The Daily Zeitgeist - Biden's Cop Cash Giveaway 09.06.22

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

In episode 1324, Jack and Miles are joined by public defender, writer, and commentator Olayemi Olurin, to discuss… The Safer American Plan -> Media Regurgitates Talking Point That More Cops = Safety, America's Skewed Perception of Our Justice System and more! The Safer American Plan -> Media Regurgitates Talking Point That More Cops = Safety Alec Karakatsanis Thread on NPR Disinformation Shootings spiked during the pandemic. The spike now looks like a 'new normal' Saying Goodbye to Law & Order LISTEN: All Day Swimming by Ivy LabSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties

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I'm Jess Costavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game.

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The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 253, episode one of Dirt Daily's iGeist, a production of iHeartRadio. Diet Coke. Holy shit. Oh my gosh, we made it. It's Tuesday, and you know what that means? It's National Read a Book Day. Okay, read a damn book, please. Don't just, you know, don't just say, don't just read the spine of a book and be like, I read that. Read the book, please. I actually had that book recommended to me

in an Instagram photo, and so I therefore read the title, which is half the battle, if not more. It's also Reverse 69 Day, right? It's 9-6-22. Hey, whoa, I didn't think about that. Reverse 69 Day, yep, if not more. It's also reverse 69 day, right? It's 96.22. Hey, whoa, I didn't think about that. Reverse 69 day, yep, let them know. Why did 96 not get any of the love? You know?

Is it just because it makes us picture even older people? No, 96, I think, is like more Batman and Robin. You're back to back. Okay. You know what I mean? Yeah, I guess that does. 96 evokes to me. The back, you're back to back. Yeah, no i mean yeah i guess that's folks to me the back your back back yeah no that's a good point now it could be yeah getting yeah you know uh be like i'm

picturing it i've been 69ing all wrong all this time oh boy all right i've been 96ing well anyways my name is jack o'brien aka on a dark desert highway, cool ranch in my hair. One smell of gorditas rising up through the air. Up ahead in the distance, I saw purple neon lights. My stomach hungry and my choices slim. I exited on the right. As I got to the doorway of the Taco Bell. I was thinking to myself, I could get seven tacos with hard shells.

Then she asked me my order and how I'd like to pay. All my choices found me worried for my colon's mental state. Long one. read for my colon's mental state long one here comes the chalupas i'm sorry here comes the chalupas that i ordered got chicken and steak got chicken and steak all over my face all over my face i'm living it must look at all the food that i ordered nacho cheesy fries and black beans and rice that is courtesy of wapple house bringing the longy but a goodie yeah damn you know i'm about to go on a road trip and this felt extremely appropriate to me also you know when it's a first time guest i like to just let them know how bizarre the show is how weird yeah yeah and and that i have serious pipes and karaoke night here and i'm thrilled to be

joined as always by my co-host mr miles gray mr miles gray you know what christy i'm a gucci man when you wrote that aka i read the last line like it was Bon Jovi's Dead or Alive. So I'm going to switch it up that same a.k.a. where it's I'm living it, mas. Look at all the food I buy. Nacho cheesy fries, cheesy fries and black beans and rice. OK, so shout out to you again. I just took a new version on it i inverted it's beautiful well and then this is fun because now we get to introduce our incredibly impressive guest

fantastic guest yes that a perfect intro is juxtaposition like none other on the internet a public defender with legal aid new york a writer who you've read on teen vogue a commentator for the law and crime network and a contributor to the hill please welcome the brilliant and talented aliyah me all around what's up welcome first of all i'm super impressed that y'all pronounced my name right and that y'all had them songs look we try we try we try how you been how are you doing good good i'm having a good day i got paid today beautiful i was cleaning the poppers yesterday and i feel rich temporarily how's the weather you're in new york i'm guessing right yes i am in new york i am in new york it's

it's sunny but i am a i'm a firm believer that sunniness is overrated so oh listen y'all didn't grow up in the bahamas in the summer and the heat time with no AC on and your Grammy refusing to turn it on. Talking about catch the breeze. I've suffered. Right. Yeah. Have you looking forward to like fall and winter? Yeah.

Yeah. I love the fall. I love the fall. I think the fall is the best season and summer just has better PR. Right. Exactly. Because look, nothing I'm wearing a coat is undefeated. Yeah. fall i think the fall is the best season and summer just has better pr right exactly because look nothing i'm wearing a coat is undefeated yeah that's how i feel like and i like look i grew up in the san fernando valley hot as shit desert i grew up people being like i love it here

i'm like man i would i will i will move to where it snows i don't give a fuck i like this variation i like cold it's not what it's always cut up to be. Heat is, heat is really, the first time I really realized how much I truly hated heat was I was visiting a family island in the Bahamas. And listen, it was only then that I really realized, oh, we're really from an island. Like I was running for a tree. I felt like baffled. I'm like, please, Shane, help me. Somebody, we are not, we are not meant.

And then the sun, the way it's giving it up now, I'm telling you, there's no ozone layer. I'm convinced nobody you don't need to talk to the scientists anymore. I am telling you, there used to be a hole. There is none. I can feel the sun directly. No filter beating down on me directly. It's irresponsible to be outside in the sun. Yeah. Yeah. The summer is so brutal, only getting more brutal. only getting more brutal we talked on a recent episode about the beach is you know the beach is great but only as relief from the extremely uncomfortable summer you know it's like a it's not like i i don't know the fall is so great i'm so excited and this might just be the fact that it's the very end of summer speaking and i'm sweating through my shirt as we speak. Right. Oh, yeah. Not good for me either as a sweater.

No. And I'm about to drive through Death Valley and it's going to be bad. It's supposed to be 124. Just as a bit. Yeah. Put on a North Face. Let me see a bubble goose just out there. Ooh.

That'll be the last thing you ever do. Yeah. He's like, he died the second he sat on. All right. Alimi, we're going gonna get to know you a little bit better in a moment first we're gonna tell our listeners a couple of the things we're talking about we're gonna talk about the safer american plan and just the way the media regurgitates talking points that more cops equals safety and we're gonna talk about copaganda in all its, not in all its forms, but in some of its more popular forms, which, Alimi, you have written about at length and brilliantly. So all of that, plenty more. But first, we do like to ask our guest, what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are or what you're up to?

Well, in my search history right now, I think it's foolishness. I've been arguing with my friends that Eeyore is Black from Lady Boo, and so that's what I'm on right now. I'm on which cartoon characters are actually Black. Wait, I like that. Wait, okay, now that I'm thinking about this. Does he live in the forest with them? No.

No, he does not live in the hundred acre woods i'm glad i'm glad you asked he lives on the outskirts okay by himself go on yes i don't know if you've noticed if you just look at the sheer infrastructure of eeyore's little snoopy house versus everybody's full home is right they got a land right everybody else lives in 100 acre woods they don't even see eeyore till the end of the episode they spend all day frolicking amongst 100 acre woods and after they're done doing everything they're doing eating potty and going by rabbit then they're like who are you i'm so sad yeah he's like i just got off my shift on the sanitation department what are you talking about listen you're be calling them all day they're like he's depressed but no one asked why nobody asked why

they're like eeyore you get really angry really easy people listen i knew it was up as a child me and my grandma immediately he was black i remember they came to him at the end of the episode be like hold on you know this was it's the it's this the adventures of winnie the pooh and everybody else do adventures but not your yeah immediately white flight white flight that's why everybody lives in the hundred acre woods and he lives there where does christopher robin live ah right in the burbs with them you notice that right right oh and he's just kind of he's like yo oh this is my backyard yeah yeah exactly white christopher robin and all the rest of them live in the same community there's that new horror movie winnie the pooh blood and where you're dead first yeah you were his dad already and they apparently they like the implied backstories that winnie the pooh and piglet

ate him is that is that did i make that up they marked him in some way. All I know is... Horror movie, Black Person Dies First, Winnie the Pooh Horror Movie starts out with Eeyore already gone. Or it's like the magical donkey man, Eeyore. They're like, tell us of your ways, magical man. Listen, they got my mans out of there.

