← Lunch with Jamie
Lunch with Jamie
The Opposite of Poverty Is Justice — Bryan Stevenson on America’s Moral Reckoning
01:15:21
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- [00:04]
A
Today I'm bringing you a conversation from the lunch with Jamie Vault with Bryan Stevenson that I had in 2020. I hope most you know who Brian is. He's the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative. He is responsible for the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, one of our most important monuments and museums. He was the subject and focus of the 2019 movie Just Mercy where he was played by the Michael B. Jordan. And he continues to be one of the most informed and dynamic voices looking at the history of injustice in our country. Brian speaks with a matter of fact frankness and honesty that I think is really important in talking about these tough subjects. The conversation, you know, went across the board from the importance of storytelling and how Hollywood plays a big role in personal stories and, and how storytelling can foster empathy, healing and cross racial understanding. We talked about the Equal Justice Initiative which he founded. We Talked about Brown vs Board of Education and how that affected him and his family. We talked about ubi, the importance of voting, how to improve the democratic system to make things more equitable. You know, Brian really is somebody that we should all be aware of, we should all be listening to. We should all make the pilgrimage to Montgomery, Alabama to a museum. He also talks about how hopeful he is. And again, although this conversation was in 2020 and maybe we've taken a few steps back, I still am going to believe that Brian today remains hopeful and I hope to have another conversation with him as a part two to this. He talked about how hope is a superpower and learning is an action item. And, and as you all know, action is really what I want to come out of this conversations. So I hope you enjoy this, hope you get something out of it, hope you learn. I hope you sign up for Brian's work, read his books, watch the movie. And here's my conversation with Bryan Stevenson.
- [02:17]
B
So welcome everybody. We have so much to cover today. I'm not going to waste time going into any of the Brian's background because you all should know who he is. You should have seen the movie, heard his zoom and interviews and read them and listen to them. So I just want to thank Brian because his time, all of our guest time is precious. But Brian is even in many ways even more precious for the work that he is doing fighting on the front lines all around the world. And from back now, although he's hunkered down in Alabama at his headquarters. So I'm gonna, Brian's gonna start off with a little intro and then we're gonna get right into it. So Brian, meet all my friends. And thank you for. Thank you for being here.
- [03:07]
C
Terrific. Well, thank you for inviting me, Jamie. It's great to see all of you and have this opportunity. You know, I want this to be a time for us to just talk with one another, and I'll just open it up for questions. But I did want to just explain a little bit why I think this is time well spent. I am a product of Brown versus Board of Education. I grew up in a community where black kids could not go to public schools. So I started my education in a colored school. And there were no high schools for black kids when my dad was a teenager. And even though he was smart and hardworking, he couldn't go to high school in our county, and that limited his opportunity. And I got to go to college.
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D
And.
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C
And in that respect, Brown represented something quite transformative. And I love the power that lawyers had to make my community do something that they would not otherwise have done. So if you had a vote on whether to end racial segregation in my county in the 1960s, we would have lost that vote. The county was only 20% black. But because these lawyers could enforce the rule of law, they had the power to actually protect the rights of poor kids like me. And that's what motivated me to want to go to law school. And I wanted to use that same power to help disfavored people. And when I came out of law school in the 80s, we were in the midst of this rush to mass incarceration. The prison population went from about 200,000 in the early 1970s to 2.2 million today. I was coming out at a time when millions of people were being caught up by this system. And so I decided to use this power of the law to protect the rights of people on death row, where folks were literally dying for legal assistance, where I realized we have a criminal justice system that treats you better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. And that was my focus. And for the first 20 some years of my career, you know, I was undercover. I was going into prisons. I was on death row. I felt a little bit like Harriet Tubman because we didn't want a lot of attention. We were trying to get people to freedom, and the more attention, the more obstacles would be created. And it was a very covert kind of practice. And then about 12 years ago, I realized that we probably couldn't win Brown versus Board of Education. Today, I don't think our court would do something as disruptive on behalf of disfavored people as The Warren court did in the 1950s. And that worried me. And I began seeing it in my cases. I had dramatic evidence of people who were innocent on death row facing execution, and I couldn't get courts to respond. Dramatic evidence of excessive punishment. Courts were non responsive. And the environment outside the courts had become so indifferent to the rights of people of color, to the rights of the poor, to this long history of racial inequality, that I became persuaded that we had to get outside of the courts and start working on this environment while we continue to do our work. And today I still represent lots and lots of people on death row, in jails and prisons. But I became persuaded that narrative work, changing the narrative of what justice requires, was going to be core to what I should be doing. And I don't think there's any narrative that has been unaddressed, that has been managed effectively more than the narrative of racial difference, the history of racial injustice and inequality that continues to shape life in this country. I absolutely am persuaded that we're not really free in America. We are burdened by this long history. Racial inequality, racial injustice. It creates a kind of smog in the air. And whether you live in California or you live in Alabama or Massachusetts or Wisconsin, you live in a space that has been corrupted by this history of racial inequality. And I think a lot of people have believed for a long time that these toxins over time will simply dissipate. But I don't believe that anymore. I actually think we're going to have to clean the environment, we're going to have to do things that are proactive to challenge and change this legacy, this narrative of racial difference, this history of white supremacy. And for me, what that means is engaging in narrative work. And that's why writers and artists and movies and storytellers become critical players in the front line of this narrative struggle. What we are interested in doing is talking about things we haven't talked about before. I think we have to talk about the fact that we're a post genocide country. What happened to indigenous people when Europeans came to this continent was a genocide. We killed millions of native people. Most Americans. Most history scholars can't even give you the number of indigenous people living on this continent who died during that time period of genocide. We don't even think about that. We kept their names. Half the states in America are native words. But we made the people worse. Leave. We've never acknowledged or addressed that legacy of violence where millions of people died through famine and war. And we justified that violence with a narrative. We said, oh, These indigenous people, they're savages. And we use that rhetoric to justify the violence. And we created a constitution that talks about equality and justice for all. That didn't extend to this indigenous group because they were a different race. And that narrative of racial difference has actually been reinforced in the nineteenth century and the twentieth century. And storytellers have been complicit in reinforcing that narrative. We have a whole catalog of films and stories in the 20th century that are complicit in reinforcing that narrative. And that narrative of racial difference that we embraced to justify the genocide of indigenous people was the same narrative we then used to justify two and a half centuries of slavery. And I don't believe the great evil of American slavery was involuntary servitude and forced labor. I really believe that the true evil of American slavery was the narrative we created to justify enslavement. White enslavers didn't want to feel immoral or unchristian, so they had to create a narrative. They had to create a myth about black people. And what they said was that black people are different than white people. Black people are less human. Black people are less evolved. Black people are less deserving. Black people are less capable. Black people are less worthy. And that narrative of racial difference, that ideology of white supremacy, for me, was the true evil of American slavery. And we never addressed that. We fought the Civil War. The north won the Civil War, but the south won the narrative war. Because that narrative of white supremacy continued. It was undefeated. And we passed the 13th Amendment in 1865, which talks about ending involuntary servitude and ending forced labor, but says nothing about ending racial hierarchy, ending this ideology of white supremacy. And because of that, when I give lectures, I say slavery didn't end in 1865. It just evolved. It turned into a century of violence and terrorism. Black people were pulled out of their homes. They were beaten, they were drowned, they were menaced, they were tortured, they were lynched, sometimes on the courthouse law, in the very institutions that were created to provide justice and equal protection. That's where these lawless acts of terror and violence took place. And we never really acknowledged that. We passed the 14th amendment, which