
In This Episode
Whistleblower exposes Russian political interference operation, Louisiana governor evicts homeless people ahead of Super Bowl, Mississippi infrastructure neglect leads to parasites in impoverished residents, and Doechii stuns in Black sitcom inspired music video. DeRay interviews Andrew Bakaj and Naomi Seligman of Whistleblower Aid.
News
The Westminster whistleblower: how my friend Sergei tried to expose the Kremlin plot against Britain
Governor forces removal of homeless people by New Orleans Superdome before Super Bowl
Infrastructure neglect and poverty lead to parasites in the Mississippi Delta
Watch Doechii’s life literally blow up on ‘Denial is a River Show”
Follow @PodSaveThePeople on Instagram.
TRANSCRIPT
[AD BREAK]
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay and welcome to Pod Save the People. On this episode it’s me, Kaya, and Myles and De’Ara talking about the news that you don’t know or maybe didn’t hear about with regard to race, justice, and equity from the past week. And obviously the election because 2025 is off to really a mad dash. And then I sit down with Andrew and Naomi from Whistleblower Aid, which is a nonprofit that was created to help people figure out the whistleblowing process. Whether it’s in state, county or city election offices or anybody else within the government. So I learned a lot. I did not know whistleblower aid existed. It is an incredible organization. I hope that you will learn from Andrew and Naomi too. Here we go. And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram at @PodSavethePeople for more. Boom.
De’Ara Balenger: Family. Welcome to another episode of Pod Save the People. I am De’Ara Balenger. You can find me on Instagram at De’Ara Balenger.
Myles E. Johnson: I’m Myles E. Johnson. You can find me on Instagram at @pharaohrapture.
Kaya Henderson: I’m Kaya Henderson on Instagram at @kayashines
DeRay Mckesson: And this is DeRay at @deray on the one and only still Twitter.
De’Ara Balenger: Well, folks.
Myles E. Johnson: Just dead naming that girl. [laughter] That is TS X.
De’Ara Balenger: Oh man. And and speaking of the social media, it looked like TikTok was going to be gone. I mean, it is right, isn’t it? It’s like it’s inactive, right? For like some hours. [indistinct banter]
DeRay Mckesson: It just got, it just came–
De’Ara Balenger: But it’s back. But it’s back.
DeRay Mckesson: It’s back. It was gone for 14 hours.
De’Ara Balenger: It’s and it’s back. And TikTok released a statement thanking Donald Trump and his efforts to reinstate TikTok temporarily.
Kaya Henderson: Wasn’t he the one–
De’Ara Balenger: Um.
Kaya Henderson: –who declared war on TikTok at the beginning?
De’Ara Balenger: Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, uh huh. In 2020. Uh huh. Mm hmm.
Kaya Henderson: I mean I’m just trying to follow.
De’Ara Balenger: Oh yeah yeah yeah.
Kaya Henderson: The flip flops are so flippity floppity.
De’Ara Balenger: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um. So so that happened. I mean, I’m on a lot of chats and some mom chats. I don’t know how I end up in the mom chats, but I exist there and there’s so much TikTokery that happens in those mom chats. And so people were very, very upset and and like, what am I going to do with my time? My my mind went to, I don’t know, get off. It’s a great thing that’s happening. Maybe stay off of social media, everybody. But but no it’s back. And so so here we are.
DeRay Mckesson: And you know, Trump proposed that the federal government actually buy half of it today and that if the federal government invested in TikTok, it will be worth, and I quote, “maybe trillions.”
Kaya Henderson: Trillions, trillions.
De’Ara Balenger: Yeah, because the federal government is so great at innovation and the internet. That sounds like a great business idea.
DeRay Mckesson: It is just wild to watch that back and forth with Trump not being the president, obviously, but negotiating. Getting them to put his name up on the alert when TikTok went down to say that like, you know, that shout out to President Trump felt very much reminiscent of the stimulus checks. And then for them to not even be offline the entire day, essentially, but to come back online in the middle of the day. Trump is still not the president. Trump does not have the power and an executive order to undo the law that forces the sale. It just is it’s been a wild misinformation moment to watch, but also Trump’s sort of mastermind at like no real policy, but getting people so riled up over this stuff that he becomes a story. People know more about him and TikTok than they do with his position of taking health care away from millions of people. You know, it’s just so wild to watch.
Myles E. Johnson: Wild is a way to put it. I’m also just thinking about just the to me, it just seems very obvious that he wants to have very clear wins. So when it comes to the cease fire, you know, whatever is going to happen with that and Netanyahu. And we we’re recording on a Sunday, who knows what’s going to be true by Tuesday, but it seems obvious that he’s trying to construct just different ways that he can be seen as winning. So getting I think the the TikTok being taken away is publicity and theater. I think all that news and all that stuff that was happening up until then, I think they already knew what was going to happen and what it looked like. And Trump wanted the theater of that. And then um going into later on this week, I think another big publicity theater moment is going to be seeing um illegal uh there’s going to be seeing people deported, seeing people get caught up, Chicago. I think that is something that he wants the American people to see. I think he’s using publicity to show his presidency is victorious, even if there’s a whole bunch of um failure and incompetence happening under the hood. So if if if–
Kaya Henderson: I’m trying to–
Myles E. Johnson: It wasn’t so shady, it would be brilliant. [laugh] Like.
Kaya Henderson: I’m trying to figure out how he’s going to square the circle on these deportations. I was reading an article this morning on NPR about how the entire state of Nebraska revolves around the meat processing industry. And there’s there’s only 39 workers for every 100 jobs, and they need legal, illegal uh immigrants. They are like, come here, you got a job. You can build a house, you can do these things. And the meat that Americans eat will not, can’t move like agriculture, construction, GrubHub, Uber eats all y’all who like to do all of that stuff. Um. There are so many different industries that are going to be radically impacted um when these deportations start. And the same business people who, you know, elected this man and thought he would be business friendly are now turning around like lots of other people and saying, wait a minute, where am I get my workers from?
Myles E. Johnson: But it seems as though the things that it seems like what he’s targeting. And again, there’s like so much news around it. So I could be wrong. So tell me if you all read something different, but it seems like he’s targeting blue states in urban areas. So he didn’t. It’s not Chicag– it’s not Illinois.
Kaya Henderson: Chicago, right, Chicago. Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: It’s Chicago. So I think what he’s going to do and what it looks like he’s going to do is he’s centering those blue states, those urban areas, and that’s where he’s going to attack. And that’s where the [?] the theater and the publicity’s going to come and he’s not going to make it so–
Kaya Henderson: Touch Nebraska.
Myles E. Johnson: Those bigger companies and those and those rural. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.
De’Ara Balenger: Mm hmm.
DeRay Mckesson: [?] one of the more interesting polls I saw was, you know, because people have been talking about this idea that deportations are really popular and da da da. And when you actually drill down, Data for Progress put out an interesting poll that was done in October of 2024. And they show that the more people actually learned about the subsets of people, the less they supported deportations. So when they were when people were asked, do you think we should deport somebody who was brought to the United States as a child without legal status, but has lived here for 20 years, 65% of likely voters said no. Somebody who sought asylum and their application is awaiting a decision, 64% of voters said no. Somebody who’s under temporary protected status and their country is experiencing ongoing conflict. 62% said no. So like people are actually way more nuanced about this and do not support this mass deportation thing. I’m hopeful. And, you know, the it’s so sad because the mayor of Chicago is under so much hot water now in his own world that I don’t think he’ll be able to even weave a narrative that pushes back on the deportations, which is unfortunate. And Lord knows, if they happen in New York City, Eric Adams is in bed with Trump. So that’ll be another nightmare.
Myles E. Johnson: Right.
DeRay Mckesson: But, you know, you got to hope that one of these things backfires on Trump.
Myles E. Johnson: That that h word. I don’t know. I think I’m preparing my spirit to see people deported. I think I’m prepared and I think that it’s something that they want. And I think it’s something that Trump wants. And I think it’s something that his his electorate, his electorate wants to see. And I and I mean, I of course, I hope that. But it just looks like the reality is that is something that is going to be seen as a clear win. And they want to be able to see it. Even if it’s happening in different sizes, if if that makes sense, even if the people want to see the perp walk, the people want to see the the cruelty. And to your point, DeRay, about people when they hear about the details of of these plans, people have more humane responses. That just shows the conservatives whole plan to to to dehumanize the policy. So like it’s just this bloc of aliens or this bloc of people who eat dogs. Like you can’t necessarily interject humanity into it because most people do have some type of compassion and don’t want to and have some type of reasoning. That’s why they make it uh uh make it a point to not let your mind even connect that these people are humans with uh practical lives.
De’Ara Balenger: And just a reminder that the Biden administration has deported more people than the Trump administration. And there was an increase in deportations over the last couple of months, like a like a surge in deportations. So, you know, this I think it obviously, you know, the war in Gaza and I think this and the deportations, how immigration was boggled and then also criminal justice reform like there there there was such a lack of intensity or intention around it. Like I think these will be the blemishes um on Joe Biden’s legacy among among other things, that these are just the type of things that are top of mind for–
Kaya Henderson: But this is this is collective.
De’Ara Balenger: For me.
Kaya Henderson: This is collective guilt because we haven’t had–
De’Ara Balenger: Yeah.
Kaya Henderson: –substantive immigration reform since Ronald Reagan. So a whole bunch of people can line up to take this this guilt. And we just need to fix this broken system. Why won’t we just fix the system instead of all of the–
De’Ara Balenger: Politicizing it. And doing this.
