DOJ ends agreement to address wastewater problems in rural Alabama, elevated blood levels of mercury and lead found in Palisades firefighters, and mixed feelings on the Dems recent public appearances. Myles interviews actor, performer, and New York Times Best Selling Author Bob The Drag Queen about their new book Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert.

 

News

DOJ ends environmental justice agreement in Alabama county citing Trump

Palisades and Eaton firefighters had elevated blood levels of mercury and lead, according to an early study

Quick, No One Tell Trump About Bernie Sanders and AOC’s Crowd Sizes

Education Secretary Linda McMahon confuses AI with A1, sauce brand capitalizes on blunder

 

Follow @PodSaveThePeople on Instagram.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

[AD BREAK]

 

DeRay Mckesson: Hey, this is DeRay and welcome to Pod Save the People, in this episode we got a lot going on. This was a great, you know, the world is so wild and I’m happy that I get to process it with this crew of people. It was me, Myles and Sharhonda this week talking about the news that you might not have heard of and some other things that were just going on and then Myles sat down with actor, performer and now New York Times bestselling author Bob the Drag Queen to talk about their new book Harriet Tubman Live in Concert. Here we go. [music break] Every week it gets a little wilder here in these United States of America, but we are happy to be back. This is DeRay at @deray on Twitter. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: This is Myles E. Johnson, @Myles.E.Johnson on Instagram. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: And this is Sharhonda Bossier. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: There’s so much going–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: No one’s looking for me on LinkedIn. [laughter]

 

DeRay Mckesson: But people [?] a real post on LinkedIn, like like essays and–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yes the–

 

DeRay Mckesson: I’m never checking for essays on LinkedIn but they’re there. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: The rise of the LinkedIn influencer, we are definitely yeah in in that moment right now. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: It’s a moment. Well, the um a lot happened in this past week with regard to the you know the national political landscape. Myles, one of the things that you said that legitimately cracked me up, you were like, language is a struggle for everyone, but Donald Trump. And it feels like language has been a struggle for the left for a while. Bernie Sanders did the biggest rally of his, I think, career recently. 36,000 people, him and AOC in LA. He also made an appearance at Coachella. If you did not see that last night, he was on the main he was on the stage at Coachella. Um. And it really is him, AOC, and Jasmine Crockett, who seemed to be the three people repeatedly in the press sort of holding um the fire to Donald Trump. So I’m interested in your analysis about what’s going on with Bernie, AOC and Jasmine Crockett. And then I just want to say, I don’t know if you saw that somebody tried to set Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania’s house on fire yesterday. They the governor’s mansion, he had to get evacuated, whole thing, but this just happened. Um. It just got reported Sunday morning. It happened uh Saturday night. But let’s start with Bernie, AOC, Jasmine Crocket. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: You always give us like these little tidbits of breaking news that I’m like, that just rewired and reorganized my whole brain with the Ben Shapiro um bit, but–

 

DeRay Mckesson: Josh Shapiro, Josh. Josh. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: You know excuse me Josh Shapiro. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Josh Shapiro Josh Shapiro. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Sorry, sorry. Okay, my brain’s not as rewired. [laughter] If I could be honest, which I always am, um I still am just not feeling it. Like I’m just not or I just am not feeling the the wave, right? Like I’m not feeling the AOC, Bernie stuff. And I guess also it’s not targeted towards me. I guess it’s target towards the communities I have proximity to. But again, my my the thing that I’ve been reading about and studying about and really caring and thinking about has been Black people and our political power and it kind of bleeding out and and what can we do to solve that? And maybe also what are the reasons why that’s happening, and it does bother me that it feels like whatever the Democrats are pushing to help make people feel things, I just have not felt them anywhere that I’ve been um between Ohio, Kentucky, and like these other places where Midwestern Black people are. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I think they also are just not resonating in my friend group, right? And so, you know, we talked about like, Bernie being at Coachella, and most of my friends like, look, we watch Coachella from our couches these days, right, but we did stream it, and um literally no one mentioned that Bernie was there. We all talked about Missy’s set and how the crowd didn’t deserve her because they had no idea what was happening, right. We all talk about Gaga’s set, mixed reviews on Glorilla, but like, even as people who are plugged in culturally and politically. Like, even Bernie showing up at that place, at this thing that we’re all watching, it just didn’t resonate. Like, it just doesn’t even get a passing mention. And I think to Myles’s point, maybe that’s because we’re, you know, Black and brown people, at least in that group text, right? Like, from our mid-30s to our mid 40s. And it’s like we have for so long been thought of and talked about, and I think thought of and talked about ourselves as sort of the backbone of the Democratic Party. And it just feels like whatever they’re trying and whoever they’re tying to reach, we aren’t at the center of those efforts. Um. And yeah, and it’s showing. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Do you think anybody, would you say that’s true with Jasmine Crockett too? Is she penetrating the friend groups? 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I think she’s penetrating the friend group in that like, y’all look at your girl again way, right? I think people for the most part agree with and appreciate how she votes on issues. I think there are some questions about who the target demographic or audiences are for a lot of the stuff that she creates and puts out online and via social media. [pause] [laugh] That was a heavy sigh, and I wish y’all could see Myles’ face. Go on, Myles. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I just, I don’t wanna, I feel like this will just bleed into my news, so I’ll just save it, but, um yeah, to quote Whoopi Goldberg, you in danger, girl. It’s it’s it’s really, really, really weak. Like it, you know what it reminds me of in my pop culture brain? It’s something I’ve never actually seen. I never saw a Destiny’s Child performance without Beyoncé. And what I do feel like politically what I’m witnessing is a democratic performance without any star power. And you know, as great as I think Latoya and Latavia and all the girls, and Michelle and Kelly are, I think that there needs to be somebody who’s on the precipice, just like there needed to be someone who’s the precipice of performance, who would get down and shake that weave and shake that ass and really drive that point of that song home. You we, Democrats need that same person, and they don’t have that person. What I’m realizing the more I’m reading about it and understanding the moment we’re in is that they can’t have that person because of ties they have to corporations and and things that have just successfully blocked other type of political thought out. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: But you think that the influencer sphere is not that either? And I only ask because you have been so both thoughtful and persistent about us looking at YouTube and the substack people and the TikTokers who have huge followings on the left or like bigger followings than a lot of people have. Do you not think that they will be the messengers at some point in a legitimate way? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So you’re talking about whatever TikTokker who’s a political influencer and will one day will they be somebody who people take seriously? [indistinct]

 