He's one of us. He's a brother. Alright, shout out eeyore what's uh what's something you think is overrated the notebook okay the movie the notebook the movie the notebook i haven't even seen that shit you never no you really no one has dragged you in your lifetime it seemed every person that was shaming me for watching it was a white woman and listen and no they love it. They love them some notebook. And I'm like, what about this trauma-filled movie is doing it for you?

Like, I don't. It's a sad film. Honestly, the whole movie is a cry for help for Ryan Gosling's character and why no one ever in his whole life, no one ever sought to teach him that he was valuable. Like, your life don't have to be all about this lady. Like, your whole life, you spent summertime with this lady one time and now your whole life is about joining the whole life you never heard but no interest in his just trying to make her dreams come true sitting around waiting for her to come like and then what happens the woman spends

he spends his summer with this woman falls in love with this woman he gotta go to war because he's poor first of all he spends the whole first half of the movie is she rich i haven't seen either you either jack what's happening i don't know okay they gotta they gotta pull it together yeah listen this is this is what happens right not the not the love version let me tell you what happens so ryan gosling is dating this woman for the summer they are young teenagers she is a rich white lady he is a poor white man her rich family ain't having that so then he goes off to war and he's sending all these letters rich families like it was in the trash they're like

he died sweetie really died he is dead he died in the war and she's like i would be like that sometimes. And she fully goes and gets her a rich man and she's kicking it, chilling, good. Then, he comes back from the war, she with her man and he's like, uh-huh. I should go and build her a dream house. That'll do it. So he goes and builds.

Yes, yes he does. That is pathetic. He builds the dream home this lady talked about that summer right goes builds it eventually she finds out she sees a picture of him in the newspaper she's like oh shit he ain't dead like she's not like oh he he not dead the love of my life let me get my mask nah then. Then he comes to her like, oh, you know, I love you and whatnot. And she's like, hmm. Really? Yeah, she's still not with it.

Then they have sex. And she's like, that was cool. But I do gots me a man. So she goes back to her rich dude. Then after a little bit, she's like, hmm. OK, OK, I'll be with you, brokie. I'll be with you. i'll be with you brokey i'll be with you i'll be with you so then they get married and then late in her old age she gets alzheimer's she doesn't remember yeah she doesn't know shy he does so now she don't even fucking

remember him so now they go to the old folks home and he dies with her he like has a like time set out somehow his love gave him a heart attack at the right time with her so he could die with her because he can't live life without shorty that is a horror film that is a story about trauma therapy that is a movie actually that is an indictment on poverty because if he had health insurance from the beginning of the movie he would have sorted through that breakup in the appropriate way he would have talked to a therapist and he would have wrapped that up but instead i'm watching i'm like oh my god oh my god all the white ladies are like that's the best film i've ever seen i'm like is it yeah like yeah no terrible so

when i look at it that film it it came out in June of 2004. So that's the summer of my freshman year of college. And this is me in the process of rejecting everything I thought I like that was mainstream. And I'm like, man, fuck all this shit. I've been consuming. Like, that was kind of my mindset. I'm like, I never listened to no fucking pot top shit again. Fucking notebook.

Fuck out of here. So I had a very like contrarian angry guy mindset back then, which is why like to this day, I think part of me was like, no, I'm not, I'm not that person. I,

then I do not engage with the notebook. I don't even know what my excuse was. Cause I was a young girl and I loved all things. But I watched this and I was like, not, I'm not feeling the love. Like, like i want this i'm like not your second pick your whole life and then she forgets you now you dead that's it that's the whole life no rule of a minute we're not gonna start this life thing over terrible really yeah i mean yeah and again just good to indoctrinate people with that idea it's like look motherfucker you gonna be treated like they don't want you you're gonna be second best you're gonna die and they're gonna forget about

you right but if she chooses you and that's beautiful and that's beautiful and they love they love that listen ruin the generation yeah that's yeah i i believe that's called codependency yes that's not not good yeah wow i did not know that was the the plot of that i just knew the last part because i'm like well what the fuck is i remember always asking me i'm like what the fuck is the notebook though like why is it called the notebook and they're like because he's they don't remember shit and he has to read the notebook to her and i was like which is terrible that's also why 50 first dates is terrible is a i i don't know why people love that either yes i saw 50 first dates and that is weird at the end like she feels it seems like she's like a captive yeah like it's so strange yeah no you

can't go like you have to every day i'm gonna read you're gonna do this whole thing i have you in a boat i'm pretty sure they like on a boat doing this right it is terrible i couldn't believe it like why is this just dramatic dramatic film, just horror movies. I was like, she gets into an accident, she forgets everything, and now he's going to make her do Groundhog's Day every day? He don't even have enough time in the day to convince her she loves him. It takes 24

hours just to remind her. All right, he hit me. And then she's pregnant at one point. So now you're in prison to end. Exactly. So there's a human growing inside pregnant at one point. So now you're in pregnancy. Exactly. It's all good. I'm your husband. I'm your baby. Chill. I feel like every morning is him going chill, chill, chill,

chill, chill, chill, chill. Like in the bed. And she's like, sit down and watch this motherfucking tape. He got to set an alarm for like an hour before so he can be up and ready to get to like... Yeah, right, exactly. Okay, you're strapped in. I know you are restrained right now,

but this is for your own safety and that of the child. She's like, the what? We have allowed some sick movies and shows to like, literally get away with it. And we're just like, aw. Yeah, people are like, this is real cute. I was like, is it? Aw, they love each other in general it's like how much we have amnesia as a trope in media in general like memory loss

because ain't cute i don't get it but we keep doing it but it's not cute at all no i mean like i remember yeah dealing with my own family you know like dementia alzheimer's and that shit is the last thing is like it's so fun to look at my grandmother who's like who are you yeah we're like trying to show her pictures she's like that ain't me and I'm like oh shit that's not a version where then I go to like a quirky like island cafe later and I'm like man I had a

rough one today I'm like I'm crying in my Mazda leaving the convalescent home like look at the mortality weeping which Just the most tragic thing. Yeah. What is something you think is underrated? Courage the Cowardly Dog.

Okay. Yes. Please tell me y'all watch Courage too. No? Neither one of you? I know about Courage the Cowardly Dog, but I was not watching it in its heyday. I hate how your childhood went for you, and I want

more from y'all. Thank you. There's just no reason why y'all... See? Well, that proves my point. Courage is the most underrated. I feel like, you know the way Spongebob is... I mean, nothing's touching Spongebob, obviously. But Courage should be talked about more. We should

be getting more Courage pop culture references, and my man don't get no love so it's courage for me it came out so okay so when this show came out like in its heyday i'm like in eighth junior high high school so i because i'm constantly putting myself in that year and i'm like okay i know why i wasn't watching this because at this point i was like to be like, yo, I'm watching fucking Tarantino. I'm fucking Tarantino Network. That's what y'all were watching in your eighth grade year. That's why I'm so maladjusted as an adult. I'm judging all of y'all. My eighth grade year

I was watching Dragon Ball Z and appropriate things for cool people. Look, I'll one up you. Growing up half Japanese, I was watching Dragon Ball Z when I was like a kid. So when that shit came to the US, I was like, I've been off this shit since I was a child. And y'all talking about Pokemon now?

Okay, you got me there. I'm in a weird spot as like a Black and Japanese American where like part of me is like, what's this white person? Are you Black and Japanese American? That's popping my eyes. In my media mind,

I had like, I was contest, I had many different voices at work with what I thought I should or should not be watching at that age. Oh, that's bomb. But then you watch Boondocks.