Kaya Henderson: Instead of treating the symptoms.
De’Ara Balenger: Yeah. Mm hmm.
DeRay Mckesson: I do think too, that our storytelling around immigration has to change. I think that you know, before so I know the police and criminal justice much better than I knew immigration and I realized that so much of my sense of like the immigration problem was about the border because that’s what I had been told. I’d heard so much about the border that, like, I didn’t realize about the people who visas had expired. The the hearings that have never happened, the backlog. So people are technically here illegally but no fault of their own, you know, so like so when people talk about this idea that if you commit a crime, you should just be deported. If you don’t have legal status, you’re like, no, these people. This is this idea that the whole group of people are people who like hopped over a fence, which is actually the narrative that I think we get fed so much is part of the problem. And the storytelling around immigration and the process. I do think we have to figure out how to tell a better more a big picture story so that our side like just understands what is at stake. You know.
De’Ara Balenger: Guess what’s happening tomorrow, everyone. January 20th.
Kaya Henderson: Martin Luther King Day.
De’Ara Balenger: The innau– [laughter]
Kaya Henderson: Brother King. Celebrate.
Myles E. Johnson: Okay.
DeRay Mckesson: Hallelujah.
Kaya Henderson: [?] celebrate.
De’Ara Balenger: Did y’all see that Maurice has um.
Myles E. Johnson: We had a dream.
De’Ara Balenger: Uh what is it called? Something in bloom. Maurice that’s based out of L.A. He has a really beautiful and hilarious uh uh Instagram and he basically yeah, was celebrating MLK Day. I’m going to have to send it around to you because everyone should watch it. I don’t know when Maurice became an expert at flag throwing or flag twirling, but that was part of the celebration of Martin Luther King Day that very much stuck with me. But yes, that’s what certainly what we are cele– celebrating. But it’s it’s been interesting to see all of sort of the twists and turns that have gone along with this inauguration. Um. One, it’s no longer outside. It’s now in the rotunda. The other piece of news that came out is that they’re they’re also going to take there were going to be big screens outside. Now, those aren’t going to be um a part of the show either. Um. Some other things, too, that were popular in my group chats over the weekend is that, you know, Nelly and Snoop are performing at the inauguration ball. [sigh] We’ll save that for another day. Um. But it just I guess it’s it’s it’s just interesting that all of these sort of, you know, the thing what we all assumed to be would be a lot of sort of, um you know, making this as big as possible in Trump brand, is is sort of not is not what’s happening. It looks like it’s going to be really tight. It’s going to be the front row is going to be all the billionaires, um all the people that are pouring into D.C.. I’m not in D.C. right now. My mom is there, though. She’s having a liberation party if anybody wants to go. Um. Yeah, just it’s it’s interesting to see the shift in in what this is going to look like.
Myles E. Johnson: Soulja Boy and Rick Ross.
De’Ara Balenger: What?
Myles E. Johnson: Nelly, Snoop Dogg, Soulja Boy and Rick Ross.
DeRay Mckesson: And they actually already performed. So they performed at the like pre ball’s all of–
De’Ara Balenger: Oh really?
DeRay Mckesson: All four of them have already performed. Carrie Underwood is the feature performer I think on the actual Inauguration day, and you know, they had to announce to all the Trump people that their tickets to watch the actual inauguration are now commemorative because they will not be able to see it live and they will not be able–
De’Ara Balenger: Oh.
DeRay Mckesson: To see it on the Jumbotron. And the only people in the rotunda will be the members of Congress. So it’s so interesting, though, because his people keep getting played and they still support him. So I don’t really know what to say to to them because they I don’t know. What do you say? And then he. Yeah, I don’t know.
Myles E. Johnson: You said who gets–
De’Ara Balenger: So not Soulja boy.
DeRay Mckesson: Like Myles his people bought tickets to fly to D.C. to see him and then at the last minute he is like just kidding. It’s all inside. So they are now, you know, there are videos of them.
Myles E. Johnson: Got it.
DeRay Mckesson: On the Internet being like, we’re not–
Myles E. Johnson: Got it.
DeRay Mckesson: –going to get to see him. Like, I’m pissed that I flew all the way out here and it’s like well.
Myles E. Johnson: Got it.
DeRay Mckesson: Y’all got got. But he been getting y’all the whole time.
De’Ara Balenger: The whole time.
Myles E. Johnson: Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It’s become obvious. Um. I think the, the the Black folks line up the Nelly, Snoop Dogg, Soulja Boy and Rick Ross line up is really interesting to me, um specifically in the wake of the Drake lawsuits, because I think Drake has done a really good job of kind of showing people taking the the hood off of how the dynamic, the culture, the profit dynamic works. Like Black people make something cool. So that person is now cool and that person now sells it to white people who buy things. But those white people only want what you have because they think that you’re cool. And it’s funny that everybody on this list is somebody who has who who who had that kind of like Black cultural solidarity. You’re from St Louis, you’re from Cali. Um. Your you have a you’re willing to perform a certain type of of Blackness that shows that you’re dangerous and white boys think that you’re cool. And now I think they’re seeing wait, I could still perform at Trump and get the same dudes to um to like me who’ve always liked me. Because at the end of the day, when you look at those DMX performances, that is who your audience is is the white boys. That’s who your– and Kendrick Lamar, even though we all love him and he’s like us but Drake, that’s really who you’re who you’re performing for. So I think they’re noticing that I can still make money and I can still get lots and lots of money and not actually lose um a large enough section of my fan base that makes it hit my pockets. You know that I think that’s what we seeing going on too. That times I think a lot of straight Black men, this audience aren’t as partisan [laugh] as as other demographics um or willing to not be as partisan when it comes to what the entertainment they share.
De’Ara Balenger: Well, I just wanted to share the other side of that because lucky for me, a lot of my dad’s buddies, Morehouse buddies, text me all the time because they miss my daddy and so they text me. So I get a lot of the like like the text that gets sent around to everybody, everybody, everybody and one of the texts was a long text about how they are planning to um boycott the inauguration. Like, don’t even have your TV on tomorrow for it to get ratings. Um. I just I love seeing that, I guess also just working, having spent time working on um Kamala’s campaign and having to do so much around organizing Black men, when I see they can organize themselves, I get really excited and everybody take that however they want to.
Myles E. Johnson: And they go and listen to be listen to The Stylistics and Funkadelic. [banter]
De’Ara Balenger: Well, I’ll tell you [?]–
DeRay Mckesson: Delfonics, baby. The Delfonics.
De’Ara Balenger: If only–
Myles E. Johnson: It’s something in the music, I promise you.
De’Ara Balenger: Listen.
Myles E. Johnson: Because once you start saying Nelly, Snoop, Soulja Boy. I hate to sound like Bill Cosby, but I’m like, oh yeah.
De’Ara Balenger: Yeah, who cares. The yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: That audience doesn’t.
De’Ara Balenger: I am my my the ball I’m going to is at Mardi Gras. The Zulu ball and Jeffrey Osborne and FSV are performing. Okay. Those are the those are the time to acts that I that have integrity to me.
DeRay Mckesson: I love it. I will say I was shocked that Nelly, when asked about why he performed. He’s like, it’s not for money. It’s an honor to perform for the president. Da da da da da. I’m like, this is just wild.
Myles E. Johnson: That sounds like something Trump would tell you to say. It sounds like when you get a lot of money.
De’Ara Balenger: Maybe Ashanti told him to say that.
Myles E. Johnson: That what that’s what that’s what I would say, that uh no, I think Trump said to say that because I think that he knows just as much as anybody else that he wants it. He wants to be seen as a powerful, influential president. And that’s the kind of statement that that that that reinforces that fantasy.
DeRay Mckesson: Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned. There’s more to come.
[AD BREAK]
De’Ara Balenger: Here’s what I think is happening at the White House, because we see all these things, right, All these the Biden pardons. You know, there like were 100 people that got um the Presidential Medal of Freedom a few weeks ago, including Hillary Clinton, thanks President Biden for giving Hillary Clinton one. I don’t know, like a day before you’re leaving. What? Um. I think and I want to give a shout out because this is just what I think is happening in the White House right now. I think there are folks who have been pushing all along for certain things to happen, like these pardons, like, you know, commuting people’s death penalties, and sentences, etc.. And I think now that we’re at the final days, all these things are getting pushed through because I think the head white folks in charge are like, okay, we’ll let the women get what they want, we’ll let the folks of color get what they want. Um. So I think that that’s sort of like what with my experience in admin in administrations and seeing how these things work and seeing how the late later days before a president leaves office works. So, I mean, shout out to all the folks that I know y’all have been working to probably push those through the day you got to work four years ago. Um. So I don’t know. I don’t know how quick I want to be to give props where I think those should have been, you know, sort of within 90 days of you being in office, you should have gotten some of this stuff done. Um. But that that’s my very pessimistic take on it.
DeRay Mckesson: I’ll say I’m not pessimistic about it, but I also don’t know those people. I will say the two highlights of the pardons. One is um he pardoned the people who had been negatively impacted by the crack cocaine disparity. As you remember, there used to be 101 to disparity, so same amount but if you used crack, you got penalized heavily in federal sentencing. He pardoned those people. So shout out to them for not experiencing the brunt of that disparity. And then also, you know, people have been pushing really along for Marcus Garvey to receive a pardon after his death. And Biden also did that. And some other people, he did some other civil rights people who are still alive.
Kaya Henderson: I have a question. I have a question about that. Um. I don’t and I don’t mean to be facetious, but like, what difference does that make?