DeRay Mckesson: Well, if you’re saying like that the group of people I brought up don’t have the star power. Do you think the starpower exists in the influencer sphere? 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Like, can the head of the Democratic Party be somebody who’s not among the elected ranks? 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, sure. I think that could happen. I think it won’t happen [laughter] because [laughing] because I think that the Democratic part is just obvious with how the Democratic Party wants to be made up. They want those people who have the star power to be the engines for the people they have already designated to be ythe leaders. So they don’t want that person to come and replace Hakeem Jeffries or replace Nancy Pelosi because they might accidentally do something uh radical they might accidently do something that offends or is against AIPAC so they don’t really want that but they do want you to just espouse their messages. So is this you know what and I just thought about this. There there it’s the Democratic Party recreates its own classhood. It makes it successfully creates these monarchs and these Clintons and these Obamas, and then it uses the surfs, the influencers, in order to perpetuate their power. That seems like the system that they’re happy with and that they want to continue to perpetrate. They just want to reconfigure it a little bit so it can beat Trump and get a few more votes. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Now, in terms of, you know, it is noticeable to me, too, that people of color are not at these rallies, weren’t at the hands off rallies, not at the Bernie AOC thing. None of my friends have none of my Black and Brown friends have gone to them. A lot of my white friends have gone to them, but I say that again only because Stephen A. Smith, the sports commentator, seems to be becoming even more serious about running for president. And he is one of the highest paid commentators on TV. Uh, he obviously, as you know, he is a Black man who prides himself on having a Black male audience and we have not talked about this in any, in any venue, you know what it, what you make of Stephen A. Smith’s seeming play for the presidency. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Recently, just through my own health and through therapy sessions and stuff, I’ve been um thinking about body dysmorphia and thinking about my interactions with it. I’ve also been thinking about other dysmorphias and how Black people with fame, with money have a dysphoria around how they’re actually perceived and who they actually are. And they think just because people will turn them on while they’re cutting their onions. And people will turn them on and they can listen to them yell while they’re folding their laundry that that equates political power and A, it does not. Also it’s insulting to most Black people and then when we look at Black people, um and people in general not showing up, this is the type of insulting, this, this is the type of thing that uh uh deflates and depresses people because it’s not just something that happened. New York, so here’s here’s what I see. I see um a marketing publicity move in order to try to make people think that Stephen A. should be our next president. And and that’s why he was on The View that many times. That’s how come that New Yorker article came out with him. And that is how come he initially said, no, I’m not smart enough, because he knows that will make people like that. And now he’s kind of doing the storytelling of how he’s going to eventually say, no I can’t do it. That’s what I see. I see somebody who’s in concert maybe with some folks in the Democratic Party trying to convince us that he’s a valuable choice, because again, Democrats want to create a Trump they can control. And but the the the trump card of being a Trump is the uncontrollability. You know? 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Are we sure that Stephen A. is a Democrat? Like that’s my that’s my first question. Because I’m actually– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Well, Democrat don’t mean shit no more. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Well, I actually, I’m just not even sure he would pretend to be one. You know what I mean? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: He a diet Republican. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Mm uh. I find it really interesting that people think that all you need is popularity to be president of the United States, right? I think that that is really fascinating to me. I also think what is going unsaid here is that whether people will say it aloud or not, people are like, well, if this Black man can be president, then hell, anyone can be president, right? I think that’s how we ended up with Trump. I think like having Obama in the White House for a lot of people made people think that like, well, if he can do it, anyone can do it. And I think what people did not play up enough about Obama um was his actual understanding of things like constitutional law and how our system of government worked, right? I think people were like, oh, we like him, he’s charming. That’s all you need to be president. And I think it’s one of the reasons that people have been floating other names like The Rock, right um, because people are like, if there’s a personality that we can all sort of get behind. And I just wonder what it means to live in a culture and in a cultural moment where celebrity can be leveraged in this way. Um. But yeah, I I think Stephen A. Smith is gonna find out the hard way to Myles’s point that like while a lot of people might watch you on TV and pal around with you at um you know at different mixers, they don’t want you to have any influence over their real lives. Um. And you’re gonna they’re gonna say that in no uncertain terms, I think. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I am sort of surprised that he also doesn’t realize that the white people have been supporting Trump because of white supremacy, and they will turn on Stephen A. Smith in 12 seconds and a heartbeat. That all those Black people who supported Trump, they didn’t even get fake jobs in the administration. They are just–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Exactly. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: –hanging out, this go round. It is interesting um how little substance we find in the Administration. I think about um the Secretary of Education’s confusing AI with A1 at a huge education conference in Toronto, which I want us to talk about. But the way that his confusion and the way that Trump’s mastery of the media has essentially just overshadowed the deep incompetence is just, I don’t know, I think I’m I think I’m like floored by it, especially as it is no longer theoretical. It’s like kids are actually dying from measles. You know it’s like there are real consequences people are people are experiencing and which I know we say every week, but it still surprises me every week. Myles?

 

Myles E. Johnson: Something that both of you all said, what it made me think of is how a huge, maybe the biggest point of Trump that it seems like a lot of people want to ignore about how he gets elected and how he got power is that he relinquished his own personal brand to the extremes of his own party. So he went from a neoliberal, democratic, I like gay people, but I like low taxes kind of person who’s in the sphere, who’d go on good morning America, Trump. And then he decided to totally destroy that image in order to create something that fascists, uh people on the extremes of the right, can can love and commit to. The problem with Democrats trying to recreate that is that they’re never gonna do that with leftists. They’re never going to, you know, all the bullshit terms, social leftism, and the like, or social, uh uh what is it? Socialist, Democrat, like all these kinda all these just kind of like language soups that they come up with are never going to have the bite like Make America Great Again, because in that phrase was an agreement at the same time with neo-Nazis, the KKK, um with very conservative folks in politics. Like that phrase put a lot of different people who are on the far right in agreement, and the Democrats are not even interested in creating that. You know, again, I’ll say this for the third or fourth week in a row, that happened when Liz Cheney came on. I was like, Oh, you’re not even trying to pretend to little fist in the air, pretend like you care. You just saying no, Cheney lethal weapons. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: One thing DeRay said to me years ago that I found compelling and that I sort of you know reference often is like the thing about Make America Great Again is that it hearkens back to this moment that people can feel viscerally, right? Like the pull of nostalgia is like very strong and very real and people can, even if they weren’t there for that moment, imagine what that looks like, right. And we on the left are trying to push people to a reality or a version of reality that has never existed. And the work of public imagination is very hard work and we don’t have a muscle around that, right? So you’re trying to say to people, you’re competing with a like, here’s when things were great and you know exactly what that looks like and exactly what that felt like for, here’s what we think doing the following things will result in. And that’s like a really that’s really hard work, you know? Um. Especially I think in a moment when people are focused on bread and butter issues. And rent in Los Angeles is $4,200 for a one bedroom. You know?

 

DeRay Mckesson: I want to go to the news, but I’m interested in, Myles, I’ll kick it over to you to start us with your news about Jasmine and Sharhonda, what I’d ask from you and, you know, it’s always so fun that we don’t um talk about these things before before we record, is I’m actually interested in what would your advice be to start talking to Black people? So if we acknowledge that the Bernie AOC crowds, the hands-off people, like it is very white, even, you know. Most of the sub stacks we see the one we talked about last time was a really great analysis of the moment, not of how Black people are or not engaging. I’ll just make the case very simply for this question is that Black people are, you can’t win the Democrats cannot win without Black people. It is statistically impossible. But after your news, Myles, if you can set us up, if you can start us after you introduce your news. With like what would our advice be to insert here, whether it’s the party, organizers. Uh, listeners, just God, I don’t know what is it about what we do [?] Black people. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Whoever you got the number to, call them DeRay. [?]

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, yeah, whatever, whoever, yeah. Like because I mean, I have what I would say my advice is, but I’m interested in what y’all got to say. [music break] Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come. 

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Myles E. Johnson: Okay, I’m just gonna jump in. So representative Jasmine Crockett suggests the United States needs illegal immigrants because we done picking cotton. 

 

[clip of Represenative Jasmine Crockett] So I had to go around the country and educate people about what immigrants do for this country or the fact that we are a country of immigrants. 

 

[clip of unnamed person] Right, right. 

 

[clip of Represenative Jasmine Crockett] The fact is, ain’t none of y’all trying to go and farm right now. Okay, so I’m [?], raise your hands. You’re not, you’re not. We done picking cotton. We are! You can’t pay us enough to find a plantation. 

 

[clip of unnamed person 2] I know that’s right.

