The Daily Zeitgeist - How Can We Win, Oscars? LOL 6.17.20

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

In episode 653, Miles and guest host Jamie Loftus are joined by Joelle Smith to discuss the oscars being delayed and good films to watch, and more! Plus we're joined by activist and author Kimberly Jones to talk about her viral video "How Can We Win" and how education of black history is lacking, and more.FOOTNOTES: The Oscars have been delayed until April 2021 WATCH: How Can We Win by: Kimberly L. Jones Kimberly's Instagram: @kimberlylatricejones Kimberly's Twitter: @kimlatricejones Kimberly Jones website WATCH: Chloe x Halle - Tipsy Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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by subscribing to iHeart True Crime Plus only on Apple Podcasts. Uh-oh, hello the internet and welcome to Season 138, Episode 3 of the Daily Zeitgeist, a production of iHeart Radio. This is the podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness. And, you know, just officially we look in there and say, okay, so fuck the Koch brothers. Okay, fuck Fox News. Okay, fuck Rush Limbaugh. Okay, fuck Buck Sexton. Okay, fuck capitalism.

Okay, what else? Any TERF novelists out there who are feeling themselves too much, like J.K. Rowling. So, yeah, it's Wednesday, June 17th, 2020. My name is Miles Gray, a.k.a. Ya Boy Kusama. Experimental artist. Experimental artist, not experimental artist. And I am thrilled

to be joined by today's co-host, the very lovely and hilarious, just the queen of Zambonis herself, Jamie Loftus. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's Jamie, a.k.a. Small Ice

Resurfacer. We're going generic name from now on. You said Small Ice Resurfacer? Is that what a Zamboni is? Yeah, that's... Oh, yes, Little Zamboni. Wow. Yeah, Little... There you go. We got there.

A.k.a. Chuck E. Cheese is going bankrupt, but I don't give a fuck anymore. I don't give a little, there you go. There you go, we got there. AKA Chuck E. Cheese is going bankrupt, but I don't give a fuck anymore. I don't give a fuck about, you know. People keep tweeting at me about Chuck E. Cheese going out of business and I'm like, we need to talk about defunding the police. I don't want to talk to you about Chuck E. Cheese this week. I think because, you know,

your brand is so inextricably tied. It's like when Taco Bell, everyone's like, you know, they support Trump. You got to stop eating Taco Bell. I'm like, yeah, no problem. No problem. No problem. But everyone's like Taco Bell. It's so easily done.

I'm like, it's hard when you reduce your identity to like three things people buy at a store or can buy. It is. I mean, and I would never ask someone to know more than three things about me. It's boring. It gets so boring. Well, Jamie, the architect of Chuck E. Cheese and the police state's downfall, please help me welcome today's third seat, a very special guest, the wonderful, talented producer, writer, you know, also just a super producer, too.

People don't know this uh on team iheart and also past guests this is not her first time uh please help me welcome joelle monique hi guys hi joelle hi how are you it's good to see you it's really good to see you too jamie uh how am i not prepared to answer that question that's all we need to say i was gonna say uh how energized are you to burn it down oh so ready there we go i like that we have to focus on a direction more than uh sometimes the the aggravation that we're experiencing all at the same time um you know joelle we're gonna get to know you a little bit more uh first we're gonna let people what we're gonna talk about um coming up in little bit more. First, we're going to let people know what we're going to talk about.

Coming up in the second act, we have a very, very special guest. There's no doubt you have probably seen her very amazing interview that went viral that I believe is titled, How Do We Win or How We Win? Kimberly Jones, who's an activist and author, she will be joining us to speak with us joining us to speak with us and see I'm I am not very uh eloquent today but yes I we can't wait for you guys uh to check that out because she is fantastic um and I mean if you haven't heard this interview just search her name and how we win the episode and watch it yeah it's if you were on the i mean hopefully you're not on the fence and listening to this show uh but if you needed even more of a reason to wake the fuck up uh please uh ingest that with your espresso in the

morning joelle yes what is something from your search history that is a little bit revealing about who you are i'm gonna go with looking at the lyrics to ungodly hour okay every song but mostly tipsy as i'm listening to it a lot and if you haven't heard ungodly hour it's chloe and hallie's new um album uh that they're beyonce's protege their sisters they have style oozing out of their skin you maybe saw them like was it a dick i don't know what time is anymore a long time ago when they were young girls they sang the national anthem at a basketball game and it was revolutionary and people were like how are they doing these harmonies it's so weird and so good and the kind of thing you could only do if you were like in the same womb as a person and spent your whole life like singing together right they are so weird and interesting and cool and that album is so it's like a lovely distraction in that it's not like

don't look at black lives matter or don't think about like the protest or the anger we feel it very much is like accessible to all of those feelings but is not about any of those things and that has been very helpful yeah i uh they're like i was saying before they have it all they got it they're like truly they have like the artistry just shooting out of them like their aura is it doesn't feel like a label found some talented people and was like let me let us get you a stylist and and and some makeup and they'll make this right like they have i don't know like it's it's very refreshing to see because they clearly have their own aesthetic it's a it's basically what the kids call a whole ass vibe

um essentially that's what they're calling it so the kids are calling it miles is our new gen z correspondent gen z correspondent reports live from gen Ever since, wasn't it you saying how those Gen Z takes on millennials? I'm like, yo, I salute Gen Z. They were so funny. I delight in those. They are the most freshest generation. I love Gen Z so much. Yeah.

Please call us out on our stupidity. I love it. Especially on that Harry Potter bullshit. In a way, I feel so vindicated. I didn't with harry potter and i'm watching people like i don't understand like why would she i'm like i don't know y'all but that whole thing was not a vibe to me at the time i was like untrained harry potter from myself i was never there but yeah i think maybe i wonder if the love between millennials and gen z is the first time millennials like hey man those kids man like i look i don't get the the dance the coordinated tiktok dances and shit but other

than that like as humans they seem to be all right man the millennials have been uh stomped on their entire existence since the name millennial came out we were like oh those kids and their facebook and then it was their children their children forever despite the fact that science is like well yeah our adolescence is stretching as we live longer. That's how things happen in creatures. I think by the time that we were like the next generation, I guess we're like, yeah, maybe we went through a lot. I don't know. Y'all seem pretty smart.

We're happy to listen. Whatever. They're children. What do I care? We also have the great honor of being financially stomped on twice now. Oh, yeah. It's almost kinky. Yeah.

The fin dom. Yeah. Just dominate us, please. I kind of wonder. I feel like, well, I guess I'm curious on what you think. I feel like the same friendly kinship doesn't really exist between millennials and Gen X. I would like for that to be true. friendly kinship doesn't really exist between millennials and Gen X. Like I,

I would like for that to be true, but no, they're like, don't make fun of rage against the machine. Like they're so, they're like very like, Oh, they tend to.

So I, I love many a Gen Xer and many a Gen Xer who's a friend, but like if we're looking at the stereotypes of the two generations, it's certainly a Gen Xers tend to be more pessimistic. And I don't think millennials can stand it, and I don't think they can understand our optimism. I feel like we're just really butting heads on like – we're just going to keep trying. We're going to do it. I believe my fellow man, and they're like, you could just go home and eat a pizza. I don't know if you guys know, but all of this like angsty, like interactive progression, you could just go home and listen to a band rage about it instead, which I can appreciate.

Sometimes it's necessary. But yeah, I think that we are kind of, we seem almost polar opposites as generations. They were like ignored. We were like overly loved by our parents.

It's a lot. Yeah. And I can see that resentment too where they're like, why are y'all coddling these fucking babies? Because that was the first thing coming out.

Like, I guess I was sort of aging out of it, but as an elder millennial, like, it was all this like participation trophy crap where they're like oh my god you're just gonna give them fucking trophies i mean we used to you know we would arrive at our place of self-loathing and low self-esteem by not getting the trophy i'm just why did why they don't get that experience now to be fair we didn't like that either that was the the boomers they did that to us and we

didn't appreciate it so if that helps the bond between gen x and millennials at all i think maybe because we're broke and and gen z's broke we're like the we're like yeah cool hop on in but like gen x they they got lucky man they were able to build some wealth and own some real estate and shit like that it's a much different game some of them it's like a half and half game for those guys yes that's why gen x like cinema is fascinating to me i wonder if there's been like a ton like just a study of it because there's so many teen movies that are like i hate my parents that provide for me and love me so much like fuck you and then you're just like uh you know and then it's like millennials are over here like we don't have any money or it's like we love our parents that did everything they could i mean

they really did it they really did all they could like they're boomers nonetheless like we could uh but but yeah they're trying they they oh my god they're trying well i've tried to talk to my parents about like what it means to defund the police and why I'm a police abolitionist and what the differences are. And they're, you know, in their 50s and 60s, a lot of their friends became cops. And they're like, defund the police? How is that even possible? And I'm like, okay, well, have you looked at any of their budgets and the size? Maybe compare it to schools.