Myles E. Johnson: It’s symbolic. It’s really for colonialism’s own narcissism, to say, oh we pardoned somebody who’s frickin dead. It’s like it’s just it’s just symbolic and pageantry to show oh now we are sophisticated enough that uh we’re going to pardon Marcus Garvey. Not read anything that he said. Not do–
Kaya Henderson: Well right. This was–
Myles E. Johnson: Not really a not really absorb any of his intellectual work or any of that, just symbolically say, you were a Black person who said a right thing. Here’s your pardon, isn’t U.S.. great? Like, fuck you. Give us reparations, please.
Kaya Henderson: Well, right. This is what I don’t I really don’t understand. And I’m sure it [?]– [banter]
DeRay Mckesson: Just want to say that my I do have I do have some friends who are historians who were very excited about it and who had been pushing for it for a long time. And they are a small set of Black historians who have been really animated about this to like correct the historical record. But I also hear your larger point.
De’Ara Balenger: But it is it’s not connective, y’all. And that’s why I started with my long preamble because this is–
Kaya Henderson: Yeah.
De’Ara Balenger: This I, I, I this is somebody individual some individual in the White House really wanted this to happen. Like if I ever worked in a White House, I would spend my whole four years working on getting Assata Shakur off the FBI most wanted list. Like that would be my thing. And that would come out and people would be like, why the fuck she working you so I think it it is. That’s why I mean that that’s what this is signaling to me is that there are people who wanted these individual things to happen. It’s not a part of a grander–
Kaya Henderson: But it’s also–
De’Ara Balenger: –sort of ideology.
Kaya Henderson: But it’s also like even if I was one of the people that were working on that and and it had significance for me, this is cheap. It’s cheap that for four years you didn’t this was important.
De’Ara Balenger: And late.
Kaya Henderson: On your last day of office you’re going to try to throw a bone to the Black people by pardoning Marcus Garvey? Sorry. I just I’m sure that it matters a lot to the Garvey family. And lots but I–
Myles E. Johnson: I don’t know. [banter]
De’Ara Balenger: They probably like F y’all.
Kaya Henderson: Maybe it really doesn’t.
Myles E. Johnson: I would like to, have y’all read the book because Garvey is–
Kaya Henderson: That’s true, that is true.
Myles E. Johnson: Garvey said. [laugh]
Kaya Henderson: That’s true. [?]. But but this is what I’m saying, right? Like we have to stop being excited about cheap crap that people throw to us, right? Like this is this is all, you know, bread crumbs after the people have feasted. Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?
Myles E. Johnson: But the the whole.
Kaya Henderson: Sorry, forg–
Myles E. Johnson: The whole thing is cause because usually is in order to get a place, in order to get a place inside of a institution, you have to kind of be in your heart institutionalist. You have to believe in the institution. So it’s like, I I get it. But that’s uh I just feel like a lot of the people who would push for those type of things are really doing it for their own careerist motives. I think they’re doing it because they want to do it.
De’Ara Balenger: No they’re not. No they’re not.
Myles E. Johnson: They want to be able to they wanted to be able to say that this is what I did, this is what my resume is and this is on my resume. And this thing is now something that I did without necessarily absorbing what that person actually stood for and doing actions in line with that person’s own thought theory and political work. So that to me, that’s what it is. And I’m not saying that this is explicitly what that person is going to tell you after they got out of whatever academic situation that a hey, I’m going to put this on my list. But I think that we as Black people are primed to give our most our greatest efforts to institutions, thinking that doing something so symbolic means anything. And we’re seeing that it doesn’t mean anything. And we’re seeing on the grand scale with this these commutes, and these sentences being commuted, that um Democrats in general are doing the slow, incremental thing while they’re getting like pushed and and and plummeted by Republicans who are doing something in a office and a meeting and 20 minutes later, TikToking it. Like, you know, so it’s like, no.
Kaya Henderson: Meanwhile.
Myles E. Johnson: You should have done that the first hour and got it going, if it was going to even have its symbolic value.
Kaya Henderson: Meanwhile, before Donald Trump even gets into office, he says, let’s extend TikTok and oh there are some people who maybe could buy TikTok and you know who the people are. The the little company with the three young men or whatever who I can’t even remember the name of the company now, you put it in the chat, DeRay. Find it for me, whatever it is, the company that they suggested buying. And so I did a De’Ara, and I looked at their list of investors. It’s there’s three young men. One is Indian, one is Asian, like the Chinese maybe. And one is sounds white. I can’t remember the names. Um. I’ll find out the name of the thing in a minute. But I look on the investor list. And who are the investors? Jeff Bezos. The lady who’s the CEO, she was the like number six employee at Google and now she’s the CEO of YouTube. Like the oligarchs, the tech oligarchs. And that is what they are doing for themselves and their friends while they are throwing us ceremonial posthumous pardons for a brother who could have cared less about this pardon? Come on, y’all.
DeRay Mckesson: I just want to read the um so TikTok is back and TikTok just released a statement that everybody has to see when they go on to TikTok. And the statement says, thanks for your patience and support. As a result of President Trump’s efforts, TikTok is back in the US. [laughter] You can continue to create, share and discover all the things you love on TikTok. [?]
Myles E. Johnson: He’s caring. [banter] [laughter]
De’Ara Balenger: No it’s just like him signing the checks. It’s like him signing the um Covid checks. It’s the same thing.
Kaya Henderson: But hold it, you know that he invited the TikTok guy to his inauguration and the TikTok guy gave him $1 million. And so, like, what why is any of this surprising? I don’t understand uh listen, shout out to the shout out to the 92% who are not engaging. That’s why I wouldn’t engage in y’alls little inauguration conversation, because I’m repping the aunties who are not playing with this stuff.
DeRay Mckesson: So my news is a longer piece that you should read uh that is from The Guardian, it is titled The Westminster Whistleblower: How My Friend Sergei Tried to Expose the Kremlin Plot Against Britain. And what it highlights is um a man who came from Russia. Understood early, before it was popular that Russia was one of the first countries to really figure out the social media game. That they had started early on Twitter. They’d started early on some of the original platforms with memes and using them to create campaigns around information and disinformation. And he tried to get this information to the British government. And the short version is that it the report about it was stopped by none other than Boris Johnson, who thought that it was just inflammatory nonsense that was going to interfere with Brexit. And later people realized what had happened. The MPs are upset. How did nobody know who was protecting the British government? Blah, blah, blah. But I brought it up. I mean, it’s a long article, but I brought it up because it two things stuck out to me. One is that people saw this coming, that the the different disinformation and misinformation work did not just like pop out of a vacuum. It did not sneak up on us. It was it was not that people whose job this is were not paying attention. People were paying attention. But there was a real interest in hiding this information from the public, hiding it from political leaders. Until we get to the point now where Elon is actively interfering in our politics. Elon is actively interfering interfering in the politics of the United Kingdom, that it is not like a hehe ha ha any anymore. It really is a thing where the information is so controlled that it is changing politics at a scale that we just had not seen before. And it was interesting to see this guy be like, I tried to tell people, he’s like, I went to the thing. I said it to this person. They wrote a report. They da da da, you know, and the reporters even like, you know, he’s like I’m trying to figure out what happened after you told people. And I brought it here because I do think I remember the first time I heard about the Russian involvement and it sounded a little frou frou like it sounded like a conspiracy theory and da da da da da. Like it didn’t sound like there was legs to it to me. I remember hearing Cambridge Analytica, and that also didn’t seem like a conspiracy theory, but it was my first sort of entrance to a scandal of that magnitude. I didn’t I don’t think I fully understood the impact of it until much later. What it meant that Trump’s people hacked Facebook and got to people on a more intimate setting until we saw the impact of it. And it’s why I keep saying here and everywhere else, people talk about Trump as a creation of sort of the reality TV. And I think that’s only partially true. I think that Trump got into everybody’s house through Facebook in a way that we had never imagined because you couldn’t buy ads in that way. They hacked it. And the last thing I’ll say is that there have been no consequences for any of these people. Trump obviously did what he did. Nothing happened to him. The people that hid the article or the report in in the UK are fine. Russia is very much still Russiaing. And we got Trump over here talking about he gonna buy Greenland and Canada’s going to be the 51st state. So, you know, here we are. But I wanted to bring it because I was really interested it was something I didn’t know.
Myles E. Johnson: Thank you for um bringing this article. So this article reminded me of Miles Davis and um Bitches Brew. And Bitches Brew is so scary. And what makes it scary when you hear Miles Davis talk about it is the silence inside of um Bitches Brew as music. And when I was reading the article, I’m gonna be honest with you because I probably have TikTok brain and I probably need to it should probably it needs to be banned in my house regardless. Is it was kind of hard for me to stick with the article, stick with the article. But what I noticed was like Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, the silence was the scary part. So each time all this stuff would be building up and then it’s met with silence. That was the chilling part. It did remind me of um just kind of this bigger idea of like a white supremacist uh global solidarity. So once um certain issues and I think we are we’re seeing it with with Trump and Brexit and all these different powerful um elite men like still getting a, getting along. I think you’re seeing this kind of like solidarity that even things that would um harm your own government system. There seems to be this kind of like trans national uh agreement that that supersedes uh uh laws and borders that that that this man is trying to push up against. And they’re like, no. We know we. We got this. You’re you’re. You’re. You’re. You’re in over your head. And that was kind of scary because um specifically here in America, it is Black folks who were being most manipulated. A lot of the stuff that was happening um, Russia, Russian interference. I know this is about the UK, but, you know, for Black Americans, it was our talked about race and and and and really um creating discord where things that had no discord um and that makes us more unpowerful. So again, we’re in a situation where the most powerful elite white man their silence is making um our pain so loud.