 

Myles E. Johnson: So this was a huge viral video on um on the internet. And you know, when you speak a lot, and I know this from just speaking weekly publicly, that every single thing that comes out my mouth ain’t a gem. So I am I try to be as emotionally generous as possible when I read people’s blunders, because if you’re speaking all the time, something’s going to be something’s not always gonna hit. But what you do say is indicative of something bigger. And sometimes what you do speak, even in flaw, is indicative of a greater truth. And I thought what was interesting, specifically two weeks after I spoke to the aunties, who are two uh Black woman in the life, as they will call it, uh living on farmland that was once um occupied by Harriet Tubman. What I’ve noticed is that there was, there’s actually so many people. I was, listeners can remember that conversation, but there’s so many Black people who are interested in agriculture. There’s so many Black people who are interested in touching land again and taking their and taking their food back and doing maybe a little bit more labor or doing labor that was once marked Southern and and and only for slaves and reclaiming that. So that’s just to me, proof positive of like a kind of like disconnection she has. But then the bigger disconnection that made it so I just couldn’t ignore my own conscious and not bring this up is the fact that the Black liberatory stance when we know there’s a slavehood identity in America is not saying you done being a slave. You don’t wanna do that no more. So let those Mexicans do it. It’s how do we abolish having a slavehood identity in America? That’s what you say, that’s how that’s how you, that is the the the Black liberatory, Black radical tradition and that is the tradition that so many of these people have been skating around, which leads me to Jasmine Crockett. I can jump to Cory Booker, who did all the theatrics in the pulpit and then a video of him comes of him telling folks of AIPAC how can they court Black folks, how can they better court Black folks? And then you have Cory Booker telling people who are in AIPAC, this is how you get Black people to be in alliance with you politically. This is how get Black young, and he’s telling them how to do it. And then you then we wonder, how come there’s this disconnect? The disconnect, ooh, I’m sorry. And I really trying not to, I’m gonna stop apologizing for stuff, but I just really hope you hear my soul. But this, era of leadership in the Democratic Party truly disgusts me. Disgusts me not just because I can look at things and say, oh, you’re disconnected from the Black community. Oh, you took money and was bribed by AIPAC, so a lot of your stances on Israel and Palestine are not informed by your moral compass, but your bank account. Not just that. It disgusts me because at the same time, I look at people like Cori Bush. I look people like Jamaal Brown [note: they meant Bowman]. It disgusts me because they’re willingly um separating themselves from any type of Black unity, Black power that can be created in this moment in defense of the state. I’m like, where did we lose the plot? There’s always been Black people who have interacted with the government. And have interacted with political movements and have found a way to still come out come out morally sound, to come out morally centered. But it just seems like we’re not there anymore. And just not to mince my words, this era of what I see of political minstrelsy is what I will call it, is going to be damning. We’re so perpetually concerned about this history book that will probably be illegal in 100 years if we’re going down this same road, that we’re not actually thinking critically about the moment we’re in right now and that we can see it all. So we, so we at the same time see you in the pulpit talking for 25 hours and we see you talking to the white lady, comforting her about what she’s gonna do. But we also see your total um absence in morality and the things that activate Black people. So yeah, so anywho, I brought in the Jasmine Crockett moment, not to just demonize her in that moment, not to just to call her out um or to say critical things about her, but this is indicative of the grander moment that we’re in. And it’s the last thing is this is definitely connected to my news last week with Obama and Assata Shakur, this continuing rotting of Black political power by Black neoliberal careerists , and it’s really helping making us suffer, you know? 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, I think I wanna pick up on this idea that like if if if the work and the working conditions, let’s just say they are beneath you then they are beneath everyone, right? Um. I think what it reveals to me though also is a lack of understanding of what Black people are talking about when they’re talking about the particular points of friction and pain that they experience, when they see themselves quote unquote, “competing with immigrants for jobs,” right? Most of those jobs are actually not agricultural jobs, right? Black people have not been, in large numbers anyway, for the most part, working agricultural jobs for generations, right, at least the last two. Um and but where we have been present is in factories and meat packing plants and uh other sorts of manual labor, janitorial services, et cetera, right. And so. You know, in my in my full time work, I do a lot of kind of cross-racial, multiracial coalition building. And I think a couple of things that I would suggest as my advice to Democrats as they are thinking about how to talk about these issues. One is to help Black people understand that immigration is also a Black issue, right? So there are Black immigrants to the U.S. There are undocumented Black people in the United States and that the people we are talking about in many instances actually share our surnames, our cultures, our religion, our faith practices, et cetera, right. So there’s an othering that happens even when we’re engaging Black people on an immigration conversation that allows someone like a Jasmine to say what she said, right? Because she also has bought into the rights narrative about who is immigrating here. And that has meant that Black people, to the extent that immigration is a top three issue for them, and it’s the thing that is driving them to the polls, have actually sided with Republicans on this issue, right. This is not actually the way to get Black people who again are voting on immigration to side with Democrats. So so that’s one. The second thing that I would say is um Black people understand better than anyone what a path to opportunity means and can and should look like. I think engaging Black people and helping define what that can and should look like for people who have been historically locked out of opportunity is also good work for the Democrats and for community organizers to do, right? So we all agree that immigration and our immigration system needs to be fixed, right. Part of the reason we need to fix it is that it keeps people locked out of opportunities to fully engage, right, and to do work with dignity, to be able to access housing, etc., which Black people have also historically been marginalized from, right? For a host of reasons, either because of restrictive covenants or because of like, you know, some your brother is convicted of a felony, he now can’t come live with your family again because you live in public housing, whatever the situation is, right. And I think there are ways to say to Black people, y’all get this, y’all understand this, how do we fix this so that no one else has to experience it, that the Democrats are losing an opportunity to do and to take advantage of. And then I think lastly, you know I think a theme of the last few weeks anyway, that you know I’ve been in conversation with you all is that we are still engaging on issues writ large using the frameworks and the lexicon determined by the right. And for as long as we are doing that, we are losing ground. And there’s a real push, I think, and an opportunity for us to say, like, how are people talking about this in everyday life? How are people in Jackson, Mississippi, who are Black, talking about immigration? And how do we figure out how we bring some of that language and some of that discourse to the national platform? Because I think we would hear very different things and very different issues and very different concerns. Um. Actually, I lied. One more thing. I grew up in Watts. Um. And Watts is historically a Black community, right? That is no longer true. And what I hear from my friends and my family members who are there is that there’s a sense of loss. There’s a sense a loss of identity, a sense loss of home, a loss sense of culture. And we have to tend to that sense of loss if we are going to get to a place of being able to bridge and build solidarity and ensure that our Black elected leaders aren’t saying stuff like, that work is beneath us, let those other people do it. It is not. Neither is Compton. It’s majority Latino. And you know when I was growing up there, the Latinos were mostly from Mexico and even that has shifted. Increasingly they’re from El Salvador, from Guatemala, et cetera. So even like you know the sort of legacy Mexican stores and um you know businesses now have have shifted, right? Um. And I think last thing I’ll say is if y’all didn’t catch the stuff that was happening on the LA city council a couple of years ago, right? Where you had Latino city council members saying anti-Black things and anti-Indigenous things, right. They were talking about a different wave of immigrants and migrants who were coming to the United States, often also from their countries of origin, right, but those people are now Browner, are now more Indigenous and are now Blacker. And so even the Latino electeds in Los Angeles are like, oh yeah, when we said Latinos, we didn’t mean them, right? And so like there’s a real opportunity again, I think for Democrats to pull up from some of the regional conversations to figure out how that can shape and influence conversations that are happening on the national stage. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I want to double click on everything you said. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Um. The only things I’ll add is I think you’re right. I think that I think the left doesn’t even know that we’re participating in the rights framing and has not made an attempt to reframe, which is a real challenge. I also think and you know when I say this, I can see already like a consultant putting together this like crazy document. But just instead of statements about–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Nobody who’s ever worked at McKinsey should be involved in this. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Right but like, somebody like what are the things we believe in? Like, everybody should have health care. Everybody should have free education that includes lunch. I don’t know, like, like what are those core commitments? Like, we can actually win on those. And I am frustrated that we have not figured that out. Um. As you know, voter ID is the hill that I will die on. The SAVE Act, which would require you to have a birth certificate or a passport to vote, which would nullify every driver’s license in the United States, it’s crazy that that is, that that passed the house as like a legitimate law is nuts so, you know, hopefully the Senate votes against that because that would be unreal as voter suppression. The last thing is a little blasphemous to me as an organizer, but having been in the room with a lot of elected officials, I think that almost all of the membership-based biggest groups that represent [?] communities are, do not represent [?] communities for real. I don’t think that they actually speak for them anymore. So I like when I see the big African-American groups, the big, all these identity groups in the room saying that this is what people in community believe. I’m like, I don’t know if you’ve been in community. Like, I’m, like, that’s not, I don’t think that’s real. You know, and I think about Sharhonda and I just were at the juvenile jail in Cleveland. And I think, about the number of people who talked to her about prison stuff or jail stuff who haven’t been to a jail in ages and like I just don’t know how you are the voice how you are the like I don’t just know and I do think I remember being in that meeting with Obama with legacy groups who I who I like and I’m just like I don’t think that the urgency that I’m seeing on the street every day y’all y’all don’t have that in this room. There’s like a suit and tie element to this that is not the people that I’m with who are willing to tear everything down or who are just so forlorn because their family members are getting killed. And that sense of urgency is not in this room. It is polished, it is tight, and it is putting in reports. And I’m like, I don’t think y’all are, I dunno. So I do, I don’t know if that’s a barbershop tour or whatever it is. But I do think [?]–

