April 9, 2025 • 38 mins
Today's special guest is Nikole Hannah Jones , author of the 1619 Project and Host of the upcoming fireside chat at the "Journalism Under Fire: Guarding Against Threats to our Democracy" event at Howard University on April 24th.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Nicole Hannah Jones is a New York Times best selling
author and the Pulitzer Prize winning creator of The sixteen
nineteen Project. Her sixteen nineteen Project is now a six
part docu series on Hulu. Additionally, she is a staff
writer at The New York Times magazine. Anna Jones has
spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her
(00:20):
reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the
Genius Grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards, and
the National Magazine Award three times. She also serves as
the Night Chair of Race and Journalism at Howard University,
where she founded the Center for Journalism and Democracy. Anna
Jones is also the co founder of the I. B.
(00:42):
Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which seeks to increase the
number of investigative reporters and editors of color. And in
twenty twenty two, she opened the sixteen nineteen Freedom School,
a free after school literacy program in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa.
And she is our guest today. This is the Black
Information Network Daily Podcast. I'm your host Ramsey's Jah.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And I'm your host Qward. All Right, welcome to the
show today.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
We've been really looking forward to having the conversation with you,
and I know that we had a little bit of
mix up with the scheduling, but we are here, we
are on the line, and we are happy to have
this conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
So do us a favor. This is what we do
for all of our guests. We like to start our
stories at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I know that I kind of gave a little bit
of a professional bio background on you, but just so
that our listeners who may not be intimately familiar with
who you are and your work, know who they're.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Hearing from today.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit
about maybe where you grew up, what inspired you to
adopt a career path that you're on, and just so
again we have a little bit more of an idea
of who we're listening to today.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Sure, thank you so much for having me on. Really
happy to talk to you both and to your audience. So,
as you said, my name is Nicole. People often say
Hanna Nicole Jones. I don't know why. I think I
think it's Anna Nicole Smith or something gets in their head.
I don't know, but the three names mixed people up,
so I'm used to it. But I you know, at
(02:14):
my essence, I'm just a girl from a small town
called Waterloo, Iowa. Yes, there are black people in Iowa.
As I say, there's always black people everywhere. And I'm
a child of the Great Migration. My father was born
in Mississippi, and the same migration that took black folks
from Mississippi to Chicago brought my folks to Iowa. And
(02:37):
there's lots of black folks that dotted in these Midwestern towns.
And I became really interested in journalism from a young age.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Both of my parents were avid readers.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
My dad and I used to read the newspaper together
when I was a kid. I wrote my first letter
to the editor when I was eleven years old about
Jesse Jackson running for president and not doing well in
the Iowa primary. And every day I would go home
and open the paper to the opinion section to see
if they ran my letter, and one day they did,
(03:09):
And I think that's really when the bug hit me.
I realized you could see something in the world that
you didn't think was right, and you could write about it,
and of course other people to at least grapple with
your thoughts on that, And that's when I started to
think maybe writing our journalism would be a career I'd
want to explore.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
So much of your story is just flatly inspirational. Listening
to the idea of getting into journalism and you know,
causing people to grapple with opposing opinions, ideas, thoughts, and
being able to share your voice and your point of
view with the world. What a different place we live
(03:50):
in today. But just listening to how that bug bit
you just you know, made me remember why I was
so excited about, you know, being able to speak in
the spaces that we're allowed to speak in and lucky enough,
fortunate enough to be able to have conversations with people
like yourself. For our listeners who are unfamiliar with the
(04:12):
sixteen nineteen Project, discuss that a little bit for us
to bring.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Us up to speed.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Sure, So the sixteen nineteen Project published at The New
York Times where I work in August of twenty nineteen,
and it's named the sixteen nineteen Project because it was
published to commemorate the year that the first Africans were
sold into the colony of Virginia. So we mark that
as the beginning of slavery in the United States, and
what the project does through a series of essays and
(04:41):
now a documentary series, a podcast, and a visual arts book,
is really argue that if you want to understand the
United States, and unfortunately it's been born out in the
moment that we're in politically in the United States right now,
that you can't begin by thinking our origins were seven
eeteen seventy six with these ideals of freedom, that you
(05:02):
really have to mark our founding at the year sixteen
nineteen with the advent of slavery. And that's so much
about the country we live in right now. Our politics,
our social systems, our inequality really has its basis in
a nation that believe that it was founded on ideas
of freedom, but was also founded on the practice of slavery,
(05:24):
of depriving that freedom, and that these kind of warring
sides of ourselves we have never.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Been able.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
To fully deal with, and because we haven't, we get
the country that we have today. And you can look
honestly at Donald Trump's efforts to restrict our learning of
history that teaches about slavery, that teaches about racism, that
helps explain the inequality. That we see the executive order
(05:54):
against the National Museum of African American History and Culture,
the mandates to purge what they're calling diversity, equity inclusion,
to eliminate the ability to celebrate Black History Month. All
of that is because we've never we've never dealt with
that original sin. And so what the project tries to
do is is not tell the story of a past,
(06:14):
but every essay or episode is saying, look at America today,
look at this. You know, our system of capitalism, democracy,
Why you're stuck in traffic in Atlanta, and all of
these things actually have their basis in our original sin
of slavery.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
You know, listening to to delineate sixteen nineteen, particularly from
the timeline of this country is I think it's so
critical because there are these events that have taken place historically,
(06:55):
as I'm sure you will know, and you know, Q
and I we discussed on the show from time to
time that were indeed pivotal in terms of not just
the evolution of this country or what would ultimately become
this country, but the world.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
I believe it.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Was sometime in the fifteen hundreds when you know, white
people were invented and the idea that white people as
a delineating term from black people or the slave class
had come into use.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Prior to that, you were just a product.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Of the country you were from. Additionally, you know, to
know that where we are in this country, how there
are you mentioned, you know, the rollbacks on DEI and
the push to kind of purge the National Museum of
African American History and Culture and so forth, that the
(07:52):
messaging often on the right and the far right has
been effective. And they know, I would imagine, and they're
aware that there's a base of people who will respond
to that messaging. If they say, well, black people are
getting this and it's costing you something. Instead of saying, well,
that makes sense, we should all sit back and kind
(08:13):
of allow this to right itself, they push back and say, no,
absolutely not. Now that it's framed in that way, I'm
losing something. We cannot have this. And then we have
this base of people who are galvin not further galvanized,
and then engage in the electoral process and elect reelect
Donald Trump, and here we are. You know, and I
(08:36):
know that there was there's a number of factors and
I don't want to, you know, talk through all of.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Them, of course, but there are more brilliant.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Minds than mine that are discussing the goings on in
this country. So I want if you can talk to
us a little bit about journalism under fire, guarding against
the threat to our democracy.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Absolutely. So.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
I have many jobs, and one of them is on
the night chair in racing journalism at Howard University, and
I also founded a center there called the Center for
Journalism and Democracy. I founded that center really right after
the first Trump presidency, and I founded it because I
(09:21):
really believed that our profession was failing. They didn't know
how to cover someone like Donald Trump. It was really
failing to see that we were facing an impending crisis
of democracy and really in many ways legitimized Trump in
his first term and the unparalleled actions that he was taking.