Kaya Henderson: Yeah, I think um two things struck me about this. This isn’t the first time that this has happened. I think I when I was in college, um I got to meet a guy named Jan Karski, and Jan Karski was a Polish guy who uh was in the Resistance during World War Two, and he got himself to both the UK and the US, to the president and the prime to meetings with the President and the prime minister of both to tell them about the horrors that were happening in the Holocaust and what was really going on with the Third Reich. And both the Brits and the Americans were like, nah, probably not. Um. And it took another year after he showed up in their offices for um the allied forces to jump into the fray and and to really begin to address some of those issues. And so I wonder what it is that uh makes us not listen to people who come out and tell the truth um and who risk quite a bit. Right. I mean, we know what the Russians do to people who who do these things. There are poison mass poisonings in other places and all kinds of stuff. Right. And so um the risk is high. And we’re like, yeah, no, probably not. And Boris Johnson, for his efforts, resigned in disgrace as the prime minister, you know, was not reelected. His party took the biggest political wapping in like British history. Um. And, you know, he he is probably making money somewhere, writing books and doing whatever. And ev– the world’s electoral systems are jacked. Thanks, Boris. Thanks.
De’Ara Balenger: Yeah. And to Myles’s point about being scary, there’s a there’s a part in the article that says the threat level from Russia has only gone up. There are many people, myself included, who believe we are already at war with Russia. Last month, Richard Moore, the head of M16, said in 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in such a dangerous state. The staggeringly reckless campaign of Russian sabotage, believed to include cutting underwater Internet cables, is just one alarming new tactic. Norway has issued its citizens with emergency instructions, um and I guess Sweden has done the same. So I think it’s also this is all happening. What what I think in our minds and I know in my mind, having lived now not personally lived through wars, but been a witness to our imperialist country being in war and supporting wars in various places. I think I think of just sort of violence and bomb dropping. But what Russia is engaged in is a completely different thing. And when that means war um or perhaps, you know, war is a different sort of circumstances now.
Myles E. Johnson: Keeping people stupid, keeping people arguing about things, making populations weaker, um uh DeRay I don’t know. I’m probably going to say this person’s name, and like you probably know them. But this also reminded me of um Ronan Farrow’s catch and kill book, and it was about espionage and oh they kind of um cracked open a lot of stuff that I think people think is just like it reads like spy movies. This reads like like a spy movie. And so does his book. And and to your point De’Ara, that is we we we in for, them Russians ain’t playing. Um. Mm mm.
De’Ara Balenger: Mm mm.
DeRay Mckesson: They really they really aren’t.
De’Ara Balenger: I’m taking us south for my news today. At this point everyone should know how much I love New Orleans and how much it’s like a second home to me um and I was there this um earlier this week. And um the city is preparing for the Super Bowl. Um. And, you know, I’m in New Orleans for a lot of big things all the time. Jazz Fest, Mardi Gras, book, like all all sorts of things. But it was just interesting because a conversation with some family members there, um we were talking about, you know, what’s going to happen to to the unhoused population of New Orleans. Um. And, you know, someone was like, well, they’re just going to they’re just going to remove all of them. And I was like, what? I was like, no, no, no, no, no. That can’t. That can’t be a thing. Literally, the very next day I was driving to the gym, um as DeRay does at 6 a.m. in in the morning. And there were police cars galore, huge busses, etc., and you could see them moving people and then also dismantling people where people, their belongings and their set ups, etc.. And so it just I don’t and and just so we’ve been talking about homelessness so much and just sort of just how homelessness is increasing and the income gap is becoming more and more staggering. So I guess just to see this in real life and to know that it was supported by this wackadoo governor in Louisiana um and then also by the city and the mayor, quite frankly. And then what they’re doing is they bought a six million. They they paid somebody for this kind of warehouse. But it looks more like a like an airplane hangar, $6 million. And then they’re going to put those who say who are willing put them there. But it’s all temporary. For the Super Bowl.
Kaya Henderson: Honey, can I give you one better? I’m I listen. I live in Washington, D.C. So do you. Go Commanders, we are one game away from the Super Bowl. [clap] Um. But it on Monday, I was in downtown Washington, D.C., where they were doing the exact same thing.
De’Ara Balenger: For inauguration.
Kaya Henderson: Kicking people out for the inauguration. Two and three big police people moving homeless people. There were no busses. I don’t know where they were taking the people, but they were dismantling their stuff, moving homeless people physically so they could put up these fences and so that your friends can have the inauguration that they are having. These people are not playing with us, y’all. There is no they are doing whatever they need to and want to do for their pomp and pageantry. And we will always bear the brunt of this.
Myles E. Johnson: Yes. It doesn’t surprise me that, you know, that uh homeless people are moved for the commercial success of of a corporation or an event. Um. What this did re– make me think of because so many people are closer to broke than ever before, is how the more broke we are um just nationally, culturally, the more we have a disdain for people who are even broker. So there’s actually so I feel this weird um and I almost put it in the I might have put it in the um the group chat. But there’s like these like Gen Z men telling other Gen Z men how to be homeless, like the uh and stuff. Like it’s a viral thing going on about uh Gen Z men um uh just kind of giving up on the the nine to five life or whatever. And of course it’s very, it’s very it’s very white and it’s very um man in the man in the woods. But um it made me think about how. So that’s one, that’s one thing just around homelessness but it also just make me think about how just like the average non 20 year old homelessness um is is taking in and how we just don’t like homeless people as a culture because it is a reminder of our proximity to um to from disaster. So we don’t look at homeless people. Um. We make excuses of why they’re there. We build narratives about them that we don’t know are true, but we we inject them into those people’s circumstances to create distance. That won’t ever happen to me.
De’Ara Balenger: Yup.
Myles E. Johnson: Because I’m not on drugs. That didn’t happen to me because I went to college.
De’Ara Balenger: Word up.
Myles E. Johnson: That’s what happened. But then what it made me think of this is the this is the kicker. Maybe it reminded me that Jim Jones bussed a whole bunch of homeless people to the cult. And I don’t know why I’ve been on this cult kick because there’s a there is an uptick. There is um different things that were not cultish that are now becoming cultish um because of individualism and are us not being together. So there’s just more space for cult like things to be activated. And it reminds me how there are always going to be people who um draw power because of these circumstances. So not to I mean, I don’t know, but that is what it made me think of. As more people are looking to disappear homeless people, there’s going to be people who are willing to wield that kind of human capital for their own gains. And while we’re seeing upticks in cult like institutions, um it scares me to think about what the possibilities are with those two things in our air. Like it’s the ’70s.
DeRay Mckesson: I think what uh what stuck out to me about this was also in addition to what has already been said was around the storytelling about homelessness. I think that the story that so many people have is like a sort of piggyback of what you said Myles. It’s like, you know what? They made all these crazy choices. They were lazy. They were addicted to drugs, they da da. And you’re like, you know, I know a lot of people that are one paycheck away from also being sleeping on somebody’s couch or trying to figure out a way to sleep. That they that when you think about the minimum wage, you think about prices going up, like being homeless is actually, you know, a result of rising costs. And, you know, the number of people who live in cars and families. I remember when I worked in the school system in Baltimore, we had a lot of homeless kids. And it was not this idea that there were all these families who, you know, everybody was lazy and da da, that wasn’t it. That’s just not true. But that is so much of what the story is that people think about, so their lack of sympathy is rooted in this idea that why should we help you? Because you made all these crazy decisions or you didn’t want to work and [?] and that is the story as well that the right tells. So whether, you know, the child tax, the child tax credit or, you know, food stamps and da they their only story is people take advantage of it and they’re buying tennis shoes da da da. And you’re like, the data never supports that. But part of it is our storytelling has to tell a more nuanced story around how people end up in these situations. And as we all know on this podcast, people are one, two checks away from deep, deep financial instability. No fault of their own.
De’Ara Balenger: That’s right. And I and just to correct myself, this site where they’re sending folks in New Orleans cost the state 16.2 million to operate for 90 days, and there’s no plan for what happens after the 90 days.
Kaya Henderson: They couldn’t build they couldn’t build houses with that $16.2 million.
Myles E. Johnson: And DeRay, your friend um, your friend and very like influential YouTuber who I who I love, Ola.
DeRay Mckesson: Olay yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Olay. Sorry. Um. She discussed that just because we’re talking about the homeless population, that that story that went kind of um viral around the man uh setting the woman on a woman on fire.
De’Ara Balenger: Oh my God.
Myles E. Johnson: So she. So I was. I was um listen, it was her video that taught me that, A, the woman who he set on fire was homeless as well, that she had went to college, that she was in her 50s. Like it was it was a set of circumstances that had happened, I think, in the last ten years of her uh of her life that set her up to be homeless. And I think it’s interesting that that side of the story was is so suppressed.
DeRay Mckesson: Yes.
Myles E. Johnson: Um. And the framing of it and that it reminded me of what you were saying.
De’Ara Balenger: Mm hmm. And I read other just the last thing on it. Um I was reading other articles that were interviewing some of the folks in these encampments and may have been homeless because of prior hurricanes, so whether it was Katrina or Ida, etc.. So it’s also I think there is going to be more of sort of like the environmental um these disasters that are happening and we’ll see in L.A. that are leaving so many people without homes. And we have there is no plan for them.
