The Toast - S3 Ep100: Monday, June 1st, 2020

Episode Date: June 1, 2020

1. The George Floyd Memorial Fund: The official GoFundMe to support the Floyd family: https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd 2. The Minnesota Freedom Fund: A community based non profit that pays criminal bail & immigration bonds for individuals who have been arrested while protesting police brutality: https://minnesotafreedomfund.org/ 3. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund: A legal organization that fights for racial justice: https://www.naacpldf.org/ 4. Black Visions Collective: A black, trans and queer-led organization that is committed to dismantling systems of oppression and violence and shifting the public narrative to create long term change: https://www.blackvisionsmn.org/ 5. The Innocence Project: Exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice: https://www.innocenceproject.org/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Good morning, millennials. Happy Monday, I guess. It doesn't really feel like a happy Monday. It's been a very sad and somber weekend in this country. to be coming on here. Um, but we have a lot to talk about and we wanted to dedicate this episode to just discussing, um, a lot of things that happened over the weekend. Uh, the weekend for me, um, was just totally consumed by what's been happening. Um, it's been really stressful. It's been a stressful and challenging time for the country, but more specifically for the Black community. And, you know, Jackie and I just wanted to reiterate like our hearts are just so heavy with what's been going on and we really um just wanted to dedicate this episode to talking about the current state of the world I really didn't think about anything other than George Floyd during this entire weekend I've just like been watching videos podcasts just consuming so much content about it I'm just trying

to for the show obviously get as much information as possible, but also just for myself as a human being. Yeah, definitely. I spent the weekend the same way, watching videos, reading, trying to get a better understanding of what's going on and what has been going on. So it really just doesn't feel right for us to do our typical show today. The country is just, it's heartbreaking. Our hearts are heavy with what's been going on, especially as it relates to what the Black

community is going through right now. And we want to spend the time on our show today talking about that because really nothing else is important right now. Nothing else matters. No. It seems as though in our community, though, there's a bit of confusion about where we stand on this issue. And so we spoke about it a bit on Friday's episode,

but there's no shortage of amount of times that we can say that Black Lives Matter, George Floyd's life matters, and George Floyd deserves justice. abuse of power and the police officers involved must be held responsible. Three out of four of the officers involved in his murder still have not been arrested, have not been charged. And we want to use our platform and our voices right now to seek justice for George Floyd and to speak out against this injustice and the ones that have come before it because there is systematic racism in this country and we cannot enact change, help enact change if we're not talking about it. Right. And so even though it's not necessarily a topic we normally talk about on the toast, you and I both made a conscious effort to address it on Friday's episode. And I've been posting about it on my Instagram for a few days, but there still was this sort of just confusion

from the community. And that means that we're just not being loud enough. So I'm going to say it now and I'll say it again. If you ever want to know where Jackie and I stand on a certain issue, I really encourage you to look at our Instagrams, our social media, our podcast, you know, Girl With No Job, Jackie O Problems, The Morning Toast. Those are the places if you want to hear from us. And that's it. Nowhere else. Jackie and I are individuals.

We are separate grown women. We are responsible for this platform and what we say on this platform but we are not responsible for what other people think or say we and I can't say this enough times like we are so sad about what has happened this week and the murder of George Floyd who was a man who was murdered for being black and he was murdered at the hands of police officers who are supposed to be there to protect us, which makes this even more sickening. And it's not the first time that this has happened. It is indicative of a much, much larger problem

in this country of police brutality and systemic racism. And I feel sad and like embarrassed that people might not have even known where we stood on this and that we weren't being loud enough. And that's on us. That's on us. But that ends today. We want to let you guys know

exactly how we feel about this. We speak for ourselves. We think for ourselves. And we are just, we are so saddened by this, but we also are motivated to make a change in the type of content that we're sharing with you guys. I feel like though in the past, obviously we haven't been the most outspoken influencers about racial injustice. And one, I want to say that we are sorry about that. And two, that is ending today. Yeah. I'm like mortified that we even have to say that, but it's true. And I feel like I've just thought of myself as this like woke person who's like so aware, but like at the end of the day, it's just so not the case. And we have so much work to do on ourselves and in our community. thrown around a lot and I like to think of myself as an ally, but you can't really be an ally unless you know, like knowledge is truly power. So Jackie and I have been spending, you know, the last few days just reading and consuming as much as we can, because I don't think you can really consider

yourself an ally if you just post something on social media and then go on with the rest of your day thinking that you solve the world's problems or that, you know, it's over or I'm an ally because I posted. No, there's so much more that goes into being an ally. And there's so much more work and knowledge that requires you, that's required of you if you want to be considered a true ally. Yeah. And we want to be allies. We want to be part of the solution,

not part of the problem. And I think that for a while, you and I were just feeling this need to prove to people that we're not racist, but that's not even enough. Like it's not enough to just be not racist. Like we have to be anti-racism and there's a lot of different ways that we can do that. And it starts with reading and educating, watching things that change the way that we see the world and help us understand the plights of people of color and the Black community. Right. And we'll never, we'll never really know what it's like to be a Black person in America right now and how

challenging it can be. But I think the first step, like you said, in wanting to be more of an ally and an advocate is having those uncomfortable, you know, thoughts and really recognizing your own privilege. Like you and I are white. We, that makes us privileged. And we don't even think about things that other people think about every day. Like I literally was on the street a few days ago getting, I got a blood test and this police officer came up to me and was like, are you lost? Do you know where to go? And he was like, so nice. And I just, given what's going on in the world, I was like, wow, that's kind of weird. It just really made me so aware of my privilege. And, you know, we grew up a certain way. I think a lot of our audience can relate, you know,

growing up privileged and around, surrounded by people who were just as, if not more privileged than us. But as adults, you know, we've made the conscious effort to kind of grow and evolve and unlearn some of the biases that we might not have even necessarily knew that we had in our hearts. Like even subconsciously, like those biases just kind of skew the way you see the world and made us think that racial inequality, you know, it wasn't our problem or it didn't apply to us, or maybe it was just isolated incidents, but now just kind of evolving in the way that we have. Like I realized that that type of thinking is exactly what makes you part of the problem. It's still part of the problem. And I don't want to be a part of the problem. And I don't want our community to be about a part of

the problem anymore. Like we need to be a part of the solution. Like we have this platform. And while I know that what we do here is not life-saving work, I do think that we can make a difference. Yeah. I think that we can make a difference too. And there's a lot of different things that we want to share with you today. But first and foremost, we want to share with you ways that you can take action now, help the Black Lives Matter movement. There are a lot of great organizations that we've contributed to financially that we ask that you do as well. So I'm just going to share with you some of those organizations that could really benefit from our help financially and otherwise

right now. The first organization is the George Floyd Memorial Fund. This is the official GoFundMe to support the Floyd family. It's amazing how many people have donated. Like the last time I checked, it was $6 million. And it's obviously like nice to see so many people just wanting to help. But at the same time, it's like nothing's going to bring back their brother, son, cousin. And it just, it like makes me like really, really sad. Yeah, no, it makes me really sad too. It's just, it will never be enough. Also the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which is a community-based nonprofit that pays criminal

bail and immigration bonds for individuals who have been arrested while protesting police brutality. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which is a legal organization that fights for racial justice the Black Visions Collective which is a black trans and queer-led organization that is committed to dismantling systems of oppression and violence and shifting the public narrative to create long term change and the Innocence Project which exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. Yeah, we've linked all the organizations below on YouTube and on all the podcast apps. So you can learn more about the organization, click the link, donate if you can. Jackie and I have

donated. And if you can, we really would love if you guys would do that as well. No amount is considered too small. I know it's a tough time for everyone, but I think it's really important that we put our money where our mouth is and not just say stuff, but actions speak louder than words. Yeah. So those are some ways that we can help right now today. And I think it is so important to be outraged right now. But we also need to keep up this momentum within ourselves,

within our community, But we also need to keep up this momentum within ourselves, within our community, and make changes that will help us just get out of our bubble and become more educated about the plights of the Black community and just their experiences. Yeah, like how we move forward needs to obviously benefit and educate ourselves, but also our community. And of course, you know, we are so divided in this country right now. And again, this is a pop culture show. It's meant to be fun and light. And while I don't think we're going to, you know, change the world in a day, I think there are definitely things we could be doing within ourselves just to broaden and widen our knowledge and our experience. Like so many people come on the show and they watch TV shows or they read books or they go see movies that we recommend. And I feel like for a while, maybe without even realizing, we were just like, our content was just so narrow minded. And it was

like, we live in this bubble and everything we watch is like just all the same. And I feel like a really great place to start in educating yourselves is just with the content you watch. Like there are so many movies and TV shows directed by starring people of color and that we've kind of just been ignoring. Yeah, I completely agree. Some of the stuff that we've recommended has been a complete waste of your time, our time, like dinner for schmucks. I can't. That time can be, we're the schmucks. We are the schmucks. Like we are wasting people's time and not really taking advantage of what we actually could be watching and learning. Right. So we want to spend our time and your time more thoughtfully. We will never understand what it is like to be a Black person in this country, but we can listen to people. We can watch movies. We can watch TV shows. We can read books that will help us see

the world differently than how we've been seeing it. Also, I know that the next Redheads book is going to be very different from what we've been reading. And I think that it is time for that to happen. And we want to use our suggestions, our recommendations, our influence to help all of us get a better sense of what is going on in the world. So we're not just waking up one day and waking up to all of it. Right. Like even though we'll never understand the experience, just watching stuff and reading stuff is a real window into the experiences of people who are different from us. And that's important. And I feel like we haven't been doing that. And I really,

I do apologize for that. So with that said, we are bringing back toast movie of the week here on the morning toast, but it's going to be slightly different as it pertains to the content that we choose, which I think is long overdue. We just want to watch stuff that makes us more aware of our privilege and of our platform and make sure that we're encouraging people to watch things that are slightly more important than, you know, the invention of lying. So Toast Movie of the Week is coming back. We want to highlight stories that are important to watch that are directed by or starring people of color that tells their story just so we can, you know, have a better understanding of the world

and just racism in general. The first movie that we're assigning today that we will recap at the end of this week is called The Hate U Give. It is available on Hulu. So if you have a Hulu, you can watch it for free. If you don't have one, make sure to steal a friend's. You can watch it for free there. It's been highly recommended all over social media. I've been seeing people watch it. So I think that'll just, it's a good place to start. It's a good place to start. I look forward to watching it with you, Claude, with as many toasters as possible. I look forward to the discussions we will have about it, and I look forward to continuing this on well after this

week. Also something that we want to do is we are going to be using our Friday episodes. We will be using all of our ad space from those episodes to promote black businesses, black-owned businesses. We think that that is just one small way that we can help raise awareness for great businesses that you guys should know about, that we should know about, that we should be shopping at. We have some great ones in mind, but if you guys want to suggest some more, we would love to take your suggestions and incorporate that into the show. Yeah, I really encourage everyone to reach out if they have businesses that they think

could benefit from being highlighted on the show. If they're a toaster owned business, just anything to kind of raise awareness. I think that'll be just an, again, just a great way to expand beyond our own experiences and our own bubble and our own knowledge because that's what we've been doing for so long and it's never been more apparent and it's embarrassing. Yeah. It's important that we do it and it's time that we do it and we are sorry that- It took this.

It's taken us this long, but we've just been spending the weekend just reading and seeing and trying to understand how we can better educate ourselves. And we want to take those points that everyone has been sharing and actually implement them into this show. Yes, we are a pop culture show. We will continue to be a pop culture show, but there's a lot of ways that we can be doing better within the confines of our show. Right. We will continue to be a pop culture show with a better understanding

of our platform, of our influence and of the world around us, specifically of people who don't look like us. Yeah. I, I agree. Yeah. Um, I'm sure that a lot of people tuned in today to hear if we have anything to say about some of the Facebook drama that happened. Yeah. Honestly, really nothing feels less important than talking about Facebook group drama today. We know that some of the subgroups changed their names and we think that that's great for them. These subgroups were made for you. A lot of them were made by you. And if you want to change the name of your group, go right ahead. That works for us. Yeah. I don't really want to make it a whole hoopla because in the grand scheme of the world, it's just not important. And I want, and I want to continue just

to dedicate airtime on the show to things that are worthy and George Floyd and the entire Black Lives Matter movement is worthy of that. So, um, which is also why there's no fast five stories today. Um, it just doesn't feel right or appropriate. Um, I think that we all need to be spending this time learning more and watching, you know, videos consuming content that will help us get a better understanding of what's going on and supporting the Black Lives Matter movement right now. I think that a lot of times our show is, is a welcome distraction for people from what might be going on in their

lives or what's going on in the world. And we love that. We love that. And that's what we do. And that is what, that is our, our purpose, you know, to just make light of tough situations and help everyone get through. But then there are some times where it is important to not be distracted from what's going on. And we feel as though today is one of those times. Right. Like we as a community have been distracted long enough. And I think it's just time that we take this seriously. So we apologize for there not being an episode. We promise we will be back, you know, later in the week, but I just felt, and Jackie felt that, um, out of respect for the lives lost and just for the entire movement. Just to not, just to not. Just to not.

So we hope everyone is doing well. And we'll see you tomorrow. We'll see ya. Bye.