 

Myles E. Johnson: No, don’t, nobody’s sitting in no more barbershops. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: No barbershops, the salons. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: No more. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I don’t know what it is. Churches. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Can I? 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Come on Myles, what you got? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I meant to um, you know, you gave me directions, I still ain’t following them. Cause I did wanna I really was interested in my the advice part. I really did want to comment on that. So you know how Black people, how a lot of our creation, specifically, I’m talking about Black Americans, a lot of our creations are built upon um existing things and we recreate them. So that’s what happened with jazz and soul food. And when, as I was, I’m just a nostalgia junkie, so I just love how it makes me feel, but then also it’s just interesting to see what was happening in the 60s, 70s, and 80s on television and stuff like that. And I was like, Black people um were in debate with each other, Black people were talking to each other and it was sharpening each other. And I was like, well, if Black people in this era were to take something from the dominant white political culture and recreated our own, it is the primary. And I think that the fact that we don’t have a moment where Cori Bush and Jamaal Brown [they mean Bowman] are talking to Jasmine Crockett and Hakeem Jefferies, and we don’t have a debate around that and talking about that, that is killing the Black community. The fact that Ta Nehisi Coates and, um, and, and  Obama are not talking about what’s going on in Palestine, that is hurting the Black community. The one thing that the right doesn’t do, they’ve already done the work of their own segregation. It’s called left and right. So once you get into the sphere of the red and the right, they all talk to each other. It’s high and low. It’s like a good Marc Jacobs outfit. Where you got a little bit of something five dollars and something five hundred dollars on when you when you like kind of listen to how they talk it’s just that great combination of high and low and on the left there’s not that and they so you have high highly capable highly intelligent experienced Black people who are barred from talking to other highly intelligent, experienced Black people. And that’s how come we’re so stagnant in the thought. And I think that’s how come there’s so um so much disinterest when topics are directed towards Black people because we’re getting elementary topics because Ta Nehisi Coates can’t talk to Cory Booker and say, hey, how come you got all that AIPAC money? What about that video? That’s the conversation. That’s the conversation that’s gonna revitalize something. We to me, that is a Black primary. That is Black people using their own intelligence and using their own experience and and all their intellectual capacities in order to A, show other black people how to think, and how to debate, and what ideas are out in the sphere, but then also saying, oh, I deserve to be your leader because look how I conquered that debate and conquered that discourse. That fear of that happening is what’s killing us too. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Just for the record, his name is Jamaal Bowman. [laugh]

 

Myles E. Johnson: Jamaal, Jamaal Bowman, Jamaal Bowman. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Every time you call him Jamaal Brown, it cracks me up. I love it! Very Black name. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, yeah, I like Jamaal Brown. Yeah, Jamaal Bowman. I’m sorry Jamaal Bowman. Can we AI correct that? 

 

DeRay Mckesson: No no we gotta. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Can we A1 correct me? [laughter] Can we A1 cor–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Can A1 correct me? [laughter]

 

DeRay Mckesson: Don’t go anywhere, more Pod Save the People’s coming. 