(09:45):
And so I thought I really needed to call our
profession into its mandate, which is to say, a free
press cannot be neutral when it comes to democracy. That
while we're told we're supposed to be objective, you can
have a free press without democracy, and democracy also requires
a free press. Our founders were very flawed and problematic,
(10:09):
as the sixteen nineteen project lays out, but one thing
that they got right was understanding that an informed populace
and a free press that could hold power to account
was a necessary ingredient of the democracy. That's why the
very first Amendment to the Constitution lays out our right
freedom of speech and a freedom of the press, And
in fact, the press is the only profession that's protected
(10:32):
in the Constitution. So what we have seen though is,
of course Donald Trump, as he is doing things that
experts on authoritarianism say are increasingly autocratic, that one of
the things he's attacked is the free press. We have
seen in the first Trump administration there was surveillance of reporters.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
We have seen.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Donald Trump in the past stoking violence against reporters. And
what we saw leading up to this second Trump election
was really a capitulation by some of the biggest media
companies in the United States. We saw the La Times,
the billionaire owner of the La Times, and the billionaire
owner of the Washington Post actually infringing on the editorial
(11:18):
rights of.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Their opinion pages.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
So there was a concern when that happened that what
happens when our free press actually is run by oligarchs
who then capitulate to this powerful figure who is seen
as eroding press freedoms, and so I decided that we
needed to hold a forum at Howard through My Center
(11:44):
where we brought those journalists because what happened when those
billionaires wouldn't allow the editorial pages to freely write the
things that they wanted to write is you saw a
wave of resignations. You've seen resignations at the La Times,
at the Washington Post, saw at CNN as there was
kind of a crackdown on what some journalists could talk about.
(12:06):
And I wanted to bring those journalists into a space
to speak about their experiences but also why it's important
to stand up in this moment, why we have to
protect a free press in this moment, and also to
bring experts on authoritarianism to help us to see understand
what's happening, because we seem to get when other countries
(12:28):
start to devolve into authoritarianism, and some of the things
that we're seeing in the United States, if they were
happening in China, if they were happening in Cuba, we
would be very clear about what's happening and what to
call that. But we really struggle to call these things
out in America. Because we kind of believe in this
idea of exceptionalism and that our democratic institutions will hold
(12:51):
even as we're seeing them be eroded. So I wanted
to bring in a very big way this conversation to
the public to allow us to really take apart what's
happening and figure out how do we help preserve the
free press, because we need the free press if we're
going to preserve democracy.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Before before we move on, can you do me a
favor and mention the names of the people that will
be participating.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah, sure, let me.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Well, I I know that Joy is going to be there. Yeah,
and given what has happened, you know, recently with her
being fired, you know, I think that you kind of
explained exactly what Trump's presidency has had on kind of
shaping or reshaping rather the free press and particularly those
(13:44):
people who have been critical of Donald Trump and Donald
Trump's influence on politics in general. And so Joy is
kind of one of the more popular names. So that's
why I wanted you to to to mention the folks
who are going to be unpounded, because she's not the
only one.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
But please go ahead, absolutely, So this talk again journalism
under fire Guarding Against Threats to Our Democracy is April
twenty fourth at Crampton Auditorium at Howard University at the Mecca,
and our big name speakers are Joyane Reid, who, of
course until very recently had the Read Report on MSNBC,
(14:18):
and in a shakeup following Trump's inauguration, she was fired.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
She was extremely outspoken.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Both on Donald Trump but also on Gaza, and so
she's going to be one of the speakers. Heather Cox
Richardson is a famous historian who has a new book
out about Eroding Democracy. We have Jim Acosta, who many
people know from CNN, who was kind of forced out
of prime time and he resigned in protest and said,
(14:48):
as someone who's father immigrated here from Cuba, he knows
that you always have to stand up.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
To people who have authoritarian tendencies.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
And then we have Robert Kagan who resigned, who's an
editorial writer who resigned from the Washington Polls and Mario
Garza who is an editorial writer who resigned from the
La Times. So we're representing all different types of media
and people who have personally sacrificed in order to stand
up for the public's right to know.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
Nicole, listening to you speak, there are so many things
that I'm so passionate and emotional about that you are
speaking to. One thing that we've discussed on multiple platforms
is the failure of the fourth estate to hold to
account power and point out all of these things that
are so wrong and that you can't play the middle on.
(15:43):
And we just watched our journalistic integrity kind of erode
as people try to play the middle on something that
was so clearly wrong.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I forget who said this, Ramses.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
The more homogeneous nations in the world would be able
to more clearly point out things like this. You know,
everyone in China is Chinese. Yeah, so if an authoritarian
or an autocrat showed up with something so clearly what
(16:22):
it is on its face, it'd be easier for the
nation to point it out or call it out. In
our nation, only one group considers themselves American. So as
long as these things don't in their minds directly impact
or influence them their way of life, their safety, their security,
they're willing to kind of shrug their shoulders and look
the other way. So just listening to you speak to
(16:45):
all these things that make me very, very emotional I
just appreciate your voice and your point of view as
we're watching all of these different things come under attack
under this administration, because it's not just what we do,
It's not just journalism.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
What are some other things, you know?
Speaker 6 (17:04):
I e.
Speaker 5 (17:05):
The dismantling of the Department of Education and the funding
of museums, and you know, the banning of books are
some things that stand out to me. What are some
other things that have come under attack today as we
kind of sit and watch everything that we thought we
knew crumbled around us.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yeah, I mean we should be clear. If there was
any belief that this administration's policies were only going to
hurt a specific group of people, I think we should
be disabused of that because what we're seeing is really
a wide scale gutting of the infrastructure of the federal government,
(17:46):
and the federal government reaches into every person's lives. So
if you look at all the layoffs at health and
human services, well, these are the people who protect our
food supply. These are the people who help fund medical
device and make sure that medical devices are safe for us.
These are the people who fund the science that we
need to come up with cures and vaccines that's being
(18:09):
eviscerated right now. So you know, when there's a problem
in our food supply, who's going to catch it before
it starts killing people? If you look at their you
know what they're doing to social security where people are
unable to even get their phone calls answered when they're
waiting for this assistance. The Department of Education. Most people
don't really understand what the Department of Education does. The
(18:31):
apartment the Department of Education doesn't set curriculum, It doesn't
hire teachers, it doesn't determine, you know, what are the
standards of learning. What it does do is it enforces
the civil rights of students across the country. That department
has been completely gutted. They have closed most of the
regional offices that enforce our civil rights, so you know,
(18:53):
against racial discrimination, against gender discrimination. If your child is
special needs, the reasons and that they're able and they
are mandated to receive special needs services is because of
the enforcements is coming out of the US Department of Education.