DeRay Mckesson: Don’t go anywhere. More Pod Save the People is coming.
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Kaya Henderson: My news this week is also taking place in the South. It’s sad. I listen, I feel I feel like I’m angry Kaya this week and I’m not really angry. I don’t know what my problem is. This to me makes me angry. This I feel like I have a right to be angry about. Um. But these are about our cousins in the Mississippi Delta, and most of us believe that um the United States has rid itself of parasites like hookworm and tapeworm and all of these things that people used to suffer from. Um. But this report tells us that um lots of the babies in the Mississippi Delta, not just babies, people, young people, children, old people, um whatever are have widespread intestinal infections and parasites that they are suffering from on a daily basis, it’s keeping kids out of schools, keeping people out of work. Um. In fact, uh we thought that because we had invested in sanitation and public health, that people weren’t suffering with these things. But in fact, about 12 million Americans are believed to have neglected parasitic infections. They’re called neglected because of their prevalence, their disabling symptoms and their links to poverty. They the illness is spread through contaminated water and contact with feces and tend to thrive in high poverty areas with poor sanitation systems. So, again, through no fault of their own. Except the fact that they are poor. And the fact that the politicians don’t keep up the infrastructure in these poor Black and Brown communities. Um. 38% of children in the initial samples that they uh collected had intestinal parasitic infections and 80% had high levels of intestinal inflammation. A common symptom of parasites. Y’all, this is heart breaking. Like this is, you know, this is like 1920s and ’30s types of problems where, you know, raw sewage was running down streets and the end people had no you know protection from that. In the Mississippi Delta, people are, you know, there are burst pipes, there are water systems that break down and they don’t fix them. And these children have hot burning tummies is what one little boy said his tummy feels like. Um. We should be ashamed of ourselves, that at the very least, we can’t make sure that people have decent um water and sanitation services. I remember the first time I went to the Mississippi Delta and, you know, I went um to look at schools in the Delta and many of the schools had outhouses. Child, I didn’t even start teaching until 1992. So this was the ’90s and the 2000s, I think it was the 2000s was the first time that I went. And when they were making the Delta a uh a lucrative place for casinos, they were creating a gaming center in the Mississippi Delta. The politicians were smart enough to say, If you are going to make a whole bunch of money off of our folks, you have to build housing for them because they are not going to go to your casinos where there’s running water and and sanitation and then go back to homes without houses. So you have to build housing for them. You have to rebuild every school in the Mississippi Delta and make sure that it has, you know, the appropriate facilities so that young people can learn. And, you know, I I thought that that was brilliant at the time. If you’re going to make these big capitalist, you know, moves for a community, at least make sure that the community benefits. And here we are now in 2025, and children in the Mississippi Delta have intestinal parasites. I just this is heartbreaking. And while people are focused on the inauguration or TikTok or all of these other things, um there are still little Brown babies in the Mississippi Delta who don’t have clean water. There are still people in Flint who don’t have clean water. There are still people in Jackson, Mississippi, which is the capital of Mississippi, who still don’t have clean water.
DeRay Mckesson: Kaya this was fascinating. I didn’t know anything about this. I knew about Lowndes County in Alabama, which is the place where people often bring this up. There was a 2017 landmark study that highlighted that more than a third of the residents in Alabama’s Lowndes County tested positive for traces of hookworm. But one of the things I found interesting abou this Kaya–
Kaya Henderson: We talked about Lowndes here on. We talked about Lowndes, De’Ara–
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah.
Kaya Henderson: –brought it.
DeRay Mckesson: Yeah. So that’s what I normally think of with this. So I didn’t I did not know. I knew Cancer Alley, which was another thing we’ve talked about on the podcast. So this was interesting. Um. What I, what I thought was particularly interesting was the solve for this. How do you so besides fixing the water, the sewage, all that stuff is I didn’t even think about what happens when the problem has been eradicated in so much of the country that they’re not even providers trained to recognize and treat this anymore. So, you know, we got to fix the water. But you think about all the people who are impacted, the kids and adults, is that they can’t even find enough people to treat it and recognize it, which is like another problem. And that is just a reminder of the 360 nature of how we need to fix all this stuff. And you think about where states decide to invest their resources, I refuse to believe that if this was a white community that they would be letting this happen in this way.
Kaya Henderson: That’s right. That’s right. That’s right.
DeRay Mckesson: At this time, 60% of the people are Black. And as Kaya said, and most of them are descendants of the formerly enslaved, the enslaved. So I hope that this gets some more exposure. It reminds me, too, of a documentary that we show called The Smell of Money, where they in North Carolina where the the the companies are literally spraying pig poop in people’s front yards out of the sprinklers and you’re like, this only happens in low income or Black communities. Like this is a this is a raced thing. This is a class problem. And it’s wild that people know about it and it still continues. So, you know, but like Don said on a podcast not too long ago with us, he was like, remember that these places were blue not too long ago, that we can shift political power again, that there are a lot of places that we think of as staunchly red that that were once blue.
De’Ara Balenger: Um I yeah. This this did take me back to to um Katherine Flowers who I was introduced to and have become um just honored that she’s in in my orbit. But I remember Katherine saying in one of our first conversations, she was saying that she was wasn’t feeling well herself because a lot of her time obviously is spent in Lowndes County um with the impacted folks we’re talking about. And she wasn’t feeling well. And after all these test tests, all this bloodwork done, one of her colleagues um that lives in India said it sounds like you have a tropical disease. And she’s like, but I’m in America. There are no tropical diseases here. He’s like, well, that’s what it sounds like you have. And that is, in fact, what she had. She had got bitten by a mosquito and had a, you know, a disease that hadn’t been around since the 1900s, early 1900s. Um. And and yeah, it’s like this. This is what is happening. And yeah, I mean, I don’t even know where to start. I mean, I I’ve gotten pulled into like, you know, sort of sort of disconnected fundraising actions when it’s like somebody at the church can’t flush their toilet or somebody at the church, every time they flush their toilet, they have waste in their bathtub like this. It’s a reality that, like, folks are living with every single day. But DeRay, to your point around solution, this has been what Katherine’s life life’s work has been in partnership with so many other folks. So there is some solution. It’s just a matter of of interest, really, um and for folks to be prioritized in this way. And part of the problem is that when you’re outside of city limits, it’s actually your own. Well, this is the case in Lowndes County. If you’re outside of sort of the city of Montgomery, then you have to actually pay for and have your own septic system. And if you can’t afford to have it or repair it, and then when all the folks that are that you’re supposed to trust to fix it. Mm mm. So but thank you, Kaya, for bringing this, because these are just the type of issues that–
Kaya Henderson: We can’t let people forget.
De’Ara Balenger: — that I think. No. And then they have to be–
Kaya Henderson: We can’t let people forget.
De’Ara Balenger: They have to be front of mind and it all go, you know, when it comes to environmental injustice, but also food inaccessibility. Like there’s so many things that compound people’s experiences um and that and that is really where our focus needs to be.
Myles E. Johnson: Thank you for bringing this to the podcast. The part of the article that got me was in 1971, Black residents in Shaw successfully argued before a federal court that local officials practice discrimination by not providing services like sewage, drainage and water in predominantly Black neighborhoods. The court ordered Shaw officials to submit a planned program of improvements that will within a reasonable time remove the disparities that bear so heavily on the Black citizens of Shaw. And then the article like later goes on to go into a little bit of like a like a Trump critique. But I think that paragraph shows that this is an American government critique. And I think sometimes we can see things that happen in um Palestine right now with our own eyes and see the kind of like lethal visual brutality of it and say that is awful. But um America has its own systems to disappear its unwanted people, too. And we know that attacking the gut is attacking the brain. We know that it’s that’s attacking the heart. We know that it’s attacking um health, health. And um if you if if if you somehow survive a childhood of bad water, then that is the ailments that you’ll have, the cognitive um repercussions you’ll you’ll have that totally only make you able to be a mule of like hard labor. Um. So we have our own genocidal ways that um are often just codified and protected around um systems and they’re bloodless but they’re still um deadly. And that’s the what this article reminds me of. So thank you. Um. Auntie Kaya for we got to know, you know.
Kaya Henderson: Mm hmm. For sure.
Myles E. Johnson: We got to know. Um. Okay. I’m the ray of sunshine this week.
Kaya Henderson: Bring it baby.
De’Ara Balenger: We need it. We need it.