Boondocks is also in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm throwing Boondocks and Courage at Cowardly Dog. That's my final answer. Wait, so what's so good? Okay, tell me,

I know like when I look at the art of Courage, I know that's Courage, but i've never been like seen a whole episode i'm like oh this is why people fuck with i mean courage was just the realest motherfucker alive i mean okay that's just the realty right first of all they call him courage the cowardly dog who was a shit cowardly about him okay courage was out here living in the middle of nowhere fighting off real fucking monsters every day to save Muriel's ass. And Muriel, so he's living with these

two old people, his owners. Muriel and Eustace. Eustace is a hater. Like, a hater deep in his soul. Like, God, like, when he was thinking of hater, he put Eustace on Earth. So that's what Eustace is there to do, is to hate on Courage and cause the monsters to kill them all. And Muriel is very stupid.

Like, fully just a dodo bird, but Courage loves her. But they can't understand him. The monsters be coming right to the door saying, hi, we monsters. We had to do monster shit today. And they be like, oh, Courage, get him some coffee. Like, Courage, shut up. And now whole monster shit.

Whole episode for the Courage got to save them. And the animation is amazing. But yeah, Courage is just that guy. Oh, shit. So the thing I was doing, because I'm old as fuck. I didn't watch that. I was, I think, 19 to 22 when this came out. But I did edit an article about a fan theory about Courage the Cowardly Dog.

And the fan theory is that the monsters are just people from a dog's point of view and like the whole thing is just like a really accurate depiction of what reality looks like from a dog's point of view and like like one of the things is like a is courage like have a like terrifying interaction with a vacuum at one point maybe maybe but that me and that person there who made that fine theory we might have to talk because i mean i believe like ed and eddie fine theories right that they're purgatory like that's what happens when the kids are the kids are dead that's why the parents don't show up yeah yeah i'm all for it believe it but courage boy if you see some of these demons and people coming from space and whatnot and people don't begin murked. There is, like, a demon

cat that, if you ever see the episode where Muriel's... Miles, I'm gonna send y'all a link to Courage after this, and we gonna revisit it, because I don't think so. I mean, I wanna hear it. Like, I'm open to the theory, but I definitely think those was real monsters fucking life up for Courage

every day, wanting to kill Muriel and them especially because they live in like the middle of nowhere like that's that's and i you need to hit a theme song top tier it says that the theory of them being in the middle of nowhere is that the dog a dog's awareness of like have you ever heard that story like someone opens the fence and they're like oh the there's another yard behind there and it's like no there's like yards because the dog is like only aware of like what's happening inside their yard essentially and so like they think it's in the middle of nowhere

but it's actually just like i don't know you see how establishment gaslighting courage you see that you see this you see courage finally gets his story out and now look what they want to do he's he's unwell they're like oh they're there courage that's what's fucked up about it is that it's like it makes it makes you realize like oh man dog being a dog in a human's household would be fucking terrifying like you think dogs you know dogs seem so so that's the thing though dogs do be seeming so happy as opposed to like my cat like right like he's happy but i i know he's like a person he makes his own choices like if my cat can sit with me i know it's because he wants to because he'll definitely say no but

dogs be here they do maybe dogs are oppressed maybe they feel like this is what i gotta do in order to get my meals and go right like you know yeah for survival they might just be oppressed you you were correct i'm prepared to think about that courage definitely is okay we're gonna yeah send those links now yeah it was my recent fan on you gotta become a fan miles i got, you love courage. Deep reading first. Yeah, for sure. All right.

Let's take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll talk about the Safer American plan. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades.

Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling, first-hand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. It's tradition. It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish

about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Santos! Santos! Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of My Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. MTV's official challenge podcast is back for another season. That's right. The challenge is about to embark on its monumental 40th season, y'all, and we are coming along for the ride. Woohoo! That would be me, Devin Simone. And then there's me, Davon Rogers.

And we're here to take you behind the scenes of... Drumroll, please. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The Challenge 40, Battle of the Eras. Yes. Each week, cast members will be joining us to spill all of the tea on the relentless challenges,

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the Challenge 40 Battle of the Eras. Listen to MTV's official Challenge podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Bruce Bozzi. On my podcast Table for Two, we have unforgettable lunch after unforgettable lunch

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We sit down at a great restaurant for a meal, maybe a glass of rosé, and the stories start flowing. Our second season is airing right now, so you can catch up on our conversations that are intimate, surprising, and often hilarious. Listen to Table for Two with Bruce Bozzi on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back.

And, you know, in between darkiden dark brandon appearances last week that everybody was memeing up biden addressed it seemed like he was addressing like a police union or something because he was like addressing them as like you guys we expect you guys to do everything so he announced his plan to deal with crime and he said the answer is not to defund the police. It's fund the police, Jack. We expect them to do everything to protect us, to be psychologists, to be sociologists. He's literally making the case for the fund. Yeah, exactly.

That's what's so great. He went from it's fund the, like, this is why we should fund the police and then gave the examples of why we should defund the police. Right. Why everything else is being adequately funded because we're giving all the money to the police. Yeah. Exactly. We fund the police instead of mental health and

any resource that doesn't involve armed people. And it's a major fucking problem. Right. And according to them, the police aren't adequately trained to do the things that you're already paying them billions of dollars to do. So I don't know why we would leave it to them to do all these other areas that we have actual experts

and trained professionals to do. It's illogical. I like how you even evoke psychologists and sociologists, and those are the motherfuckers they're ignoring. Those are the people they're actually defending while they continue to raise all the money they're giving to the police they're like golly what's going on with that huh we should be funding you guys they expect you to figure out the problems that we ignore because they go against our conventional the conventional

wisdom but it's not like people aren't those are literally the arguments people are making right put money give money to these social services and all these different other things. So the police aren't the people responding to mental health checks. People aren't, police aren't responding, aren't police, don't have to respond to traffic violations and these different things and lead to these results. And the police units are like, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Don't you dare. I wouldn't think of it. don't you dare i wouldn't think of it yeah and it's anomalous like what we do the amount of funding that we give to the police in the united states is historically anomalous is the most any civilization has ever like used policing and like funded policing and so any problem that people are like well our problem is we're not funding the police enough is no, like this is if, if policing was the answer, then the U S would be the safest place in the history of the world. And that's the, quite frankly,

that's the simple truth. They don't want to acknowledge, right? If policing and public safety is synonymous and why, why are these not the safest places? And constantly the places that are giving more and more money to police are also the same people whose media is constantly committed to this whole crime wave. Crime is up. All of this is the next thing. New York it. They just got $260 more million, even though they cut from education, they cut from the parks, they cut from housing, they cut everywhere else.

But NYPD, more money. Meanwhile, what's happened? They continue to say, you let the Post tell it, crime is constantly raising. Oh my God. But NYPD was never defunded. They've gotten more money. Everything else is defunded. We see evictions up, education, all kinds of housing issues, homelessness has spiked. And it's like, why is that? Just complete... That's what I love. There's this feigned ignorance that politicians and media do with stuff. It's like, oh, conveniently, you see all these eviction moratoriums are lifted. You're evicting people 24-7 in the same breath. They're like, the problem that is homelessness, where is this coming from? right oh it couldn't have anything to do with the pandemic just we just had where businesses were closed y'all like y'all lifted eviction moratoriums

y'all have the jails full of like it's not a coincidence i i think it's interesting especially with homelessness and all the big cities it's like it's like new york city new york city la i think those are two prime places that talk about homelessness. It's their job to do so. They're two of the most expensive cities in the world, not even just the country, in the world. People aren't homeless because they want to be homeless. They're homeless because they cannot afford to live there. That's just the reality of it. And instead of ever talking about livable wages or what rent has actually increased to, New York City is constantly talking about how our homelessness has increased, but our rent has also increased. The average cost

of rent right now in New York city is over $4,000 a month. Well, the answer to that more cops, man, got to get more cops out there. It's absurd. And I think the problem too, is so many people are out of touch and don't have honest conversations about it. And I think it's because they also don't really know, like I am a public defender so i yeah yes not only do i represent poor people but i'm also not well paid myself and my apartment my apartment and i just got this through new york city's affordable housing right affordable housing and won the housing lottery my apartment was twenty two hundred dollars right like you get a room room. That is what average person, the people who really, really need, and that's as a lawyer.