Most of the funding that the federal government puts into
schools is for schools that serve a high number of
(19:14):
students with lowing that are low income that's called Title
one funding. That's extra money to schools that serve kids
with the most needs. That funding is now being threatened
by the Trump administration because he is forcing states to
certify within ten days that they have no diversity, equity
and inclusion policies or they're going to lose that Title
one funding. So I want us to think about this.
(19:36):
The majority of public school students in this country are
people of color. White students are a minority of public
school students, and now schools that serve a majority population
of people of color are being told that they will
lose funding if they pay attention to diversity, equity and inclusion.
So everyone is going to be impacted by what's happening
(19:58):
in our federal government. And I think this is where
that mythology of America is, as you said, crumbling around us.
Because I don't even think it's necessarily that we're not homogeneous.
A lot of authoritarian societies are homogeneous. What's different about
us is that we actually have drunk the kool aid
(20:19):
on the idea of American exceptionalism. So many white Americans
fundamentally believe that we are an exceptional nation and that
we cannot actually succumb to the things that have brought
down other societies, and so they believe that, yeah, you know,
Donald Trump might be doing some crazy things, but we
have the system of checks and balances. Our check system
(20:40):
of checks and bounces is failing right now. And what
the research actually shows is that white Americans lose their
belief in democracy the more they believe that black folks
and other people of color are going to determine democracy.
And so this belief in democracy for any white Americans
(21:01):
was predicated on America being an ethnocracy democracy for one
ethnic group, and not a true democracy, which means everyone
in this multi racial nation gets a vote and has
to share political parties or power. So that's really what
we're seeing right now is in some ways it was
(21:24):
inevitable that we were going to arrive at this moment
based on the fact that we've only really had democracy
in the United States since nineteen sixty five with the
passage of the Voting Rights Act. And think about the
decades of political struggle, a violent struggle that Black Americans
(21:44):
had to engage in to receive that. So democracy in
the United States has always been contested, and now we're
seeing a bunch of people who don't believe anymore in
a public good, who don't believe that government should be
trying to help people because they think they.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Can go it alone.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
But they can go on alone because they don't understand
everything the government does and that we actually can exist
in a nation if we don't believe that we owe
each other something.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
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Speaker 6 (22:11):
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Speaker 1 (23:11):
We are here today with New York Times best selling
author and the Pulitzer Prize winning creator of the sixteen
nineteen Project, Nicole Hannah Jones. Okay, thank you for being Sae.
So on this show, of course, we have to have
(23:33):
conversations with lots of different folks, and you know, we
do our best to you know, highlight voices that we
feel are missing from you know, many conversations, and you know,
our listeners really appreciate that about the show. But you know,
obviously there are some people who you know, we do
our best not to allow them on the show, you know,
(23:55):
but there's some people out there who have some crazy
ideas and.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Unfortunately, while we're not trying.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
To, we we we have to cover these ideas and
these these movements and so forth. And so that provides
a level of dignity to them that we don't intend.
It's just we're acknowledging them, and so that kind of
kind of gives some validity to it. So when I
say thank you for being sane and walking us through,
you know, step by step kind of the goings on,
(24:26):
what we're facing, what happens when, for instance, the Department
of Education is dismantled and the implications of that it
I think it's it's as sobering as we need it
to be. And you know that's something that you know,
obviously throughout your career you've been committed to, you know,
(24:49):
telling the truth. But you know, in this moment where
you know, as journalists Q and myself, we sometimes you know,
this can become kind of disheartening, taxing and wear heavily
on you when you kind of know what's going on
and no one else does. To just have a reminder
of a friendly voice in the room that's you know,
firm and measured, but also uh, you know, explaining everything
(25:13):
to us in a way that we can kind of
you know, I can't say how much I appreciate you,
so please keep going.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Now.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I know that as a journalist, and you know, among
other things.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
You know, you have.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Your work cut out for you. But you do have work.
There's things that you can do. There's things you can say,
places you can go, microphones, audiences, et cetera, where you
can perhaps impact out you can shape outcomes, right, you
can perhaps influence minds or talk to people. And you know,
and certainly at your level, you know you have a
(25:53):
lot of people who also matter quite a bit. But
let's say there are people listening to us today who
maybe they don't have microphones, they don't have audiences, and
they wake up in the morning and they take a shower,
and they get in their car and they have to
get that knocking noise fixed, and then they got to
(26:14):
go to work, and then they get off, go to
the grocery store and get their kids, go home, and
they do that every day, right, But they're listening to
us today and they say this is wrong. And I
voted and I did everything, but I got nothing. What
am I supposed to do? I don't have and there's
no audience for me. There's no one, you know, So
(26:34):
what do you say to those people who sort of
want to push back against this regime's hostility and they
haven't yet found their role in you know, our collective
path forward.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a legitimate feeling, and
I think it's a widespread feeling. And frankly, even with
the megaphone that I have, it's hard not to feel
helpless as we're seeing this dismantling. But I've taken, you know,
a little inspiration just in the last week, you know,
(27:10):
with Corey Booker doing that epic five hour It didn't
change anything, but what it did was it gave people inspiration.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
It made people say, at least.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Someone out here is speaking up and pushing back. And
I think that the sense of inspiration is what people
are looking for. And then the other thing was the
election for the Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Elon Musk put something like twenty million.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Dollars dollars into that election and paid, you know, two
people two million dollars each to try to get people
to vote the way that he wanted. And yet regular
people in Wisconsin defeated the billionaire, right the richest man
in the world, who poured all that money in there,
and the election wasn't even close. So what that told me,
(28:03):
and I posted about this some blue sky. Not on
ex I'm not on exit.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
There you go, thank you.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
I posted about this some blue sky. But what that
what that said is, this is what they most fear,
is that in a democracy, there's still one person, one vote.
So you can have three hundred billion dollars, but you
still get one vote. And I think that we all
have to understand that we do have a collective power,
(28:32):
but that collective power begins with the individual actions that
we take. So yeah, you you you have to go
to work, you have to feed your kids, but you
can call your.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Senator, you can call your representative.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
You can go down to the local school board meeting
or to the state legislature. Those things actually do work.
There are things that we can do individually. And voting
every two years or every four years, honestly, that's the minimum.
That's the minimum. That's the easiest thing that we can do.
(29:04):
But you can do something so your legislature, legislators, they
answer to you. If they get and I've spoken with
some of them, even a small number of calls on
a issue, it can be persuasive, it can lead to change,
and then control the things that you can that you
can control, Speak up, for your educators. They try to
(29:27):
ban books of your community. Sometimes it's five people going
down to a school board meeting who are getting books withdrawn.