was supposed to guarantee equal protection. We passed the 15th amendment, which was supposed to guarantee the right to vote. And we simply abandoned those constitutional commitments for a century. And we haven't talked about it. The narrative was never really addressed. And the demographic geography of America was shaped during the first half of the 20th century when 6 million black people fled the American south. And we haven't acknowledged the fact that the black people in LA and the black people in Oakland and the black people in Cleveland and Chicago and Detroit and Minneapolis and Boston did not go to these communities as immigrants looking for new economic opportunities. They came to these communities as refugees and exiles from terror in the American South. And they didn't face the same threat of mob violence when they got to California, to Los Angeles and Oakland. But they weren't welcome. They were put in refugee camps and exile spaces, which you can see the footprints of today in South Central LA and places in the communities where you have this legacy of neglect and abuse. And we haven't really talked about it. Older people of color come up to me sometimes and they talk about being antagonized when they hear folks say we're dealing with domestic terrorism for the first time in our nation's history. After 9 11, they said we grew up with terror. We had to worry about being bombed and lynched and menaced every day of our lives. And that narrative has not been addressed. And again, we told stories throughout most of the 20th century that through our silence and sometimes through our affirmation, made this seem acceptable. We had a heroic civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, but even then, we didn't really confront the. This narrative of racial difference. We passed some laws thinking that the laws would be sufficient, and they weren't. And so today we're still living at a time where this narrative of racial difference, this presumption of dangerousness and guilt that gets assigned to black people, black and brown people, it is still weighing on us. And that is the reason why police encounters are so lethal, so menacing, so dangerous for black folks. I graduated from Harvard Law School, was practicing law in Atlanta, Georgia, and late at night, was pulled out of my car, had police officers point a gun at me, and threatened to blow my brains out. And it was my burden to calm those officers down. I had to say, it's all right, it's okay. Not going to do anything. My burden. And it's not fair that it should be my burden. The thing that really terrified me about that night was I was 28 years old. I had a law degree. I'd been practicing. I'd even done police misconduct cases. If the same thing had happened to me 10 years earlier, when I was 17 or 18, when that police officer said, move and I'll blow your brains out, I probably would have run. And I can't tell you that I'd be here, that I'd be safe, that I'd be Alive. Had I done that, and it broke my heart with anxiety to worry about all the black kids in my neighborhood. Are they ready to say, it's all right, it's okay? Would they do what I would have done when I was their age? And that creates a kind of burden. And this presumption of dangerousness, it just follows you. And because we haven't addressed it, it's everywhere. And you can be a Hollywood writer, you can be a celebrity, you can be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, you can be kind, you can be hard working. But if you're black or brown, you will go places in this country where you have to navigate a presumption of dangerousness and guilt. And I can tell you that as I've gotten older, when you have to navigate this through most of your life, you get tired. And a lot of us are just tired of living in a space where there is this presumption, where there are these burdens, and we want those to change. I tell the story often where I'd argue the case at the U.S. supreme Court and Wanda case, and I was going around the country to help children who'd been sentenced to life without parole get relief under this decision. I was in a courtroom in the Midwest and I had my suit and tie on. I got there early. I was sitting at defense counsel's table, and the judge walked in and he saw me sitting there and he got angry. He said, hey, hey, you get back out there in the hallway. You wait until your lawyer gets here. I don't want any defendant sitting in my courtroom without their lawyer. And I had to stand up and apologize and say, oh, I'm sorry, your honor, I didn't introduce myself. My name is Bryan Stevenson. I am the lawyer. And the judge started laughing and the prosecutor started laughing, and I made myself laugh because I didn't want to disadvantage my client, who was more vulnerable than I was. And the client came in and we did the hearing. But afterward, I was sitting in my car thinking about the fact that I'm a middle aged black man, got all of these degrees, and I'm still required to laugh at my own humiliation, to get justice for the people I care about. And that is the legacy of this history, of this narrative that we have not confronted. So a lot of my work now is about challenging that, about pushing this nation to an era of truth and justice. I think we need an era of truth and justice. I think we're going to have to engage in a fully immersive period of truth telling in South Africa. After apartheid, there was a commitment to truth and reconciliation. In Rwanda after the genocide, they realized they couldn't actually get back into right relationship after all of that violence without some truth telling. You go to Berlin, Germany, you can't go 200 meters without seeing markers and stones and symbols that have been placed next to the homes of Jewish families that were abducted in Berlin. The Holocaust memorial is the center of the city. The taxi cab drivers and the hotel operators encourage everybody to go to these spaces where you're required to reckon with that legacy. There are no Adolf Hitler statues in Germany. None. There are no statues memorializing and honoring the architects the Holocaust. It would be unconscionable for someone to even propose that. But I live in a region of this country where the landscape is littered with the iconography of the Confederacy. I live in a state where Jefferson Davis birthday is a state holiday, where Confederate Memorial Day is a state holiday. We don't even have Martin Luther King Day in Alabama. It's Martin Luther King, Robert E. Lee Day. And we've got Air Force bases named after these Confederate leaders. We have institutions named after segregationists who vowed segregation forever. We have not reckoned with the truth of our past. And that reckoning, for me, is critical to how we move forward. And that's why, you know, we are putting out these reports. That's why we do a daily calendar. That's why we built this museum, the Legacy Museum. That's why we built the National Memorial. That's why we are engaging in the kind of conversation that we're having today. I believe in truth and justice. I believe our nation needs it. I believe in truth and repair, truth and restoration, truth and reconciliation, truth and reparation. But I believe these things are sequential. You got to tell the truth before you get to all those beautiful R words. Without the truth telling, we don't actually know how to fix the problems that the challenges. I come from a faith tradition where you can't come into my church and say, I want redemption and salvation and all that good stuff. But I don't want to talk about anything bad. I'm not going to admit to anything bad. The preacher. Preachers are going to tell you, doesn't work like that. They'll tell you you have to first confess and repent before you get the redemption and the salvation and all that good stuff. And I think that's true collectively, and I think storytellers have a critical role to play. We don't have a catalog of films and shows and stories that actually have pushed this nation Forced this nation to do the things that it needs to do. And I think that's a really important space for the truth telling to occupy. I'll just give you a quick example, then I'll stop. You know, I look at the way we have evolved our thinking on domestic violence. You know, 60 years ago, we didn't have narratives out there that reinforced how tragic domestic violence is. There used to be a show on TV when I was a kid, the Jackie Gleason show, and they'd end a show and he would say, to the moon, Alice, and this threat of violence would be a joke. And then we started telling stories. There was a movie called the Burning. Farrah Fawcett Majors played the role of a woman who had been abused. And it was the narrative of an abused woman actually giving voice to the pain and agony of that kind of domestic violence. And there were other stories that emerged. And today we have a consciousness about domestic violence that we didn't have 50 years ago. And even our most celebrated athletes today are going to be held accountable if they're credible allegations of domestic violence. We still have a lot of work to do on that issue, but that issue has changed. I look at what used to be true. When I was a kid. Growing up, nobody took driving while intoxicated seriously. It was a joke, and we didn't hold people accountable. And then a group of women, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, began organizing and lifting up stories about what it's like to lose a child to a drunk driver. And that narrative pushed this country to think differently about the crime of driving while intoxicated. And we have a completely different infrastructure, a completely different response to that issue. Today, I look at what's happened around sexuality. Twenty years ago, no one could have imagined that we'd have marriage equality and a lot of the rights that have emerged. Still a lot of work to do. But that's about a narrative shift that was absolutely enhanced and advanced by our storytellers, and we haven't done that when it comes to race. If anything, we've done things to reinforce the same hierarchy and structure that we've been dealing with. So for me, this is a critical arena to engage. Your work, your ability, your talents, your capacity for influencing narrative is critical to the effort that I think this nation desperately needs. And it's why I'm really, really happy to have this opportunity to share with you and to answer any questions that I can.