That's as someone who is, how's the average person going to afford that? And also, the average person can't even qualify for it because the amount of hoops they make you jump through to secure the apartments and how it works is so they, like in New York City, the affordable housing lottery works like this. They let, you know, so gentrification,

they buy these buildings up in these neighborhoods. Like, in flatbush in brooklyn and then they charge the whole building is priced at like six times more than what the rest of the neighborhood is so then you price out the people already live in the neighborhood and they can't get there and then what they'll do is they'll take like a couple of units in the building like mine and say this is affordable but it's actually just four times less than the rest of the neighborhood as opposed to six. Exactly. And so you get people who still, people who are most in need,

they're only like, like, I mean, the smallest handful of places that they can actually afford in the affordable lottery. So it's just a myth. The reality is homelessness, poverty, all these things are a direct response to the ways that our government

is already failing these people in their communities. And that's just the conversations they don't want to have. And they pretend there's no people who say to address it that way, don't care about crime or you, you, you know, you want lawlessness or you want anarchy. And that's not the case. Yeah. So in response to that Biden speech, CBS News, just this, this is how they tweeted it. The Safer American plan aimed at reducing gun crime is based on a, quote, simple notion, says President Biden. The answer is not to defund the police. It's fund the police, he adds.

We expect them to do everything to protect us, to be psychologists, to be sociologists, but like nothing else. So they're just pasting his talking points into a tweet and putting it out there and that's how our media does i mean that's how our media literally does it regurgitates like politicians and especially police narratives as pure fact there is no questioning of it just this is what they said so this is this is the factual matter of it and the problem is the average person is a consumer not and not even as a negative to them, right? The average person is busy dealing with their own life and the trials and tribulations that they're not being helped with.

So they read information and they say, all right, I don't have time to like research this or assume there's more to it. So if I'm constantly fed that like, you know, police are a necessity, you know, police are the necessity, you know, they're the people who find themselves in the criminal system.

They're in some way to blame for their own circumstances. And, you know, the system is about producing find themselves in the criminal system. They are in some way to blame for their own circumstances. And, you know, the system is about producing just outcomes. Even when they hear about police brutality or for them, it seems like an outlier or a mistake or the system, you know, going wrong as opposed to this is what it produces every day. Yeah. I mean, the media portrays the asserted motivation. So this is from Alec Karakatsanis who's a abolitionist and also yeah so he he was saying that like the media portrays the asserted motivations of powerful people as their actual motivations like this is how copaganda like they will just say whatever the police say they were trying to do was what they they like without any criticism. It's like if they reported that BP is

actually an organization that is designed for taking care of the climate, addressing climate change because there's an ad that BP puts out that says that shit. And it's just like that's a good trick and everybody listening should always

watch how the media will just take at face value anything a powerful person says about their motives but then somebody who is you know killed by the police arrested by the police you know their motives will immediately be called into question yeah anybody who's not powerful will immediately like it'll be thrown up as like we don't know what they were doing there. We don't know how people and police, their opinions, their their story, their narrative is treated as fact. And any level of pushback to that is a conspiracy or something that needs to be investigated. Does that go one step further? Even in media, when you try like when I try to when you write off ads and things like this, even if you make the entire argument, right, you have everything sort like cited for why you believe this, right? This is the actual

motivation behind whatever the police are doing or the politicians are doing. You cite it to a million facts. They'll say, well, the police didn't, they didn't say that. You know what I mean? Like, oh, it's your opinion. They'll take that out. Oh, we don't, we can't say, we can't speak to their motivations. You know, it's always this desire to give them the benefit of the doubt that does not exist in our society legally any other way. Like when you think about it, even if we look at how police

investigations are conducted in America, if I call, if Miles, if I call the police and I say, Miles sent me 13 text messages cussing my ass out, you in New York City, you best believe you could be arrested and charged with aggravated harassment

in the third degree. I represented many people. All you need is the accusation. But when comes to police when it comes to politicians you can watch the whole incident on video investigation and the police get to da's offices and the police officers get to investigate themselves you know investigate themselves and say ah no our intentions were pure it was this all these different things but usually if you say it in court any other time, obviously anybody accused of a crime, I tell the court, you know, no, we deny this.

Our story is this. And you know what they say? That's an issue for trial. That's an issue for the jury. That is your argument. Everybody has the right to make an argument, but not when it comes to police. The police get to make their argument

and decide, oh, no charges should come. Yeah, they're like, okay, that's all cap. That's what I heard. Yes. Take it closed. Yes, there must be be there must always be something you are not seeing some other way to spin it you know how many times how many different cases have you seen you've watched police brutality on video and then they tell you to the

investigation and you don't hear anything for a year or two when you finally look back quietly no charges were brought the prosecutor's office declined to bring charges right and they're always and they're always on a leave with pay yes always always on some paid administrative leave the one thing too is like you know i think because we've allowed like just this consistent definition of crime to just be like the dominant narrative of like crime is when bad people do bad shit that's what crime is yeah there's not we have such a crumbling society that people are merely trying to survive and do things to survive and doing things that just that you would think, oh, I would never do that. But that's maybe you from your perspective where you have a safety net, some kind of support system where others purely are trying to survive. And I think that allows constantly for cops to be like, you know these people are bad or whatever it's like i don't know somebody who's stealing like food

i don't know what like i'm not i don't i don't see tiktok videos of people being like yo this is how i got a lambo because i'm stealing food right and then like flipping it that's not what we're talking about and i think it allows for this constant like dehumanization of people yeah which easily allows them like for people to have like this you know easy thought pattern to occur which is cops said they're bad that's bad i don't know why they're bad but if they're bad and they're criminals then that's crime and that's i don't need to have a i don't need to have empathy for that right and what i think also is important is that they don't no one no one uh stops to discuss the fact that the

the quote-unquote victims of crime and perpetrators of crime are the same people, the same community, right? Like how in the same breath, if we designate all these specific areas and communities as high crime areas, right? All the poor communities, all the Black communities, all the people of color communities, right? These are high crime areas. So that being said, these are also the people that are the victims of crime. crime areas. So that being said, these are also the people that are the victims of crime. So the same communities that you're heavily policing and you're incarcerated, you feel like they are so bad, they need to be punished. And you do all these punitive things that prevent them from ever getting out of the hole. You're punishing the exact same community you claim you want to be

helping. So it's just so obviously logically inconsistent. And I think that's a problem. It's something I always think about as a public defender is when you meet your clients, they've already been failed in some way. This is not the first time the system has harmed them. And something I always think about as a public defender is when you meet your clients, they've already been failed in some way. This is not the first time the system has harmed them. Anybody that I represent, which is the vast majority of people that are in the criminal system are destitute poor, like can't afford an attorney because I wouldn't qualify for my own services and I could not afford my own services or an attorney services is astronomical. So the average person in the criminal system are people who are not seeing any money at all completely and if you see that and you say okay these are people already don't have any money they don't have any resources and now all right i'm

gonna put you in the criminal system you get a rap sheet you get this not only are they suffering their children suffering the whole community their family and it just is constantly regurgitating cycles and cycles of poverty and also in addition to, when we tend to end the analysis of crimes of poverty and like what is direct, like in a sense, oh, I'm poor, so I can't buy food, so I stole food. And then we're like, all right, those, we can understand that, you know, those of us on the left, there'll be people they can reconcile themselves with. That person, you know, doesn't deserve to be prosecuted. But it also comes to people that are committing assault or they're, you know, they're fighting or they're cursing people out or they're doing why do you think that happens i always tell people i'm far more likely to slap the shit out of you if my rent can't get paid you know what i mean if i

went to the times in my life when my life is good when my things are paid for adequately dealt i am so much nicer i will deal with things so much better i am so much willing to be a reasonable but if life is on you if life is on you you, you got a father in jail, you got a mother with medical bills you're trying to pay for, you don't have health insurance, you can't get to school, you're losing your apartment, all these different things, you're more likely to fight somebody. You know what I mean? You're more likely to respond to life issues in the worst way. You're more likely to feel like, oh, I have to go sell drugs. I have to do these different things. And so it's a much larger phenomenon and problem in the way that poverty relates to these outcomes.