So if there's fifteen of you, then you can pull.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
It the other way.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
So I think in this moment, this administration thrives on chaos.
They thrive on hitting us every day with something new
to make us feel debilitated. That's where they actually get
their power. Because we do have power. We just have
to learn to exercise it. So don't be overwhelmed and
take one step. And I tell people a lot, So
(29:59):
I've and doing all this reading on authoritarianism just so
I can also understand what's happening right now and.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
How do we process it.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
And this writer Timothy Snyder, what he says is, you know,
we can't fight on every battlefront. Pick an institution and
defend it. So pick that thing that whether it's the
public schools, whether it's the public libraries, whether it's voting rights,
whether it's trying to defend our trends, neighbors. But pick
that one thing that you think you may have the
(30:28):
most influence on or that's most important to you, and
defend that one thing. Don't try to do everything, because
if you try to do everything, you sometimes end up
doing nothing. But I do think it's important for folks
to know this is the time for sacrifice and courage.
Like the normal excuses about your life is you know,
you're too tired or you don't feel you can't do that.
(30:51):
Right now, we are in an unprecedented moment, especially as
black folks working. I've been working on this essay for
two months now. It's been killing me because I'm trying
to help us understand that we're at the cusp of
the second and the dear any of us who were
born after the nineteen sixties, we've not lived in this America.
We are seeing things happen that we've only read about
(31:14):
in history books, and they are happening right now. So
we don't actually have the luxury to be tired or
to feel like, you know, we've got more important things
to do. This is our moment. And as a good
friend of mine who's a writer says, there's going to
be an accounting. There's going to be an accounting one
day of like what did we do in this moment?
Speaker 4 (31:34):
And you know, we.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Think about our grandparents now and now all of them
say that marsh were king, but most of them did
it right.
Speaker 6 (31:43):
And so.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
What you're doing now is what you would have been
doing in the movement before. And I just think it's
important for us to know. I know, right after the
election there are all these means about you know, black
folks are gonna we're going to.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
Just step back and rest and withdraw. We don't have
that luxury.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
We don't have that luxury because everything that's being done,
it's going to hit our communities the hardest. So I
just I would really implore people that whatever is that
thing that you think you can do, I don't care
how tired you are, Please force yourself to do it.
Speaker 5 (32:21):
You know, Nicole, reading about you is inspiring, but having
a conversation with you feels empowering.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
It feels like it's like a call to action.
Speaker 5 (32:32):
Just listening to you speak like I'm about to pick
up my phone and text Ramps is to figure out
what can we do next?
Speaker 2 (32:38):
What can we do later today? What can we do tomorrow.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
I know that this conversation will mean a lot to
every listener whose ears that it touches, But I do
not want people's view of you to be singular. So
please tell us, besides journalism under Fire, besides the essay
that you are working on, besides these powerful conversations that
you are spearheading for those who want to know what's
(33:04):
next for you, and again more actionable steps about what
they can do to be more involved and more empowered.
What would you share with us?
Speaker 4 (33:15):
Thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
You know, I'm a person who feels like I have
been so tremendously blessed, come from very humble beginnings, and
have had an amazing career and an amazing life, and
so I really do feel an obligation to try to
do as much good as possible. So you know, I
founded a freedom school in my hometown. It's a free
(33:40):
acter school literacy program. It's called the sixteen nineteen Freedom School.
Always looking for donations of books and other things to
help our young scholars. The idd Well Society for Investigative
Reporting I founded co founded that organization. We train journalists
of color to do the important invest thegative work that
(34:02):
shows a way that power is being used against our communities.
You can support the work of the Center for Journalism
and Democracy. We not only do we put on public programming,
but we train in resource journalism programs at historically black
colleges and universities. I just actually was reading an article
this morning that FAM you is facing the loss of
(34:22):
fourteen million dollars in funds because of Donald Trump. And
so you know, we're doing important work of trying to
lift up our historically black colleges which are going to
be more increasingly important. And I'm working on opening a bookstore,
Bourbon Bar and liberatory Space of Resistance in Brooklyn.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
So stay tuned.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Haven't created any like public facing information about it, but
stay tuned, and I hope you all will will come
and support that when it opens this fall.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Before we let you go, do favor and make sure
that you share your social media as well, just so
that you know, people can you know, tap in with you,
and as you identify additional ways that people can get
involved support, show up, uh you know at events or
maybe you know for the forthcoming event, you know, people
(35:19):
can even maybe zoom in because obviously we have a
national audience.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Here, you know. Having that you mentioned Blue Sky but
you know.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Elsewhere absolutely so I'm Ida bay Wells on Blue Sky,
which of course is paying homage to Ida b Wells
on Instagram I'm Nicole Hannah Jones, and if you want
to find out and register for the event at the
Center for Journalism and Democracy, Journalism under Fire, we are
going to have we are going to live stream it
(35:48):
and you can also come in person, and that is
at the Center for Journalism and Democracy, So you can
just go to our website there.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
And then we have followed you. We are going to
be keeping up with you. As Q mentioned. You know,
we don't get to have conversations with folks like you
every day, and so you know, I figure that we
would not compel our listeners to take action if we
weren't willing to do it ourselves.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
And so if you got the ball and you're running
with it.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Let us be you know, your support, let us run
the blocks, let us do what we gotta do. So
with that in mind, thank you very much for coming
on today to share your your insights and.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
You know, your advice on how we should move forward.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
It has been a joy and we hopefully we'll be
able to do it again.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
We're here at your leisure.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
So you just let us know and you come back anytime,
all right, Once again, Today's guest is New York Times
best selling author and the Pulitzer Prize winning creator of
the sixteen nineteen project Nicole Hannah Jones. This has been
a production of the Black Information Network. Today's show is
produced by Chris Thompson. Have some thoughts you'd like to share,
use the red microphone talk back feature on the eye
(37:00):
Hard Radio app. While you're there, be sure to hit
subscribe and download all of our episodes. I am your
host Ramsey's Jah on all social media.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
I am q Ward on all social media as well.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
And join us tomorrow as we share our news with
our voice from our perspective right here on the Black
Information Network Daily Podcast
Nicole Hannah Jones is a New York Times best selling
author and the Pulitzer Prize winning creator of The sixteen
nineteen Project. Her sixteen nineteen Project is now a six
part docu series on Hulu. Additionally, she is a staff
writer at The New York Times magazine. Anna Jones has
spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her
(00:20):
reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the
Genius Grant, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards, and
the National Magazine Award three times. She also serves as
the Night Chair of Race and Journalism at Howard University,
where she founded the Center for Journalism and Democracy. Anna
Jones is also the co founder of the I. B.
(00:42):
Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which seeks to increase the
number of investigative reporters and editors of color. And in
twenty twenty two, she opened the sixteen nineteen Freedom School,
a free after school literacy program in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa.