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Sharhonda Bossier: My news today is uh about a series of studies trying to figure out the environmental and health impacts of the Southern California fires and the Palisades and the Eaton Canyon fire. And um a group of researchers tested um a very small group of firefighters and figured out that they had elevated levels of lead and mercury in their blood. Um. They had elevated levels of lead that were five times higher than a control group of firefighters who had only fought a forest fire and not the urban fires. Uh. And levels of mercury that were three times higher than firefighters who had only fought forest fires and not um either of these fires. And part of the reason that I wanted to bring this to the pod is like, yes, I am obviously because I live here thinking a lot about the long-term health and environmental impacts of these fires, but also because at any given time, about a third of the firefighting, wildfire firefighting corps in California is comprised of people who are incarcerated, of inmates, right? And when you think about the fact that people are serving lengthy sentences, right, this is sort of one of the jobs that they quote unquote, “can get,” right? Um. And the fact that the state of California has been talking a lot about its struggles to recruit firefighters, right. Which means that it’s increasingly relying on incarcerated people and their labor. Um. I just am thinking about the fact that we are exposing people to these things that we know are going to shave years, potentially decades off their lives, right, for pennies on the dollar. And you know, the state is doing nothing to incentivize people to move, to build in ways that are more environmentally sound and friendly, etc. And so increasingly, we are relying on people who are incarcerated to save wealthy people’s homes. To ignore the fact that there are some places in the state that we probably should not build or rebuild, right? And we know that they’re going to experience, again, significant health complications in order for us to continue to live our way of life. And it just feels like another move towards creating a permanent subclass. And the other really wild thing about this is, as you know, in California, a lot of these folks can’t get jobs as full-time firefighters once they’re released, right? Because they have felonies on their record, so it’s like while you’re incarcerated, please expose yourself to the most harmful chemicals ever. Please allow us to, in exchange for your time, shave years and decades off your life and like best of luck. Um. Because when I think about this country’s almost refusal even to support the first responders after 9/11, there’s no world in which these people or their families get anything that is close to reparations. And so I’m just bringing that to the pod because I think sometimes the ways that all of these systems work together to rob Black people in particular in this state of like our ability to live and to thrive can go unnoticed and unseen. And the moment I read this article I was very clear about who was going to be most at risk for experiencing these long-term health implications. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Thank you for bringing this news to the podcast. I think the first thing that came to my mind when reading this and even listening to you discuss it is how um I seen an increasing anti-prisoner sentiment grow. And a lot of communities that are not just right-wing at all. I’ve seen it amongst um peer groups. I’ve see it amongst um just you know reg just like regular Black folks who vote blue or don’t vote, but not aren’t with the Trump shit or whatever. There has been like an improving stigma around around prisoners. There’s been like this narrative that every single person, even though there’s been so much work around um false accusations and all that other work, I’ve just seen it uptick in more people saying, well, if they’re suffering while they’re in there in any way. They deserve it because they’re because they are in prison. And I think to me, that’s where my mind goes when these stories go and come out because I’m like, well, in order for anything like this to even change, a lot of more people have to find this outrageous. And again, I think the plan of the right, the plan of fascism or this new era of neoliberal fascism that we’re that we’re inside of, there needs to be a better picture painted of what the final destination is. We need a better picture painted of no, they’re doing this to, you know, prisoners today. But then the goal is, in 50 years, for everybody, if you’re making less than $100,000 to be a prisoner, the goal is for more people to find their way into jail for way less things or just to hap their way into jail. It’s the probability they want the probability for um most people to go into jail who are poor to be the same as Black men for everybody so they can have this invisible slave labor force so they can make things and put out fires and risk their lives. That is the plan and their plan is to get you too. That’s the only narrative because unfortunately, we’re a selfish individualistic society. So we have to paint it that this is happening to them today and 10 years it be you. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know, it’s interesting, what I thought about this was a real storytelling opportunity for the left to remind people of the damage of what the right is doing. So when I think of like deregulation, when I saw this, I’m like, oh we, this is fixable, but not fixable when you get rid of the Department of Energy or the you know all the regulation at the Department of Transportation or all of the oversight of homes being built. Like it is not fixable, like the firefighters have a vested interest in things in community if they burn, not releasing toxins that kill them when they go into the buildings. So I think that like, people feel really disconnected from like regulation, oversight da da, and you’re like, no, no no, this actually touches all of us in really interesting ways. But the way that we tell the environmental harm story is like microplastics in the food. And you’re, well like, yeah, that’s a part of it. But them letting lead be still in buildings. Yeah, it impacts you firefighters. It impacts the electricians. It impacts the plumber. Like there’s actually an ecosystem of people who don’t see themselves as like very interested parties who don’t lobby this stuff, who just see it and like, it goes by and you’re like, no, this is the downstream of this is actually pretty intense. And when I think about, you know, we talk about the big tent on the left a lot. I actually think that we don’t do big tent storytelling. We big tent the wrong issues. We like don’t get the plumbers and we’re like plumbers, electricians, metal workers, firefighters. The environmental stuff is actually way more important to you than it is to some other people who think that they are the most impacted. And this to me was a great example of that. I just echo everything you said about incarcerated people, but um but I think about the intense deregulation happening and I don’t think the firefighters union is taking a stand and realizing like this is the downstream of that. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Boom. Uh. My news is simple. So the DOJ, as you can imagine, is ending consent decrees around environmental issues. Um. There’s a real announcement from the Office of Public Affairs that says that the DOJ Civil Rights Division is immediately closing, quote, “an environmental justice matter.” They put environmental justice in quotes. Effective immediately, the division will terminate the environmental justice settlement agreement that stemmed from an investigation launched by the previous administration targeting Lowndes County, Alabama. The actual quote the quote with a person’s name attached to it says the DOJ will no longer push quote environmental justice as viewed through a distorting DEI lens. President Trump made it clear Americans deserve a government committed to serving every individual with dignity and respect and to expending taxpayer resources in accordance with the national interest, not arbitrary criteria. Now what was happening in Lowndes County that made the DOJ intervene in the first place? The short version is that the sewage has been bad for a long time in Lowndes County. We’ve talked about it here. A ton of people have been working on this issue. It’s been estimated that 30% of the county’s population lives below the poverty line and still today does not have access to water. The DOJ found that the department um of health in Alabama. The Department of Public Health was not in compliance with actually updating the septic systems. They had entered into a court mandated agreement to force the Alabama Department of public health to do right by people. And here we go with the DOJ just upending it. And I thought I’d bring it here because again, this is the storytelling stuff that actually matters. These are like, I would not have seen this if I was not preparing for the pod and looking for interesting news. But I’m like, oh, I missed this. I missed that like the DOJ is like, screw those people who in 2025 don’t have access to clean water. Like what is going on? 30% of the county, mostly Black people? Um. And and these are the things that I think, these are stories the left needs to be talking about. These are the things in people’s living rooms that they are feeling every day in a way that they don’t really feel Medicare and Medicaid when talked as such. But they do feel the absence or presence of health care. I think that we’re overplaying the billionaire angle. Like I think we’re right. But one of the things I’ve learned in polling is that the public has no concept of big numbers. So billionaire, millionaire, also like it just becomes a wash. People can’t conceptualize it. So I do think we need to–

 

Myles E. Johnson: 500,000aire.

 

DeRay Mckesson: [?]. Yeah. But they understand, you know, white people with power and more money than you like they understand those things. But I think there are different ways to get to where we’re going. I will maintain that I think we’ve not lost the base. I think our people are there. I think they’re ready to be mobilized. I think they are waiting for somebody to mobilize around and a story to mobilize around. I think the people are there. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I think it’s interesting that they are able to frame this as a DEI issue. Um. I think, you know, I live in a shared, I lived in a building, right, which means like I share walls with my neighbors, right. Um. And we have an issue with one of my neighbors who is a little bit older and developing a hoarding habit, right? And so we’ve had to like intervene. And you know people are like, well, it’s sort of her business, her issue, and I’m like, baby, we share walls, right? Like anything that happens in her unit is going to happen in yours and mine, right. And so what I think is fascinating about this is that like infrastructure is the same thing. You know what I mean? It’s not like not dealing with you know crumbling infrastructure or toxic waste or, you know, a poisoned water supply is only going to impact the people you don’t like. We share walls, baby. You know what I’m saying? So what happens there is going to happen here. And I also just think that um I one of the things that is also fascinating to me about the U.S.  in this particular political moment is how little we are willing to invest in things that are for the greater public good, right? If we don’t immediately and directly benefit from them, and you layer on top of that differences in race and differences in class, that’s sort of where you are. But I think, you know, this DOJ, this EPA, like they don’t believe in climate change, right. They don’t believe that human behavior is changing anything. And so I find it interesting that they didn’t just go with that justification and rationale and instead went with the sort of this is a targeted intervention for a community that’s predominantly Black and therefore is a DEI initiative. I just, I don’t have a real reflection other than, huh, that’s fascinating to me. You know? They weren’t just climate deniers. They chose to be racist. Like they, you know, like it was like racism above climate. [banter] Climate deniers, you know? 

 

DeRay Mckesson: They chose to be racist is a good sentence. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So, you know, just because we’re the therapy generation. So a lot of times when you’re doing different things and doing maybe different negative things, uh they can just seem separate. And one of the tools of therapy helps you to connect those things. So something might be happening in my romantic relationship um and uh and there’s a story and something might be happening in my professional relationship and there may be a story or a belief system that I’m holding that is making um a negative experience professionally, romantically be it’s kind of interconnected, maybe it’s around low self-esteem or something like that. So how I’m applying that to this situation is how obsessed the right is with taking or uprooting stories, making sense of stories. Um. How did the water get this way? Why are we in a system where anybody who’s living in America, every 100% of people need clean water? How what’s the other story around making sure a group of people has dirty water? That sounds like something that rhymes with genocide to me. That sounds like something that rhymes with domination to me, and I think even when it comes to the museum stuff, even though it hasn’t emotionally hit me, the editing of certain things and the taking down and the and the take this off of slavery, like all that kind of stuff that’s happening, it hasn’t emotionally like hit me. But I do understand that that story that connects why something happens is so imperative and they’re and they’re destroying it and they’re calling it a lie and they are editing it. And I because you know you’re like, why do they care about that? Why why are they focused on that? And I’m noticing more and more, oh, that’s that’s imperative. You that you’re making it so people are not enlightened around white supremacy and imperialism and and and how it has poisoned a lot of American people’s lives, how many lives have been wasted because of poverty, because of these different types of um uh laws and and and actions that were based in white supremacy, how that’s still venomous to us now. And if you take out and edit things so people can’t make that connection or that can’t be seen as a legitimized truth because it’s coming from the U.S. Government, that’s doing a huge, huge, huge work too. And to me, this helps that real um that real violence happen. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You know, I was just at Bowdoin giving a talk and one of the students, somebody asked me like, what do I believe now that I don’t know if I believed 10 years ago when the protests started? And what I said to them was like 10 years ago, you know, I have a platform and all these things, partly because I was a storyteller and people experienced me as the voice of the protest [?]. Um. And I thought that was like a role to play. I was proud to do it. It was a lot of work, which people didn’t always appreciate that it was a lotta work, but it was. And now I look back and I’m like, oh, I think the storytelling is actually the only power. Like I was too close to it before because I was sort of in it and like it just wasn’t it was. But I look up and I’m like, Oh, the storytelling is what allows all the other stuff to happen. And that is what the right nails, they get that it’s crazy storytelling, but it is consistent. People are you’re never confused by what you are confused because it is alive. But you don’t not understand it. But I think I thought storytelling was a nice to have, and now I think it is actually the only form of power that is real power. I think is the prerequisite for the actions in a way that I just would not have said before. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah, interesting. I have a slightly different— 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Come on, what you got? What you got?! Sharonda Bossier.