Yeah. Because cops are just like the Roomba that suck up the failure of our capitalist system. It's just like, yeah, we're just here to clean that up. No real, not about it. They're one branch. They're one bad branch and a whole bad tree. That's how I like to see it. You know, we tend to focus, we focus on police and then we end the narrative there. And I think that's what can become problematic, right? It's like when I'm in the criminal, when I'm in court, I'm not, it's not like it's just the police, the police, the judge, the court officers, the prosecutor are all on the same team.

You by yourself, it's only you and your client on this agenda, right? The entire system is set up this way. Police might arrest people, but it's the prosecutors who've got to decide to bring in charges. It's judges, you know, convicting people, sentencing people. This is, because they're all, you know, in tandem.

And also the laws that the prosecutors and the police officers are, and the judges are enforcing and using. The legislators are the ones who wrote them, all this determinate sentencing. They're all, they're all make, you know, a part of a concerted, and a concerted effort so i mean we end the analysis and condemn the police as one officer should be should be charged or this should happen this way

and then we're confused as to how the system keeps reproducing the exact same results yeah like so biden referenced the defund the police movement by being like we don't need to defund we need to fund but npr is also like npr just published an article that claimed and i actually heard this on npr we we make fun of npr a lot on this show for just like being asmr for neolibs but they also like are they report some damaging shit sometimes and this report was just basically being like crimes gone way up and people aren't getting caught anymore because of the defund the police. And the thing they based it on was something that like a random person who they interviewed said it wasn't like an expert.

It wasn't based on statistics. This is the, this is the key. This guy had a gun once. The whole sourcing. Anthony Branch, 26, got into trouble for carrying a gun when he was a teen. Watching the gun culture in his

neighborhood, he thinks more minors and felons are carrying guns illegally now for one simple reason. Quote, defund the police, as he put it. Foolishness. That doesn't even connect. Foolishness. And the thing anything is they know is foolishness they they know it right like think about it courtrooms courtrooms are technically public

right the courts are open to the public anybody can can come in there and sit there but yet we're not allowed to record or take picture of anything that's happening court no one's allowed to court you know lawyers were not allowed to because the average person people cannot go sit in courtrooms and go watch entire court because that's not going to happen right but if people did and people saw what actually happens in court what's the average thing that is a crime and what people are being prosecuted for and how it's being treated they would feel differently about it so what they do is they take these sensationalized story they produce shows like law and order and everything else that's on our tv and it treats crime people think of crime like people so often say to me i have represented over a thousand people in very few

cases or anything that's like salacious or wild or anybody who does like it's just just regular everyday life things that you wouldn't even realize are criminalized when i first became a public defender it was jarring to me realizing how much shit i could have been arrested for if i just happened to be criminalized you know what i mean or if you lived in a certain society like the entire bahamas which is where i'm from the entire every bahamian person would be behind bars in america's criminal system absolutely immediately just a whole way to be engaged i once represented a lady who got arrested like shortly after giving birth to her child because like a woman was sexing her like arguing with her during labor.

And she was like, fuck you, whatever, don't play with me. You know what I mean? Something like that. And they arrested that woman for aggravated harassment in the third. Jesus Christ. They do stuff like that. I represented so many people where they arrest them because they were banging on their own door because they locked the door, they locked themselves out.

Now they charge you with criminal mischief and say, well, you don't actually, this is a NYCHA building. a nature building you own that door so yeah yeah that's the nonsense the amount of people in who have been sat in rikers because of traffic violations things that they literally yes it's absurd it's absurd so you know they they intentionally keep that stuff away from you and then they choose these choose these outlier cases to sensationalize the system. And so people think of everybody that's in jail as other, they don't think of them as, you know, you are, exactly. But if you actually, you know, put a magnifying, first of all, you put a magnifying glass on anybody and it probably don't even have to be a good magnifying glass. They're committing some form of crime. They're

doing something that's technically illegal, illegal because America's overbroad. Yeah. They can find a way. Yeah yeah yeah absolutely we'd all be in jail child all right let's take a quick break we'll be right back to kind of continue talking about this and law and order the tv show not the broad concept i'm jess casaveto executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed.

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Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre. It doesn't get more Mexican than this. Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment. Lucha libre is a type of storytelling. It's a dance. It's tradition. It's tradition. It's culture. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish

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This wasn't just a new game. Atari promised 150 grand in prizes to four finalists, but the prizes disappeared. And what started as a video game promotion became one of the most controversial moments in 80s pop culture. I just don't believe they exist. I mean, my reaction, shock and awe. That sword was amazing. It was so beautiful. I'm Jamie Loftus. Join me this spring for The Legend of Sword Quest, a podcast about the fall of Atari

and the disappearing Sword Quest prizes. We'll follow the quest for lost treasure across four decades. It's almost like a metaphor for the industry and Atari itself, in a way. Listen to The Legend of Sword Quest on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And, you know, as we were talking about before the break, like this kind of brings up the question of, you know,

And, you know, as we were talking about before the break, like this kind of brings up the question of, you know, now we had I think I've heard you talk about the fact that like the alimy that like the Black Lives Matter movement in the mainstream media is like these things being like we don't gotta defund the police we gotta fund the police and like npr like blaming it for straight-up murder so this like kind of raises the question why is this particular lie so just deeply like so hard to shake that like violent armed police and human caging are the only way to deal with things and you know there's it's structurally integral to our society it's like a lie that is that's the answer undergirds all of the white supremacy everything and that's your answer it's structurally under that's why something doesn't become the status quo because the majority isn't invested in like defending and maintaining. That's the why. our super producer, Trisha Mukherjee, is joining us to talk about your argument in a piece for

Team Vogue about law and order, the TV show, and just copaganda in general being, creating this standard narrative where the cops are the protagonist. Yeah. I mean, it's an average. So I guess I tried to look at it commonsensically. And I think I have the benefit of my family's Bahamian. They live in the Bahamas. So this isn't their society at all. But we watch the same things. We watch it.

My mother so often responds to me who is in the Bahamas. She don't vote here. She don't live here. She don't have no reason to be invested here. But she is, child. And my mommy and them is a heavy, a heavy coffee guy in the house.