Education's really important to you guys. Maybe you'll see it then. It's a work in progress. Right. I'm sure if you even did like a small exercise, I mean like you have $10 million and you have to fund six different departments in your city. You know, like health, policing, education, da, da, da, da, da. How would you split the money up? This is why I'm learning. And then they'll be like oh i would do this i think it's i think you know it's a shame these teachers have to like literally

scavenge for supplies to teach our children how to read um i think i'll put more money there and then just be like okay well this is how the city looks at it because it's all lopsided now i think that's step one is like see so already it's at odds with even how your idea of a just you know budget would work so what you're saying is millennials need to have children teach these lessons to their children in front of their parents right so yeah definitely i'm seeing the vision here they're like joelle i didn't put it together until i saw you teaching your child about this and Exactly. I'm sorry I wasn't able to explain that to you as a parent. I have failed.

I have failed. Joelle, what is something you think is underrated? Underrated? The number of missing black women in this country right now. And if I can really turn your audience's attention to Brea Pruden, she went missing in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She is my friend's sister. There is an official missing report filed with the New Jersey police. So you guys can give them a call if you

have no other way. But if you are a Twitter person, I want you to please go to Black Magic. It's spelled funny, so listen closely. It's Black, B-L-A-C-K, Magic, M-A-J-I-I-K. Her name is Tora Shea. If you can leave her a message, that's her sister. I can confirm myself that that's her actual sister. She will not be harmed if you let Tora know where she is. You know, we worry about sending police after our missing girls because we know what happens when police interact with black women on occasion. She's been missing since Thursday.

So if we can find her, that would be amazing. I know she's not even since Thursday. So if we can find her, that would be amazing. Yeah. I know she's not even close to the only one. There's so many women either missing. I mean, it's just as crazy the number of women who are currently actively trying to get out of violent or emotionally violent situations in the middle of a pandemic. Yeah. It's a lot. So, yeah, underrated.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot. So yeah, underrated. Yeah. I feel like just the past few weeks have presented, depending on the level of engagement, like an Omni crisis and just, it's, it's, it's hard. And just to know too, like, especially when we first for the amount of times people really ask these questions about like, what, you know, like, but what have the, what are you going to do without the police it's like we're we've fundamentally completely emphasized the wrong parts of our society where it allows you know black women to completely fall through the cracks and women all

many women to fall through the cracks too and it's almost like again very often like fall fall out of the news cycle so quickly too like it's it's yeah well you know people in those newsrooms only have the palate so much to actually report on the ills of this country because you know the people who are really like when you read these stories out now about the like people who are running these newsrooms like in print or tv how many of them have just fucked off to like you know vacation areas to try and just bury their heads in the sand and just sort of do this work remotely as they like experience this other version of reality. It's just, it's just weird that we also don't have

conversations around how wealth can bias the reporting that we have in this country too. It's just like, most of the time it's like, well, you know, it's a, it's an angry guy talking about men's rights or a woman is talking about feminism or whatever, but there's never this like class consciousness applied to media coverage either. Um, and I think that's one of the reasons too, where, oh, when shit was burning down, you better believe they love those cameras on there because that gets them fired up as people who are land owning, you know, the landed gentry or what have you. But when it's peaceful, and that's like about a truly, you know,

multiracial, multiclass movement, it's like, ugh, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. It's not... I'm a big proponent of ending the 24-hour news cycle. I miss curated news. I think as we continue to try to just... Like, if cnn has like

breaking news it's breaking news for like a full eight hours and then at some point you're like this is no longer breaking i reported that and now you have people arguing but no types of conclusions which i think really sort of just irritates and agitates the the average person because they don't have time to learn everything they need to learn while also like feeding their kids and doing their work and keeping their house up like it's it's so much information to try to take in sort through i get a lot of like my like activism news from twitter like what's happening first and try and then trying to aggregate that and figure out like what's true and like back it up with like a reputable source

is that a reporter on the ground or just a citizen what happened before and after that camera got turned off like it is so much work trying to just figure out like what is actually happening in the moment um yeah i don't know it's a struggle and then it feels like on top of that it's like i feel the exact same way where it seems like Twitter, as infuriating as it is and can be and will always be, is the best way to get firsthand accounts of what's going on. It doesn't really seem like there's other ways. I feel like anyone who's ever been on Twitter is well aware that we are not getting full, complete stories due to a number of things but but it feels like you're being given an additional task because every time that i i you know go on twitter to find out okay what actually happened here and then what am i able to do to fact check or verify

any of this then you also are sort of burdened with going to people in your life who do just get their information from the news and have to tell them like, Hey, that is not the full story of just, I feel like a lot of people had to explain, um, what happened to go to that. Yeah.

But like to, to their parents, like the way that they're like, that the generations before us consume information is so different and it's done with a level of trust that we don't have yeah trying to explain to my parents that like i mean early before before they caught wind of like oh if we say that the cops are beating these people like people might tune in and be interested in that like the initial news of the protests were like people are being arrested and bombed like

there's fires everywhere and they had to like very detailed explain like because my parents like don't go out there like it's dangerous and anything could happen to you and i was like i let's just see what happens i was at the very first protest in la and like the speed at which things changed there was very much not reported on at first it was very much like oh look they blew up a card it's like with three hours in a park very passionately naming the people who have been killed by the police very detailed explanations for what it meant to defund the police and where we wanted these funds to go and why there shouldn't be cops in schools like all like the the idea that these things aren't being explained or it's got to be so like awful for activists, like people actually out there writing the

doctrine and and explaining it and like in the streets and in our government buildings, like trying to advocate for all of us regular people. I can't even imagine like how upsetting it is to constantly be misquoted and being told that like, oh, you hate the police and we hate the system the police run on and we're telling you that it's killing citizens and you're treating us like we're in a war zone it's like a never-ending cycle of and i say never-ending because when everything first started happening i went all the way back to 1912 and looked at every race riot and if you look at every race riot you can go from the 1912, the 1968, the 1992 riots here, even the stuff that happened in Ferguson.

It's all the same catalyst, and it all has the exact same result. Yeah. It's white supremacy re-exerting its dominance again. And I think that's even what we were talking about, how the news, like even the narrative of the news has been hijacked too, because it went from being another black man has been killed by police. And it's just, it's casual. The way they did it was with impunity as if nothing could happen to them. This is part and parcel of the cycle of racial violence that we have in this country. But in this specific context, the cycle of violence that's perpetrated by the over-policing of black communities. And very narrowly, we could have began a discussion about, OK, now this is really about a broader issue about white supremacy and the nature of how we are policing our neighborhoods.

Not the, it sounds like the police and the people don't like each other, which is what they pivot to, to completely take the teeth out of what you know this isn't because people aren't getting along with the police it's because the police are murdering people they are lynching them symbolically what have you and quite literally in some places now i think there have been five lynchings in the last week in this country uh in the last seven days or five days um literal lynchings where the media really has this thing again where it can only talk about it for a second where then they go okay well let's make this about the it's about i think it's about defunding the police and let's get up in arms with this idea of that people just want chaos i think let's talk about that let's be disingenuous in how we even report

this even though we're smart enough to know that they're not saying we won't, they act as if people are saying we want every police car to vanish at the snap of a finger. And then that's how we're going to do life. No. And it's disingenuous for them to even present it like that and say like, so what are you asking for? I think their responsibility too, is to use your own intelligence to say to read what people are asking for to present that information and then move forward because again if this if the the solutions are too uh too i think they threaten to upset the balance of power too much that they can't actually speak about that constantly on the news because it would be a conversation about capitalism and and the institution of white supremacy the question i've been asking myself a lot lately is what does justice look like?