Myles E. Johnson: I wanted to so there is so much going on in the music industry and um I know that you all know this, but it just bears repeating that there is so much music out. We um are interacting with more music than we have ever have before, and sometimes it is hard to figure out what’s worth listening to, you know? I know for me I’m over here always listening to um Leontyne Price and Miles Davis, because I don’t want to waste my time listening to two hours of mumbling to get to a good song. I’m like, [?] hold on. We don’t know what’s going on. I don’t want to waste my time that way. But I did some work for you. So if you’re looking for if you’re kind of like me, and you want some new music and you’re like, what’s really good? Who’s really out here? I wanted to excuse me, I wanted to make my news this week Doechii. Doechii is a young female um [?] dark skinned Black rapper who’s been making waves with her new um mixtape actually um called Alligator Bites Never Heal. So she made a huge wave. The actual news is her music video is for a song called Denial is a River. The theme of the music video is based around Family Matters. It features Zach Fox and Ricky Thompson. I thought this was an interesting take because Jaleel White was just in the news for saying that uh and Black people in the in the in the grand Black Imagination, Family Matters is not seen as one of those Black coveted sitcoms. And then a young Black rapper uses it as a theme. So I’m like, that disproves that. But what I also thought was interesting is the whole Denial is a River, which is a really great song where it reminds me of um Slick Rick. Um. There’s um Dougie, Dougie Fresh kind of allusions inside inside of the songs too, but she’s telling this story about her own um toxic relationships, um addictions, just just just who she was as as as her shadow self. And it’s interesting because Jaleel White will say, who played Urkel, will say that the thing about Family Matters that makes it unique in a bad way is that the writer room was white, all white. And a lot of the humor that Urkel was doing was white boy humor and a lot of the things that made Family Matters maybe stick out culturally next to maybe Living Single and Martin was because there was just no input by any by Black writers um or Black creators. And I think that that stands out. So I thought it was funny that a song, excuse me, a video to illustrate a song, used the theme of Family Matters, which there’s just something in the idea that she wasn’t able to be the be the producer and director of her own life. And she used a show that is um that is just famous for just not having any kind of like control or Black control or creativity or pioneering in it. And I thought there was something metaphorical about that, um you know. Or I could just be thinking about it too hard. But I like thinking about things too hard when it’s when it’s good music and it’s good, interesting, uh thought provoking lyrics and visuals. She did a video where she excuse me, she did a performance where she uses uh her hair and connects it. That kind of alludes to this performance that Solange did for SNL. She dons Gucci, which has been um specifically since Dapper Dan’s renaissance has been the kind of logo for Black solidarity. So Gucci kind of commutes, uh uh compute uh computes something to our imaginations. I even think about Beyoncé wearing all Gucci in Formation. Gucci is just something that uh uh, I don’t know. It just it has become a different type of symbolism in the last ten years about Black solidarity, about Black solidarity and um reinvention. So she’s um in head to toe Gucci and she’s just doing really cool things and also using Black culture and Black art as the palette, which I also think we’re thirsty for. I think it’s been a minute since we’ve seen somebody really use Black culture as their palette. It really is Kendrick Lamar was the last person to do it, and before that it just seemed to not be in vogue to do so it feels also feels good to see people saying, oh I’m going to use this sitcom to make a commentary and this hairstyle and this and this type of um sonic um influence. And I’m going to create something that’s new and innovative. But it could still be Black because for a minute it felt like in order to be avant garde in the mainstream, you had to be white as well. And Doechii is just somebody who’s just pushing up against that, I wanted to hopefully get you interested enough to press play because these people are getting paid 0.01% on each play. And I want to make sure that she is funded to let her um just let her imagination go free, because we need that. We need that Missy Elliott. We need that Lauryn Hill. We need that Kelis, we need alternative Black creativities to show us alternative Black realities. And usually when the world feels a little bit boring, it’s because we haven’t given enough weird Black people money. So please give her your spins and and and your and your love.
Kaya Henderson: I feel you. I feel you on that, Myles. Thank you. Um. I do.
Kaya Henderson: I support Black weirdness. I support Black imagination. I feel like those are the people who, like, take us to another place. She came to my attention. I saw a picture of her with the um with uh–
Myles E. Johnson: Tape.
Kaya Henderson: Yeah. Though I don’t mean with the taped eyes. I don’t know what you call them, but um that I didn’t reali– I mean I guess I sort of realized that like a lot of these young ladies are taping their eyes.
Myles E. Johnson: Fox eyes.
Kaya Henderson: [?] Underneath their wigs. Um. And she’s like, yeah, I’m just going to look different and do it, and I’m not gonna hide it. I’m just gonna beat it. Um. And, you know, I I my my people are mad because I really want a set of grills. And they are like, no, no. As a 54 year old who you are not gonna get a set of grills.
DeRay Mckesson: Must, you must. You must.
Kaya Henderson: I’m like are you kidding me?
Myles E. Johnson: Come on.
Kaya Henderson: Like it’s whimsical.
Myles E. Johnson: Come on.
Kaya Henderson: And it’s like, why can’t we express ourselves in creative ways and do the thing. Um. And so I have I have seen her blow up. I have not heard her music, um but I I’m with you. I I will Myles, thank you for the pre-vet. Um. Feel free to send anybody else my way who because I don’t, look, I got less time than you to waste. So uh send anybody my way who passes your gate. I appreciate that. Um. And I’m. I’m about it. I I really do. I’m like oh this little girl is so cute. She’s pretty. She is avant garde. She is. She got a white alligator. Um. Maybe it’s an albino alligator. I don’t know [?] the girl be. Um. Yeah yeah, I’m down. I’m I’m excited to get into this. And don’t worry. I’m gonna make sure that the aunties get a good dose of it too, so that we can be–
Myles E. Johnson: Thank you.
Kaya Henderson: –broadly supportive.
Myles E. Johnson: Because we need y’all to be supportive too. Because y’all actually–
Kaya Henderson: Yeah yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: –do the things.
Kaya Henderson: We we got the coins.
Myles E. Johnson: Y’all won’t y’all won’t cancel in two weeks, y’all won’t cancel her in two weeks because she said the wrong. We need that good auntie support.
Kaya Henderson: No, no. Yeah, we in.
De’Ara Balenger: Hundred percent. Absolutely. Um. I first learned about her because she did a NPR Tiny Desk.
Myles E. Johnson: Amazing.
De’Ara Balenger: That I saved and play on repeat. Um. Yeah. And that’s how this auntie learns about some of the young folks today is on Tiny Desk. So shout out to the producers of Tiny Desk. Um.
Kaya Henderson: Shout out to shout out to Machel Montano, the first Soca artist to have a Tiny Desk concert.
De’Ara Balenger: Oh see!
Kaya Henderson: Last week. And he crushed it. Y’all.
De’Ara Balenger: Okay.
Kaya Henderson: Check it out.
De’Ara Balenger: Now I got to watch that.
Kaya Henderson: That’s my boy.
De’Ara Balenger: I got to watch that.
Kaya Henderson: Double M.
DeRay Mckesson: I came to Doechii because of the Katy Perry collab, uh so I am pumped to continue to learn about her. She’s very cool. I knew her like I knew she was a thing on Twitter, but I didn’t know any music. And then she did that collab with Katy and I was like, oh this is a bump. This is a bump.
Kaya Henderson: And now and now and now you start to pay attention because it’s Katy Perry. We got to fix that child. [laughter] [banter]
De’Ara Balenger: We going. Yeah yeah. Exactly.
Myles E. Johnson: I was like Katy Perry.
De’Ara Balenger: Yeah, we gonna forgive her for that one.
DeRay Mckesson: The song is a [?].
De’Ara Balenger: But it’s all right.
DeRay Mckesson: The song is cute.
De’Ara Balenger: You make your coins sis. You do what you got to do.
Myles E. Johnson: And just, what you were saying Auntie Kaya about the um about the tape and the exposing of it. I love her doing that because then when you see it, it becomes commentary. It becomes like, what is that? Why is she doing that? Oh she’s exposing what everybody is doing in order to get this kind of like new Eurocentric.
Kaya Henderson: Look. Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Um. Multicultural look. And she’s actually–
Kaya Henderson: Totally.
Myles E. Johnson: –making a commentary on it by exposing it.
Kaya Henderson: Yes, yes. Yeah.
Myles E. Johnson: Which is, like interesting. That’s interesting.
Kaya Henderson: Yes. Yeah yeah. Let’s talk about it.
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Kaya Henderson: –this now.
DeRay Mckesson: Naomi and Andrew, thanks so much for joining us today on Pod Save the People.
Naomi Seligman: Thank you so much for having us.
Andrew Bakaj: Yes.
Naomi Seligman: It’s nice to see you, DeRay.
Andrew Bakaj: Thank you.
DeRay Mckesson: Now, I met you, Naomi, at a conference, which feels like eight thousand years ago, but it wasn’t. Uh and when you, talked to me about the work of the organization around whistleblowers. I was fascinated. Can you both tell us how you got to this work? Was it did you grow up being like, I saw a whistleblower movie and this is going to be my work? Or like, what was your was there an experience? Help us understand your story, and how you got here.
Naomi Seligman: So I came into whistleblower aid after three decades in accountability work. I had um launched Media Matters. I had launched Crew. I worked in gun safety, going undercover to NRA conventions and gun shows. And I never um I never thought that I would become a whistleblower myself after, you know, we represented at Crew, Valerie Plame and her husband. But I was working um as a communications director in Mayor Garcetti’s office in Los Angeles, and I witnessed and experienced sexual harassment um um and inappropriate touching at the mayor’s office. And the mayor had enabled it for years and years and years. And I did become a whistleblower out of that office. I was lucky enough to work with whistleblower aid when they represented me in my case. Um. And when I was done with that case, I felt so passionate about what they were doing and who they were helping and really taking on those big institutions and leaders that I knew that I had to be a part of it. And so I joined up. And what’s so extraordinary about it is I now have the opportunity to really support the whistleblowers that were going through the journey I went through. But to be able to relay the kinds of um experiences and um and best practices and help them really get through that journey in a way that they feel whole afterwards.
DeRay Mckesson: Boom. What about you, Andrew?