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I I think that um my what I believe now that I didn’t believe 10 years ago, particularly about about the protests, is that proximity is not expertise. Um. And I think there were a lot of people who felt proximate to the issue, who felt proximitate to the to the moment and felt proximate to the protest uh that I don’t think learned anything or helped other people learn anything. Do you know what I mean? And I– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I don’t know what you mean, can you explain further? [laughter]

 

Sharhonda Bossier: So, there are a lot of people who felt personally impacted and implicated right by what was happening in the moment. They were Black, they had experienced police violence, they lost someone to police violence etc. Right. But the work of the protest is, I think maybe it’s sort of building on DeRay’s point and the storytelling is, and the helping people make sense of what’s happening is also to then get to a place where you are able to propose solutions, right? And there were a lot of people who did not, from what they were hearing on the ground, what they were experiencing on the ground uh have the capacity and the ability to then turn that into actionable recommendations for what we could do. And the people who could not do that often were continuously either given the mic or taking the mic, right? And I think it got us stuck in this place and space of like a sort of admiration of the problem. And I it meant that we missed a window for us to sort of you know enact policies and enact changes that could have gotten us there. And I that um it’s a really hard thing to say to someone. That your trauma doesn’t make you an expert on a subject, right, or that your experience doesn’t make you an expert on the subject. But I think especially in a culture that overall is in a moment of devaluing expertise and devalueing studying and devaluing research. Like there’s something about what we call praxis, right? The marrying of understanding research and policy and practice that we didn’t get right in the movement. And I think we, in some ways, over-indexed on or overvalued proximity to the protest or proximity to the pain in a way that meant we missed an opportunity to um really elevate people who had developed through some of that work and expertise on what could have been uh real and meaningful solutions. Does that make sense? Is that clear, Myles? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: No, that’s that’s super duper duper, duper clear. Yeah, I was I was listening to you like it was audible. And– [laughter]

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah, I’m just going to say the thing that um, the thing, Sharhonda, not only did we not make space for the people who had developed expertise, we didn’t, part of the consequence of what you just named is that we did not communicate to new activists that the gaining of that expertise was the skill. We were sort of like, if you just are outside long enough, and if you have had a bad experience with the police, and if you love Black people, that is your–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: That’s enough. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: That’s enough, and what happened was that you know 10 years later, you’re like, well, we probably should change the law and people are like, what is the law? And you’re, like, well that’s not [?]. They’re like well the policy. And they’re like what is a policy? You’re like well then you know it becomes this thing where you’re like you don’t actually even have that raw skill to actually do anything to the system. You don’t understand. This is part of the storytelling problem. It’s hard to tell a story about a system you don’t actually understand well. You know, like that becomes one of the rubs. I think about my, I was raised by two people or both my parents were addicted to drugs. My father raised us. My mother left when I was three. I am an expert on being the child of somebody addicted to drugs. I’m not an expert on addiction, you know but I am proximate to it. I know his story really well. I grew up in NA. I don’t, I’m not an expert on addiction. I just, and people use their proximity as expertise. I appreciate you calling that out because I think it is so true. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So I agree with everything that you all said. And I’m wondering, as all we’re part of the LGBT alphabet soup on this podcast now. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Which, by the way, Myles just figured out. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I didn’t know. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: About me today. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I did not know. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Speak for yourself. [indistinct banter]

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I got a whole septum piercing. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: You don’t know anything about me. Don’t be putting my [?] out on the podcast. [laughter]

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yes, me and every single person drooling underneath your um fitness pictures every other day. Um. So so I think everything that you all are saying around like race disparities and like the and the and the activism and the organizing around that, that seems true. And I and I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t I wouldn’t know to even like to push back. But another thing that I saw happen is somehow, so when I look at the right, the right agrees that the government is bad, needs to be reworked, needs to be overhauled, and my life is not feeling good and somebody needs to happen. So the right has the right like uh diagnosis, I guess, right? It seems like for a really long time, the left didn’t have the right diagnoses. I think that is symbolic symbolic in the fact that you’re inside of the slave-built White House that we love to remind everybody that you know your ancestors, your slaves did. And, you know, the big thing was, can we get a third bathroom? Where the sentiment in the nation was, fuck that house at that time. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: You know, for everything that was going on. And and whatever that is, that made people feel like they were more interested in um in the ascension in neoliberal celebrity culture than disrupting it. That to me feels like a huge part of what y’all are talking about too. And I think that um that is not just exclusive to Black folks, that has to do with LGBT activists. Everybody who was doing something was really about how do I get a seat at this table when I think that the thing that people wanted to see, the thing that people felt was, no, we want somebody, if you do gotta sit at the table, we want you to flip it over. We want you to say that this table is making us suffer. We wanna we want somebody who has a sentiment that or a right diagnosis that that things are not good. But when you see people say things are good, we just need to pass something. It just, you know, it just doesn’t hit. And I wonder yeah that’s that’s–

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yeah I’m happy you bring it up and I don’t know what we I know we’re coming up on time, but that’s interesting to me. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Because I think my diagnosis of this is actually that the that is a response to the far left scaring the base, is actually what I think happens here. So I think that people are like, and you know, I think we see this with the Obamas, with Obamacare, we see it with Biden, like a lot of the initiatives. People come in are like, let’s shake up the system. Let’s take big swings and da da da. Like, whether we like the swings they took is a different story. But I think that they actually have taken big swings. But I do think what is different about the right and the left base is that the right is not scared by the, probably because the base is white, they’re not scared by the implosion of the system because they will be fine. And the implosion is really a going back to a time that we’ve seen before. I do you think that some of the far left rhetoric, not the actual substance, but the rhetoric I think scares our base. And I’ll use defund as a good example. My father is on board with like too much money, da-da-da-da. The language of defund is scary like that is he is not there. He, and I think that that is true of the majority of our base. Now–

 

Myles E. Johnson: So defund, is far left?

 

DeRay Mckesson: Uh I think–

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yes. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yes, Myles. Yes. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Ok, I guess I don’t. I guess I don’t um ok ok ok. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Sharhonda, you with me on this? On that part.

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Relatively right I understand, like abolish probably feels–

 

Myles E. Johnson: So are y’all saying that the people who are a part of it are are far left or are you saying that the idea that sentiment is far left? 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: I think the sentiment is experienced as being far left. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Yes. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Ok. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: By your average person, right? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: So we’re talking about the sentiment, ok got it. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: And when and when we did polling at the height of, what was that, 2020, 2021, DeRay, like it was Black people who were like, now, wait a minute, all right, I got a problem with the police too, but also my neighborhood is unsafe. And there’s a tension there for people that you got to contend with, you know? And so the–

 

Myles E. Johnson: That makes sense to me. I didn’t know if we were talking about citizens like people. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Or the sentiment. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yeah. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: I think it’s a sentiment. And I think that like, so I think that, like, no FBI, no ICE, no, like I think that the people are actually willing, in terms of the actual policy prescription of the redoing the thing, I actually think our people are there. But I think the packaging of it scares people. So like, I think about in Maryland, there, Maryland um is like second only to something like Alabama, in terms of incarcerating kids as adults, or like charging kids as adults, like putting kids in the adult system. There’s a group of activists who’ve been trying to get this undone for a long time. And what they keep saying is that we charge too many kids as adults. And which is true, but all it needs is one weekend of a kid in Baltimore city who’s 15 shooting somebody. And it is literally, it’s just, it’s a wrap. 