Like if I'm not for prisons, I'm absolutely not. I mean, we understand that our prisons don't reform. We understand that our prisons basically cut our citizens off at the knee when they try to reenter society. We understand that people do bad things for a myriad of reasons and that we don't prosecute an even level across the board. There's no, it does not feel like justice, even to me in cases of murder. It doesn't feel like justice to put someone in a cage essentially for years at a time sometimes in solitary confinement with no way of accessing people without being able to properly there's a limited access to education using their labor as essentially a slave force in order to make really stupid products like it's infuriating the idea

that that are the best way forward that we as a country can do is just to lock up millions of people. And I don't have an answer for what justice does look like yet. I know it's not an eye for an eye. I know it's not do that crime to that person. That doesn't feel to me like a just result. But I think that if we can at least continue to ponder that question and discuss that, that we can end up in a better state for how we handle crime or misconduct. There has to be a better way. Yeah. Well, I think, you know, what we found again is, you know, African slaves are brought to this country for labor, and then you exploit the

labor to make money. And then when the practice of slavery became, you know, its time had come, there was still this idea of like, well, there still has to be a way to use this population to create revenue in some way that can't just end. So then you pivot to criminalizing the poverty that you create, the situation you put them in, and then you criminalize the situation they're in. So now you don't need to make money off of their labor as you used to, whether that's making fabrics or picking cotton or what have you or other cash crops. But now it's that, well, no, we can completely disenfranchise them to the point that crimes of desperation will become endemic in this community.

And then we'll create a police force to clean it up. And then that's more money for prisons to be built. That's money for people who make the handcuffs. That's money for people who make the stuff for the police. That's where that new revenue suck is coming from. And it's just been recontextualized. And I think that's what people also need to see that this poverty isn't just limited to black people. This poverty is now being experienced by many, many people. And it's clear that the government really has no interest in solving that because that would require spending money to actually lift people out rather than making money off of not doing anything about the problem. It just makes more sense. Like,

well, I can make a ton of money if I don't do anything about it. So why do that? I'll make more money rather than spend money. Wouldn't you rather live in a rich society as opposed to be rich in a poor society? It just seems so unconscionable to me to like hoard billions, even a billion. Like when we know that there are like kids with super old books that aren't being properly educated, when we understand that like most of our bridges are set to collapse any day now like it's it's crazy the amount of just i don't know selfishness self-centeredness i i it doesn't seem strange to me to want to live in a community of like well educated stable people people who have easy access mental health care i don't know we're not going to solve all the problems here but these are all the things I've been thinking about. No, but these are the things I think,

but this is the work, right? This is part of even for other people who have, you know, by their socioeconomic, what have you factors, have not had to think about these things. But these are the, these are kinds of really big questions that we need to be asking right now

if we're going to move forward in some kind of way that looks just. It's just that, and it feels overwhelming, but I think America, we've had this, it's like when you're in a shitty relationship and all your friends are like, dude, break up. What the fuck are you doing?

This is stupid. I don't know. You can't fix him. I don't know. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. No, no, no, no.

It's bad. No, this is bad. Get out. But in your mind it's just not a it's just not a possibility to do it and that's why you don't do it because just you haven't even thought of a world outside of it i think a lot of people need to begin thinking outside of what this next step is it's not that this is a problem that can't be solved it's just that like we really need to actually talk about it and on top top of it, the work has been done. Let's not, let's not,

the abolition of police and racial justice in terms of the judicial system, that has been a very much black-led field of academia that has also been put on the back burner because surprise, ding, ding, ding, white supremacy. And a lot of academics aren't interested in this field because it's coming a lot from the people that are experiencing it

and are actually giving textures and articulating what this is and and synthesizing it to offer solutions so the work is being done the work is out there but it's on everyone to be able to become literate in these things so we can have a vision of what it is i mean shit everyone saw avatar and they could figure out what fucking uh fucking pangea or whatever the fuck pandora looked like so that's the same thing like people need a vision so that way they can move angela davis wrote a really great piece called our prisons obsolete it's free pretty much all over the internet you can google it real quick and get yourself like a base layer education of what it means to potentially remove prisons from our society. And I think that's a really good place to start if you're interested.

Joelle, what's something you think is overrated? White people who are tired of protesting already. I don't care. Yeah, we were talking about that yesterday. Keep it to yourself. I'm talking specifically to one white woman. She doesn't know who she is, and I'm not going to write her because I don't have the headspace. But, girl, you have so much money, so much access in your community, so much everything.

And for you to open your mouth and your space to say that you're tired and here's a way to keep soldiering on is an insult to everybody who has to just live in black skin at any point in this country. to just live in black skin at any point in this country and specifically it's an insult to um the leaders on the ground who've been doing the work for decades actively pursuing justice not just for themselves but their kinfolk um and you look suspect in the light i don't believe you're here for us and i'm tired of you having a platform you're overrated all right i can't wait to find out who you're talking about i know it's like i can't wait to go off mine it i mean yeah to to my fellow white girls listening uh no one wants to hear it like no one wants to hear it it's like if i don't know the self-care posts are so just connected to so many infuriating things but now more than ever yeah if if you're not black and advocating for self-care to be able to maintain your sanity through a very trying

month uh that's one thing but when it's people are like i don't know like just take a bath like we get it like it's so crazy out there and like the brunch spots closed. Let's just really harmonize. It's tough seeing these sort of performative posts and things like that, but I think people will be exposed at some point down the road when their head is completely out the game because there's just so much to do. So much to do. And finally, Joel, what's a myth?

What is something that people think is true, you know, to be false or vice versa? White people know what they're doing. You know, I don't I don't believe that people are ignorant about race anymore. And if you are, it's absolutely 1000 percent a choice. You know what you're doing. You understand what it is to be racist. You've had the awkward moments you've understand how you are complicit or a part of the system and uh if you're not doing

anything to change that then you are the problem and you can no longer play coy about it yeah i mean that's i i find myself just have like there was a level where you could let someone get away with their intellectual trickery uh unveiled racism but i have a feeling i mean me personally and i see it happening on the internet everywhere where there's a certain level where there's a certain level of discourse people are not willing to accept anymore uh whether that's like kind of like you know you see people popping up with like the you know this nascar coming out with that's like uh back the blue and the driver's like no man i'm just i got love for both sides it's like bruh that's that's old that's race we know that's racism you can't love me and love the place impossible you can't

do it it's impossible um it's it's a lot of work the the thing for people though who are tired back to your other point um you know if you're tired then start putting your energy into getting this equality because then maybe we could stop talking about it when we start we start moving in that direction so yeah you're hey there's a very easy way to end you could use your privilege and just blow this motherfucker out and we can go home you know tomorrow if white people got on the same page you could you could talk to your grandmas you really could you really could i mean y'all really could if you really wanted to and they all said nope you know what no nope nope nope not doing it we're gonna listen these black people have been studying their oppression and know it very well

they have suggestions i think we should hear from them They're saying to get rid of the police and put more money into their communities. And then when we ask, well, what does it look like when you do the fund the police? They say, well, how many cops are driving around your neighborhood? How many squad cars can you count driving by the front of your house in one hour or two hours or one day or one week? And how many cops in your neighborhood are out policing outside of your neighborhood? Yeah. And what are they doing when they're outside of that space? And this is a huge part of the problem with police is the fact that they are bringing in a lot of people from outside the neighborhood who don't know the culture, who don't know the people, who are ready to just attack.

And they have no concept of what it is to keep that neighborhood safe. And they have no concept of what it is to keep that neighborhood safe. I mean, we just need to get people who have the heart to care for people to be like if they want to be anything close to what we're calling police anymore. The first step is I'm not. If if a police pulls up and says, hey, what the fuck are you doing over here? Hey, come here. Come here. Come here.

No, no, no. That's not that's not that's not what the face of policing should be. It should be seeing someone destitute and telling them, I'm going to take you somewhere for safety or checking in on somebody and saying, I understand that you need help and let me get that for you because that's my role as someone who is to serve and protect the people of this community rather than to be suspicious of and brutalize. It's the difference between cops handing out PPE in Manhattan and busting people in the Bronx. It's that sort of level of difference in protection and civil service, really, I think is what we're talking about. And I think that the role that officers perform now should just be civil service,

which is not about catching the bad guys, but about uplifting your community. And I don't think we can do it with police. I don't think you can do it with the same star that slave catchers held. I don't think you can do it under the institutions that for years have sort of hidden and protected police from any kind of accountability. And that's why I think they have to be abolished. It's not that I want these people out of a job. I just want whatever you were doing in the police force to be redirected to a community civil service unit that can better support the community as opposed to terrorizing it. Yeah, because the problem isn't crime. The problem is the environment that is creating the crime. So please address the environment. Yes, that's the issue.