Andrew Bakaj: So my path to working at Whistleblower Aid in this space is actually quite interesting because um when I first started working um for the Department of Defense years ago, um I was there as a whistleblower retaliation investigator. And I effectively, when that job developed the legal and investigative framework to protect whistleblowers um for members of the defense intelligence community, those who had security clearances, etc., And that work formed a basis for a presidential policy directive that President Obama signed in 2012 and that expanded whistleblower protections to members of the intelligence community overall. And I then transitioned from DOD to work at CIA, at [?] Inspector general’s office, and I developed basically the investigative framework for that office to comply with what the President mandated. That was based on my work in part at DOD [?]. So it’s one of those things where I didn’t go into work in the federal government to get to work in this space. I fell into it and then really fell in love with the work and representing those people who have who are brave and want to come forward when they see something wrong. And then, like Naomi, um when I was at CIA. I also saw some issues that were not very good. And became a whistleblower myself and then relied on the very regulations I developed to blow the whistle. So there are there we have it on all sides of this, creating the program, investigating on behalf of whistleblowers, not representing them.
DeRay Mckesson: Boom. Well, let’s zoom all the way out. And can you help define like, what is a whistle blower? So you all lead whistleblower aid, you work with whistle blowers. Is there like a common definition of like a whistle blower? And I ask because I can imagine that some people are like, oh there are people that complain about their workplace. That feels different than people who are whistle blowers or, you know, in the news. One of the ways to discredit people is that they’re like, oh that’s a disgruntled employee. That potentially feels different than what you might define as a whistle blower. So what is a whistle blower?
Andrew Bakaj: So that’s a really great question because what is foundational is what is a whistle blower? So the organization Whistleblower Aid was initially created to protect whistle blowers and facilitate whistle blowers from the uh who worked in the federal government or who work in the federal government, particularly those who work on national security issues. And there is a difference by law with what when somebody is a whistle blower versus a leaker. But when you work with journalists and other individuals, the term whistleblowing can be broader. And that created some confusion. Actually um , years ago when I was developing the program, particularly at CIA, because, for example, to some, an individual like Edward Snowden could be viewed as a whistleblower because he exposed issues that he felt were wrong when he was working in the government. But the government would view him as a leaker and not a whistleblower because he’d mishandled classified information. And there were other ways to come forward with it to ensure that you’re protected as a whistleblower. So what we do is we try and ensure that when we get a client coming into whistleblower aid, that one, we follow the appropriate process to get the information out. One, it protects them from retaliation. Right. And that’s why whistleblowing and that term that the lawyers use is important. I use in my work because then that’s protected. And then two, we do it in such a way. And Naomi is instrumental in this, where we can get not only the information to the appropriate investigators or regulators for investigation, but depending on the case, it can be something that we can work through with Congress and get it to the general public, because there are cases and instances that we’ve handled where, yes, it’s important for, let’s say, the SEC or some federal government agency to investigate. But people in Congress, members of Congress and the general public need to know. The best example that I can come up with, frankly, from our [?] experience is the Franci– Francis Haugen case. She was the Facebook whistleblower. Yes. The information that she brought forward that went to the government for investigation. Absolutely critical. It’s going to take time for the government, for the for the executive branch to investigate. But getting into Congress, having those public discussions about, for example, how um online social media affects kids is a conversation that everybody should have, every parent should have at home. And so it shouldn’t be just something that goes to a regulatory agency. It’s a conversations, dialog that has to be had more broadly. And that’s where Naomi is really instrumental in her work to help elevate the disclosure, help elevate what the whistleblower was coming forward with.
DeRay Mckesson: Let’s talk, Naomi, about the work of whistleblower aid. How does it actually work? Do people come to the building to file a complaint? Do people call you? Do people email? Like, how’s the what’s the what? How do people get to you?
Naomi Seligman: Sure. Um. You know, people come to us through word of mouth, through reading about us in the media um and just through our different networks. We have had you know, because I was a whistleblower myself, we have other folks that come to me because they think, oh well, she’ll know something about this or come to Andrew or come to our CEO, Libby Liu, because we’ve been working around these issues for so long. And when they come to us, they come to us in a variety of ways, right? They’ll email us, which we don’t respond to emails because we need to make sure that we are safely um corresponding with a [?]–
DeRay Mckesson: Interesting.
Naomi Seligman: Yes, we need to be very careful because we are up against really powerful institutions, powerful leaders who have a lot to lose. And so we want to be extraordinarily safe um with our with our whistleblowers and potential clients. So we communicate with our whistleblowers on signal. So we make sure that we have a very um safe app to do that on and we have an intake process. So we have a very, you know, pretty stringent vetting process because people come in and we know that they’ll come in with all what we were just talking about before, about whistleblowers that come from from all sorts of places with all sorts of experiences. And some of those are whistle blowing experiences and some of them aren’t. So first we determine. Are they actually a whistle blower? So, so helpful that you have that conversation. And then once we’ve determined that, then we take in you know, we take in really thire whole story. And we only work with those that are working in the public interest. So we will work with whistleblowers that come from the public or the private sector, so government or a corporation. But they have to have a public interest goal. So um we only work with about 10% of the whistleblowers that come to us because we don’t have capacity to work with more than that, we are a small but mighty organization um which would love to grow, but we we really punch above our weight with the whistleblowers that we do work with. Um. As um as Andrew mentioned, Francis Haugen, the anonymous whistleblower that um led to Trump’s first impeachment and the Ukraine matter. Of course, Um. I was a whistleblower. So, you know, we have whistleblowers sort of across across the continuum, but they always have at their heart a public interest goal. Um. And then once once they come in and once we decide we’re going to work together and um they retain us, then um they we develop a legal disclosure, which is really a legal narrative, a narrative, their story with all of the evidence, whatever evidence they have, and sometimes they have really strong evidence and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they can’t take any documents or anything from their from their organizations. Right. And so we work with them um and build this disclosure. And then we decide um and this is Andrew’s job, decide where is that disclosure going to go? Is it going to go to the Department of Justice? Is it going to go to a local DA’s office? Is it going to the FEC? So we determine where that is going to have the most impact because we are asking for an investigation. We want them to learn more about what we’ve brought to them. At the same time, we are then um working with media if it can be a public disclosure. So half of our whistleblowers are national security whistleblowers. So because of um classified status or classified documents, you know, they will never be public, but we will still work with them um and make sure that they are ably represented. And then for the others, that can be public, we’re working with a lot of different mainstream media, you know, whether it’s, you know, Washington Post or CNN. And at the same time, we are also working with the Hill. So we are working with Senate and House offices on the relevant committees, um members that have been really passionate um or have had a strong background in the issue sets that we’re working on. And we help our clients brief those members. And so they are telling their stories to those members. So we sort of we have all of these um we do have some of these spinning plates going on all at the same time. My job is to make sure that that is sequenced so that we can have the largest impact possible when the disclosure does become public and we see it all the way through. Right. So we are we are working with them through the disclosure process, um through the members, through all of the media. And then when there is um you know, when there’s legislators who say, like, how do we how do we solve for this? Our clients are often very useful in saying like, yeah, we know where the problem is, we know where the bodies are buried and we can help you sort of navigate this process so that this doesn’t have to happen to other people. So and then we also our um our model is a holistic model, meaning that we we wrap ourselves around our clients. So we make sure that they have all the wraparound services they need. So a lot of these a lot of these folks, you know, they may have no one left after this process. And their best friend is their dog. And we pay that bills. We make sure that there’s mental health services available to them if they need them. Sometimes they need security like in the Ukraine matter to make sure that they are they’re bodily safe. So we provide that and then, you know, we’re talking to them, supporting them, making sure that they’re okay through this process, because it can be it’s an important one, but it also can be a very punishing one. You know, you can be ostracized and retaliated against. And, you know, it does shake up your world. Um. Having said that, you know, our goal is to make sure that we give them all the support they need, you know, from beginning to end um and after.
DeRay Mckesson: Now, this is just a this is like a question I have about logistics because I don’t know the answer. Do people, so say I’m working somewhere and I’m like, wow, something illegal or wild is happening and I need to report it, do people normally come to you before they file like a something internally, or do they come to you afterwards? Like, how does that I’m like, I don’t I don’t know how it works.
Andrew Bakaj: Right? That’s actually important because ideally they come to us before they do anything. Often it’s not atypical where somebody will already have done something where they’ve either filed a disclosure or maybe talked to a member of the media. And sometimes what they have done is okay, sometimes it’s not. We can’t unring certain bells so they can come to us early on. We can make sure that their disclosure process is lawful, that they’re protected from retaliation. By the way, when we say protected from retaliation. It’s not giving their employer a reason to go after them because they made a misstep. That’s a big part of it. Right. So it’s also about going about it the right way. Finding the appropriate door to enter, to go through to make that disclosure. And then, yes, when we do that process, we work with them in putting it all together and moving it forward. So ideally beforehand.
DeRay Mckesson: Ah! Do you have any advice for whistleblowers? I can imagine that um for almost all of the people that you interact with you, it probably is their first time and they are like, you know, I know what it’s like to be in a room. And you’re like, Well, this feels crazy, but I think I need to say something and you know I don’t know how to do it, but I want to say like, what advice do you have for people as they are processing? Like, you know, I want to blow the whistle. I don’t know how to do it right. I don’t know what to do. You know what yeah, help us help people navigate it.