- [20:48]
B
I knew this was gonna be the toughest conversation we've had. And I see people shaking their heads. I'm to some extent, speechless, I have to be honest. And you know, someone asked me if I how I prepare for these. And a lot of times I like to treat these sort of as it's called Lunch with Jamie. Cause it's really just a conversation and it's not. I don't want to have something totally pre planned. This is a moment where I'm glad I have a lot of notes. You know, the one thing I do want to reference is I noticed a woman named Thelma Dye just joined us. And my mother was very involved with an organization called Northside center for Child Development which was founded by Kenneth Clark and Mamie Clark. And Kenneth, Dr. Clark was obviously responsible for the Dahl study. And I just wanted to highlight, highlight Thelma who just joined us now the head of Northside. And it's a very important organization to me and shape a lot of my life. So Thelma, thank you for joining.
- [21:54]
E
Oh, thank you for having, thank you for having this very important conversation. Appreciate it. The Patrokoffs have been involved in Northside for half of its existence of its 75 year existence. And it's the kind of conversation we should be having because so many of the children we see early on, the Clarks were trying to work against the misperception of so many as quote unquote, juvenile delinquents because there were other issues going on, racism, family issues, poverty. And so having Byron Stevenson here can help foster that kind of conversation.
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B
Yeah, we only have 40 minutes left and I have six hours worth of questions. So Brian, we'll have to have quick answers to some extent. I don't know how I'm actually working on a project relates back to the story of the Native Americans and a fact of how in popular culture and media really in many ways the true story is for the most part never been told. I mean, Native Americans are always the villains. And this, this movie which based on a book called Empire of the Summer Moon, that looks primarily at the Comanches and a man, a chief named Quanah Parker, you know, really looks at the fact of how misinterpreted and misinformed we are on that history. How important is it for us to understand that that genocide, as we begin to work harder on the sort of systemic racism we're facing.
- [23:37]
C
Yeah, I think for me what's critical about that narrative is the way in which we used race and color as a lens to see people. Right. And this is the thing about this, the United States, I mean, we have a very unique history. You know, most countries didn't Develop a racialized view of people in the way that we did. There were ethnic differences, religious differences, cultural differences, and those were very pronounced. But this kind of color difference was something that we really reinforced, that we really evolved, if you will. And I think what's significant about the story of indigenous people is the way in which we ultimately said they're different, and therefore they don't get to participate in this grand experience in democracy. And they could wax eloquently about equality and justice and feel no sense of shame or disregard or conflict or hypocrisy because of that difference. And I think that just sets everything that happens in this country up through this racialized lens. And so you then have slavery and you had white indentured servants coming, but they weren't the same as black people. And we could talk about inevitable freedom for indentured turbulence, but not for enslaved black people. And I think that color narrative, that color, that difference, that othering is really important to the story because that continues. And we have immigrant communities that get burdened the same way. So in the 19th century, we passed something called the Chinese Exclusion act, which was an act to ban people who are Chinese or Chinese descent. And we were comfortable passing that because we had long been using race and these narratives of racial difference. As we have seen, people, you know, Irish immigrants and Italian immigrants weren't welcome when they came to this country until they became white. And you had every ethnic group trying to become white because white was safe, ethnicity was not safe. And that's the story that I think we have to tell. And because indigenous people were resistant to becoming white, they didn't want to be white. They didn't want to give up traditions. They didn't want. Even though we forced them during a period of time and sent their children to these schools, they fought that. And that fighting is what gave rise to this long history. And so I think that's what's important about that part of the story, is that it's something we did to marginalize and exclude and demonize. And what's interesting to me now, other countries that had similar exploitation of indigenous populations, Australia, Canada, there's been a reckoning with that. You know, you start events in Canada, you start events in Australia, and someone will stand up by saying, first, I want to acknowledge and honor the. Whatever tribe who occupied this land before we're here. It's a token. It's a gesture of reckoning with that legacy. We don't even think about. We're not even talking about that in America. So I Do think that's part of the critical part of that story?
- [26:52]
B
I think one of the chat reasons such a pause. And I also want to mention Mayor Tubbs, who's one previous guest is on for a few minutes. He had a meeting. I told him he had if he could join for a few minutes. I wanted him here. So I really enjoyed his conversation with us. He's such a special man. One of the reasons I had to pause so much is like so many issues, especially in relation just, you know, into politics today and what we're facing in the election is you wake up every morning and there's this. You say, okay, how can I make a difference? And then you look at everything you just laid out. And I think the average person's response for many years has just been, okay, I'm gonna put the covers back over my head and go back to, back to sleep, because I can't do that. And I like to reference this Cory Booker quote, which is never let your inability to do everything undermine your determination to do something. And I guess that's the thing I kept coming back to in listening to your speak, your comments. I actually want to. And I'm going to go to Earl Hunter. I introduced you on the way here, Earl. Earl has a question that I wanted to. That I wanted to. And Earl is one of the main reasons I got introduced to you early on too as well. So Earl, are you. Earl, are you unmuted? There you go.