It's not the crime. The crime is happening because you are not supporting people. It's okay. It's not. That's the crime is the byproduct. And y'all are mistaking the smoke for the fire. Okay. All right. Let's take a quick break and we'll be back with Kimberly Jones after this.

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All you need to do is sign up at Katie Couric dot com slash good taste. That's K-A-T-I-E-C-O-U-R-I-C dot com slash good taste. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did. And we are back. And we have a very special guest today. Someone who I think most people, if you've been engaged at all with social media and the goings on in our country, have probably seen a very amazing interview with this woman. She's an author and activist. Her name is Kimberly Jones. Kimberly, welcome to the Daily Zeitgeist.

Thank you for stopping by. Thank you guys for having me. Thank you so much for stopping by. I think everybody, myself included, the second I saw your video clip, which has been viewed millions of times now, I think it's called How We Win, just describing the state of racial inequality and how white supremacy and economic inequality has affected black people in this country, I think resonated with many people because of the clarity of your words and the emotion that you're conveying. I mean, it was one of the few things I feel like consistently many people were talking about because for whatever reason, your metaphor about the rounds of Monopoly

passing black people by and not being able to build wealth really stuck with people. And I'm just so, again, so pleasured and so honored that you would stop by and talk with us. Anytime. Where are you calling from right now? I live in Atlanta, but I'm originally from Chicago, but I've been living in Atlanta now

for about 20 years. Nice. So I just want to ask you, you know, with that video becoming viral and for good reason, what do you think is sort of happening? Like, I think for some people, we feel like a lot of white Americans are having the realization or the connection between intellectually understanding that racism exists and then the connecting that with the emotional parts. What sort of from the response to your video have how have you been sort of seeing just sort of the evolution of how we are even discussing racism in this country? It's really interesting because what I've received on my end is more of a global response because I get messages from like Israel, New Zealand,

you know, Great Britain, Australia, Africa, and people are applying it to the systemic racism that is in their country that they are either now learning to grapple with or have been experiencing and not knowing how to express. But particularly in America, the most interesting thing has been a lot of the history and what I talked about, people were unfamiliar with. The amount of people have told me they had never heard of Tulsa, they had never heard of Rosewood, was astounding to me, especially because I honestly, I'm keeping track of the cities where instances like that happen. And right now I'm up to 29.

And so it's this notion that there has been this hidden history that informs how we view our current state that people haven't had access to. You know, the way that history is written in our history books, it's a very one-sided story. If the victor is writing the story, then, you know, that's the way they're going to write it. And so a lot of what I'm receiving is people just being like, you know, it took a bunch of the pieces for me to put it together for the big picture to all make sense to me. And I think a lot of times when it's not your experience and you're not seeing it on a daily basis, then you don't understand the saturation of it. Because I feel like I've even had that conversation, not just with white people. I've also had that conversation with the bourgeois Black community.

had that conversation with the bourgeois Black community, right? So people who are in situations where they've never lived in the hood or they've never lived in a working class neighborhood. So they've never been around on a Friday night when the officers are just sitting awaiting to write tickets to people, to grab people, to hope that people have something going wrong. There was a lawsuit here in Atlanta in 2015 where a bunch of police officers actually sued the county because they said the county was requiring them to go to these marginalized communities and basically like create reasons to give people tickets so that they can meet the budget bottom line. So but if you're not in a neighborhood where you're watching this consistent harassment, then it doesn't seem real to you. Because the thing is, we talk a lot about the people who have been murdered, as we should, because those cases deserve justice and they deserve communication. But what people are not talking about are the daily indignities that people suffer at the hand of the police. I myself have been a victim of police brutality on two different occasions.

And so fortunately, it's not always fatal. But there is a certain level of just consistent not always fatal, but there is a certain level of just consistent harassment about being judge, jury, and sometimes executioner in the streets. And then also about handling one group one way and handling another group another way. The last time that I was a victim of police brutality, I was in the car with a dear friend who's Latinx and they took her identification, yet they still ran her through ICE, even though she is a, even though she's a national, they still just to mess with her, ran her through ICE and detained her for hours. And so there's all of this kind of stuff that's happening that, that if it's not targeted at you, how would you know? And you would believe that we've got to be making it up, right? Because your neighbor's a cop and he's nice.

And you would believe that we've got to be making it up, right? Because your neighbor's a cop and he's nice. Do you think, you know, we're, I think the next step, right, is for a lot of people to understand how white, how pervasive white supremacy is, or basically that it's foundational to everything in this country, that to then move past it, right, that we also have to begin, like you're saying, if we're going to have these realizations, right, if people are going to say like, wow, our neighborhoods are over policed, what do you think the ability is or how much faith do you have because in people to really keep this ball moving, because now you have the president handing out or decreeing with this very lukewarm, it's not even lukewarm, it's

bullshit. It's bullshit reforms. It's not, it's not anything. It's not anything. It's not anything. If anything, it's nice for the police. And it's just reform because, you know, around here, I think everybody shares the same feeling that reforms is just fancy talk for delaying equality and justice. That's all reforms do. It's just a delaying tactic. It's not moving to the point we're trying to get to. moving to the point we're trying to get to. So when you see these things where, you know, I think a lot of people are going to say, wow, well, the president is calling for the creation of a database of misconduct. So then that way people will be, you know, on record if they're, if they're violating people and committing these transgressions, or they will also maybe add more social workers to the mix to be first responders. Do you think that, do you think the next struggle is really getting people to see that these are just completely think that, do you think the next struggle is really getting people to see that these are just completely ineffective? And do you, I mean, how willing do you feel people are to really begin to have these sober conversations about what defunding and

abolition looks like of our modern policing system? I don't, I don't, I don't think that people really are ready to have the conversation in the way in which they're giving lip service to it at this moment. Because I think that you see that in these types of plans that are getting rolled out. Right. So you're saying create a database where you can see these these transactions that kind of almost semi already exist. Right. So you look at the case of the police officer or the police officers who were involved in pulling those kids out and tasing them over at Clark Atlanta. Well, there was a murder of a young man who was suffering from mental illness here in Atlanta in 2016, Jamerion Robinson, who the officers put 76 bullets in him. They fired over 90 rounds at him and 76 bullets hit his body. Oh, one of the

officers that was involved in the case with Jamarian Robinson, which his mother still has not received, you know, any resolve for, was one of the officers who pulled those kids out of the car. That officer has already had several, you know, he has had several instances of misconduct that have been documented, that have been reported by the people, that his superiors and the union are aware of, yet he was still in the force and he was still in the streets and able to harass somebody new that night. So that system's already in place. That's internal affairs. That's already a system. So to pretend as if though it's the creation of something new

is comical. It's like, no, you don't want to. You don't want to change anything. You're aware that the common, the average American citizen is not aware of the systems that are already in place. So you can push forth the ones that are already in place and say, look, we're going to do these amazing, awesome things. And it's like these amazing, awesome things already exist and are already not working. And I'm on to you, sir. Right. Do you think like we have that opportunity to, I mean, like you're saying, we're not ready to have that conversation, but it seems like a lot of people are willing to at least acknowledge the pathology of white supremacy in this country. And the idea that black bodies are a threat and disposable as part of this conversation,

because that's how police are viewing, uh, these, any marginalized community, especially black and brown people in this country. Uh, but you know, it's still this thing where it's like, if we're talking about the police, we're not actually talking about the greater issue because really it's, it's this idea of how blackness is viewed in this country. Uh, and what the responsibility is of white America in relation to that. You know, I feel like everybody's trying to be like, yes, we're almost there, we're almost there, but let's really have this, let's really take this conversation to the next step. Yeah. I think that is the biggest issue, right? The biggest issue is not, because, you know,

first of all, we do need to re-examine this notion that we're creating the warrior cop versus the guardian of the community. So our system is designed to create that, right? You even look at, there's this amazing book that I think everyone should read called Policing in the 21st Century by Dr. Cedric Alexander, who's a former police chief and he served on Obama's commission on policing. And what he talks about is the way in which we've changed in which how we are police. But even if you look at the uniform form now versus the uniform 30 or 40 years ago, it's gone from a, you know, an actual police uniform to a military tactical uniform. And that even in terms of the way we advertise for people who want to join the police force, we're not showing, you know, the friendly officer getting the kitten out of the tree. We're showing like, you know, a militarized, you know, commercial of like,