Andrew Bakaj: So whenever I do an initial call with prospective clients, particularly when they have retained, they’re making that decision like, I want to proceed. The first thing I tell them to do is, you know, think about what’s most important in their life, right? A lot of individuals um are have their jobs define who they are, their career paths and all of that. And the act of whistleblowing can be neutral to your career or it can be a risk. Depends on the circumstances. If you’re one of five people who know something that’s really sensitive, that needs to come forward with it. It’s likely that your supervisor chain of command is going to identify and figure out pretty quickly who the whistleblower is. If you’re one of 50, maybe more difficult. Right. But if you brace yourself for the possibility that it may be a rocky road at some point in time that it could be, and that you surround yourself by other interests, family, friends, that those are the most important things, it makes it easier to go through the process. Because at some point in time it can become lonely, especially if you’re speaking truth to power, and especially those among the most powerful in the world. I mean, a great example is the Ukraine whistleblower who came forward. And, you know, there was a great article um just this past a couple of days ago with him in the Post um talking about it still anonymously. And you know when you’re going up against like some against somebody like the president of the United States, um it can be lonely. And you and it you may have people who are going to support you and want to wrap you know around you and be there for you. But there will also be people who will not. And so being prepared for that possibility, particularly when it’s something rather um not I don’t want to say significant, because when a when a whistleblower comes forward, it’s significant to them. But if it’s high profile, right, when you’re going against a president, um you really have to brace yourself for all the possibilities.
Naomi Seligman: I mean, I would just add, I think one of the things that we try to prepare our clients for is how engrossing this will be in their lives. And just to ensure that this doesn’t define them. I think it’s really um easy um when you’re going through this process to feel like this is the only thing going on in the entire world, because for you it is. Because it is about your family. It is about your workplace, it is about your colleagues. And the and the bottom line is two, your friends, you know, and not everyone will necessarily support you. And so it’s important to do what Andrew’s saying is to have sort of these outside activities and the such, but to really sort of hold on to that piece of yourself that’s you. Um. Regardless of your whistleblowing activities. And that can because it can take a real toll. I think that’s why the work we do is so important because we’re really trying to make sure that their work is not everything um who they are. Like it is not defining them. I think that’s really important as well.
DeRay Mckesson: And do you ever I’m so interested. Do the police ever whistleblow? Blow the whistle?
Andrew Bakaj: Yes. Um. You can have members of law enforcement blow the whistle. In fact, I have worked on cases involving federal law enforcement agents who have seen something wrong in terms of how matters were handled. And we facilitated disclosures through the appropriate channels. Like so if you’re, for example, an FBI agent and you see something that is being a law being violated, you can go to the inspector general’s office at the Department of Justice and file, make those disclosures. We can facilitate disclosures to Congress. So, yes, you’d be surprised. A lot of law enforcement, you name it, we have people when they see something wrong, they want to come forward. But they in particular know, hey, I’ve got to do this the right way.
DeRay Mckesson: And are there any misconceptions about the whistleblower process that we should clear up?
Andrew Bakaj: Well, first, I would say. Process, perhaps. But there was one thing that you mentioned early on, which is, you know, a lot of whistleblowers can be viewed as, you know, somebody who is a disgruntled employee because, you know, the initial response from whoever they’re blowing the whistle against is to push back. Right. Which is a natural human instinct, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on circumstances. Um. But the playbook is typically they’re a disgruntled employee. They were not a great performer, whatever the case may be. They’re not always disgruntled employees. It’s literally they have um seen something wrong. Many times they have elevated it to their bosses, to their bosses bosses, and have tried to right the wrong. And nobody is listening. And so, you know, I would say that whenever you hear somebody saying, hey, they’re just a disgruntled employee or they’re no longer working here, it’s because the the individuals who are committed the wrongdoing, they don’t want to talk about the underlying issues that are being brought forward. They attack the messenger. Because that’s easier to do. So whenever you hear somebody saying, oh this is a disgruntled employee. Ask yourself the question, why are they coming forward with. Because nobody sent their prior employers are not talking about or their employers not talking about the underlying issue. And why is that?
Naomi Seligman: I mean, I think what’s really important is that because um whistleblowers are so targeted, um you know, the kinds of um language is actually a thread among sort of almost almost always we see this very specific language. That’s right. We see disgruntled employee. There’s something that talks about them not being they won’t say the word loyal, but they’ll say words around that. Right. Um. They’ll say they’re not trust, you know, they’re not trustworthy, that kind of thing. Right. They’ve often been asked to sign nondisclosure agreements that aren’t protecting trade secrets but are protecting other really important secrets that could um that could really damage uh the organization and the public. Um. You know, sometimes they’ll call them leakers, right? So in a way to discredit the really important work they’re doing. And also, it’s really important to remember that there is a process that these whistleblowers, we want them to go through. So they do it in a legal and safe and responsible way. We have examples of those that weren’t and didn’t it and weren’t able to do that, like a reality winner who ended up going to prison for four years because she went directly to the media without having any counsel. So we want to make sure that they go through this process so that they are actually a whistleblower, as we talked about earlier. And they aren’t a leaker because that’s not a safe, safe way to go.
DeRay Mckesson: It’s so interesting that you say that, Naomi, because, you know, until I met you all I would have even been like, you know, tell the press, like when you find out something, find a reporter, get it off the record. You know, those are the movies we see. We see the movie where somebody puts it in a manila envelope and mails it to The New York Times and Washington Post. They open the envelope, they write this story, and they take down the bad guy. What is the danger of that of that approach?
Andrew Bakaj: Well, if they work for the CIA, the FBI, and it’s classified, they can go to prison and they can be prosecuted for that because they may be mishandling classified information. So that’s a danger there for the federal employees. If you’re in the private sector and you take information that is proprietary or that um that can be what is considered to be trade secrets in terms of how an organization runs or develops things, um you can expose yourself to civil lawsuits. And some companies will you know, they will go after people for doing that. And what you’ve done is if you go to the directly to the press, you may have, depending on circumstances, opened your open the door for that. When you don’t need to, you don’t need to put yourself in a position to experience that type of a retaliatory response because you’ve gone to the appropriate entities first. Or how the way that we structure things to be able to protect the individual while at the same time getting things out to the public so that way there can be not only an investigation but a public dialog on the things that matter most to our democracy.
Naomi Seligman: And importantly, reporters and um members of Congress are now referring clients to us. So um journalists are understanding that it is not safe for a whistleblower to talk directly with them without having counsel. So we have reporters from, you know, from media organizations across the country and across the world, by the way, who are getting in touch with us and saying, listen, we had this person come to me with really important evidence on a really important issue. You know, I think it’s I think it’s vital that they are represented um to make sure that they’re safe. So, you know, I’m going to connect you with them if that works. Right. And so we’re having folks do that all the time now. We’re having a huge number of clients coming to us that way because they recognize that um that whistleblowers aren’t safe if they go directly to the media without representation.
Andrew Bakaj: And the key thing there is we’re not a brick wall. We’re there to help facilitate, and to find the path forward. That’s what we do.
DeRay Mckesson: Boom. Well, help people understand where we can keep up to date with what you all are doing. How do people, is it a Web site? Is it Instagram? Is it Facebook? Is it how do people stay in touch with with whistleblower aid?
Naomi Seligman: Um. Something to add to that in two parts DeRay, because I want to make sure that um that your listeners know that we have an election protection program that we have launched, which um which is going to help support whistleblowers within the election um infrastructure from poll workers all the way up to secretaries of state. So if you are working um on the front lines of this election cycle before, during and after and you experience or witness wrongdoing, you can get in touch with us to make sure that you’re being heard and that we can work through and see if there’s something there that we need to take action on. Um. We have a Web site it is whistlebloweraid.org. And so you can go there and that will give you all the information you need to get in touch with us.
Andrew Bakaj: The additional thing that I want to mention also, given that Naomi mentioned the election protection program, is that um when we think about what happened in 2020, obviously there was a lot of a lot of things that happened that are now happening again that are problematic or can be potentially problematic. But we’ve seen is that the threat to democracy really spiked. It was the during and after the election, right? Jan six happened after the election. So and we had individuals being bullied and intimidated by high profile individuals uh through coercive and through coercion and intimidation um to try and force them to do things that may be illegal or just simply wrong. And so what we want to do is when those individuals are doing their duty as citizens. Right. Trying to ensure that one of the foundational things for our democracy, a free and fair election that it can continue and simply be. It’s one of those things that I grew up I never really thought of that. I think that was most of us right. We had election day. Things happened and you got the results. There’s a lot of people who work throughout that process, and if they feel bullied or intimidated, they have a safe path forward to bring those issues to light. And there can even be a way, depending on the circumstance. So we can talk through this with those prospective whistleblowers about how to shoulder anonymity as well, because we understand that people can be afraid, but there are many people who are brave, who may see or will see really concerning things, and they don’t have to do this alone. We are there to help.
Naomi Seligman: Yeah and I’ll be very specific if you go on to our website. Whistlebloweraid.org, there is a tab up top that says become a whistleblower and it gives you very specific instructions on how to get in touch with us.
DeRay Mckesson: Boom. Well, Naomi and Andrew, we consider you friends of the pod. Can’t wait to have you back. And everybody–
Naomi Seligman: Thank you.
DeRay Mckesson: Please check out whistleblower aid.
Naomi Seligman: Appreciate it.
Andrew Bakaj: Thank you so much.
Naomi Seligman: So much DeRay. Thank you for having us on. It was great.
DeRay Mckesson: Woop woop. [music break] Well, that’s it. Thanks so much for tuning in to Pod Save the People this week. Tell your friends to check it out and make sure you rate it wherever you get your podcasts whether it’s Apple Podcasts or somewhere else. And we’ll see you next week. Pod Save the People is a production of Crooked Media. It’s produced by AJ Moultrié and mixed by Evan Sutton, executive produced by me and special thanks to our weekly contributors Kaya Henderson, De’Ara Balenger, and Myles E. Johnson. [music break]
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