- [28:15]
F
Well, thank you, Jamie, for this. This series is just so enlightening to us all. I think I can probably speak on behalf of everyone. And Brian, it's such an incredible honor to even be able to have a conversation with you. I've seen you, my colleague Sarah Fillion and I saw you at the national association of Independent School Conference some years ago. And I'm just such a big fan. So I want to quote you to you and ask you to sort of expand on something. In the incredible interview that you gave with Lester Holt at the, at the Legacy Memorial, you said, we can't treat this illness unless we have a diagnosis. Without understanding slavery, lynching and segregation, we are not going to get the right diagnosis. So I'm wondering if you can one expand on that for the audience because I know this to be an audience of, just like Jamie said, of ones of folks that want to do something. It's not about just listening to Jamie and listening to these incredible guests and getting a lot of information and going back and pulling the covers back over there head. But I was wondering if you could connect that to something. I also am, I was awed by, which is your description of the four steps in changing the world. Can you connect those two? And then also just want to say I appreciate the analogy that you made with regard to the enslavement of Africans as kidnapping. So that's a lot.
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D
Yeah.
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C
Well, thank you for that. Yeah. I don't think most people in this country have no understanding of slavery. You know, we just haven't really been required to understand the brutality of it, the degradation, the humiliation. 50% of enslaved families were separated. When you come to our museum, we actually have these first person narratives. And for me, the most powerful part is that we actually have a wall of ads that formerly enslaved people placed when emancipation came because they just wanted to find their children. They wanted to find their loved ones. And most of those folks were never able to do that. And so black people in this country started their experience as free people carrying a kind of trauma that we haven't even acknowledged. They were kidnapped victims. They were taken across an ocean during a horrific journey where 2 million died. And we've got a new transatlantic slave trade exhibit in our space. And the reason why I'm focusing on that era now, because I don't understand why we've had a hundred ships go looking for remnants of the Titanic, but there are 2 million black people lying on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. We haven't even begun to ask questions about their bodies are just there to be ignored. It's part of this consciousness. And so I do think that learning is key. And in response to Jamie's question, I think one of the things we have to do is to get people to understand that learning is an action item. People say to me, what can I do? I said, you need to learn things about this history. We do our calendar, we do a daily thing, and we do it because we feel like people need to hear this story over and over and over again. People don't know that 6 million black people fled the American south in the first half of the 20th century. It's one of the largest mass migrations in world history. We don't talk about. About that. You know, people don't know the brutality. So I think that's why I said to Lester Holt that we have to engage in this truth telling. And without that truth, without that diagnosis, we won't understand the multiple repairs that are needed. And, you know, I tell a lot of stories because I want people to understand the weight of this, you know, on people. And the challenge. My four Step prescription is that the way we change the world with that information is that we have to get proximate. I do believe that we cannot do effective work. We stay isolated in communities and spaces where we're not required to engage with the communities most directly impacted by this history. I think we have to be proximate to the poor and the excluded and the neglected if we're going to talk about their needs. Our politicians make the mistake of coming up with solutions without being proximate. And when you're proximate, you hear things you won't otherwise hear. You see things you won't otherwise see. And so proximity for me is key, I do think. Changing the narrative underneath the issue. So, for example, in law, when you go to law school, the curriculum is dominated by courses that talk about remedies. So if a corporation violates the law, the question is, what's the remedy going to be? If a person doesn't pay their taxes, what's the remedy? If you breach a contract, what's the remedy? If you commit a tort, what's the remedy? In most of the law, it's about remedies. And we don't say to anybody who violates the law, you just have to say, you won't violate the law again. We don't ever do that. We have things like punitive damages and treble damages to incentivize a reckoning, an accountability for those mistakes in crime. Criminal courts, none of my clients who've been convicted of robbery or burglary can come into court and say, oh, you, Honor, I get it now. Burglary is bad. I won't do it again. There's no way you can just say that and walk out and not be held accountable. You're going to be punished for what you've done. There are going to be consequences for that crime. And we do this in every area of the law, except in the civil rights area, in the human rights area. Because we had 100 years of disenfranchisement in the American South. We passed the Voting Rights act, and the states that had done everything they could to exclude black people from voting weren't required to do anything other than to say, oh, we're not going to do that again. And they didn't even do that. We excluded people from education, and that exclusion was never remedied. I actually think in 1965, after the voting rights, that we should have said to all the states that had disenfranchised black people, you're now required to automatically register every black person when they become of age. I don't know why that wasn't a remedy that we should have embraced. I think colleges and universities in these states that excluded people should have been required to give admission at discounted rates to those populations. And so when I. So the second thing we have to do, in addition to getting proximate, is we have to change the narrative of what justice requires. And what justice requires is that there be a remedy to injustice, that there be a fix for inequality. And we accept that in every aspect of life. We just haven't applied it in the civil rights context. The third thing I'm persuaded we have to do is we have to stay hopeful. I don't think we can make a difference in this space if we allow ourselves to be hopeless about what's possible. I think hopelessness is the enemy of justice. I think injustice prevails where hopelessness persists. I think hope is our superpower. I live in Montgomery, Alabama. I stand on the shoulders of black people who would put on their Sunday best in the 1950s, and they'd go places where they knew they would get beaten and battered and bloodied, but they went anyway. They didn't have a model of justice, of civil rights. They had a model of lynching and terror and violence. And these folks had hope. They did so much more with so much less. And when I think about their lives and think about the. That I'm standing on their shoulders, I don't have any right to be hopeless about what I can do. And I do think that's key, because hope is the thing that gets you to stand up when other people say, sit down. It's the thing that gets you to speak when other people say, be quiet. We built a museum, and we built a memorial. We had to have a hope because everybody else was saying to me that, you don't know anything about museums. You don't know anything about memorials. That has to be part of how we deal with this legacy. And finally, I think it requires doing things that are uncomfortable and inconvenient. I don't think there's any way to advance justice if we only do the things that are comfortable, if we only do the things that are convenient. Telling stories that are not popular, that don't fit into a formula is a part of the challenge, Even working on this project, of making my book a movie. I had to kind of push sometimes to kind of not fall into these formulaic responses. And I think that getting proximate, changing narratives, staying hopeful and doing uncomfortable things is going to be key to our capacity to make a difference at this moment. And then when we commit to learning, when we commit to kind of doing the things that we have to do to empower ourselves to know what has to happen, that changes everything.
- [37:08]
B
Thank you for the answer. And I want to get into Hollywood and storytelling because it's important for this group. But Jordan Brown, who's on this, has a question that actually relates to one things Mayor Tubbs has been working on. So, Jordan, you're unmuted. Ask your question.
- [37:30]
G
Yeah, thanks, Jamie. And hi, Brian. One of the things I took away after reading your book and Michelle Alexander's, I think, was that the two major things I think about in terms of what we face now as Americans is the economic damage done by systemic racism and the human or sort of the sole cost. And, you know, Mayor Tubbs has been such a leader, along with others on the guaranteed income or universal basic income front. And I think it shows such promise at addressing the economic part and sort of undoing some of that just tremendous wealth gap that the system has promulgated. But I'm wondering if you think nationalizing that where there was a true universal basic income, is that a replacement for something like reparations, or is it really just solving half the picture, which I think is much more politically tough than to get through probably than a guaranteed income? And just do you have any thoughts on that as a replacement for reparations, or is it. Do we still need to do that really, really tough soul work of the country? Yeah, I guess that's the question.