And she is our guest today. This is the Black
Information Network Daily Podcast. I'm your host Ramsey's Jah.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And I'm your host Qward. All Right, welcome to the
show today.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
We've been really looking forward to having the conversation with you,
and I know that we had a little bit of
mix up with the scheduling, but we are here, we
are on the line, and we are happy to have
this conversation.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
So do us a favor. This is what we do
for all of our guests. We like to start our
stories at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
I know that I kind of gave a little bit
of a professional bio background on you, but just so
that our listeners who may not be intimately familiar with
who you are and your work, know who they're.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Hearing from today.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit
about maybe where you grew up, what inspired you to
adopt a career path that you're on, and just so
again we have a little bit more of an idea
of who we're listening to today.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Sure, thank you so much for having me on. Really
happy to talk to you both and to your audience. So,
as you said, my name is Nicole. People often say
Hanna Nicole Jones. I don't know why. I think I
think it's Anna Nicole Smith or something gets in their head.
I don't know, but the three names mixed people up,
so I'm used to it. But I you know, at
(02:14):
my essence, I'm just a girl from a small town
called Waterloo, Iowa. Yes, there are black people in Iowa.
As I say, there's always black people everywhere. And I'm
a child of the Great Migration. My father was born
in Mississippi, and the same migration that took black folks
from Mississippi to Chicago brought my folks to Iowa. And
(02:37):
there's lots of black folks that dotted in these Midwestern towns.
And I became really interested in journalism from a young age.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
Both of my parents were avid readers.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
My dad and I used to read the newspaper together
when I was a kid. I wrote my first letter
to the editor when I was eleven years old about
Jesse Jackson running for president and not doing well in
the Iowa primary. And every day I would go home
and open the paper to the opinion section to see
if they ran my letter, and one day they did,
(03:09):
And I think that's really when the bug hit me.
I realized you could see something in the world that
you didn't think was right, and you could write about it,
and of course other people to at least grapple with
your thoughts on that, And that's when I started to
think maybe writing our journalism would be a career I'd
want to explore.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
So much of your story is just flatly inspirational. Listening
to the idea of getting into journalism and you know,
causing people to grapple with opposing opinions, ideas, thoughts, and
being able to share your voice and your point of
view with the world. What a different place we live
(03:50):
in today. But just listening to how that bug bit
you just you know, made me remember why I was
so excited about, you know, being able to speak in
the spaces that we're allowed to speak in and lucky enough,
fortunate enough to be able to have conversations with people
like yourself. For our listeners who are unfamiliar with the
(04:12):
sixteen nineteen Project, discuss that a little bit for us
to bring.
Speaker 2 (04:15):
Us up to speed.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Sure, So the sixteen nineteen Project published at The New
York Times where I work in August of twenty nineteen,
and it's named the sixteen nineteen Project because it was
published to commemorate the year that the first Africans were
sold into the colony of Virginia. So we mark that
as the beginning of slavery in the United States, and
what the project does through a series of essays and
(04:41):
now a documentary series, a podcast, and a visual arts book,
is really argue that if you want to understand the
United States, and unfortunately it's been born out in the
moment that we're in politically in the United States right now,
that you can't begin by thinking our origins were seven
eeteen seventy six with these ideals of freedom, that you
(05:02):
really have to mark our founding at the year sixteen
nineteen with the advent of slavery. And that's so much
about the country we live in right now. Our politics,
our social systems, our inequality really has its basis in
a nation that believe that it was founded on ideas
of freedom, but was also founded on the practice of slavery,
(05:24):
of depriving that freedom, and that these kind of warring
sides of ourselves we have never.
Speaker 4 (05:30):
Been able.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
To fully deal with, and because we haven't, we get
the country that we have today. And you can look
honestly at Donald Trump's efforts to restrict our learning of
history that teaches about slavery, that teaches about racism, that
helps explain the inequality. That we see the executive order
(05:54):
against the National Museum of African American History and Culture,
the mandates to purge what they're calling diversity, equity inclusion,
to eliminate the ability to celebrate Black History Month. All
of that is because we've never we've never dealt with
that original sin. And so what the project tries to
do is is not tell the story of a past,
(06:14):
but every essay or episode is saying, look at America today,
look at this. You know, our system of capitalism, democracy,
Why you're stuck in traffic in Atlanta, and all of
these things actually have their basis in our original sin
of slavery.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
You know, listening to to delineate sixteen nineteen, particularly from
the timeline of this country is I think it's so
critical because there are these events that have taken place historically,
(06:55):
as I'm sure you will know, and you know, Q
and I we discussed on the show from time to
time that were indeed pivotal in terms of not just
the evolution of this country or what would ultimately become
this country, but the world.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
I believe it.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Was sometime in the fifteen hundreds when you know, white
people were invented and the idea that white people as
a delineating term from black people or the slave class
had come into use.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Prior to that, you were just a product.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Of the country you were from. Additionally, you know, to
know that where we are in this country, how there
are you mentioned, you know, the rollbacks on DEI and
the push to kind of purge the National Museum of
African American History and Culture and so forth, that the
(07:52):
messaging often on the right and the far right has
been effective. And they know, I would imagine, and they're
aware that there's a base of people who will respond
to that messaging. If they say, well, black people are
getting this and it's costing you something. Instead of saying, well,
that makes sense, we should all sit back and kind
(08:13):
of allow this to right itself, they push back and say, no,
absolutely not. Now that it's framed in that way, I'm
losing something. We cannot have this. And then we have
this base of people who are galvin not further galvanized,
and then engage in the electoral process and elect reelect
Donald Trump, and here we are. You know, and I
(08:36):
know that there was there's a number of factors and
I don't want to, you know, talk through all of.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Them, of course, but there are more brilliant.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
Minds than mine that are discussing the goings on in
this country. So I want if you can talk to
us a little bit about journalism under fire, guarding against
the threat to our democracy.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Absolutely. So.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
I have many jobs, and one of them is on
the night chair in racing journalism at Howard University, and
I also founded a center there called the Center for
Journalism and Democracy. I founded that center really right after
the first Trump presidency, and I founded it because I
(09:21):
really believed that our profession was failing. They didn't know
how to cover someone like Donald Trump. It was really
failing to see that we were facing an impending crisis
of democracy and really in many ways legitimized Trump in
his first term and the unparalleled actions that he was taking.
(09:45):
And so I thought I really needed to call our
profession into its mandate, which is to say, a free
press cannot be neutral when it comes to democracy. That
while we're told we're supposed to be objective, you can
have a free press without democracy, and democracy also requires
a free press. Our founders were very flawed and problematic,
(10:09):
as the sixteen nineteen project lays out, but one thing
that they got right was understanding that an informed populace
and a free press that could hold power to account
was a necessary ingredient of the democracy. That's why the
very first Amendment to the Constitution lays out our right
freedom of speech and a freedom of the press, And
in fact, the press is the only profession that's protected
(10:32):
in the Constitution. So what we have seen though is,
of course Donald Trump, as he is doing things that
experts on authoritarianism say are increasingly autocratic, that one of
the things he's attacked is the free press. We have
seen in the first Trump administration there was surveillance of reporters.