My mom and them go on order, snapped, all of it. My mommy is watching it all and she loves it. Okay. Her boy, a stabler in them. She'll, she'd be ready to fight me in the house over this stuff. And I recognize, you know, and I thought about it early on from jump is one of the first things we teach people, you know, it's like, Oh, this, you know, 911, we teach little children, little children you know this is not here's your parents number here's 9-1-1 you know you play cops and robbers cops are the good guys robbers are bad everything you watch has you know protagonist antagonist antagonist is automatically treated as the villain and in so many things beyond just the amount the sheer volume of shows that we have is just direct propaganda like law and order csi and even like lucifer tv shows like so many of them have this but i thought about this even

the other day i was like cartoons you watch and you don't even realize it like i was a big pop up girls like big big into pop up girls like love me some pop up girls okay and i realized the other day and i'm like why didn't i notice that these three little gals was agents of the states beating people out into the white meat the minute the mayor called them up? Like, you ain't never noticed that? That's literally what it is. The powerful girls, the mayor calls them up, red button, hey, hey, hey,

we just heard something, fuck them up. He meeting him, the men can see him. They see Mojo Jojo in the food store, Mojo Jojo is trying to buy some groceries. They beat him and they beat his ass down. And everybody, right? Mojo Jojo, the whole townspeople,

all the townspeople look like the powerpuff girls. Apricot-colored white people just like Professor X, right? All the villains. Mojo Jojo green. Fuzzy Lumpkin pink. The gang green gang is green. the boogeyman is blue him is red all the people of color are villain criminals again they ask whoop 24 7 and you realize like eventually everything you watch is kind of treated like this like this is what we've

designated as good and this is what we've designated as bad and nothing in between really matters it don't matter you don't see no due process in the part, you know, and you watch, but it really is like that. How much of things you watch and it shows you, even when it shows you that the police are breaking the law, like their right to be inviolable, it's showing you how the police has to, because this bad guy or they're constrained. I watched the Chippendale rescue movie the other day, and it was the same shit. Like, oh, the police, the police were working with chippendale to try to get peter pan and them and the police are like oh we want to do something but we can't

chippendale because you have these constitutional rights and stuff so chippendale we're like ah all these damn tests always yeah due process is treated as like it's never been good in a single movie it's like yeah right due process the only person the only person who brings in up due process is like about to get their head smashed into their desk by russell crowe before he like goes out and catches the bad guys yes yes and like all jokes aside like that that is something like we don't realize how much we're like how we're taught to perceive the world is in green and stuff like even in lucifer lucifer is the literal fucking devil like he's satan he's literally satan and for for satan to be redeemed in the eyes of god in the

world he works with the lapd like i'm dead ass that's the plot of the show like that's the plot of the show and you know the only person they matter of factly is saying is gonna go to hell the defense attorney and in order for her to go to is gonna go to hell the defense attorney and in order for her to go to heaven she had to quit the defense attorney and go become a da and then they kill her she goes to heaven because the the defense attorney is just trying to get bad guys off the hook yeah and like it's all a world yeah yes and you realize when you watch tv and you think about it more you see it in everything that person they're always the bad guy or the poor character or whoever it is. They're bad.

They're this. It's like that. It's like that. It's funny that you bring up the LAPD, right? Because, Tricia, you point out, like, the kind of LAPD kind of has a starting point in the beginnings of all this. Yes. Right. Exactly.

So, Aliyah and me, I read your article. First of all, your work is amazing and so cool. But yeah, so I just started going a little bit deeper into this copaganda in TV shows around crime. And one interesting thing I found out was, of course, the media has always supported the police through the history of the country. But in the 1950s, it was actually

formalized because this actor, director Jack Webb, he made this deal with the LAPD where if the LAPD would allow him to access police equipment and quickly approve permits and get off-duty officers as extras in his movies, he allowed the LAPD to read over his scripts and basically just veto anything that they didn't like so of course they're not going to approve anything where the cops are portrayed as bad and then this has just been the standard set in Hollywood and just set in TV and movie industry where the the police is literally controlling what we see on the screen in a lot of ways yes absolutely absolutely you realize it's so much more i have a friend who who was writing the script the other

day like entertainment and he had like just not even thinking about it because it's so like into shows and when you think about public defenders are depicted in all media and we're depicted as bums right like bums anytime you see a public defender in anything like they're dropping their files they're disheveled and it's a way it's how they need foot cream and it's how the system like goes and blames and it's so funny because that has so much you know a lot of how your relationship plays out with your clients has everything to do with their initial even perception of you is and if a public if a public defender gets blamed like when you think the money is attributed is in these ways deliberately a public defender is underfunded but the prosecutor's office is not but we're funded by the exact same entities we're opposite across the aisle we're doing the same level of

workload but it's deliberately set up where the public defenders are ill-equipped right and even within that system like public defenders get blamed for plea deals or presenting you with a plea which is you you're obligated you have to present whatever is the plea offer but the plea offers made better prosecutors the reason why you even have to present whatever is the plea offer, but the plea offer is made by the prosecutors. The reason why you even have to tell them, oh, you should probably take a plea because this is what's likely to happen at trial because of the terminate sentencing done by legislators

and what the judge is going to punish you. It's so many different ways. The system is actively doing all these different things, but how does our media spin it to people? Oh, if you could afford to have, it's these broke-ass, bum-ass public defendants that are causing you to go to jail. And and it all you know relates back to poverty in general because even in a world where we pretended the problem was the public defender the problem is

this this public defender that's still a reflection of the fact the majority of the people in the criminal system are poor you know and they're being represented by public defenders as opposed they can't afford paid representation not that it's true that public defenders are ill-equipped but even if that was the case and it's not like the court doesn't know i think something people forget to and i and i and i appreciate that people are optimistic or they have i don't know more faith in their in their actors but the court knows everything else that you tell the rest of the society that shocks their conscience and gets them to see like oh the system is messed up and they think oh we need to get that in from like the people in power, the people doing it

don't know. I'm assigned by the court. The person who sets the bail is the same person that just said this person has no money. They can't afford a lawyer. And I'm also going to set a mad money on them for bail because you're going to now you're going to go to jail for something you haven't been convicted. They know it's deliberately done that way and i want i actually in law school i went to a prosecutor mill for law school i was like the only public defender in my class everybody else was prosecutor but in going to that process oh yeah trust me it's stress in going to that prosecutor mill you know they pressured me to do an internship at the da's office one summer and it it went the way you would think a person like me in the DA's office. I don't know. Oh, listen, it was terrible.

But I remember the one thing I appreciate is I confirmed that all of the horrible things that I think academically, you think like, oh, you have to parse out racism. And you more so think it's like, oh, if I statistically look at the numbers, you'll realize it's racist. Nah, it's upfront, like upfront there.

They're actively like trying to force and muscle people to sign supporting depositions and because people don't know how it actually works in the maneuvers and what you know what happens from on the legal end so they'll be like you're bringing people and they're like oh i don't want to i don't want to press charges i don't want a criminal case or i want them to have you know uh therapy i want them to get this and they'll be like oh well you need to support if you sign supporting that position i could get them counseling or whatever they really mean is sign this and now i have the document i need to proceed on this criminal case with this person and in the case of there's

a certain amount of days where if that's not signed or they don't have that paperwork if you have somebody in on bail they have to come out you have to you have to get them out so what they do is they force muscle these people sign it sign it now you know and then now this person is stuck in jail so now they're forced to take a plea or want to you know negotiate with you a plea because they're literally going to sit in prison so on a case they were you were never going to be able to prosecute they were never going to be able to get convicted of or whatever but now they're in this position and so and that's that's the unfortunate reality like people in rikers people they hear about places

like rikers but they don't realize rightikers is a pre-trial detention center. If you hear about something that's this infamously awful place, you think it's for infamously awful people. You don't realize it's anybody that gets arrested in New York City for anything. Traffic infraction, jumping the turnstile, whatever. You don't have money. That's where you're at. And Rikers isn't even the worst of its kind. You have Cook County in Chicago where the average person is waiting for their trial in prison four to six years eight years some people in their 11 years doing full bids

on things they have not even had a trial on it's absurd but that's how they that's how they stack it right and we and i think because of that like sort of gap between what the lived experiences of the people who are actually grappling with the system and then like the writer's rooms that are then like, I don't know, like I'm rich. And like, we got off because we got a rich, like a good lawyer. I think that probably feeds into this problem as well. My dad got me a good lawyer

when I was arrested in college for pissing in the street. Oh, right. And that's another trope you see a lot because I think you're seeing these writers reflect back what even their own experience was like i fucking ran over a homeless guy but i got how many how many times you watch a white show and the character like gets arrested and they're they're out like the next scene and you never hear about it for the rest of the show like you know what i mean no charge no case no that's how it's

treated because that is often very much in a reality even on the rare occasion i've like i said i've represented over a thousand people i probably have not represented 30 white people like there were that many wouldn't even i remember all my white clients by name because they're few and far in between and they're always fucking outraged outraged that they're in this i can't listen no one more outraged to you than a white person that's been arrested. They will call you every day. I used to have a white client call me every day and go, so people can just lie on me? And I can go to every day. She couldn't believe it. Couldn't wrap her head around it.