- [38:45]
B
Yeah.
- [38:46]
C
I mean, I obviously embrace any kind of policy that helps. It makes it easier for people who have been disfavored and disadvantaged and economically exploited to get the kind of support that they need. But I do think we have to go beyond that. I think the truth telling, if we do it effectively will create a different conversation than even the conversations we're having now. I mean, you know, when we talk about the Great Migration, we talk about 6 million black people fleeing lands, many of them owned during the first half of the 20th century. The question then becomes, well, what happened to the land they own? Who got it? Well, it was the people who perpetrated the violence and terror, who unjustly were enriched by that terror and violence and unjust enrichment is something we understand in the law, but we've never applied that concept to the millions of families. We have a wealth gap in this country. Even if we start with World War II, black veterans went to war, risked their lives, fought for this country. We Passed the GI Bill. We come back, black veterans want the same thing that white veterans want, except we allowed the states to manage that. And the states weren't going to give to black veterans what they gave to white veterans. And so black veterans couldn't get mortgages for their loans for their homes. They couldn't get loans, they couldn't create wealth. My father fought in the Korean War, came back, couldn't get a loan, built a house that cost $12,000. He died four years ago. And when he died, he still didn't own that house because he was constantly in debt, trying to recover the money he needed to just be alive and healthy. And that wealth gap is a consequence of these policies. So I want the banks that were complicit in denying black veterans loans and mortgages to know they did that. And I want them to think about what's an adequate remedy. I want the United States military, who turned its back to on black veterans and didn't help them get the same access to home mortgage loans and to educational opportunities that white veterans, to think about what that means for the children of those veterans, for the families of those veterans. And I just think when we start talking more honestly about this legacy, a whole new set of remedies, of responses, of repair will emerge. You know, there were hospitals when I grew up, the hospitals didn't let black children have rooms, so we were out in the hallway. There were hospitals that wouldn't give black families the medications. They only gave them the medications that had already expired. And that was their history, that was their tradition. There were hospitals that wouldn't accept black women in labor and the mortality, infant mortality rate that we saw emerge in the. All of these things have consequences. And I don't think it would be wrong for those hospitals now to say, oh, we're going to open up a wing that provides no cost care to low income black mothers who need remedy for this legacy. We're going to do these things. And so I think, yes, we need all of the things, and I'm a big fan of Mayor Tubbs and the policies that he's announced. But I also think we need to have a more honest, complete story about what we did in this country and the legacy of that exploitation, the legacy of, of sharecropping and tenant farming and the way in which people have been deprived land. We just worked with the people in Tulsa. So I know watchmen came out. HBO created a consciousness about what happened in Tulsa in 1921. And a lawsuit was filed three weeks ago because there are Actually, people who were alive during that Tulsa massacre who are still poor, who are still marginalized, their children are still poor. And what. What we are saying is that Tulsa should do something to help these families recover from the land that they lost, from the property that they lost. You know, we could have rebuilt black Wall street, but insurance companies refuse to pay claims that black families had in Tulsa. And those insurance companies are still profitable and making lots of money. And we want them to understand their role in that story. And if they understand their role, it won't seem so radical to say, oh, you know what? We owe you this, we owe you that. In other parts of the world, we understood that we owed Jewish families compensation for the things they lost during the occupation by the Nazis. We owe people something. When the United States military does things in countries where people, even there, we feel like we owe someone something. That consciousness hasn't been applied to this country. And I think that's part of what it is. I think we say reparations without talking about violations. It doesn't resonate. That's why I think the truth part has to come first.
- [43:34]
B
This is so sad. I see the end in our horizon already. I want to get into Hollywood and storytelling. First of all, the fact that I never thought of the honeymooners and the violence towards women is just mind boggling. And I was a teenager, obviously, when I watched that. The show has been on, but it just talks. It really shows, shows where we've come in that story and I think now getting into what our role, obviously this is a wide variety of people, but our role and how big a difference storytelling can make in this fight. And I'm curious. Well, I'm curious just to hear a little talk a little bit about that, because I think you have somebody strong points of view on that.
- [44:22]
C
Yeah, well, I do think that we are way behind in building a catalog of stories and films and movies and TV shows that get people to reckon honestly with this era. You know, we can't. You can't call out a dozen movies that you've seen that talk about what happened to indigenous people when settlers came. Where the indigenous people are the. Are the stars, where their plight is at the center of that. And even when we try to get close to that, we insist on having these kind of white kind of savior figures in the middle because we're not persuaded that we can get people to hear the story without that. And I just think we have to radicalize our thinking on that. And I think if we tell the stories effectively, we do something that changes the thinking. We don't even have shame in this country about what happened to indigenous people. Listen, nothing has been more central to the formation of America than the legacy of slavery. Nothing. We have been a slave nation longer than we had been a nation that is post slavery.
- [45:28]
G
Right.
- [45:28]
C
250 years of enslavement, and you can't count on one hand the stories, the films, the deep, explorative narrative work that actually tries to dramatize the horrors of slavery. And I just think there's a lot of work to do. We skipped from the Civil War to the civil rights movement. Even there, given the drama of that era, there's not a lot to point to. And I just think that has to change. I mean, we have. There are hundreds of films about the Holocaust, and we need each and every one of them. You know, I think that we need more storytelling during that era. But when I compare the catalog of stories about that event with the catalog of stories that we've developed in this country about slavery or lynching or segregation, it's very clear to me that we have a comfort level with telling those Holocaust stories that we don't have, with telling stories about what happened to indigenous people and enslaved people and people facing terror, lynching, and segregation. And that has to change. And I think we feel a little more comfortable with the Holocaust because we don't feel implicated. We don't feel like we were the perpetrators of that atrocity. And that's why we need people who have the courage to acknowledge that complicity if we're going to get there. So, yes, I absolutely believe that. I think, you know, some things have changed, but it goes beyond, say, Black Panther. Right. That's a kind of A. Kind of a fantasy world that has a lot of power because it represents something. We do a lot of historical narrative work in this country, but we've done a really poor job of historical narrative that educates people about the legacy of slavery, the legacy of lynching, the legacy of segregation. And I think it's a rich area, obviously, for storytelling, and we just need a new movement that allows people to do that kind of work effectively.