Speaker 4 (10:56):
We have seen.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Donald Trump in the past stoking violence against reporters. And
what we saw leading up to this second Trump election
was really a capitulation by some of the biggest media
companies in the United States. We saw the La Times,
the billionaire owner of the La Times, and the billionaire
owner of the Washington Post actually infringing on the editorial
(11:18):
rights of.
Speaker 4 (11:20):
Their opinion pages.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
So there was a concern when that happened that what
happens when our free press actually is run by oligarchs
who then capitulate to this powerful figure who is seen
as eroding press freedoms, and so I decided that we
needed to hold a forum at Howard through My Center
(11:44):
where we brought those journalists because what happened when those
billionaires wouldn't allow the editorial pages to freely write the
things that they wanted to write is you saw a
wave of resignations. You've seen resignations at the La Times,
at the Washington Post, saw at CNN as there was
kind of a crackdown on what some journalists could talk about.
(12:06):
And I wanted to bring those journalists into a space
to speak about their experiences but also why it's important
to stand up in this moment, why we have to
protect a free press in this moment, and also to
bring experts on authoritarianism to help us to see understand
what's happening, because we seem to get when other countries
(12:28):
start to devolve into authoritarianism, and some of the things
that we're seeing in the United States, if they were
happening in China, if they were happening in Cuba, we
would be very clear about what's happening and what to
call that. But we really struggle to call these things
out in America. Because we kind of believe in this
idea of exceptionalism and that our democratic institutions will hold
(12:51):
even as we're seeing them be eroded. So I wanted
to bring in a very big way this conversation to
the public to allow us to really take apart what's
happening and figure out how do we help preserve the
free press, because we need the free press if we're
going to preserve democracy.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Before before we move on, can you do me a
favor and mention the names of the people that will
be participating.
Speaker 4 (13:19):
Yeah, sure, let me.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
Well, I I know that Joy is going to be there. Yeah,
and given what has happened, you know, recently with her
being fired, you know, I think that you kind of
explained exactly what Trump's presidency has had on kind of
shaping or reshaping rather the free press and particularly those
(13:44):
people who have been critical of Donald Trump and Donald
Trump's influence on politics in general. And so Joy is
kind of one of the more popular names. So that's
why I wanted you to to to mention the folks
who are going to be unpounded, because she's not the
only one.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
But please go ahead, absolutely, So this talk again journalism
under fire Guarding Against Threats to Our Democracy is April
twenty fourth at Crampton Auditorium at Howard University at the Mecca,
and our big name speakers are Joyane Reid, who, of
course until very recently had the Read Report on MSNBC,
(14:18):
and in a shakeup following Trump's inauguration, she was fired.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
She was extremely outspoken.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Both on Donald Trump but also on Gaza, and so
she's going to be one of the speakers. Heather Cox
Richardson is a famous historian who has a new book
out about Eroding Democracy. We have Jim Acosta, who many
people know from CNN, who was kind of forced out
of prime time and he resigned in protest and said,
(14:48):
as someone who's father immigrated here from Cuba, he knows
that you always have to stand up.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
To people who have authoritarian tendencies.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
And then we have Robert Kagan who resigned, who's an
editorial writer who resigned from the Washington Polls and Mario
Garza who is an editorial writer who resigned from the
La Times. So we're representing all different types of media
and people who have personally sacrificed in order to stand
up for the public's right to know.
Speaker 5 (15:19):
Nicole, listening to you speak, there are so many things
that I'm so passionate and emotional about that you are
speaking to. One thing that we've discussed on multiple platforms
is the failure of the fourth estate to hold to
account power and point out all of these things that
are so wrong and that you can't play the middle on.
(15:43):
And we just watched our journalistic integrity kind of erode
as people try to play the middle on something that
was so clearly wrong.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I forget who said this, Ramses.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
The more homogeneous nations in the world would be able
to more clearly point out things like this. You know,
everyone in China is Chinese. Yeah, so if an authoritarian
or an autocrat showed up with something so clearly what
(16:22):
it is on its face, it'd be easier for the
nation to point it out or call it out. In
our nation, only one group considers themselves American. So as
long as these things don't in their minds directly impact
or influence them their way of life, their safety, their security,
they're willing to kind of shrug their shoulders and look
the other way. So just listening to you speak to
(16:45):
all these things that make me very, very emotional I
just appreciate your voice and your point of view as
we're watching all of these different things come under attack
under this administration, because it's not just what we do,
It's not just journalism.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
What are some other things, you know?
Speaker 6 (17:04):
I e.
Speaker 5 (17:05):
The dismantling of the Department of Education and the funding
of museums, and you know, the banning of books are
some things that stand out to me. What are some
other things that have come under attack today as we
kind of sit and watch everything that we thought we
knew crumbled around us.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
Yeah, I mean we should be clear. If there was
any belief that this administration's policies were only going to
hurt a specific group of people, I think we should
be disabused of that because what we're seeing is really
a wide scale gutting of the infrastructure of the federal government,
(17:46):
and the federal government reaches into every person's lives. So
if you look at all the layoffs at health and
human services, well, these are the people who protect our
food supply. These are the people who help fund medical
device and make sure that medical devices are safe for us.
These are the people who fund the science that we
need to come up with cures and vaccines that's being
(18:09):
eviscerated right now. So you know, when there's a problem
in our food supply, who's going to catch it before
it starts killing people? If you look at their you
know what they're doing to social security where people are
unable to even get their phone calls answered when they're
waiting for this assistance. The Department of Education. Most people
don't really understand what the Department of Education does. The
(18:31):
apartment the Department of Education doesn't set curriculum, It doesn't
hire teachers, it doesn't determine, you know, what are the
standards of learning. What it does do is it enforces
the civil rights of students across the country. That department
has been completely gutted. They have closed most of the
regional offices that enforce our civil rights, so you know,
(18:53):
against racial discrimination, against gender discrimination. If your child is
special needs, the reasons and that they're able and they
are mandated to receive special needs services is because of
the enforcements is coming out of the US Department of Education.
Most of the funding that the federal government puts into
schools is for schools that serve a high number of
(19:14):
students with lowing that are low income that's called Title
one funding. That's extra money to schools that serve kids
with the most needs. That funding is now being threatened
by the Trump administration because he is forcing states to
certify within ten days that they have no diversity, equity
and inclusion policies or they're going to lose that Title
one funding. So I want us to think about this.