do you want to hunt down the bad guy? Do you want to be this warrior that's chasing and shooting people and throwing grenades at people? And so we're enticing that kind of sentiment. So when you couple that with implicit bias and racism that is in this country, the combination of the two of them, as we have seen, is deadly. And the notion that people have that racism is something of the bygone past and that people don't think about that should probably pay attention to the news and watch the sentiment of people. But also we have to be realistic about the timeline, right? So you're thinking about, you know, 1955, 1965, where lynchings were still commonplace, and there are pieces of that that we don't discuss about how often people took children CEO, an officer, a congressman, a senator,

the local storekeep. So to think that this sentiment of Black lives having no value has disappeared when people who were eyewitness and participants in some of the worst atrocities of this nation, like lynching, are still at a young enough age to have the voice and have the control and power on what's happening to us is insane. And it's like, what do you think they taught their kids? What conversations do you think they heard at their dinner table on Friday night? And so we have to start working at peeling back the psychological effects of that. And a lot of people don't like it when I say this, but at this point, I'm over the adults. We're all rotten and no good, and we've all been tainted. I think we need to start focusing our energy on educating the next generation. We need

to start having these in-depth conversations, workshops, and change-making instances in schools. And I'm talking about from middle school to high school to even the collegiate level, to say, okay, we all need to process the trauma of white supremacy on both sides and have people start to grapple with some feelings that they have inside of them that they don't know even exist because of what their parents have taught them or because of what their experiences have been. Absolutely. I mean, one of the things that I mean, everything about your speech was so incredible and so powerful.

But I think that based on what I've seen and when I sent your speech to my own parents, it's a lot of what I hear back is that, like you were saying earlier, this is history that is not taught in schools. And it's history that I think, to some history that is not taught in schools. And it's history that I think, to some extent needs to be sought out. And because it's just not on the curriculum and finding I mean, I'm aware and know how on a state level and on a national level, how there's such a stranglehold on what is taught and who gets to write the history books

and what gets the wide distribution. And it does seem like the absolute bare minimum that these need to be taught and not just events that have been erased, but also the way that, I mean, we were talking about this a little bit on the show yesterday, where the way I was I mean, we were talking about this a little bit on the show yesterday, where the way I was taught when I was in school was that basically Martin Luther King

solved racism and we don't really discuss the circumstances that he was murdered under. And the way that it's so glossed over that just you have generations and generations and generations of people who have just been completely miseducated. Well, let's say here it was the FBI that murdered him. Like we had a whole trial and it was proven. And I mean, Jamie, I went to an all white school. All minorities in my community made up less than one percent of the population. school. All minorities in my community made up less than 1% of the population. I got the very same education, except for the fact that I had black parents and a black grandmother who cared that I knew black history. And so, you know, finding that as often it's to all of these points,

trying to educate the children is so hard when black history is relegated to just black people. It's like, oh, you have a black museum. That's where your history is. Oh, to just black people it's like oh you have a black museum that's where your history is oh you have um you know there's an african festival happening which is a racist effect that there are like a thousand cultures with on the continent of africa and it blends it all into one like trying to get a hold of black history even as a black person in america is work and i think it's going to take a lot of systemic change from the way our schools are run, from the fact that most of our books

come from one place in Texas and they like to talk about how slaves were happy in those books. Like it's such a, it feels like an insurmountable mountain to climb just for us to understand our own lineage in this country, which is crazy because we built it. Yeah.

And the irony too is, you know, to be stolen from Africa and then you're paying companies like 23andMe just to find out you don't know where you come from. And they're turning your information over to the police. So that's a really vicious cycle. And I think, again, it feels insurmountable, right? Because white supremacy is so pervasive. Every single thing we come into contact with is touched or built on this ideology. So our educations are built on that. So we have to completely, that's a whole other reckoning that has to happen within education, within banking, within real estate, within labor. And I think that's why it's important too for people to think, you could look at this mountain of white supremacy

like, oh my, well, how could we ever take this down? But a lot of people who are focused in their areas where they are at the levers, that's how this gradual change happens, much in the same way that a lot of the people that are at the levers of power now were probably raised by people with very questionable beliefs on racial equality. Those are the people who have risen up now. It's a matter of making sure that there's like-mindedness in these other fields too. But yeah, it does show you at every level, it's just white supremacy is something that is experienced too. I think a lot of people also get caught up in this idea that it's an overt act. Like, well, I'm not a Klan and I'm not a Nazi and I didn't own slaves. So what do I know about white supremacy? No, no, no, no, no,

no. That's not what, and again, I think people need to understand about how that's experienced and not even, not just by people who are not white, but white people themselves. White people have also been fed a steady diet of, you are always on a moral high ground. You shouldn't question your worth. You're always doing okay. If you're against somebody, chances are they're bad. And don't think much deeper into anything else because we also wrote the history to sound like you came to America, gave Native American people corn, and it was all Gucci after that. It's, you know, it's also people have been failed on multiple levels. And now we're all seeing, you know, varying degrees of an awakening, depending on how honest you want to be with yourself. Yeah. And I think that, you know,

you know, growth comes from discomfort, right? And so people don't want to be uncomfortable. Like people don't want to let go of their comfort. They don't want to let go of their privilege. They don't want to let go of their traditions because, you know, the old saying is, if you know better, you do better, but people learn better. And they're still so attached to traditions like Thanksgiving that they would rather be OK with something that is the indicator of like a slaughter of an entire race so that they can have their turkey. And, you know, and then they can rewrite the history and say, well, you know, this is about my family sharing and and love. And we put these narratives out to say, well, this is this is about family and community. No, this is about the introduction of what was a genocide. That is what this Thanksgiving is about. But if you prefer to

have your mashed potatoes, because that's more comfortable for you, then you go right ahead and slap a bunch of them on your plate. So it's like wanting, breaking tradition and wanting to be comfortable has become far more superior need and desire for people than actually living in the truth. And the truth is you can create new traditions. You know what I'm saying? Like you can get rid of Thanksgiving and we can all celebrate Festivus or whatever it is that we decide to do. But people don't want to do that. And the other thing is as long as you don't have the information that informs how we got here, then you're never going to be understanding of how we got here.

Again, to Joelle's point, like the amount of history that I learned about African-American history, even learning about Juneteenth and learning about Tulsa and things like that. I got I went to an all black elementary school. I went to diverse high school, but I went to an all black elementary school and I got like this much of it even there, you know what I mean? And so the bulk and the, and the big chunk, a huge chunk that I did get was from one teacher. I had one teacher who had studied African-American studies, my eighth grade teacher. And she was like, she was like, black history is not just February. It's all year round. And I'm going to take money out of my own pocket and go, you know, photocopy things from these books that I have and make sure you guys have all this information. So I learned a ton about Black History in eighth grade, just because I had one wily teacher who

was like, F the system. This is what I'm doing. You know, and it's like without Mrs. Lumpkin, I wouldn't have any of this information. I also was fortunate enough as a child. I grew up in Chicago. We had the Rainbow Coalition, which is a multicultural human rights organization. I went to an after school program there. And then we have the historic DuSable Museum, which is an African-American museum. And I went to programming there. That is where I got all of my original information. Shout out to DuSable. That's where I got most of my early information. Exactly. So, yes, like, you know, there are these private exterior spaces in which this information was given to me. But I guess it should not just be given to me.

So that means that in my neighborhood, I was walking around with all the information being like overly woke at 14 and everyone else was in the dark. Yeah. Well, you know, in a way it's by design because the more we become aware of these things, it's just, I think most human beings are programmed at a certain level to know the difference between overt good or overt evil. And when you put something like that in front of, you know, a kid or someone, you would be like, why would anybody do that? Why would anybody? But I think that ignorance allows people to,

you know, not confront those harsh realities to a certain extent. And I think there's also, you know, there's this level of not confronting the hypocrisy of whiteness sometimes that we see play out over and over and over again um and even now like when you hear roger goodell of the nfl say you know he says oh if you know colin kaepernick quote if he wants to resume his career in the nfl then obviously it's going to take a team to make that decision i welcome that support a club making

that decision and encourage them to do that now the, but see, this is some of, that's the kind of craven hypocrisy that whiteness can shield you from. Where you can go, because I don't know if he forgot the last four years where he basically made sure this man had no career. And suddenly he's out here with his fist up saying, oh, I welcome him back. no career. And suddenly he's out here with his fist up saying, Oh, I welcome him back. This is, I think these are moments too, that we all have to be prepared to be able to hold people to account for because this sort of like gaslighting of like, Oh, well, no, I did right. I did right. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. You spent four years smearing this man and making sure he had no access to a livelihood that he was deserved. And then to go out here and say that you all you support this.