- [47:25]
B
Yeah, and I think you're spot on. And as someone who's a producer and been working in this business a long time, I need to do better. I mean, we have. I have a handful of projects that I think are important on this subject that we're working on, and, you know, it brings up a sensitive thing that I know is on a lot of people's minds, and I think it Relates to the bigger back again, not to go back to my Cory Booker quote, but back to that, you know, the sort of do something. And I always worry people can't are looking at it behind me. But if you look up sort of there, that's a bust that my daughter Riley made in sixth grade of, of Katherine Johnson. And you know, we're going from an awful place where Hollywood is when it comes to people of color. I mean, let's just be honest about it. We've all seen the numbers. It's atrocious. And, you know, but at the same time, you know, and you guys all have a lot of homework to do because I think it's critical you listen to Brian's other conversations. Rachel will drop some in the chat. His conversation with Ezra Klein, the conversation with Whoopi Goldberg for the Academy. I don't think Don Hudson's on, but that was a. That the series are doing is great. I think we all need to make a trip to the Lynching memorial. Charmaine put something in the chat about her experience there. Katie McNeil works with me. Just went there recently and was so moved. And I am. It's one of the first places I'll be going to when. When time comes to travel. But you reference this movie and today I have again, I have a handful of projects related to race and it has become critical. Katie, who works with me and Rachel works with me. We must find people of color to direct these projects, to write these projects.
- [49:10]
C
But it's hard.
- [49:11]
B
It's hard just because we're at a place right now where there just isn't enough people out there have had a chance and we're working to give people a chance. But again, Hidden Figures wouldn't be made today the way it was. Now, I don't know if that's good or bad. Ted Melfi could not direct Hidden Figures today. It just. They wouldn't make the movie and so that movie might not have gotten made. My daughter might not have made that bust. She wouldn't know who Catherine is.
- [49:40]
C
So
- [49:42]
B
how do we start chipping away at this problem in a real way? Obviously we've been using an X acto knife to this point and we need an axe now as we're chopping down this tree. But it's not going to take one chop. And it's sort of. It's, it's, it's, it's. I'm excited for the challenge and we are excited to work on it and
- [50:01]
C
to do our part.
- [50:02]
B
But at the same time, I'm happy to make it take five or ten years to tell a story about. You know, we have this story about this. That book. Lawrence Lemur wrote about this book called the Lynching, about the case of Michael Donald and the Figures brothers. And it's an extraordinary story. I'm not gonna go into it for everybody here, but I'm happy to fight and to make sure we have all the people of color and all those different roles. But it might take me an extra three, five, seven years to tell that story. What is my responsibility as a producer of. Okay, well, if the writer is a person of color, but the director isn't, or if the director isn't the writer, what. You know, it's. And I guess it's also different what society is going to think now versus what's the right thing to do or not.
- [50:44]
C
Yeah, I mean, I guess I don't think there's some precise formula. I think doing anything effective, anything good, anything that makes a difference, is hard. It always is. And I think what happens in creative spaces, and I think this is true in music, I think it's true in film, I think it's true in tv, I think, is that you have institutions that fund these projects, and their goal is to make money, and they know that certain things will make money, and they don't know whether these new things will make money. And I just think part of the obligation of creative talent and creative producers is to push institutions to recognize that truth telling has always been compelling. It always has been. And engaging people who have different perspectives always produces something that is unique, that is fresh, that is original. I look at the history of music and people were saying in the 30s, oh, you can't find black musicians who can do this or black writers who can do this. And I think that you could. It just requires a different lens, a different relationship. And I just think that we have the capacity to do way more. And what that way more is, I can't quantify. It's not my medium. But, you know, coming out of law school, as a black man in the Deep south, people looked at me like I was, you know, some oddity, like somehow it just wasn't supposed to be. I've never felt like I was in places where people thought I was supposed to be there, but that's where I was and that's the work I had to do. And I just think that's the orientation we have to have. I think it does mean thinking differently about how we put together teams who tell these stories. I think it means thinking Creatively, but there's so much energy right now and so much talent right now that wants to be a part of this. I actually believe it can happen. I think the thing about this kind of storytelling, for me, kind of relates to the story. I'll tell you really quickly. We started going to lynching sites and collecting soil at the site. And it was just part of. In our museum, we have a wall of jars that are jars that have names of lynching victims, and we honor them with soil collected at the site. And we wanted people to do something uncomfortable to help us do that. So we send these folks to the lynching sites. And I talk about a black woman who came to one of our sites and one of our events, and she said she wanted to do it, and I said, fine. And she went to this site in west Alabama that was, you know, pretty scary. It was kind of on a dirt road. And she got there and she was nervous. And she gets down in front of this lynching space, and she starts to dig. And this white guy drives by in a truck, big white guy, and he stares at her. And then he turns around and he drives back by again. And he stares at her some more, and she gets really nervous. Then she parks her truck, and he starts walking toward her. And we tell people when they go out to do our site collections, they don't have to explain what they're doing. This man walks up to this a black woman while she's down on her knees getting ready to dig this soil. And he says, what are you doing? And she told me later that she was just going to tell him she was getting dirt for her garden. But when he asked her that question, even though he was big and scary to her, she said, something got a hold of me. And she said, I told that man, I'm digging soil because this is where a black man was lynched in 1937, and I'm going to honor his life today. And she started digging real fast because she didn't know what the man was going to do. And she said the man surprised her by saying, does the paper you have talk about the lynching? And she said, it does. And then he said, can I read it? And she gave this man the paper, and he started reading. And then when he finished reading, he put the paper down, and he shocked her. And he said, can I help you? And she said, yes. And the man got down on his knees next to her. She offered her the implement. Him to implement. To dig the soil. He said, no, no, no, you keep that. I'LL just use my hands. And he started throwing his hands into the soil. He was putting up the soil and putting it in. He kept throwing his hands into the soil. And she said the force and the conviction with which he was cooking up this soil to put in the jar moved her. And the next thing she knew, she had tears running down her face. And the man stopped when he saw her crying. And he said, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm upsetting you. And she said, no, no, no, you're blessing me. And she kept digging with the implement and the man kept digging with his hands. And they got that soil till the top of the jar. And she noticed that he slowed down as they got near the end. And she looked over at him and his shoulders were shaking. And then she saw tears running down his face. And that's when she stopped and she put her hand on his shoulder and she said, are you okay? And that's when the man looked at her and he said, no, no, I'm not okay. He said, I'm just afraid that it might have been my grandfather who participated in this man's lynching. And she said they both sat on the road and he was crying, she was crying. They finished putting the soil in the jar and he said, I want to take a picture of you holding the jar. And she said, I want to take a picture of you holding the jar. And they took pictures of one another. And she was coming back to Montgomery and the man asked her if he could come with her. And this middle aged black woman had gone out to do this event that we thought she was going to come back alone. She came back with this big white guy and they put that jar on the exhibit. And I tell you that because beautiful things like that don't always happen when you try to tell the truth, sometimes it just doesn't go that way. But until we tell the truth, we deny ourselves the beauty of what justice looks like. And justice is not just black. Justice is not just this color or that color. Justice is this manifestation of people coming together. And so I think sometimes we overthink, you know, who can do this and who can do that and who has to be this and who has to be that. You know, that story is meaningful for me because it was the courage of a black woman on a dirt road in west Alabama that challenged and convicted the heart of a white man whose parents and grandparents were actually perpetrators of violence. But through that courage, something beautiful emerged. And my vision, I just think there's something better waiting for us there's something that feels more like freedom, feels more like equality, feels more like justice waiting for us. And we just have to have the courage to break down the barriers, to not be too constrained in what we can and can't do. To tell these stories, to lift up these truths. That's how we get there. And that's scary. I get it. And nobody likes to be challenged. But I just think we have to find a way to move forward. And I think there is a way.