(19:36):
The majority of public school students in this country are
people of color. White students are a minority of public
school students, and now schools that serve a majority population
of people of color are being told that they will
lose funding if they pay attention to diversity, equity and inclusion.
So everyone is going to be impacted by what's happening
(19:58):
in our federal government. And I think this is where
that mythology of America is, as you said, crumbling around us.
Because I don't even think it's necessarily that we're not homogeneous.
A lot of authoritarian societies are homogeneous. What's different about
us is that we actually have drunk the kool aid
(20:19):
on the idea of American exceptionalism. So many white Americans
fundamentally believe that we are an exceptional nation and that
we cannot actually succumb to the things that have brought
down other societies, and so they believe that, yeah, you know,
Donald Trump might be doing some crazy things, but we
have the system of checks and balances. Our check system
(20:40):
of checks and bounces is failing right now. And what
the research actually shows is that white Americans lose their
belief in democracy the more they believe that black folks
and other people of color are going to determine democracy.
And so this belief in democracy for any white Americans
(21:01):
was predicated on America being an ethnocracy democracy for one
ethnic group, and not a true democracy, which means everyone
in this multi racial nation gets a vote and has
to share political parties or power. So that's really what
we're seeing right now is in some ways it was
(21:24):
inevitable that we were going to arrive at this moment
based on the fact that we've only really had democracy
in the United States since nineteen sixty five with the
passage of the Voting Rights Act. And think about the
decades of political struggle, a violent struggle that Black Americans
(21:44):
had to engage in to receive that. So democracy in
the United States has always been contested, and now we're
seeing a bunch of people who don't believe anymore in
a public good, who don't believe that government should be
trying to help people because they think they.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Can go it alone.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
But they can go on alone because they don't understand
everything the government does and that we actually can exist
in a nation if we don't believe that we owe
each other something.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Black Black feast of the planet.
Speaker 6 (22:11):
I go by the name of Charlamagne of God, and
I can't wait to see y'all at the third annual
Black Effect Podcast Festival.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
That's right.
Speaker 6 (22:17):
Yeah, number three, Baby Black called Black Rose More Black
CEO be coming back to Pullman Yard Saturday. We're twenty
six in Atlanta, hosted by none other than Mandy B
and Weezy. That's right, Decisions, Decisions. The Black Effect is
bringing some of the biggest and best podcasts in the
world to.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
The stage one day only Ready.
Speaker 6 (22:35):
We got the R and B Money Podcast with taking
Jay Valentine. We got the Women of All Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
With Sarah J.
Speaker 6 (22:41):
Roberts, Good Mom's Bad Choices, Neked Sports with Carrie Champion,
and the Trap Nerds podcast were more to be announced,
and of course it's bigger than podcasts. We're bringing the
Black Effect Marketplace with black owned businesses, plus the food
truck court to keep you fed while you visit us.
All right, for all my aspiring podcasters, we got something
for you too, you know, we got informed the panels
and you can go to the Career corn up to
(23:02):
play excoosive one on one time with industry leaders. Tickets
on sale now tap into at Black Effect dot Com
Flash Podcast Festival.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
We are here today with New York Times best selling
author and the Pulitzer Prize winning creator of the sixteen
nineteen Project, Nicole Hannah Jones. Okay, thank you for being Sae.
So on this show, of course, we have to have
(23:33):
conversations with lots of different folks, and you know, we
do our best to you know, highlight voices that we
feel are missing from you know, many conversations, and you know,
our listeners really appreciate that about the show. But you know,
obviously there are some people who you know, we do
our best not to allow them on the show, you know,
(23:55):
but there's some people out there who have some crazy
ideas and.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Unfortunately, while we're not trying.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
To, we we we have to cover these ideas and
these these movements and so forth. And so that provides
a level of dignity to them that we don't intend.
It's just we're acknowledging them, and so that kind of
kind of gives some validity to it. So when I
say thank you for being sane and walking us through,
you know, step by step kind of the goings on,
(24:26):
what we're facing, what happens when, for instance, the Department
of Education is dismantled and the implications of that it
I think it's it's as sobering as we need it
to be. And you know that's something that you know,
obviously throughout your career you've been committed to, you know,
(24:49):
telling the truth. But you know, in this moment where
you know, as journalists Q and myself, we sometimes you know,
this can become kind of disheartening, taxing and wear heavily
on you when you kind of know what's going on
and no one else does. To just have a reminder
of a friendly voice in the room that's you know,
firm and measured, but also uh, you know, explaining everything
(25:13):
to us in a way that we can kind of
you know, I can't say how much I appreciate you,
so please keep going.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Now.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
I know that as a journalist, and you know, among
other things.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
You know, you have.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
Your work cut out for you. But you do have work.
There's things that you can do. There's things you can say,
places you can go, microphones, audiences, et cetera, where you
can perhaps impact out you can shape outcomes, right, you
can perhaps influence minds or talk to people. And you know,
and certainly at your level, you know you have a
(25:53):
lot of people who also matter quite a bit. But
let's say there are people listening to us today who
maybe they don't have microphones, they don't have audiences, and
they wake up in the morning and they take a shower,
and they get in their car and they have to
get that knocking noise fixed, and then they got to
(26:14):
go to work, and then they get off, go to
the grocery store and get their kids, go home, and
they do that every day, right, But they're listening to
us today and they say this is wrong. And I
voted and I did everything, but I got nothing. What
am I supposed to do? I don't have and there's
no audience for me. There's no one, you know, So
(26:34):
what do you say to those people who sort of
want to push back against this regime's hostility and they
haven't yet found their role in you know, our collective
path forward.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a legitimate feeling, and
I think it's a widespread feeling. And frankly, even with
the megaphone that I have, it's hard not to feel
helpless as we're seeing this dismantling. But I've taken, you know,
a little inspiration just in the last week, you know,
(27:10):
with Corey Booker doing that epic five hour It didn't
change anything, but what it did was it gave people inspiration.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
It made people say, at least.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Someone out here is speaking up and pushing back. And
I think that the sense of inspiration is what people
are looking for. And then the other thing was the
election for the Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
Elon Musk put something like twenty million.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Dollars dollars into that election and paid, you know, two
people two million dollars each to try to get people
to vote the way that he wanted. And yet regular
people in Wisconsin defeated the billionaire, right the richest man
in the world, who poured all that money in there,
and the election wasn't even close. So what that told me,
(28:03):
and I posted about this some blue sky. Not on
ex I'm not on exit.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
There you go, thank you.
Speaker 3 (28:09):
I posted about this some blue sky. But what that
what that said is, this is what they most fear,
is that in a democracy, there's still one person, one vote.
So you can have three hundred billion dollars, but you
still get one vote. And I think that we all
have to understand that we do have a collective power,
(28:32):
but that collective power begins with the individual actions that
we take. So yeah, you you you have to go
to work, you have to feed your kids, but you
can call your.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Senator, you can call your representative.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
You can go down to the local school board meeting
or to the state legislature. Those things actually do work.