I think it's just, you know, we have to really begin. That's what I'm hoping. A lot of people, you know, they're saying certain things out loud, but it's also important, especially for somebody who considers themselves an ally or you are invested in this fight for equality to also understand that you need to hold these structures accountable and in some instances we need to wholly dismantle them um and we need people to reconsider what it looks like to be called out see so many people be like oh you're being mean to these people they don't know your ignorance is not our problem like you not knowing at this point what black people have been through like and especially i think it's so frustrating particularly to millennials at this point what black people have been through like and especially I think it's so frustrating particularly to millennials at this point in time like we

went through this five years ago like and to me that felt like a big moment like I recognized as I looked around you know in protests and things like who was there and who wasn't there it was clear but like that was the end of the line for being like we we don't know what's going on we don't know what's happening Tamir Rice was 12 and was shot in four seconds at a park. That guy still works as a police officer. I don't have time to be nice to you or to kindly explain why my life has value or why it sucks that we have a sea of diversity initiatives being led by Black people, which is essentially 12 hours more on our week of work that we have to do.

Like, it is crazy the amount of work black people have already done. So for you to also then be upset that we're pissed, who can coddle you more than this? This is another layer, another shield of whiteness protecting you. And it's exhausting. It is so exhausting. Lord, it's exhausting. It's so exhausting.

And just like to your point like willful ignorance um and and to me sometimes malicious intent that you have set up that you feel like you can back out of because don't even get me started on donald trump going to tulsa on june 10th son well yeah the most he did was realize okay that's too hot so we'll do it on the 20th. That's the most they could do. But I mean, it shows you that this country is evolving at about maybe four or five different speeds. You know, one important thing everyone brings up is this idea of like what we even read in school. Like, I don't think I read a book about a black person maybe until To Kill a Mockingbird was the first time.

That was my. Oh, no. Maybe Tom Sawyer. And even then we're using racial epithets. And then my teacher's trying to tell me, well, that was a different time. And Mark 29, and luckily my dad being an artist, black, radical, you know, college, he's, he was like, he had to put native son into my hands and say, read this. Because you're not going to learn about this at your school.

And then you're going to look weird because yes, I went to a predominantly white school. I can't talk to anybody my age about that. And damn no, like another 12 year old knows what I could possibly be processing and hearing the stories of my grandparents, my uncles, whatever, um, how important it is to get this like literature in people's hands. And, and Kimberly, you are an author, um, and your book that you wrote, uh, that you co-wrote, I'm not dying with you tonight. You wrote that sort of on with the backdrop of the, of the Freddie gray, uh, uprisings in 2015. Um, and I've heard you, you know, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've read interviews with you before and I've, and I've watched some of your interviews as well. And there's an interesting thing I've heard you bring up about, you know, when people,

I've heard a lot of well-intentioned book critics saying like, and you know, what's the role of race in this book? And like, how do you guys tackle race? And you very calmly explain, you're like, I think we're trying, it's about perspective. It's about changing perspective versus this concept of changing. How do we change people's attitudes around race? Can you just kind of break that down a little bit? Because I think that's a really nuanced but important point. Yeah, I think that our lived experiences inform how we react to things, how we see things, and how we view things. So when you're in these moments,

um, even if you're a horrible racist jerk, that perspective that you have is informed by your life experiences, by your lived experiences. So the same way in which you could have someone, um, listen, there, there are, I'm going to be honest with you. There are some, some black people in this world right now that I'm like, what are you talking about? You sound crazy. We would like to trade you for the best white person. Cause you, we want you off the team. Um, but so, and that's their lived experience, right? That's their perspective based on their relationships, based on their viewpoints, based on who have been around, based on some of their own self-loathing, all of that. And so what we wanted to do with the book was give two very

specific perspectives. I intentionally wrote Lena, the Black girl, because it's two girls who survived the night in race riots, two 17-year-old girls. One is Black, one is white. And I intentionally wrote Lena as like a hood chick because I was like, I can't see anybody being better equipped to survive a riot than a little hood girl, right? Because her lived experience has had her to endure some situations and have to survive in some situations that is going to make her skin a little bit tougher. I mean, she's not going to flinch at certain things. There are going to be moments of things that are coming at her that by design won't make her weary. And she's going to have an understanding of that community and that neighborhood and know how to navigate it.

And she's going to have some allies along the way that this white girl with her is not going to have. And so also because I've worked with a lot of little girls that people call hood or ghetto and they don't get to see themselves on the page. that people would call hood or ghetto, and they don't get to see themselves on the page. And so I wanted them to see themselves, not only did I want them to see themselves on the page, but I wanted them to see themselves as the hero of the story on the page. And I got a lot of pushback from that.

Y'all should read my Kirkus review. It basically was like, wipe your butt with this book. But my point was, I wanted to show perspective because perspective is very important because although these girls are black and white and you get to see how differently they handle the night and they view the night, there's a lot of moments where they see the night exactly the same. But that's because you're talking about a female or female presenting perspective. And that omnipresent threat to the feminine form is something that they connect on.

And that's what they connect on. And they know that as girls, they are stronger together. I always say if even one of the characters was male or male presenting, the book would have ended at like chapter two. It's a different experience for two girls to navigate their way through a tumultuous night. And again, that's all about perspective because had I put Lena, the African-American character, had I put her with a white male, they probably wouldn't have had much, much similar perspective at all at any point. So it's how we view the world is based on our lived experience. And a big chunk of our lived experience is the bullshit that's passed down to us by our parents and our grandparents, those conversations, which is why I made Lena being raised by her grandfather and not a parent, because that means she's being raised by someone who would have survived Jim Crow,

and he would have given her a very specific viewpoint on the world. When I just hear you even talk about that, it's like I think of how much the books or the things that we're told or literature or whatever are so they completely like skew our idea of what, you know, the world can be at times. So I think that's really. Yeah. To anybody, if you love YA especially, please check out Kimberly's work, too, because I know you're a big YA fan, too. please check out Kimberly's work too because I know you're a big YA fan too huge I that's I I am not an adult in my mind and that's all I really like I love it so much does it did it naturally did you and your writing like activism did that all kind of swirl together at once or you always just kind of knew you wanted to write was it something else because I know you had you've also have a background in working in tv and film as well yeah it it grew simultaneously because I started going to like after school programs at push when I was as young as like 10 years old I like cussed

Ronald Reagan out on national tv when I was six and I had a lot of words for him about the war when I was six years old and so so my mom made a post on Facebook after the video went viral and was like, so my child's been doing this since she was six. So there's no pride here at all. She basically went the equivalent of viral back then when she was six telling the president she didn't agree with his war and his war tactics. So my team is like actively trying to find that clip because it was national news. So we're trying to figure out where it was. They stopped my sister, who was a teenager at the time, and asked her her opinion.

She's very shy. And she kind of clammed up. And I was like, I'll take the mic. So it's kind of been my journey, my whole life. I've always known that I wanted to be a writer. I was that kid that carried it, that was like socially awkward and just carried around my notebook to keep my thoughts and my feelings in there. I also, when I was younger, thought I was going to be a rapper. So when I was like 13, I started a rap group.