- [57:17]
B
That story brought me to tears when I heard you talking about it. And I was going to ask you to tell it, and I appreciate you sharing that. I don't know if you have a hard out at 2, I'd like to keep you for a couple minutes after Michael Ely has a question. Michael, I'm gonna unmute you. Oh, there you go. Got it.
- [57:39]
D
Hi. Yeah. Mr. Stevenson, it's honored to meet you. Thank you for all that you do.
- [57:46]
B
Always.
- [57:48]
D
I just wanted to have, like, kind of a realistic conversation about, you know, whether or not one. It's Hollywood's responsibility to tell the truth. And is it possible even for Hollywood to tell the truth when, you know, especially when it comes to black projects? Sadly, the goal is to make money. And if it's not gonna make money around the world, it's probably not worth making. When I think about the movie poster for 12 Years a Slave that, you know, that created a lot of controversy with this big image of Brad Pitt and this tiny little version of Chiwetel that was running, I mean, I think that's indicative of whether or not Hollywood is capable even of telling the truth, as Mr. Stevenson is suggesting. Because is it possible to tell the truth when the goal seems to always be to make money?
- [58:46]
C
Yeah, I think it's a really important question. And, you know, this is world, your world. But even my experience with the Just Mercy Project just gave me some insight into some of this. I think the reason why I'm so intent on making sure that Hollywood and the filmmaking industry recognizes its complicity in creating the problems that we are dealing with. Right. Is because I actually think there is an obligation to repair a century of storytelling that reinforced racial hierarchy, that reinforced white supremacy. You know, Americans believe the way they believe because they were taught to believe that black people only have value as servants and as people who are subordinate to white people. We have taught a generation of people in this country that black people can't be successful in this, can't do that, can't do that. And there is an obligation to repair the damage that has been created by a century of storytelling that was racist and fundamentally at odds with a just society. And frankly, I'm not persuaded by the argument that won't make money, but will it tell something important about what we need to hear? I just think that the industry collectively needs to understand it has an obligation to address problems that it has allowed to manifest. And that's why I think it's not crazy to say a certain percentage of content has to be developed because it's part of how we're going to repair all of the story. You can watch, we can put together a list of films that when you watch them, they're heartbreaking with the way in which we have accommodated bigotry and racism. Just heartbreaking. And I think that's the consciousness that has to be infusing how we go at this. You know, when I talked about the remedy after the Voting Rights Act, I mean, I joke about it sometimes, but I'm really kind of serious. I actually think black people should be automatically registered to vote in all of the states that disenfranchise people for centuries. I don't even think it would have been crazy to say to places like Alabama and Mississippi on election day, you actually have to go to the home of every black family and get their vote. You have a burden now to fix a century of disenfranchisement. You gotta hire a bunch of people, you gotta go to every black family's home and get their vote. I don't even think it would've been crazy to say, you know what? Black people get to vote twice on election day for a while. And that's in part because it reflects a need to repair. So I actually think the economic model has to be different. We talk about storytelling that repairs the narrative of racial hierarchy that we have built in Hollywood. The economic model has to be different when we repair the narrative of white supremacy that we have built in these institutions. And I think that's got to be some of the thinking that happens. And you're right that we can't expect all of it to happen within that institution. But I do think we can push everybody to be. Be accountable. And that's why, for me, the truth telling is so important. And we've seen it happen. You know, people would have said, you know, 60 years. Nobody wants to hear a story about a woman who's being abused by her spouse, who's interested in that? Nobody wants to hear a story about people who are dying from people who drive, while nobody wants to see same sex couples on TV or in film, that's not going to work. Nobody's going to want. And there was this. There was this concern, there was this desire to get the truth of what love means that pushed people past that fear and things changed. And I just think we have to have that same desire when it comes to racial equity and racial justice.
- [62:32]
B
That's what Donald Trump meant by people voting twice, that he was on the same wavelength as you. All right, before I let you go, I need two things we need. First, I would love an action item. Something you'd like to see all 120 people on this and the networks they have do, and something manageable and tangible. I was saying to my team before this that we got into an hour conversation about race in Hollywood prior to this zoom, and that's a big part of what needs to be done right now. And we got into the heated debate about different aspects of it and. And that's a big thing to do and talking and having the conversation like you said. But other. And everybody knows this. Registering to vote and calling our friends and making sure they're registered to vote and checking your voter registration, which seems silly, but everybody checking, that's obviously a critical thing, so that can't be your answer. But give us something that everybody needs to do today.
- [63:30]
C
Yeah. Well, I'd love everybody to sign up for our daily lessons, our daily history of racial injustice. I mean, each day we're producing content that is intended to help you be better informed to talk about these issues. I actually think everything we put out each day is its own kind of story. Everything we put out could be a movie or TV show because they're compelling narratives. Yesterday's was about a black woman in the 1960s who was the field secretary for the NAACP. And they had been protested and there were prosecutions against the people for protesting. When they got to court, the white prosecutor called this black woman Mary. And she said, my name is Mrs. Mary Johnson. And he refused to call her Mrs. Johnson. He kept calling her Mary. And she said, I'm not going to answer your questions until you call me Mrs. Johnson. And because he wouldn't do that, the judge held her in contempt and. And they put her in jail because she insisted on being treated with the same decency that white women were treated. And that case was appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court, and the Alabama Supreme Court backed the prosecutor in holding that woman into contempt. And then the case went to the U.S. supreme Court, and the U.S. supreme Court reversed that contempt by it. It's a whole story about the indignation of black people in the American south. And nobody knows about it. Her name was Mary Jenkins. I think everybody needs to know the name of this woman who insisted on. On decency. Right? So if you go to eji.org, our website, you can actually sign up. We post something every day. You can get the calendar. And then the second thing I'll do, if you do that history work, you can go to our website. We have a hundred narratives, we have 100 videos, we have 100 stories. Just share them. And then the last thing, I do hope you'll come and see us in Montgomery. We're in this crazy moment with the pandemic, but the sites are going to be opening up. We're actually providing private access to people even now. And I think if you spend time with us here, it can be meaningful in your own kind of thinking about how to better engage on these issues.
- [65:43]
B
So I want everybody, while we're sitting here, you're all multitasking. I want you to go to the website, sign up for the newsletter, Donate some money while you're at it, but at least sign up for the. The newsletter. I think Rachel put it in the actual chat. I'm going to complain to your tech team, Brian. It actually was. It's actually not as easy as just going and entering your email address. So that's a note for your team there, please.
- [66:07]
C
I will pass that on.