 

Sharhonda Bossier: It’s a wrap. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Right?

 

Sharhonda Bossier: Yep. 

 

DeRay Mckesson: Part of what we’ve been try to say to people is what is a winning message is all kids should start in juvenile court. I can win on that 10 out of 10. Now that takes the moral, like I you know I can’t yell about it as much, but from a policy perspective, they actually end up in the exact same place. And I but there is a group of people who feel like the only way to be honest is to keep saying that we need to stop incarcerating kids as adults. And you’re like, I get it, but people in communities are like, why did that 16-year-old shoot him? Charge him as an adult. But from a from a like messaging component, everybody agrees that kids should start in kid court, which is like, actually, that’s the policy win. And I think that that difference, I used to think that that difference was semantics. Now I think, that is the, thats the game. That is like where we win or lose. Does that make sense? [music break] Hey, you’re listening to Pod Save the People. Stay tuned, there’s more to come. 

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Myles E. Johnson: Today, I have the absolute honor of speaking with someone who is not only a trailblazer in drag and comedy, but also a sharp cultural commentator and now a visionary author. Bob the Drag Queen needs no introduction, but today we’re meeting Bob in a new light as the mind behind Harriet Tubman Live in Concert. It’s a bold, genre-bending novel set in the reality where the return brings historical figures, including Harriet herself, back into our modern world. It’s part satire, part prophecy, and entirely unforgettable. In Bob’s hands, Harriet Tubman doesn’t just return, she performs, and she reclaims a space in pop culture that’s equal parts legend and liberation. We’re going to talk about history, justice, drag, and what it means to imagine freedom through a different kind of spotlight. Bob the Drag Queen, welcome. So I’m gonna be honest with you, okay? 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Be honest, I prefer honesty. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I saw I was reading the book, or when I heard the idea of the book. I didn’t know how I was gonna feel. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Okay. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I didn’t I wasn’t like sold on it. I’m not, I can be a little critical and I’m like, listen, you don’t, don’t don’t go shaking those grounds. I’m that kind of Negro, right? So.

 

Bob the Drag Queen: It’s a pretty common response I get to the title of the book, you know, Harriet Tubman in live in concert. I always say, I understand how on the surface this sounds like, oop, I wrote this [?]. Sorry. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Okay. I was just watching the View. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: I can see how this on the surface sounds like an S like an SNL sketch. You know what I mean? But once you get into the reverence of the book, it’s quite reverent. I have a lot of reverence for uh Harriet Tubman. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And that’s what I was going to say. Like, I kid you not, I was crying on chapter two when you were, when you, uh when her name is Odessa. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Yes [?]. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: When you were walking her through Harlem and she was responding to seeing free Black people. I, like I was in tears. I was like, oh, Bob, you’re a really good writer. And I don’t mean to say that–

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Oh thank you! 

 

Myles E. Johnson: –like I’m surprised but there was just a way that you like the you were doing literary poetic things with prose, and when it was really supposed to be funny. And I’ll tell the audience right now, it’s um it’s a book called Harriet Tubman Live in Concert. It’s this kind of alternate dimension where kind of based in reality, but this thing called the return happens and a whole bunch of historical folks come back and people from the past come back and one of those people being Harriet Tubman, and the main character Darnell is this ex-music producer, and he gets asked by Harriet Tubmen to help her produce. Um. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Oh, you are from Georgia. He got axed. [laughing]

 

Myles E. Johnson: You know, no, I will fuck up a word. I’m like, I’m [?]. But. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: In Goergia we don’t ask, we axe. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: No, we ask. No, no I will. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: We axe. [?]

 

Myles E. Johnson: No for real. But um, so anyhoo for the readers, it’s somewhere for me, it lives somewhere inside of like Samuel Delany, like how he, like how he does Afrofuturism, a John Waters film with the reverence, like–

 

Bob the Drag Queen: [laughing] Love that. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And then like Aaron McGruder with the Boondocks. Because when I was reading it, even the parts that were really funny. It still put it was just so smart and so sharp, but when it was supposed to be deep and sad and and and filled with memory, it was it was that. I was I’m really, really impressed with you. And I would–

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Thank you. I would like you to um, like I mean, I’m not on this level, but it’s got a kind of like James McBride when he would write something like The Good Lord Bird, uh where the concept of The Good Lord Bird is quite absurd. It’s this enslaved young boy who gets kidnapped by John Brown, but John Brown thinks he’s a little girl. So now he has to live his life as a girl for years, even through his puberty. It’s quite absurd but it does take itself, it does, it is, it’s not slapstick humor. There is humor in it. You will, you will find yourself laughing in the book for sure, but it’s not just like Harriet Tubman. We, you know, it’s, it’s not, it it’s, not that goofy. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I mean, even with Bob, and I’m a fan, supporter, like, of you, but like, and to feel like I parasocially know you is also ridiculous. But I know that you kind of can undersell something or kind of like the deadpan comedy is a part of your comedy. I’m saying you are a really gifted writer. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Oh thank you. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Like there was there were just parts, I just want people to are hearing it to know that you really put your foot in the writing process of this. And I was just really impressed. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: And whatever it’s worth to all, that’s not just Myles, the New York Times also agrees. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Okay. Okay. Okay, okay so I want to get into like my first questions. Um. So the return brings back Harriet Tubman in the formerly enslaved into modern day America. What do you think we learn about ourselves through their reactions to our current world? 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Well, I think uh there’s a couple of things. One is obviously one is about how far we’ve come. Right. So how far we’ve come but also the fact that that doesn’t mean the journey is over. You would think that if Harriet Tubman came back today and was like, oh, we’re free. I’m good. We can we’re good. Freedom was achieved. But but it’s about how, like, you know, the goalpost for freedom has moved. It has shifted. So we must adjust and keep striving for more freedom, more freedom, more freedom. Um. So that’s, that’s what I like about, uh, cause Harriet Tubman in her life, actually, she was never done. She was never done, she lived into her nineties, almost a hundred years old when no one was living that long. Um, and even when, you know, you would think that in, I think she passed in, like, I’m not sure the year, but she lived to be about, um, about, um, let me look it up real quick. She lived to be about 91 years old. Um, and according to, uh, the interwebs she passed in, uh 1913, this was well after the emancipation proclamation was signed well after, so you would think she’d be like, I’m good now. I can stop. This is almost 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, um, but obviously she continued her work as a, as a suffragette. She continued her work as a scout for the U S military. She continued her work as a community builder, building a home, a retirement home for uh formerly enslaved people. Like the work was never done for her. So I imagine if she got back, the work would still continue. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: How, can you kind of walk me through how you, how this idea came to you? Cause you just told me you don’t do any drugs. Cause I thought I knew why how it came to you, but now I’m like, so now how did it happen? 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: No, I’ve been sober for 16 years, actually. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Congratulations. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Um. Thank you. One day at a time. Um. But I think I was in I was working on I was I was in Angels in America, at the Berkley Repertory Theater. And somehow this idea came to me like I would love this I know this idea sounds it sounds like I was high, but I swear to you, I was sober. I just remember thinking to myself, I would love to hear Harriet Tubman’s album. [laughing] That was the thought. I would love to hear Harriet Tubman’s album. Um, so then I actually started writing it as a play first and the play was going to be, are you a theater nerd at all Myles? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I am, I’m like deep, like theater nerd. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Okay. So, you know, when I initially started writing the play, it was going to be like you were going to a concert, think Hedwig and the Angry Inch, think Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Have you ever seen Passing Strange? 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: I’ve not seen it but I was lived in New York City when it was on Broadway, but I was too poor to go to get to see it. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Oh. I saw it on PBS. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Oh, word, word. Um. But it kind of would be like it’s like you’re at a concert. But then I got this book deal, and they actually offered me to write about like a memoir. And I just didn’t want to write a memoir, I wouldn’t read my memoir. So I wouldn’t want to write it. And I wouldn’t want to create anything that I wouldn’t want to consume myself. I don’t wanna create any art that I don’t want to consume myself. So, I’m actually really glad that I got a chance to do this as a novel, because it pushed me. I got out of the world of writing the concert. And then I wrote about the actual creation of the album, um, which, which kind of is a little bit more, um August Wilson’s, um uh, Ma Rainey, MA Rainey’s Black Bottom. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Ma Rainey hmm. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Which is about the recording of an album, um which also I found out that I might be Ma Rainey’s cousin because we’re both from Columbus, Georgia. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Well, hold on, when did you? Wait, when did you find this out? 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: So, um Ma Rainey, let me look this up. Ma Rainey’s uh legal name is, because she has the same last name as my father. Yeah, her name is Gertrude Pridgett. And my father is um is uh Frank Pridgett. Um. So for me to like find out that her name was Pridgett then my dad started doing some research and and going back to the genealogy and tracing her back and realized that we might actually be cousins like me and Ma Rainey might actually be cousins which is amazing because she was this remarkable queer artist from Columbus, Georgia, and you know there are there are three famous queer artists from Columbus, Georgia. All Black. Me, Ma Rainey, and Wayne Brady are all from Columbus, Georgia. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Now that’s variety. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Right? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That’s, that’s variety, but there is a connective tissue to that. That’s that’s interesting. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: For sure. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: There is a connective tissue to that, that’s weird and it feels interestingly enough, it feels like you’re, you as a, a, uh, a performance artist, a drag artist and now like a writer, it feels like you are the bridge between like a Ma Rainey and a Wayne Brady. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: [?]. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: [?] little queer bridge? Yeah, no. I see it. That’s how I see it. Um. It’s a little early in the conversation, but I do want to ask this before I move from the return because I was so fascinated by that idea. I was wondering when you were writing about the return and conceptualizing this, I do I  know that um your mother passed and I was wondering like with this idea of like people who passed on returning, Was this like any way cathartic to your grief when you were writing it? Was that an element to to it? 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Well I I actually finished the book before my mother passed away. I haven’t written a book for–