There are things that we can do individually. And voting
every two years or every four years, honestly, that's the minimum.
That's the minimum. That's the easiest thing that we can do.
(29:04):
But you can do something so your legislature, legislators, they
answer to you. If they get and I've spoken with
some of them, even a small number of calls on
a issue, it can be persuasive, it can lead to change,
and then control the things that you can that you
can control, Speak up, for your educators. They try to
(29:27):
ban books of your community. Sometimes it's five people going
down to a school board meeting who are getting books withdrawn.
So if there's fifteen of you, then you can pull.
Speaker 4 (29:37):
It the other way.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
So I think in this moment, this administration thrives on chaos.
They thrive on hitting us every day with something new
to make us feel debilitated. That's where they actually get
their power. Because we do have power. We just have
to learn to exercise it. So don't be overwhelmed and
take one step. And I tell people a lot, So
(29:59):
I've and doing all this reading on authoritarianism just so
I can also understand what's happening right now and.
Speaker 4 (30:05):
How do we process it.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
And this writer Timothy Snyder, what he says is, you know,
we can't fight on every battlefront. Pick an institution and
defend it. So pick that thing that whether it's the
public schools, whether it's the public libraries, whether it's voting rights,
whether it's trying to defend our trends, neighbors. But pick
that one thing that you think you may have the
(30:28):
most influence on or that's most important to you, and
defend that one thing. Don't try to do everything, because
if you try to do everything, you sometimes end up
doing nothing. But I do think it's important for folks
to know this is the time for sacrifice and courage.
Like the normal excuses about your life is you know,
you're too tired or you don't feel you can't do that.
(30:51):
Right now, we are in an unprecedented moment, especially as
black folks working. I've been working on this essay for
two months now. It's been killing me because I'm trying
to help us understand that we're at the cusp of
the second and the dear any of us who were
born after the nineteen sixties, we've not lived in this America.
We are seeing things happen that we've only read about
(31:14):
in history books, and they are happening right now. So
we don't actually have the luxury to be tired or
to feel like, you know, we've got more important things
to do. This is our moment. And as a good
friend of mine who's a writer says, there's going to
be an accounting. There's going to be an accounting one
day of like what did we do in this moment?
Speaker 4 (31:34):
And you know, we.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Think about our grandparents now and now all of them
say that marsh were king, but most of them did
it right.
Speaker 6 (31:43):
And so.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
What you're doing now is what you would have been
doing in the movement before. And I just think it's
important for us to know. I know, right after the
election there are all these means about you know, black
folks are gonna we're going to.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
Just step back and rest and withdraw. We don't have
that luxury.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
We don't have that luxury because everything that's being done,
it's going to hit our communities the hardest. So I
just I would really implore people that whatever is that
thing that you think you can do, I don't care
how tired you are, Please force yourself to do it.
Speaker 5 (32:21):
You know, Nicole, reading about you is inspiring, but having
a conversation with you feels empowering.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
It feels like it's like a call to action.
Speaker 5 (32:32):
Just listening to you speak like I'm about to pick
up my phone and text Ramps is to figure out
what can we do next?
Speaker 2 (32:38):
What can we do later today? What can we do tomorrow.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
I know that this conversation will mean a lot to
every listener whose ears that it touches, But I do
not want people's view of you to be singular. So
please tell us, besides journalism under Fire, besides the essay
that you are working on, besides these powerful conversations that
you are spearheading for those who want to know what's
(33:04):
next for you, and again more actionable steps about what
they can do to be more involved and more empowered.
What would you share with us?
Speaker 4 (33:15):
Thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
You know, I'm a person who feels like I have
been so tremendously blessed, come from very humble beginnings, and
have had an amazing career and an amazing life, and
so I really do feel an obligation to try to
do as much good as possible. So you know, I
founded a freedom school in my hometown. It's a free
(33:40):
acter school literacy program. It's called the sixteen nineteen Freedom School.
Always looking for donations of books and other things to
help our young scholars. The idd Well Society for Investigative
Reporting I founded co founded that organization. We train journalists
of color to do the important invest thegative work that
(34:02):
shows a way that power is being used against our communities.
You can support the work of the Center for Journalism
and Democracy. We not only do we put on public programming,
but we train in resource journalism programs at historically black
colleges and universities. I just actually was reading an article
this morning that FAM you is facing the loss of
(34:22):
fourteen million dollars in funds because of Donald Trump. And
so you know, we're doing important work of trying to
lift up our historically black colleges which are going to
be more increasingly important. And I'm working on opening a bookstore,
Bourbon Bar and liberatory Space of Resistance in Brooklyn.
Speaker 4 (34:45):
So stay tuned.
Speaker 3 (34:47):
Haven't created any like public facing information about it, but
stay tuned, and I hope you all will will come
and support that when it opens this fall.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Before we let you go, do favor and make sure
that you share your social media as well, just so
that you know, people can you know, tap in with you,
and as you identify additional ways that people can get
involved support, show up, uh you know at events or
maybe you know for the forthcoming event, you know, people
(35:19):
can even maybe zoom in because obviously we have a
national audience.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Here, you know. Having that you mentioned Blue Sky but
you know.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Elsewhere absolutely so I'm Ida bay Wells on Blue Sky,
which of course is paying homage to Ida b Wells
on Instagram I'm Nicole Hannah Jones, and if you want
to find out and register for the event at the
Center for Journalism and Democracy, Journalism under Fire, we are
going to have we are going to live stream it
(35:48):
and you can also come in person, and that is
at the Center for Journalism and Democracy, So you can
just go to our website there.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
And then we have followed you. We are going to
be keeping up with you. As Q mentioned. You know,
we don't get to have conversations with folks like you
every day, and so you know, I figure that we
would not compel our listeners to take action if we
weren't willing to do it ourselves.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
And so if you got the ball and you're running
with it.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Let us be you know, your support, let us run
the blocks, let us do what we gotta do. So
with that in mind, thank you very much for coming
on today to share your your insights and.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
You know, your advice on how we should move forward.
Speaker 1 (36:31):
It has been a joy and we hopefully we'll be
able to do it again.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
We're here at your leisure.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
So you just let us know and you come back anytime,
all right, Once again, Today's guest is New York Times
best selling author and the Pulitzer Prize winning creator of
the sixteen nineteen project Nicole Hannah Jones. This has been
a production of the Black Information Network. Today's show is
produced by Chris Thompson. Have some thoughts you'd like to share,
use the red microphone talk back feature on the eye
(37:00):
Hard Radio app. While you're there, be sure to hit
subscribe and download all of our episodes. I am your
host Ramsey's Jah on all social media.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
I am q Ward on all social media as well.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
And join us tomorrow as we share our news with
our voice from our perspective right here on the Black
Information Network Daily Podcast
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