And so that's often with the experiences because even when I'd have them, they'd dismiss it at arraignment. They'd dismiss it right then. They would offer them. I once had a white guy was on a motorcycle did a high speed chase he high speed chase on his motorcycle please i mean he was really he was really on 10 get like gets into an accident jumps off the bike keeps fucking running jumps the fence they eventually get to him they dismiss it at arraignments they would never have done that shit like i i even one time i i represented like back to back so

same arraignment shift literally i have their files did this one immediately did the same judge same prosecutor represented a black guy who's accused of having one blunt they asked for like 3500 bail on him right right immediately right after represent a white guy who was found with a bunch of drugs, the dealer, dealer, white dealer consent to release. Like they'll do. And what's the ground. Or one time I represented a white girl who was accused of some wild shit,

like some wild shit. And I remember looking, I could see the prosecutor next to me and you could see their files, right? Like across. I could, so I could see the pictures of the victim in the in the case in who was an arab guy i could see the pictures of the victim in the hospital so when i see you know this is at bail i'm like oh fuck she going to jail

like they about to show those pictures like they about to you know what i mean there was a white prosecutor she just closed the file and consented to release she just didn't say shit about the picture and i'm not gonna say like that's my client but i'm like right i remember that day being like wow an application like oh this is a different fucking system this is not something i have to academically parse out this is happening real like i'm looking at them like and yo y'all know that i saw y'all just not do this for the black people like i'm here i'm witnessing it and it's like or they'll call you yeah they'll literally call you when it's your white clients the way they talk about it the prosecutor is entirely different they'll they're like that same case with the white girl with the with the arab

victim the prosecutor was like it's advantageful and they called me because they wanted to prosecute the arab guy that was in the hospital based on what she's saying they they know to some degree that she fucked him up he He's in the hospital. She's just saying that he did something to her too. And now they call me like, oh, they want to charge him for a felony

because they can't talk to my client, you know, without my permission. And the prosecutor said to me, well, like, oh, well, you know, you know, she's accused of whatever to him. But, you know, apparently, you know, he lied.

I've never had, that's my story. My story is always, my client didn't lied he lied i've never had that's my story my story is always my client didn't do it i've never had the prosecutor credit my story to the my client's innocent only when i have a white client and they're like yeah must be some misunderstanding yeah yes absolutely white supremacy yeah like with the copaganda like i know we see like we're talking about there's like all these terrible tropes like cop equals good uh you know get your good lawyer and things like that tricia what are like other like because i think those are like and i think those are the most broad versions of things we see but so many other ways that i think this quote-unquote criminal justice system is represented which i think is a total misnomer but what what do you what what else what

are the other ways that like those things are yeah right so of course there there's that overarching idea that like when you have this protagonist who's a cop you're like really emotionally attached to and kind of manipulated into supporting in these movies and tv shows if they do bad things like you still don't consider them bad. So that really affects just the public perception of police violence. But then looking a bit deeper into it. So there's a study called normalizing injustice that was conducted by a nonprofit called color of change. And so they just dive deeper. They do this great numerical study and look at several different shows. And so one thing that I read about was just like disciplining cops who are violent or who do

really step out of line and harm the people that they're interacting with. So in this study, they found that only 3.7% of onscreen wrongful actions faced any investigation. So that totally normalizes cops stepping out of line, hurting people, and then never being punished for it and actually usually being supported for it. And I think this feeds a lot into cases like Breonna Taylor's where the cops, it's like, should they be like, are they going to be punished i mean it takes the system so long to like condemn someone for murdering and it and it usually doesn't and also we need to remember that even when there is right like when people get their civil settlements they the cops aren't punished we pay for that the cops can't be nothing we're paying for that yeah so we're paying nothing

nothing is happening at all yeah and the average part of funding yes all the fun yeah they don't and a lot of cops just get away scot-free like there's nothing done to them another thing that i looked into is sexual violence um so shows like svu they portray these really great detectives working on behalf of survivors of sexual violence. But in reality, like cops perpetrate a lot of sexual violence. Exactly. Cops perpetrate the sexual violence. And then when people who experience it come to the cops, because that's what we're constantly told to do again, like since we're little, we see all these things that, oh, we'll call 911 and the cops will save us when that's just so far from the truth. When we do report sexual violence, well, first of all, people are just scared because they know

how fucked up the system is. But then when you do file a report, the police rarely, rarely do anything. And most people who have already survived this very traumatic experience are just dissatisfied with the response. And then finally finally so in terms of just reforming the criminal justice system there is basically no discussion of that in tv and in movies no yeah no and if it is it's like a it's like a rabble rouser hippie and that's the thing right they fight against any like they completely dismiss any discussion of you want to talk about abolition right of the criminal system they completely dismiss that as though that's so radical we should be talking reform and anything the slightest thing you suggest reform the media then commits it's all of its

energy to attacking that 24 7 you try to do bail reform you try to do things and then suddenly they create entire you know propaganda and waves and discussions and stuff around around fighting that so what it really is, is they don't want any change at all. They like the system as it is. And I think that's an important part is that whenever they're trying to say, you know, the bad apple discussion, I'm like, well, the police disagree with you, right? In a different world. If I have an organization and one person in my organization was a fuck up, right? And I really, I believe that person, what they're doing does not represent this organization.

I'm not going to fight you unless you get rid of that person or, you know, these people are bad, but it's the police department. It's the police unions that say, no, it was okay that they killed him. When did they ever, when did the police unions, when did the police departments, when did the politicians get out and tell you, yeah, that's a bad apple.

Yeah, that's bad. They never, they stand with that officer to the very end, to the very end. And then they do everything that they can can everything that they can around beating the rest of the community into submission right we get let's say it was a bad apple so every time we have a bad apple and let's think about the numbers on that every year in america over this is just shot and killed this is just who police are recording as they shot and killed so that's not all your george floyds that's not your elijah mclean's it's not your eric garners that's not all your George Floyds. That's not your Elijah McClain's.

That's not your Eric Garner's. That's not your Alton Sterling's. That's none of the people that are being killed in another way. And that's none of the police brutality that does not rise to death. So exclude all of that. All your Jacob Blake's. The average police kill, shoot and kill over 1,045 people every year in America. So let's say we got, right.

So we got all of those bad apples and what, maybe five of them, 12 of them for the year, maybe best case, get some kind of like large media attention. And that was the response. They immediately send out militarized police to go beat the protesters,

go arrest the protesters, curfews. And you get a bunch of charges, you get a bunch of videos showing police brutality on video. Even remember when they knocked that old white man down that old man split his head open nope no charges there none of them we just saw uh what yesterday yesterday or the day before nypd punch and beat up a 19 year old girl and eric adams came up and said oh the officers showed great restraint or a few months ago nypPD shot an 18-year-old in the head because he ran through a red light. And Eric Adams defended that too. So you see what I'm

saying? Even if you wanted to go with the bad apple narrative, let's pretend. Okay, so we got thousands. We got thousands of bad apples. And our police departments, the police unions, our media, our politicians, and everybody in power says, no, they're not bad. So then what then? Right. Exactly. Yeah. You lost the messaging war. Yes. Yeah. Right. And then to think about like, how can we use media to change that? Like, how can we change that in movies and TV? And well, yeah, as we talked about, it's just like so racialized. Currently, out of the 27 shows that the study covered, 81% of the showrunners were white men. Out of 275 writers, more than 75% were white and only 9% were black. So the people who are creating these shows

largely don't have any experience with the system that we're dealing with in this country. And so in terms of just what we can do to change it, I mean, one option is just the personal option to not watch shows that depict cops as heroes, as good people, as people who are not violent and coercive. And this could also be a signal to networks that we don't want to watch cops who are portrayed like this. Another idea is to cancel TV shows with cops in general. And this has actually been happening. The series Cops, which ran for around 30 years, was canceled, I believe, in 2020.