Was I 13? I can't remember how old I was, but it was definitely like middle school. I started a rap group with a bunch of my friends who didn't rap and didn't write rap. So what I did was I wrote everybody's raps and like asked them out to them and be like, okay, this is the song. Now let's get ready to perform it at the talent show. So I've always had a love of words and I've always had a great concern primarily predominantly for my people, but really for me, for poor people. I have a special place in my heart for poor people. I grew up working class, so we weren't poor, but the neighborhood I grew up in in Chicago was tracked by the hood. You know what I mean? So I couldn't escape the

ills of what was going on in the hood because I walked four blocks in either direction and there was gangs and drugs and poverty. And when I went to three high schools and the second high school that I went to, all those kids went there. And so I'm a fan of the Panthers, which I know is like radical and extreme to say, but I'm a fan of the Panthers and their systems and who they were looking out for. And contrary to popular belief, they really were concerned about the proletariat. They really were concerned about the working poor. And we have to be concerned about the least of them. We have to be concerned about the least of them, because if if we say we're a great nation and we have people in this country who are food insecure. And who don't have money to go to get help for mental health.

to get help for mental health. That's a problem. That's a problem. And we've built this system that's like the rich will get rich and the poor will get poor. And it's just getting worse. And it's allowing us to pit ourselves against each other when it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Poor people, we need to rally together. And by poor people, I also mean the middle class, because you are about to be poor in like 10 seconds yeah i think middle class are the people who believe the uh illusion of like gaining going into the one percent the most because it's like almost right there it's like oh no no no i can almost do it let me but let me preserve this the socioeconomic structure so that i might may one day enter it as well and i think again it goes back to the point like every great movement or when movements are kneecapped in this country, it's when people start connecting the dots between capitalism, white supremacy, and how if everybody

can get on the same page, that would really, really upset the existing power structure. So maybe that's something everybody can read up on. Kimberly, thank you so much for joining us. We'll link to some of your work and to your social media handles so people can follow you. Ladies and gentlemen, and non-binary friends, please, let's say farewell to the wonderful Kimberly Jones. Yes, I will be back. Thank you guys for having me. All right. Bye, Kimberly. Thank you. Bye. All right. So let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Thank you. Bye. All right, so let's take a quick break, and we'll be right back.

I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. BPM 110, 120. She's terrified.

Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago.

We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Ina Garten and Martha Stewart. So I started a free newsletter called Good Taste that comes out every Thursday, and it's serving up recipes that will make your mouth water. Think a candied bacon Bloody Mary, tacos with cabbage slaw, curry cauliflower with almonds and mint, and cherry slab pie with vanilla ice cream to top it all off.

I mean, yum. I'm getting hungry. But if you're not sold yet, we also have kitchen tips like a foolproof way to grill the perfect burger and must-have products like the best cast iron skillet to feel like a chef in your own kitchen. All you need to do is sign up at katiecouric.com slash goodtaste. That's K-A-T-I-E-C-O-U-R-I-C dot com slash goodtaste. I promise your taste buds will be happy you did. It was December 2019 when the story blew up. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, former Packers star Kabir Bajabiamila caught up in a bizarre situation. KGB explaining what he believes led to the arrest of his friends at a children's Christmas play. A family man, former NFL player, devout Christian, now cut off from his family and connected to a strange arrest. I am going to share my journey

of how I went from Christianity to now a Hebrew Israelite. I got swept up in Kabir's journey, but this was only the beginning. In a story about faith and football, the search for meaning away from the gridiron and the consequences for everyone involved. You mix homesteading with guns and church and a little bit of the spice of conspiracy theories that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that we liked. Voila! You got straight away. I felt like I was living in North Korea, but worse, if that's possible. Listen to Spiraled on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels, into something everyone in the South loves, the Biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the Biscuits. It's right here in black and white in print. They lying. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch.

As a leader, you choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I just take all the other stuff out of it. On the segregation academies, when civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from that. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And I figure this is a great group, as any, to talk about this with for two people very interested in film for me. I just, I dabble, I dabble,

I dabble in the film critiquing not as much as the two of you, but the Oscars have announced that they are going to, they're going to push back, just postpone it a couple of weeks, but they're still going to have some Oscars and the, I guess the eligibility window will be extended so worry not uh tenets like or sonic i don't know i don't i joel what do you think i'm just like i don't is it really gonna make that much of a difference it's not like people can't

make more stuff right now that's like the issue like it's not like oh can't make more stuff right now. That's like the issue. Like, it's not like, oh, this will buy us time to make things like we you can't. OK, so if I look at it from a couple of perspectives, as somebody who's done a lot of festivals and is aware of the work that a lot of filmmakers do for festivals, I know there are a ton of films in the can that are ready to be released. I know festivals are considering doing these like online festivals as a way of like keeping things going but uh removing contact so i see that there are the possibilities of it my problem is we're about to have a huge explosion in cases because none of the cities flatlined like we didn't do what we were supposed to do in quarantine so we understand that there's going to be a huge that we can't avoid it it's going to happen uh which means we're going to be in quarantine for much longer um which means what you you stop pausing for a couple of weeks it just seems also way too early that you're not until next year like chill bro like maybe give us an announcement in november because there's

nothing the academy really needs to be doing like you have the space that's secure no one's worried about that you guys have the funds you're fine you're gonna watch the movies or you aren't you can probably decide that within about four or five months of the festival or of the show and i think we're still two months away from that yeah because we that usually airs in february so i just feel like take an e uh read the room no one really cares about awards and your fancy dresses uh y'all gave green book an oscar you messed it up when Moonlight won. Have a whole seat. They gave Crash an Oscar. Come on.

Best picture Oscar. I don't even know what was happening with you guys. You never gave Spike Lee his comeuppance until he was way older. Doing not his best work. What are we doing here? I think the Oscars could take a seat. Maybe listen. Learn some things and then maybe

come back with that. You just nominated a known assaulter for your board of governors, I think the Oscars could take a seat. Maybe listen, learn some things, and then maybe come back with that. You just nominated a known assaulter for your board of governors, I think. I hate them. There are just like the list is infinite of how many more productive announcements they could have made. Right. The work that they have to do. This would be like at the bottom of the list, actually. You'd think if you were their PR, like, don't talk about this till you've gotten through these other things, please.

Right. Like, literally do a thing. Like, I don't know. They nominated Ava. They're good. That's fine. That was their good deed of the year. Like, Ava DuVernay for the Board of Directors.

Woo. Which is incredible, but it's also like, okay, but what's also like, okay, but what about everything else? Like, where does it erase everything else? Well, I think that's the thing that we see, right? That there's this class of people that are in power that are doing everything they can to kind of advance the conversation past this moment

where it's like, okay, it's great. Ava DuVernay, great. She's there right where everyone's good you see we got it good we get it we're moving forward great also the oscars we're also putting a date down because this we have to make the money off of this award show because the ad dollars i'm telling y'all like don't you we can't miss this check uh because i know it's a huge huge revenue revenue uh opportunity for them too and it's just weird to see this like like why even talk about it in a way i's just weird to see this like like why even

talk about it in a way i would just wish we could just be like you know the oscars y'all have to come back you guys weren't giving out the awards properly anyway so it just became like a thing like a box to tick for your vanity if you were like in a certain industry because after at a certain point like it became very clear that the body of voters was not able to actually have a good opinion on like what a good movie was or good work of art was and it's very rare to like go away from an award show like that and be like i think everyone was generally generally thought that that was a meritocracy and that was that seemed fair like that just doesn't who gives a who gives a fuck you know be interesting to your point,

Joel, about festivals coming online. Like if festivals collaborated with these streaming platforms that already had gigantic audiences. So like you could already just be like, dude, these are amazing films. And then that way you can suddenly bring these other films into like

national conversation because they're like, I don't know. Did you check out the whatever panel, like the little subing on netflix or hulu or whatever that had all those like films that came out i don't know and i feel like that would be a really interesting way to do that but i think too many people's toes get stepped on probably well i mean there's a lot of little things that go into that so like first i do think there's a lot the film industry can be doing during this time to like band together um and we're seeing like a couple of like black creatives being really great about like here are some good black films you maybe haven't seen that you should check out I will get it later but there

is a movie by a 19 year old on Netflix about uh the church in the south that is so freaking good um that array produced philip something oh my god this is really annoying uh i will get it later and i we can drop in the show notes burning cane yeah yes burning philip useman does he's 19 and has one of the strongest visions of any filmmaker i've ever seen it is it's a very dreamy sort of slow methodical look at like the ways in which the church tears at the soul and he's like from the south and his parents are like southern baptists and he was like this clearly a kid trying to communicate issues with his parents and it is so good and so beautiful i think that's one like a small thing we can do is like continue to promote that but i also think on like a larger community scale like cinema is the core of like american ideology it's one of the

few arts that is truly our own like with rap um like film started here we started making movies and so it would be really like great for me to see more um drive-ins opening up more things where we can gather safely as a people to engage in our culture um i also think that festivals and things like that have a very classist approach to the way they screen movies oh yeah for a lot of art film which is made by mostly poor people struggling to pinch every penny to make these like really moving pieces of cinema are then held away from poor communities because they're at Sundance and it's like at least $4,000 to get there. And then you have to get a ticket to get in. It gets so many hurdles to just try to access this stuff.