- [66:09]
B
And then the last thing. Well, actually, I'm going to. It's always so tough in having these tough conversations, to go to something lighter. I'm going to go to something lighter. And you're going to end. You have an ending moment. Okay. I always make people answer these questions,
- [66:24]
F
so
- [66:26]
B
I'm not going to let you out without asking them. What are you watching these days? What's the last thing you watched on tv, on Netflix, on Disney?
- [66:39]
C
I actually. Somebody just asked me to start watching this show, Fleabag, which I never heard anything about. It's terrific. I just started watching it, and I'm halfway through the second season, and I'm really impressed. It's super, super smart and super funny.
- [67:01]
B
That's great, Great answer. Okay. Are you. What music are you listening to these days? What's something you put on recently in your car?
- [67:12]
C
Wow. Well, I'm listening to a lot, but I'm a big. I just discovered P.J. morton, who's an R and B artist who I actually like a lot. And there's a brilliant jazz R and B keyboardist, a guy named Corey Henry, who is an Absolute genius. He's the Art tatum of the 21st century when it comes to jazz and gospel. And he's been doing these things during the Pandemic where he's just going into a studio and playing with a drummer. It's absolutely brilliant stuff. So I'm all about him. He used to play with a group called Snarky Puppy, which was a fusion jazz group, but that's who I'm listening to a lot these days.
- [67:56]
B
This is why Earl and I are good friends. I was just about to say to you, one person that I think you should check out is Toby Nwigwe, which Earl just put chat. He's been doing great stuff, and I'm loving his Instagram, too. Is there, by the way, I love you, said fleabag. The only answer that tops that is Kamala Harris saying that her and Doug had just watched Eurovision on Netflix. It's like skating. I don't even know what it is. Some sort of spoof. I don't even know. I honestly don't even know what it is. But that was really great. Picked up a Covid hobby.
- [68:33]
C
Say what?
- [68:34]
B
You picked up a hobby during COVID Are you all of a sudden gardening or, you know, more or.
- [68:42]
C
Not really. You know, I play the piano, so I have a piano in my house, so I just have more time to play than I. Than I used to. And so I'm just going through things that I never thought I'd have time to do from like, you know, that 50s era when there was such great music. Bud Powell and Bill Evans and all these guys monk. Those kinds of folks. Those tunes I never knew I'm kind of spending time with. So that. I guess that would be the closest thing to a Covid habit is my
- [69:16]
B
oldest brother picked up pen making. He whittles pens out of wood. As you, Justin Warfield, mentioned. I May Destroy youy, which is a must show if people haven't seen that. And is there a podcast you picked up during this time or you had time, you know, do you have time for podcast or.
- [69:34]
C
I'm not a real podcast kind of. I mean, people will send me things and I'll listen to them, but I'm not a regular podcast list. I'm more of a reader than a kind of a podcast listener. So, I mean, I could talk about books I've read, but I don't.
- [69:46]
B
Give us one. Give us one. One book we should pick up.
- [69:49]
C
Cast by Isabel Wilkerson. She's the author of Warmth of Other Suns. It's a great book.
- [69:57]
B
Great. I see someone mentioning nice white parents, which we talk about a lot, which is, I think, a worthwhile listen. All right, so this is the end. One thing I've been really excited about is everybody from Kamala Harris to President Clinton to Albert Woodfox, I'm working with a project with have left us pretty hopeful. And in Stacey Abrams, you know, I mean, Stacey Abrams has this extraordinary quote which I actually put in my Instagram about, you know, how she talks about her family and where her great grandmother was and how she technically should be the governor of Georgia now. And I'm curious to where, you know, where you think we are and where we're going. And are you hopeful?
- [70:45]
C
Oh, yeah, I'm absolutely hopeful. I don't think, you know, you have the option to be hopeless. My great grandparents were enslaved, so my great grandfather was enslaved in Bowling Green, Virginia. And what I love about him is that he learned to read while he was enslaved because he believed that one day he'd be free. And there was no rational basis for believing that emancipation would come to enslave black people in Virginia in the 1850s. But he had enough hope to believe that. And when emancipation came, my grandmother told me that because he could read, all the formerly enslaved people would come to their house every night, and he would read the newspaper, and she would sit next to him as he read the newspaper. And she wanted the power of reading. And even though there weren't schools around, he taught her to read. And she had 10 kids, and my mother was the youngest of her 10 kids, and we grew up poor, but my mother believed in that. And so she went into debt to buy the World Book Encyclopedia. And our house, and my friends would have basketballs and bicycles and marbles and things like that. We just had the World Book Encyclopedia. But I now understand in that act of buying the books and in that act of my grandmother learning to read, and in that act of learning to read from my great grandfather, there was this hope that if they did these things, something better would come. And I've spent the last 35 years on death row standing next to condemned people, with people who've been told their lives have no meaning and purpose. But it feels important for me to be there, because I do believe something better will come. You can't live in Montgomery, Alabama, without feeling the spirit of so many people who have done so much. So, yes, I think we're in a challenging, critical moment in American history where a lot is at risk. And that is why we have to do everything we can. I Tell people all the time that I don't believe we're going to be judged when it's all over by how well we treat the talented and the gifted and the privileged. We're going to be judged by how we treat the poor and the neglected and the views. We're going to be judged for what we didn't say when there was a time to speak. I really believe the opposite of poverty isn't wealth. I think the opposite of poverty, poverty is justice. And when we do justice, we deconstruct the conditions that have created so much suffering in the world. And that's why I believe that justice and pursuing justice is everybody's obligation, everybody's responsibility, and ought to be everybody's hope. And I'm really thrilled that people like you are interested in hearing from people like me because it hasn't always been the case. And so, yeah, I'm incredibly excited and hopeful, even though I'm worried that we can do something better.
- [73:28]
B
Well, thank you so much for your time. I see someone took a quote from you in your TED Talk. The opposite of poverty is justice. Everybody, please do your homework. Listen to Brian's TED Talk. Read his book, watch his movie, listen. And we all need to make that journey to the museum and to what they've done down in Alabama. Brian, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the work you've done for your whole life. I think you've gotten obviously a lot more attention of recent. But this is not a new fight for you. This is a life's work. And I know you're going to continue this for a long time. So you know you have 120 more or however many people, loyal followers here and let us know what we can do. There should be at least 120 new signups today. So please, if you could report back, if someone could let us know. There are at least 120signups and I'll see that list. And I just, I know everybody. I'm thanking you for everybody. I've never seen a reaction to any person we've had on this series like I've seen today. And it means the world to me. To me. And I'm gonna get ready to watch the debate now tonight, so. All right. Thank you.
- [74:51]
C
Thank you. Okay. All right, terrific. Take care. Bye.
- [74:54]
B
Bye. Thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of Lunch with Jamie. As always, be sure to subscribe to
- [74:59]
A
my newsletter@jamieslist.com for my thoughts on all
- [75:02]
B
things food, pop culture, politics and more. And remember, to join these online conversations and ask my guests questions in real time.
- [75:10]
A
Sign up to get a paid subscriber.
- [75:13]
B
You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Audible and be sure to leave a review. Thanks and see you next time.