborhood. Yeah. You know, and maybe that maybe it's even like a moribund group that like hasn't gotten its shit together in a couple of years.

But like you can show up to the meetings. Yes. And I think in the process of that, I think the thing that I'm most urging people to think about, to reflect on, and to act on is not just what they're against, but what are the alternatives? How can you actually begin to see other ways of approaching X, Y, and Z issue? And so in the mix, I think we can do both.

We can uproot and we can seed. And I think a lot of our energies are, you know, understandably about we need to get rid of this and this and this, but then the intellectual and imaginative space to think about, okay, then what are we trying to grow? What are we trying to create more of? And to really prioritize that in the process. And there's also, in addition to joining those things and those actions, you are talking, though, about like wherever you happen to be, whatever work you happen to be doing, you can do that in a better, more virally justice-y way. Yeah, really look under your feet. You know, like the way Ron Finley did, the way that so many of the groups and individuals did is like, what's happening?

You know, it's not this kind of touristic approach. Like, let me go over there to help those people. It's a think about, OK, what am I already enmeshed in? You know, to think about whatever kind of work, neighborhood issues that you're already part of and then to figure out how it's operating, what's actually holding it together, what forms of exploitation and inequality have just been normalized where people say, this is just the way we do things here, you know, and now be a troublemaker and to say, well, does it have to be like that? How else can we do it?

And then to bring other examples to the table when people say, this is the only way that can be done. To think, no, actually, there's this guy over here, there's this woman over here who's greeting his kids, his students like this in the classroom, rather than disciplining them, you know, and showing what those other ways of interacting and being together are as a starting point in your own place. And that can hopefully work virally, that if you do, and I love focusing less on what is wrong and focusing more on what we can do right. Because sometimes I think when people are complaining about the world, justly so.

Absolutely. They're like, oh my God, people are so selfish and they're so greedy. And sometimes that feels like when people are mad at traffic. You know when you're driving with somebody and they're mad at everybody on the road? They're like, I can't believe that guy cut me off. It's like, what do you want to do? Eradicate bad drivers from the road? They're like, I can't believe that guy cut me off. It's like, what do you want to do? Eradicate bad drivers from the road?

Yeah. They're going to exist. Yes. Like, all you can do is try to be a good driver and try to control how you react

to those people. And so out there, there's always going to be people who, there's going to be those teachers who don't greet the kids. Yes. You know,

because they're busy and the teacher didn't have a full meal and they are ground down by their circumstance and it's not about attacking those people. It's about providing a counterexample and helping create more space for more people to do

that. And does that sound right? That sounds right to me. And not to ever get rid of, you know, the you know, you have to know what you're up against in order to create the alternative. So it's not jumping to the feel good, happy place without doing the proper diagnosis. OK, if you want to create a different way of doing things in education, you need to know how things actually suck. So it's not a kind of, again, sort of toxic, you know, way of just everything needs to be uplifting. That's not the message here. It's to say you need one without the other. That's not the message here. It's to say you need one without the other.

But too often we get so mired down in only seeing how everything sucks to say, okay, okay, I'm going to pause that and think about what we can do differently. Yeah. I love talking to you so much, Ruha. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Adam. I hope you'll come back again next time you have a new book. Or even in between books. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. Well, thank you once again to Ruha Benjamin for coming on the show. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. It was incredible. If you want to pick up a copy of her book, Viral Justice, you can get it at factuallypod.com slash books.

And when you do, you'll be supporting not just Ruha, not just this show, but your local bookstore as well. I also want to thank everybody who supports this show at the $15 a month level on Patreon. This week I'm thanking Lacey Garrison, Noah Dowd, Brian Gregory, Comrade Crunchy, Ronald C. Waits, and Vornak. Thank you to all of you. If you want to join them, head to patreon.com slash adamconover. That's patreon.com slash adamconover. As always, I want to thank Andrew WK for our theme song, The Fine Folks of Falcon Northwest,

for building me the incredible custom gaming PC that I record so many of my episodes on, and I also stream from Twitch on on occasion at twitch.tv slash Adam Conover. You can find me online at Adam Conover wherever you get your social media or at adamconover.net. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll see you next week

on Factually.