But I know that they have to make money. I like the idea of like a $20 ticket. You get to pick like six or seven films and you can download them from a streaming service and then you know that's a way for people to engage with new content that's already been made that's benefiting like poorer or or you know not supported artists i think that there's a lot we could be doing to sort of engage with our communities especially during this time we have the internet there's nothing sobbing us except for people's greed yeah just reading uh philip humans he he wrote directed and shot and edited when he was 17 miles his next oh my god i gotta watch this

this his next film is about the unofficial black panther party in the south and what the things they were doing in the 60s that's his next movie he's already working on it he got the cast together himself he wrote ava duvet he hand wrote her a letter and sent it to her and was like, I think you're the only one I want to distribute my film. Whoa, this car that Wendell Pierce is driving in this screenshot, my dad has this car. That's my dad's favorite BMW. Whoa.

All right. You got to watch this movie. It's really powerful. Banksy, Joelle, if you want to if people would taste follow joelle you know what i mean because i'm out here over salting my food because i have have you guys seen uh numa perrier is also on netflix her film jezebel if uh you heard a lot about that jezebel is a film about it's semi-autobiographical when she was 18 she was living with her sister who was like listen you guys aren't making your own money because i got mouths to feed so why not become a sex worker and she's in vegas and she becomes

like a cam girl and it's sort of about navigating that system what powers come from being a sex worker how does that make you feel good about yourself what are the hurdles those women have to endure why do people enter sex work in the first place it is one of the most like pure films about sex work that I've ever seen in that it doesn't ever shame or dirty the job. And it doesn't also liberate or like exalt it to this high power. It's just the thing that she does. And it's so wonderful. And Numa, she just announced another movie. She's one to watch out for.

I really like Numa Perrier a lot. Amazing. Well, Joelle, thank you so much for coming on to the daily zeitgeist today where can people find you follow you uh you know subscribe what do we where where can they go to get more yeah absolutely uh despite my better judgment i'm still on twitter uh so you can find me there at joelle monique it's j-o-e-l-l-e-m-o-n-i-q-u-e if you put an underscore between those two names you you can find me on Instagram. Who is doing Instagram anymore?

There are no events to show off at. Oh, my gosh. But I'm there. I'm there. Talk to me about the politics. Tell me the good things you're watching. Rewatch Watchmen and then come chat with me about that. I just finished my rewatch last night.

And it hits different, y'all. It hits episode six, is the the episode where they go into the past oh man i could it was a lot to take i mean i i was in shock i was re-watching uh how stella got her groove back and saw regina king and i was like my god my god my god but also let's be real real. Angela Bassett, Stella's house in that movie, fucking goals. Goals. Totally. Goals.

If you fuck with architecture and you have not seen how Stella got her groove back, her house. To the point where I'm like, where is this place? I want to live in this whimsical land. And what's a piece of social media that you're enjoying? A tweet or something like that? Clarkesha kent who was recently banned from twitter for being awesome yeah buddy she impersonated she trolled the fbi too good they were like oh they because she had the check mark she changed her name to like i

can't remember chicago pd or the fbi but she did one or the other and it was brilliant and they banned her for it because people thought that that was who she was but she still has a handle she had a backup just in case because she had a feeling this was going to happen so you can still find her on the Twitters she wrote an amazing piece for Wear Your Voice about the young woman who was killed in Florida and was sexually assaulted. I'm going to try to say her name right. Oluwatoyin Sala'u, I think it's S-A-L-A-U is her last name. Clarkisha wrote a piece on just how we fail black women. And it is powerful and disturbing and challenges us all to do better. And so if you're on Twitter and you want to get that a read,

you couldn't find a better writer for our current times and Clarkisha. So check that out. Jamie, what about you? Where can people find you? Follow you. And what's some, some Twitterage you liken also reluctantly still on Twitter at Jamie

left us help Instagram. Not much is happening over there right it's like feels like it's like futile to even be like i don't know like i'm not posting anything you might get a random still of like a soda i was drinking because the only thing i've gotten out of instagram is like seeing like a friend post a selfie and be like, you're disgusting. So that's all I'm getting out of Instagram right now is people not reading the room. That's the platform. Yeah, right.

I think that is the experience. Like Twitter, it's like, bro, people will just flame you if your head's not in the game and you're talking about some dumb shit. But like on Instagram, like you see like people rally around the idiot posts and like, yeah, that's so great. Good for you. Like, love this you know people are still calling a lot of things brave on Instagram uh to like white influencers doing the bare minimum it's fascinating to behold oh

you know what's also interesting speaking of that do you know how there was the um all black lives matter painted on Hollywood Boulevard yeah and it got pressure washed right after no oh yeah it was it was pressure because the deal with the city that was made and i'm not going to give out names i will off mike a media company uh wanted to pay for that uh to be done and the way it was described to the city was they wanted to brand the streets of black lives all black lives matter and they were saying like yeah we'd like to brand ho streets of black lives all black lives matter and they were saying like yeah we'd like to brand hollywood boulevard and the people were like you want this is not a brand okay we'll talk about that maybe i think that story will probably develop over time

but we'll get into that there's a lot of cynical uh and performative bullshit going on so be careful y'all uh i'll point out i have two tweets um one is from aida osman um and also um relates to the the um developing story with toyin um i love this tweet and she's been posting a lot of incredible stuff uh to this effect but she's at shut up aida and the tweet is it's not just believe women it's acknowledging that the process of telling your story is painful disorienting and terrifying it also means believing women at every iteration of their story from the initial mention of the assault to the details that come out over time and she's been really just yeah she's incredible highly recommend um and then for a fun a fun tweet here's one from Blake Wex, who I guess just watched Twister, because he tweeted,

I can't stop laughing at the reasoning for Twister's PG-13 rating, which it says, rated PG-13, intense depiction of very bad weather. So that made me laugh. Okay. So not weather for children. You can find and follow me on twitter and instagram playstation network at miles of gray and also my other podcast for 20 day fiance and also check out scam goddess i'm on this week's scam goddess with lacy mosley uh so if you want to get your

get your lols on check that out um some tweets that i'm liking let's see the first uh one is from at indy was here uh and the tweet is fantastic kind of summing up something a bit of what we were talking about this episode uh the tweet is white women be like we are the daughters of the witches you couldn't burn and then get burnt out after talking racism for five days like are you sure about that love it? It was very, very real. Uh, and also, uh,

one more, this is just so funny to me. Uh, it's like a, it's like a two panel one. It says, after you die, you will meet God.

And then the next panel is this white girl squaring up. And the tweet says, nah, when I die, God will meet me. Just a stupid. Gen Z. I needed that Gen Z.

Gen Z coming through again. And that is from at Onda Viagra. At Onda Viagra. Wow, see, and I'm all old being like, I donned a Viagra. I'm old, and I should have been told. And yes, you can find us at Daily Zeitgeist on Twitter, 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. Footnotes. Thank you. As well as a song we write out on. Not to mention, this show is a production of iHeartRadio. If you want more of this, just go check out Apple Podcasts or wherever you get those podcasts for free. And the song that we are going to write out on.

Actually, hey, let's do. What's your favorite track on Ungodly? I'm going to be controversial and say Tipsy. Okay, let's do it. From Joelle Monique. We're getting into it. Chloe and Halle, Tipsy, here we go Have a good day, I know it's hump day

We have a few, just a few more days Till the weekend where we will continue to be confused That somehow another week has gone by It's so weird Just like on, we were, Joelle and I Were on a call earlier and we had spoken to someone Like four days ago and I could have Swore it was maybe two weeks ago

Time dilation all right peace and blessings bye I might be a little tipsy on your love If you love your little life then don't fuck up Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that?

That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions,

sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Captain's log, stardate 2024. We're floating somewhere somewhere in the cosmos but we've lost our map yeah because you refuse to ask for directions it's space gem there are no roads good point so where are we headed into the unknown of course join us on in our own world as we uncover hidden truths navigate the depths of culture identity and the human spirit with a hint of mischief one episode at a time buckle up and up and listen to In Our Own World on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Trust us, it's out of this world. Hi, I am Lacey Lamar. And I'm also Lacey Lamar. Just kidding, I'm Amber Revin. What? Okay, everybody, we have exciting news to share. We're back with season two of the Amber and Lacey,

Lacey and Amber Show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network. This season, we make new friends, deep dive into my steamy DMs, answer your listener questions, and more. The more is punch each other.

Listen to the Amber and Lacey, Lacey and Amber show on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen, okay?

Or Lacey gets it. Do it.