And some other networks have also cut police reality series but a lot of people are also saying is it actually? came back in September of last year when people aren't paying attention they announced it yeah they slowly like on Fox Nation

oh my goodness and they just they changed the name to live PD to like on patrol or some other dumb euphemistic or not even euphemistic. Oh my gosh. That's the thing. Another slick thing they do with propaganda too and enough people don't call it out, but what they

love to do when they portray jails and prisons in any of these shows, they have a lot of white people. They have a lot of white people in the prisons and the jails. So it looks, people think, the system is up. No fucking way. think the system is no fucking way. Rikers is New York City. Think about how big New York City is.

Rikers is over 95% black and brown. It's not this. I saw this actually the other day. I was not watching The Flash anymore because The Flash is terrible now. I was watching a video about why The Flash isn't good anymore. They got The Flash in jail jail now which is some bullshit and riverdale did this nonsense too but the flash is in jail and he all around the jail

with none but white people whole jail just full of white people and i'm like even a federal correct right for people in white collar it's like shit or when inventing did y'all watch inventing when that came out on Netflix? Was it last year or this year? I don't know the time. Yeah. You know, with the... Yeah, I'm familiar with that.

That's supposed to be Rikers. Whole nice, white, clean environment. Just like some white girls chilling or whatever. That's what Rikers look like. You didn't even get into... This is a bunch of white what?

A bunch of anisorkins at Rikers? No. And like, that is not the case. But they make it look like that because people become people become so so comfortable with it. But it also becomes ingrained. You don't question it. There's so much to it's even to me, the scariest parts are the scariest things when it comes to developing our consciousness, our racial or shared consciousness as a society. Isn't what they explicitly tell us. It's what they don't. And we don't pay attention to it. It's like when you think about the fact that the criminal system, it's a legal

system. It's called the criminal justice system. That's intentional. That's inherently intentional because if you, the first thing you learn, you associate justice, your whole concept of justice is criminal prosecution. That's what it is. You taught that from the very beginning. Yes. For you, justice is like people don't even think of any other way to

respond or that there are other ways to respond to anything or crime or problems right justice is police arrest you and put the bad guy in jail that's what justice is to people and i've even encouraged you to question and i realized that in college when my professor i was you know running on like i usually do about the system being racist and yada, yada, yada. And my racist advisor was a white lady who was just like, you know, you sound like you'd be a person who would be into abolition. And I was like, you mean abortion? Getting rid of the prison altogether? No jail? Even as a person who fought the criminal system, I knew the criminal system is racist. And I was taught to think of the criminal system like how you think of water and air and oxygen you know what i mean

we have a civil society like right you think you have to like that is a as a foundation that must exist and you have to work from there on how do i correct this thing rather than the thing being bad because you're taught that this like man-made institution is is just you know vital and that to me is a great issue but i think as far as how do we how do we stop seeing it at the end of the day they do what we like right like media if you think about it media just what we're watching our shows how things are cast has changed drastically present day to what it was shit just 10 years ago let alone even as a kid there's so much things that's changed just because we've changed as a society how we we respond to it. You think all these diverse ensemble

casts, they keep getting in stuff just because they want to? You think they diversify and the gossip girl in all these shows because they think it's cute? It's because people respond in a particular way. So if you start calling this out, bitching and da-da-da, yeah, the right little bitch and moan on Twitter and true social

or whatever, they'd be making their noise. But the reality is people who want to lie in their pockets will, they will start making the corrections and the changes because you don't want to watch it like that. So I think we got to call out propaganda, but not just even in the shows that explicitly have cops. It's the way, even just the idea of these kind of systems

or hierarchies are put in everything else. And that's what really, to me, is the more dangerous. All the things that you're watching and you don't realize that it's like this. It's enforcing the exact same kind of dynamic and power relations even without the explicit police. Right. It seeps in. Exactly.

Well, Alimi, it's been such a pleasure having you. We've got to have you back. This is, yeah, truly an amazing guest. And I feel like I could talk to you for a whole day but what uh where can people find you follow you experience you find me on twitter at miss alurin m-s-o-l-u-r-i-n i'm that on all social media i have a sub stack named uh alurnati i love it where i write my essays every month and i'll be on the hill on tuesday all right thank you y'all amazing uh and is there a tweet or some other work of social media you've been enjoying honestly it's

foolishness jack uh there's there was a tweet there's a there's a twitter thread right now like what's your favorite moment in reality tv and the quote tweets they are gold i am just going through flavor of love i love new york heaven okay listen oh yeah i have a theory that january 6th happened because we didn't check that white girl who was talking out her neck all black um uh buck wild you know what you know what though we let buck wild cook to our own detriment you know listen i i watched it the other day and i was like yo new york was ahead of her you know, with just like not being with the shit. Like New York was like, she was really ahead of time.

And I think back then I was like, I feel like you might not even realize like, why are you hating that fuck while I'm watching that? I was like, get her, get her. I was like, get her ass, get her out. Yeah, it's so weird how differently I respond. I'm like, see, we let that shit slide. I was like, oh, you know what you work with that's a gap gap like tiffany pollard yes me too and uh trisha pleasure having you as always where can people find you follow you and is there a tweet you've been enjoying oh okay so i don't

have social media so that's right i always act like I'm surprised by this. I've still been enjoying the view out my window, though. Nice. Good. And you can listen to more of my work at People Place Power. It's a podcast I made about activism around the world. It's on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and everywhere else. Amazing. Miles, where can people find you?

What's a tweet you've been enjoying? Twitter, Instagram, at Miles of Grey. You like basketball? Check out milesandjack.madboosties. Not badboosties. Madboosties. That's our basketball podcast. The league is so close.

So close to the league starting up again. And also, if you like terrible reality shows and weed, check me and Sophia Alexander out on 420 Day Fiance, where we just talk about our favorite mess of a show 90 day fiance okay some tweets that i like first up is actually it's really just uh first one uh worm adderall at underscore underscore mary boy tweeted our monster truck rallies a competition or is it just like a monster truck recital how do we look at that is there a competition uh and then at papa pishu uh tweeted biden and the dems got exactly five percent saltier and the republicans started acting like an italian football player faking the injury

rolling around on the ground holding their ankle. Oh my god. They call us fascists. We are though, but come on now. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien and I don't know. Somebody, Depths of Internet Archive is retweeting some interesting stuff

from like Paul. I'm scared of hackers because this is from November 2003. they hack into ns uh into nasa five percent they steal things four percent they are violent sociopaths four percent they use amphetamines and speed seven percent they help osama bin laden 14 they're un-american five percent they smell bad 58 percent Wow. Yeah. So it's just fun to take a little snapshot of how stupid

we were extremely recently. You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and a website, DailyZeitgeist.com where we post our episodes and our footnotes. Where we link off to the information that we talked

about in today's episode as well as the song that we think you might enjoy miles what song do we think people might enjoy this one so we're gonna go out on a nice little instrumental track from ivy lab it's called all day swimming look it's hot out there everybody just dream of just swimming all day cooling your body off in the water uh the beat is very, you know, it's drippy. I don't know how to say it. It sounds like you're at a pool party, but maybe on an alien planet. But it's so close, though. So this is Ivy Lab with All Day

Swimming. They should have called it Alien Pool Party, but they're lost. The Daily Zeitgeist is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's going to do it for us this morning, but we're back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we will talk to you all then. Bye. Bye. Bye. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series,

Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry. Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. I'm Carrie Champion, and this is Season 4 of

Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's basketball. And on this new season,

we'll cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio apps, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke.