In this episode, we sit down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wesley Lowery. Wesley is an Ohio native and talks to us about joining the trade of journalism in the 8th grade and the heroes that inspired him to blaze his trail in an evolving field with little representation.
He was a lead on the Washington Post's "Fatal Force" project that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016 as well as the author of They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement.
Wesley's work focuses on issues of policing, justice, and race relations, and can be found in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, CBS News, The Atlantic, the cover of Newsweek, and now on 60 Minutes. His groundbreaking work on the frontlines of Ferguson to George Floyd gives him a unique perspective regarding the narratives told around police brutality. When asked, “Where do we go from here?” he speaks earnestly about the power we have as individuals and as a collective and how he believes that there is no better time like the present for us to rise.
Check one of his most recent articles here: https://www.newsweek.com/police-reform-alone-wont-stop-another-george-floyd-being-murdered-1512023
In this episode, we sit down with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wesley Lowery. Wesley is an Ohio native and talks to us about joining the trade of journalism in the 8th grade and the heroes that inspired him to blaze his trail in an evolving field with little representation.
He was a lead on the Washington Post's "Fatal Force" project that won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2016 as well as the author of They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement.
Wesley's work focuses on issues of policing, justice, and race relations, and can be found in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, CBS News, The Atlantic, the cover of Newsweek, and now on 60 Minutes. His groundbreaking work on the frontlines of Ferguson to George Floyd gives him a unique perspective regarding the narratives told around police brutality. When asked, “Where do we go from here?” he speaks earnestly about the power we have as individuals and as a collective and how he believes that there is no better time like the present for us to rise.
Check one of his most recent articles here: https://www.newsweek.com/police-reform-alone-wont-stop-another-george-floyd-being-murdered-1512023
Alright, kinfolk, come here with Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer prize, winning journalists, young black savant, man, just somebody I admire. I recently got a chance to sit with him in the days after George Floyd. And man just thought that man, this man singularly with his gift, his experience, and just his ability to analyze the problem could speak a lot to this question of where do we go from here? So Wesley, go ahead and introduce yourself. I don't know if I could do better,
Speaker 2:But no, of course. I appreciate it. PTM. I'm glad to be here with you. And I appreciate the introduction and the kind introduction. Yeah. You know, I'm a writer, a reporter, a journalist. I do a little bit of everything. This meant six years of the Washington post covering issues of policing and race and justice across the country. And then earlier this year I moved over to 60 minutes. So I work with them on an offshoot show called 60 and six. So basically the same show, only a little bit shorter, but I also still write. And so I've written pieces this year and put the Newsweek cover in the Atlantic, kind of all over the place. And again, primarily focused on issues of race and justice and what that means in our country and in this world,
Speaker 1:Man, good stuff. I want to get right to it. So tell me, how did you decide on a career in journalism? You're from my wife's her family's from shaker Heights. She has some family in shaker Heights and she tells me about the neighborhood. I was like, okay, I got to ask him, how did he decide he wanted to be a journalist from where he came from? Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so for folks who might not know, shaker Heights is East side of Cleveland. So it's an Ohio. I moved there when I was in eighth grade, my family moved there. And so I spent all of high school there. My parents were still there for me. I don't even know if I ever really made a choice. You know, it was one of those things where, you know, like I was always good at writing. I love reading. Like that was always, I was never a math science brain. I was always a history English kind of space. And I remember when I got to shaker, got to Cleveland in eighth grade and I was just looking for frankly, I was looking for like clubs, the joint, or like ways to make friends. I was a new kid in eighth grade is kind of a weird time to join a new school because like everyone's already kind of clicked up for me.
Speaker 1:They're friends. Yeah, exactly. Going into high school.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's a real awkward time to like pop in. And so I was the new kid and I remember seeing an announcement in the cafeteria that the newspaper club was meeting. Right. And I was like, Oh, I know how to do that. And so I showed up and worked for the newspaper and some of my friends throughout all of high school afterwards were people who I met working first for the middle school newspaper, and then from my high school newspaper. And so I was blessed to even go to a school that had, you know, a full journalism class and, and a newspaper. And, you know, I made friends through that way. I learned some of the basics that way. I was skipping my other classes to go hang out in the journalism department. Right. So I kinda knew that this was going to be it for me. Um, pretty early on. And one of the things I figured out pretty early on was that journalism is in a lot of ways, it's a trade. It's a little less of a, it's not like an academic profession in a lot of ways. It's trade. It's like fixing cars, right. You can follow the instructions and figure it out, but the more you do it, the more reps you put it in, the more time you put into it, the better you're going to be, the more expertise you have. And so for me, I just kind of tried to dive in as quickly as possible, as early as possible. How much can I write? Right. And so when I got to college, I went to Ohio university in Athens, Ohio. It was the sense of like how much time I spent writing while I'm here so I can get as good as possible. So I worked for the college newspaper, every single day of college, I was hustling. I was working hard, trying to write as much as possible. I was taking internships during the summer to try to get more experience working, professional spaces, start building a network. And so for me, it's been, you know, I've been working for a newspaper in some capacity, basically every day of my life, since eighth grade, you know, and like, and for a lot of that time, thinking about new ways to write, thinking about new ways to tell stories and then getting a little bit better throughout all of that.
Speaker 1:What were some of the influences? It said, Hey, this is possible for me. This is something I could do. Not just as a hobby, but man, I'm confident that this is the way that I can make it doing this, you know? Cause I know you come from a neighborhood like mine or where I come from, where it's Oh, am I playing basketball? No. Okay. You know, maybe I can sell dope. No. Okay. So then what are the other options? I mean, I don't know many black journalists and definitely not of your caliber.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I, you know, and it's unfortunate because there aren't that many black journalists and it's tough because I think a big part of achieving do you have to see, you have to be able to see yourself doing something to go do it. Right. You'd have to be able to envision it. You got to be able to fantasize about it. And unfortunately there aren't a lot of people who look like us who are in these newsrooms, in these spaces. And so for a lot of people growing up, they didn't even necessarily see it as an option. And so I think that's a big part of it. And if they do see it as an option, they only see it in like very limited roles. Like, all right, maybe I can be the weatherman. Maybe I can be Stephen A. Smith. I can go do sports, but I don't necessarily see people who look like us in all of the different roles as writers, as authors, as the news guy, as the investigative reporter, as you know. And so I think that's really important, you know, for me, I was really fortunate. You know, I grew up with both my parents, my dad, my dad was a, for a long time. And so I kind of grew up in a household where, when we woke up, like the first person up, went and got the newspaper and brought it in and then like they would, you know, we would watch the news and then we watched jeopardy like every day after dinner. And so there was just this sense of like in my household, the idea of journalism as like a noble profession or thing that people it's just like a normal part of life is something I grew up with. And that's not necessarily true for everyone. Right. That we live in a plate. We live in a time where people aren't consuming the newspaper everyday like that they're not necessarily sitting down and watching the local news. Right. Or that's what your grandmother does. That's where your aunts and uncles, you know, but like the average person doesn't necessarily sit down at the end of the day and watch the news like appointment viewing anymore. And so, you know, I was kind of lucky in that space. You know, my parents, my dad, particularly, it was always really particular as well. He always wanted me and my two younger brothers to be in spaces where we saw black achievement, where we knew black doctors and black lawyers and black businessmen, the black council man. And that the sense was that we could see with our own eyes that we could do basically anything. Right. I think that was really important. It was also interesting. Cause my dad had worked in journalism was that he really didn't want me to go into journalism at all. He was like real passive aggressive about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, that's funny that you say that because uh, my mother and father were teachers, but that's the last thing they wanted us to do. It's almost like they become professionals and they're like, well, I don't know if it's like the desire to make more money and they feel like you should do better or whatever they characterize as better, but they're like shoo, you away from what they do.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And I think for my dad too, you know, part of it was that, you know, it's a profession that doesn't have a ton of black people in it. There's racism inside the newsroom still there's, you know, sometimes we don't cover things the right way. You know, there's, there's a lot of frustration as a black journalist when you're working in mainstream media. And I think that for him, he had experienced a lot of that and his dream, you know, he grew up in kind of all over his father was a minister or a pastor, but spent a lot of time in South Jersey and in New York and some in rougher neighborhoods, right. And public housing. And he and his dream was to get his kids out to the burbs. And now he was like, why would you go back and do what I did again, you should be a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant, you know? And there was that kind of sense of building generation to generation. I kind of couldn't be shaken from this, you know, and I had a great high school journalism teacher and Annalisa Kiski and she was just like the journalism teacher, my freshman year, first period class was journalism. So she was the first teacher I had in high school. And this lady was crazy. Just this crazy survey lady who was like a total character. We get arguments in class. We would debate things, but she really taught me to love the craft. Right. And, and to love the idea that like I'd come to work every day and get in arguments with people. Like we can just sit down and we can talk about the things that matter. We could pick up the newspaper and say, what was in newspaper today? What did they get wrong? What did they get? Right. How do we push the story forward? How do we go tell people's stories? Right. And that kind of opportunity is really, really important to me. You know, it was a kind of thing where it really, for me, I felt like I had kind of found my space and my voice right. Where I can now it was just like, it was like a puzzle piece that fit for me. Right then I was in that space and I just knew, this is what I want to do. This is how I want to keep doing it.
Speaker 1:The, would you considered the bellwethers of journalism for you? People who who've come before you, that you kind of say, okay, I'm I feel like I'm going in the right direction. I see where their path, I see their trajectory. And I'm kind of following that.
Speaker 2:You know, it's an interesting, because that's shifted and changed a little bit over my career and part has not reached new milestones or accomplished new goals. Right. It also, you know, I've had the benefit of, because I've known, I wanted to do this, you know, I've been thinking about who I would aspire to be like for almost 20 years. Right. Like, and I'm 30, so it's not like, you know, so there's been a lot of time to like grow and develop and think and admire this person. Then, you know, I remember when I was growing up the local columnist, the black columnist in the Cleveland, plain dealer, like Phillip Morris, and that's another guy Sanford like, and they were the black guy who, that they're facing the newspaper was Chris Broussard there. So he came late. He came a little later, but yeah, exactly. That's one of my brothers too. Yeah, no, exactly. So, you know, but it was an idea that like the word, like there are two or three black people get their face in the newspaper and they're so smart that all these people have to listen to them. Right. They get to write where they're going to write. They get to say what they're going to say. They get to do their reporting. And unfortunately it was just a handful of black people at a columnist level. Certainly. Right. And so they stuck out in that way, like, all right, if I show up and like work hard, everyone's going to have to listen to me. And so this one, there was stuff like that, you know? And then there was, but then as I got into my career, I started looking up to an admiring, a lot of different people. So I remember there was a dude named Corey date. He's one of my best friends and mentors. He was a political reporter for a long time. He was the wall street journal. And then he moved over to NPR for a minute. And he was like this light skin brother. Right? Like we, we look a little bit alike and the heat has so much of the career that I wanted to have. He'd worked at the Boston globe and covered local politics. He'd done a national campaign. That was my dream. Like I don't want to go be a national correspondent, travel the country. Right. And then he'd moved. And so I was very taken by how I wanted to kind of mimic some of his career steps. And it was interesting because when my first full time jobs out of college who was at the Boston globe covering local politics, and I had the phone that used to be his phone, like it still had his like voicemail thing where like I found myself actually like following in the footsteps of folks like that. And then one is also true is like, I think about people who I admire. Right. Cause there's one thing to think about people whose footsteps you're trying to follow in. And I think that's really important and also was true in any career in any profession is that the pathway looks a little bit different for everyone. Right. And the work looks a little bit different. And so I also try to think about,
Speaker 1:Cause you're a man of your times,
Speaker 2:Right. And any of the different opportunities, different things pop up. We're also, we're also different. My writing is different than, you know, other folks. Right. And so like it, and so we have our own individual voices, our own styles, the different news stories pop up. Right. And one of my good friends, a guy look up to a lot to remain lead MSNBC. One of his big ComOps was, was working on hurricane Katrina in new Orleans. Like I couldn't plan to try to do something like that. Right. Because that's just the way the news works. It happened it's happening stance. Right. And he was ready and prepared in that moment to do it. Right. And so a lot of it has always been like trying to be prepared and ready in these moments to jump in and to contribute. But I also just think about like, who are people whose work I really admire, right. Who am I going to try? And in some ways be because there are so few black journalists in some ways be very fluid and kind of the classics, right? Like, so there's a guy he's passed now, but who I had the pleasure of meeting when I was younger and it was wife, I still know Angela Anderson. And he was, I think only the second black person to ever win a Pulitzer. And he was like the first black man. I think everyone in the feature writing Pulitzer, which is like among the writers, that's like the big one because it's about feature writing. And he done, he was this long time journalist pastor in Detroit and an activist too. And he, he wrote this piece when he was a fuse at the wall street journal and he wrote this piece about a pharmacy robbery. And he went back and traced, like the immigrant family who had committed the robbery or who had been the victims and they hit it. So what happened was, uh, a young black man broken this pharmacy, stuck it up and the owner shot and killed him. And then he traced back both families and looked at like what was happening and how, you know, and it was just fascinating. It was beautiful. It was nuanced. It was smart. Right. And I've read that piece a million times. Right. And like, and I think that that's, it's, what's people like that who you kind of feel like you're building on top of, or you're aspiring in some ways to be like, you know, like you're, you're trying to think like, alright, these are the classics. This is the people who kind of built this. How do I match them? How do I meet them? How do I build on top?
Speaker 1:Hmm. So now it seems like your goals have evolved. So I want to talk about your shift going from politics to now what you political writing to what you do now, but just to comment on what you just said. So it seems like you've evolved from 20 years to now. It seems like you, you know, you've almost shifted back in time to look for the people that you aspire to be because of the, the achievements that you've, you've achieved along the way. So what does it look like on, why did you make that shift from since Corey was the bellwether for you at one point to go from political reporting to what you do? I mean, cause I don't think what you do now can be encapsulated in political reporting. It's so much broader.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, I think that for me, part of it was, you know, because there is such a small number of black journalists, it's really a family, right. It's like, I always say we're all like a degree and a half separated from each other. The joke I always say is there are seven black journalists and we've all dated each other. Right. Like we literally, everyone knows everyone, right. Like if I had to, you know, like if you were like gun to my head, you got to get to Oprah in the next 25 minutes. Like it's like three text messages, right. Because like I know, I know someone who knows someone who it's just a really, really small world. Right. And because of that, there's a lot of effort that goes into, especially with young black journalist mentorship guidance advice. And I was someone because I knew I wanted to do this early, who had a lot of people who kind of looked out for me and gave me advice who tried to help guide me in one direction or the other. And one thing that they drilled into my head from a really early age, whether that was one thing that's really important for black journalists is to make sure that we're telling our stories that unfortunately so much of the media is run by white corporate insurance operated by white editors and white reporters that to have that one of the reasons or one of the things that's important about having black journalists. So you have people who can tell black stories. And so for me, I always knew that I wanted to be someone who told stories. Right. And who told stories of black and Brown people who told stories that weren't otherwise being covered. That because that lane is unfortunately so open, right? So I started, I was doing pure politics. I covered city hall in Los Angeles for a little bit. I covered city hall and local politics in Boston for a year and then came to the Washington post to cover Congress. Right. And so it's like meat and potatoes politics every day. I'm on Capitol Hill talking to senators, talking to members of Congress about whatever's happening. And, but even in that job, right, there were always little ways you can try to bite off parts of, you know, race and justice. And because what we know is that these issues touch everything right. And so one of the first front page story I ever had, the Washington post was Brock Obama had nominated a guy to be one of the assistant attorney generals to oversee the civil rights division of the justice department. And the Republicans blocked the nomination because he, because this lawyer had once signed a brief on behalf of Mumia blue Jamal in Philadelphia. Oh man. And they're going to sign the brief
Speaker 3:And you know, who, how those briefs get put together. Literally, probably he might've just signed the race.
Speaker 4:If I remember correctly, he had been working for the NAACP legal defense fund and they were offering me as some like pro bono, you know, like, so it wasn't even, so I think he actually, might've been doing it in his capacity at like for the organization, not even like individually, but anyway, so the Republicans demagogue, you know, they were like, Obama Shiner nominated a cop killer. He can't like, he can't do it or like a guy who sympathizes with cop killers. So he can't. And so the first story that I hit the front page for me as a congressional reporter was a story that was about race and police. Right? Like it was a story that was about these issues. Right. I remember doing covers at the time of the push on the Hill to try to get the voting rights act renewed. And so there was always things, I mean, immigration is an issue of race, right? Like it's issue of ethnicity. And so, so there was this, like, it was always kind of there. And so I was always looking for excuses to raise my hand or chip in or be helpful. However, and then in early 2014, uh, when Ferguson happened, Michael Brown was killed. I happen to have a backpack. I had just gotten back from a trip and they needed someone to get on the airplane that day. I was like, yeah, I can go. And I ended up going to Ferguson. I remember texting my buddies, like my main group chat with my boys. Right. And saying, I go, I gotta go out of town. I'll be in Missouri for a few days. I should be back. Like I was leaving. I'm like, uh, I think I was left on Monday and I was expected to be back that weekend for like our sports, like, you know, like to beat me up at the sports bar or whatever. I ended up staying down there for about three months and you know, was one of the last national reporters to leave for after the decision not to charge, uh, Darren Wilson, the officer, uh, but then there was a round of riding and then I stayed and helped cover some of the rebuilding as well. And so it was just a total, um, you know, life changing experience for me, which is to be honest, it's like bittersweet and weird, right? Like it's like one of these like centralized things that in a lot of ways change changed my life and the trajectory of my career. And it was born out of trash, you know, someone being killed out of the police, killing someone. Right. And like, it's just a very odd thing to sit with in that way. Right. Like you don't want to,
Speaker 3:I understand that, that I've quite recently had the same experience. I mean, last month, basically when you see, you know, all the events surrounding Georgia, Florida have kind of changed the trajectory of some of the things that myself and some of the others that were involved do now. So yeah, it is kind of a lonely feeling, but I now feel, I don't feel alone anymore,
Speaker 4:You know, but it's, it is a little strange, you know, so at the time I was still so young, I was like, I was 24 and I was at 24. I spent three months on Ferguson. It had been a best, like it had just been crazy. No one knew what was happening. It was the first, one of these that got covered like that. You know, it was hundreds of days of protesters in the streets. Police are like hitting us with tear gas all the time. It was hyper politicized. And so we were all, even the reporters who were covering it much less activists, but like the reporters we were getting, like our addresses published and people were sending us threats. So it was like, he was like a crazy environment. The activists all had it worse, they're all getting followed around. And so we come out of that and I fly back. I flew back to Washington first week of December and I land. It's been like three months. This story is finally over. I'm like exhaling. I'm trying to dislike, collect my thoughts a little bit. And I turned my phone back on as we land. And there's many announcement in New York city. If the officer who killed her gardener, isn't going to get charged. And there's like massive protests going up. And like, it was just like the next one. So the next one, once those protests pawn down, they sent me home to you in on Tamir rice because the video of him being killed. Right. And so it just went from one to the next, to the next and the net. And I just made this decision. I remember having this conversation with the one of my editors at the time. And he said to me, he said, well, what do you want to do next year? Right. We've argued, went into corporate politics. Our promise to you is that if you want them to go on a campaign trail, you know, we will help you do that. You gotta think now it was 2015 a place the Washington post is staffing up for the presidential election, 16 elections. And so they're saying, well, you know, that's still what you want to do. The floor is yours for that. Or do you want to, you know, or do you want us to try to stick on this policing stuff you want? Do we want to craft out a B, find out, find a way for you to cover this? And I was like, forget the election. This is the story, right. There is times where like something reaches out to you and pulls you in. And this was a case where I just, I was just fascinated by the story. I thought there was so much more writing going to do with, there were some questions to ask it. Clearly wasn't resolved. I wouldn't have felt right. Covering furnace in three months and then just walking away. Right. Because it didn't feel like the story. And that's, so that's how I moved into the position. I ended up in kind of as a national correspondent covering bond enforcement, justice, and then how it relates to police interactions with our communities. Um, and then we launched that next year, the fatal force project. And that was a project where we try to figure out exactly how many people, the police were killing, how many people are shooting and killing. Um, and that was, uh, a project that went back to the streets of Ferguson, right? Where the, one of the main debates at the time was, do police killings even happen at all? How often is it someone who's black or unarmed black? And when we, as journalists start trying to answer that question, we figured out when we found out that there was no accurate data, that the fence didn't keep it. A lot of the local police departments wouldn't release it. And so a team at the post set out to try to answer this question and built a database of every police shooting, just to even just trying to figure out how often, like, we're not saying these are all bad. We're not saying they're all, it's purely, how often does this happen? How can we have this conversation without facts without him? And so that, wasn't how I spent most of 2015.
Speaker 3:So I've been fascinated as a lay person, no real knowledge of journalism on the consumer, in black people who told black stories or tell black stories. And I think for me, my journey, and like even trying to find those voices started with Tavis smiley and, you know, with the state of the black union, those things that he was doing. And then it was like rolling Martin. And then there was this gap for me. This is me as an individual. And you know, who feels that gap for me now is you. And I wonder that, I wonder if you see how the consumer sees the work that you're doing and the importance of it, and the fact that there's probably single voices in the media that say, I care about telling black stories at whatever expense. And I just wonder if you just kind of see almost like you're like, I mean, of course you're a unicorn, but for those of us who are consumers like me, I'm looking for black people who are looking to tell black stories. And just that trajectory that I think that you're like the millennial version of what those guys were doing way back when,
Speaker 4:You know, trying to, you know, I think that telling those stories is so important. People like Roland and I are a group chat together. So I hear from him every day, he's a whole character. Well, that's awful rolling, you know, but he, you know, but it was one of those things where there are so few people in that space, right. Again, going back to what we're talking about before there are so few black people in media period. And then when you're talking about people who are explicitly covering black stories, that's a totally different subsection. And then black people who are telling black stories and able to do it outside of like white control. Right? So like even, you know, so the reality is right. If it can, even me, I can be a black journalist trying to tell black stories with some expertise, but I still got to get that work through a white editor through another white editor, publish it, a white public, you know, like that there is, there are layers, right? And sometimes that's as simple as the language we use and how we talk, what references we have to explain versus what we can just put in there. There's a lot of that that comes into it. And like I said, I think that for me, I've always wanted to tell black stories. Now I think that I've always been kind of torn or maybe not settled on exactly what medium I want to do. One of my goals is always been to do as much as possible and do that, the things in a lot of different spaces. And so I want to be able to write stories, whether it be in a newspaper, whether it be in a magazine, I want to be able to do on camera. Like I'm doing the 60 minutes. I want to be able to produce stories. Right. And like, you know, step out of it a little bit, but push it out into the world. Right. And so I'm always trying to think about how do I, you know, how do I do storytelling? And storytelling can look different. It doesn't always have to look the same way. It can look there, but how so? How do I do that? But then also, how do I make sure, as I'm telling the stories that I'm telling you, why, again, I guess for me, it's not that I'm not interested in other stories. I'm really interested about the stories. And you know, a lot of my in fact, favorite storytellers are people who themselves aren't black and aren't even necessarily are specifically focused on good writing, good reporting is good writing. But one of the things I know is that a lot of those other wings are overflowing with people. And here you got a whole segment of the population that no one was paying attention to. I always tell them their stories and I'm like, I'm okay. And by the way, like it's people who are my friends and family who I like who I'm interested in. And I'm like, of course, I'm gonna go tell the black story. It's like, none of y'all want to do it. I'll go do it. That's fine.
Speaker 3:Alright, man. So shifting gears here with the weight of your experience and in light of what happened with George Floyd, just bringing the weight of what, you know, I know for me, I, I struggle with this question cause I don't really know. I've heard from different people and her different ideas of where we should go. But in this particular case, man, I just want to get the weight of your experience. Where do you think we go from here in the aftermath of George for his death?
Speaker 4:You know, I think it's, this is such an interesting bump because I think there are two different populations of people in this conference, right? You have black Americans and black Americans have been saying for heaven that the police aren't treating this fair, that over police and underserved, that there's no accountability when the police use excessive force or engage a brutality. And a lot of black Americans are kind of start up, they're over it. They're tired of talking about it. They're tired of it. Like being on panel discussions are like, and then meanwhile, you know, and there's like a cynicism moment where like, you know, okay. Yeah. Y'all think George, boy's going to be the one that changes this. Okay. Well, you know, like, can I get it because they've seen this over and over and over again, and then you have a lot of white Americans. We're like, no, no, no, we're taking it seriously this time. This is real. Can you believe? You know? And so you have like two populations in some ways they're going in different directions on it. And it's interesting. I think one of the other things that's true though, is I can't tell how much of this moment is people who are caught up around George Floyd in policing. And how much of it is residual energy. A lot of other things from this presidential administration, right? This is a very polarizing time, right? No matter your politics, right? Everyone's upset. Everyone thinks the world's ending everyone like, you know, and what I was saying is that a lot of people who are now supportive of black lives matter and policing reform funding are people who've also been, who spent the last few years upset in general and ready to protest in general, they've been upset about Parkland and climate change and the kids in the cages on the border and the like, and Russia. And so this became the next thing, you know, and I'm not saying that that's not sincere. Like I'm not saying that those folks don't actually care that they're not actually trying to do the readings, but I just do wonder, I'm really interested to see what happens, come this election, um, the next year to see how much of that energy teams or how much of that is energy for this moment that like lurches things forward. But then, you know, so it's going to be really interesting. You know, I think that we've been in this period of time, that in some ways it's kind of education, right? And for folks who don't experience the police, the way that many black communities experienced police, they genuinely didn't believe that things like what happened to George Ford happened. They didn't believe it. That's not who the police are to them. That's not how the police show up and what we've seen in the years since Eric Garner. So 14 to 26 years is we've seen video after video, after video. We're like every American, no matter their race, no matter their comp I've seen one video where they were like, all right, that shit, right. I used to have, I called them my regular Washington post. And we'd be like, our it'd be like white subscribers who would angrily email me after every order.
Speaker 2:Cool. Right. And like every time it would be this long email,
Speaker 4:Well, about how that black, I actually deserved to die. Cause here's the reasons right? Tamir rice was actually seven foot tall and like, looked like a man. So it's so you're bias. Cause you're saying he was a child. They're like, you know, it's just like each time every email was why the black guy deserved. Right. I guess what it was that was the upshot or black woman. And I remember there was a turning point. I don't know if it was on Freddie gray in Baltimore and Walter Scott, there's this turning point where suddenly some of those writers were writing in to be like, all right. That one was kind of crazy, you know, did you see this?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I saw that wherever you bid, it looks like the other 20 videos I tried to show was this moment where like suddenly for a lot of people, they previously, they were looking for whatever reason
Speaker 4:They argue that this one isn't in a suddenly for a lot of people that are like, all right, now I'm getting tired of this. Like they had to kill that guy too. That's you know, like where in? So suddenly like some of that like belief that the police could never be wrong, they could never be, it was a lot of people genuinely believe this was made up, but then it wasn't. And in that took a while for folks to start to be like, Oh, Oh, okay. It's cops can do some stuff that maybe they shouldn't be doing. Oh, word, alright. Oh, another video. Right. And that was a thing. And then like they opened Twitter.
Speaker 3:So do you think the energy is around policing in general? Or do you think people get and understand systemic racism as a whole?
Speaker 4:I don't think people understand is something very, I mean, I think that there's energy around policing. I think that the average American agree understands that like, something's up, we gotta do something about it, but you know, like they can't tell you what the answers are, but the average American is like, no matter, yeah, no matter about you, no matter what they're like, all right, something's going on. We need to do something where I think that there still is some push and pull between people who think this is about policies and people write a few bad cops. And well, if we man, the choke hold in, the cops would never Trump, but there's a significant chunk of people. That's what they believe is still about that policies at that. Right. And then there's another set of folks and it's growing significant. There's another set of folks that goes clearly, there's something systemically, screwed up. Right. And when we see that argument being made over the last 20, 25 years with the new Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander, and what we understand now about mass incarceration and what that looks like, our understanding now, rug, war, and what that looked like and who got locked up and whose lives got ruined. And who did you know that there is a growing section of people instead of people who go, all right, there's something wrong about this whole system and we've got to undo. And one of the big questions becomes, is one, does that actually hit a tip? When does that actually hit a point where it's so widely understood and accepted, there are systemic problems that the only thing to do with systemic solution. And I don't necessarily think we're there. Um, you see this, you know, look, George Boyd felt like a moment, like none other in recent history. And yet suddenly at a federal level, we saw very little actual move right there in either at a lot of the local levels where there was movement stuff was happening, right. With a handful of exceptions, these weren't radical changes. Right. And so unfortunately it feels like in terms of this conversation, we're still a ways away actually seeing the type of systemic shift that might mean that there are no more George Bush.
Speaker 3:And so what do you think advocacy means? I guess what you're saying is it meant what it meant before George Florida. And it means what it means now. We've still got to do the work.
Speaker 4:I think so. You know, and I think that there's still the educational work. There's that storytelling work. I think that there's a, you know, I think there's a component of exploration, right. Um, where we don't necessarily know all the answers and we have to figure that out. Right. What does that mean? I think that there's, uh, you know, things about policing, like a lot of our stuff is that it's a local government issue. And so there's actually a lot of power though. Right? And so a handful of people can decide, they want to see a change and they can make the change. They can talk to their council members that probably safety directors that right consider is I think a lot of opportunity for an individual person out there to put their foot down on the scale issue. And that was true before its worst point. I think that's especially true.
Speaker 3:Do you think people have, it's almost like we've put up all our energy and effort into this election that if we get president Donald Trump out the white house and put president Joseph body in all of our problems would be solved. I mean, what do you say to that?
Speaker 4:I mean, I would remind people that black lives matter damn under president Barack Obama, right? Trayvon Martin was killed under president Barack Obama, like the Brown Eric Garner and your rice and Sandra bland line up with steel. And there was that these issues like two things can be true. Right? I think most people who support the black lives matter do not support president Donald Trump are people who hope that president by him is elected or someone, you know, that they're, they're certainly on the left of the spectrum, even if they don't love drumline. But I do think it would be a little foolhardy to think that that's bitch, even though, I mean, be clear, Joe Biden says a lot of things that are influenced by what activists and protesters said. He's far to the left where Barack Obama was on these issues and part because the whole country has moved down these issues right over these years. But these aren't things that an individual person, uh, that an individual, these aren't things, that individual person or an individual president has the power to kind of in one change, we're talking about systems that are embedded in our society, you know, culture and country. And so I think that, you know, for folks who care about this work care about these types of reforms and changes, I would warn against thinking that like, okay, president Trump's gone. We're good. Cause again, this stuff was happening before president Trump and it will be happening after.
Speaker 3:Do you sense in the country? I know we've had syncing polarization and that's been years in the making. I don't know if you've since this, uh, almost, uh, a hostility like before George Florida, I would never think we could ever be, even be approaching a civil war after I'm like, well, what intervening for us could stop us from continuing on this path. If there's no movement towards understanding systemic racism, I don't know what kind of emotional pulse do you feel that the country has right now?
Speaker 4:I do think there is a pretty remarkable divide in the nation and then level of polarization that everyone believes we're stuck in an emergency. You know, they believe the emergency is the opposite of the other. Right. And I think that that is, and it's different, you know, generally or historically half of the country is happy because they're guys, the president and the other half of the country thinks it's the end of the world because the other guy's the president. Right. And then it switches every few years. And like you don't like, and I wasn't different in this case. I'm part of that is politics. And the rhetoric of the president is that he wants his people will be scared. He wants them thinking the world's end and they're coming for you and I'm going to save you. And I'm going to protect, you know, that he leans so much into these kinds of divisible cultural war where they're the right is still thinks the world is that even though they run, I have to go, you've got the power. And the left definitely thinks the world is right. Like, so there is this we feel, but what's also true though. Like separate from our partisan politics is that our country is at, is dealing with a massive economic downturn, global pandemic. People are dying. We're all stuck in our houses with our families and we're going crazy. Like people are losing jobs, losing businesses. And by the way, the country's changed it to changing demographics in moments of change are kind of jarring for people. It's scary for folks when it used to be this way. And now it's this way. And so it's unsurprising to me that there would be some thrashing, right? It's not surprising to me that there would be some backlash to that and some discomfort. Well,
Speaker 3:I want to give you the last word. There's some guys, like some of the guys you've interviewed in Houston, they're like, man, I want to see something different. I want to organize a, I just want some type of guidance and wisdom as to what do I do from here? What would you say to,
Speaker 4:You know, I think that one of the lessons of the last few years is how much a devoted set of individuals can change that. Right? We all know the phrase black lives matter. And that was three women who got that together. We all know the nicknames like Michael Steele, often Sterling. And we know those names because people want out of their house and they protest. And they demonstrate that we live in a time and social media with the internet where a good idea and compelling argument can change the world. And we also have more access to nation. We can get together, we can figure out the answers to our questions. We can figure out how to petition our government. We can figure out how to start something national. You know, that we have a power as individuals that we didn't before. And so I think that should encourage people of all stripes, including people who otherwise might not get a platform, right. It might not otherwise have their voices heard. Right. There are ways to get our voices heard now totally different. And I think that that should be encouraging that like we shouldn't step back and we can set up what we should step forward and put our foot on the scale. Because I think now a committed, a dedicated, a smart person can make more change perhaps than they ever could.
Speaker 3:Wesley, thank you for joining me during this time. I know you are going from project to project, but you've really blessed us and sitting with us and helping us frame the debate about where should. And I just, you know, say where should black people, who in light of what happened with George Floyd? Where should we go from here?
Speaker 4:Of course, brother, appreciate you.