 

Myles E. Johnson: Got it. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: –for four years. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Oh. Wow. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: And we were we were by the time I had finished the book we were already in the uh by the time my mother passed away. We were already in the like reading the final drafts. You know, um me and my editor um were in that part of the the process already. So, no, that was that wasn’t really part of it. My mother passed away after after I had conceived the return and the if you want the real truth is. It was a little bit of lazy writing, the way that I wrote the return, if I’m being fully honest with myself, because I didn’t explain it. Because I didn’t I didn’t bother to be like, the time-space continuum of the molecular structure of the defibrillator, nah, I didn’t do all that, because I’m not a scientist, I don’t know that. I’m just like, we’re gonna we’ll figure out, maybe in book three or four, we’ll figure out how the return happened, but for right now, just know they’re back. We don’t how they’re back. They keep popping up, and we’re gonna deal with it as they show up. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: No, I actually love that. Actually, I’m anti the whole over-explaining paranormal phenomenon and stuff, because to be frank to me, that’s like white people shit. Like, to like have to like know one, two, three, how something happens, part of it, it needs to feel a little mystical. Um. That’s funny that you felt it was lazy writing, because I thought it was such a compelling idea. And um. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Oh thank you. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Speaking of theater, I’m writing a play now about Robert Johnson and it energized me about that, but then it made me wonder. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Oh nice. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Were you–

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Did I inspire you? Am I an inspiration? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: You are. Specifically, like, and I want to know about this too, like that wasn’t the popular thing to write about Harriet Tubman. So I’m all so you’re you’re you’re let’s talk about it. You’re Black and gay inside of um LA. You know, you’re we’re in the media atmosphere that we’re in. Nothing about that says let me write about Harriet Tubman and ancestral veneration and all this other stuff in a book. Like, where did that gumption and that bravery come from? Or did you, what was your thought process around that when it comes to doing this and putting it into the commercial space? 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Well, I mean, I’m nothing if not bold. And I think that, first of all, Harriet Tubman is shockingly enough, insanely underrepresented in terms of um like widely consumed media. She’s only been depicted in a few movies and a few TV shows. So the first main the first major motion picture depiction of Harriet Tubmen was actually in Abraham Lincoln vampire slayer. I don’t know if people know that or not. That was the first time she was actually depicted on screen in a major motion picture. And then it was uh the Harriet Tubman movie with um with Cynthia Erivo. And she was also depicted on the show Underground and she was depicted in the Good Lord Bird on Showtime with um, but even Abraham Lincoln, I mean, I’m going to try and what um that that did not come out um a long time ago. Like it was a pretty late film to consider like all these people have been brought been like represented in media but somehow Harriet Tubman was just, [?] Vampire Hunter came out in 2012. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Whoa. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That’s wild. Wait, so you’re saying that–

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That was the first? 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: The first time that she was depicted in a major motion picture, ever. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That is wild. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Outside of like things you learn for school or uh, you know, like those PBS things, but like in a, in a major blockbuster. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, she feels so ubiquitous in black life because of for for obvious reasons, but you kind of assume certain things have happened. Um. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Maybe people are afraid to write about her. You know what I mean? I mean, I know that, like, for example, I know that she was not uh the movie with Cynthia Erivo was not particularly well-received, you know what mean? So I don’t think that it’s far-fetched to imagine that people were like, I just don’t feel comfortable writing about this woman because of how it’s gonna be received. And there was some notion that I thought to myself, people might not like the way that I’m that I’m portraying her. Obviously, I am mine is very fictional. Right. So the way that I that I portray her is it’s all it’s all made I mean, I account real things that happened to her. But I’m not actually like, it’s not about her life. It’s not it’s not about like, it’s not it’s about Darnell’s life. [?].

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. You have a lot of play room too. Yeah. And then for with the um you’re kind of leading me into my like another question that I had for you because Darnell was, from where I’m at in the book right now, Darnell is really going through it and you’re kind of like learning about his past in the music industry and what kind of created his um tension in the in the musical industry and stuff like that. And I think I think there’s like a line around like anytime he thinks about music, there’s like  anxiety in his stomach or something. And I have so many people and I know you have soo many people who are interacting with fame and media and the attention economy and rejection and and oh my goodness you’re 35, you’re 40, you are 45 and you’re going like that kind of stuff. How much of that was um cathartic or critique too? 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Well, a lot of it was just like, uh, re-imagining the things that have happened to me in my life. Cause you know, when you are a public figure, you go through the same thing that everyone else goes through, but it’s, but as amplified, because everyone’s watching it happen. You know what I mean? Like if you’ve ever been through divorce or a breakup, imagine if everyone was watching it and also giving their critiques on it, people you don’t even know. And then on top of that, I, uh you know. Uh, Darnell has a lot of, uh. What’s the word I’m looking for? I guess I’ll just call it criticism and projection on people in his life because he thinks they’re gonna be judging him. So he’s actually judging himself through their lens without giving them the opportunity or the option to even build their own judgment. He’s he’s because he’s judging himself through the lens specifically of older Black people. He is projecting his own insecurities onto them as opposed to allowing them to pass their judgment themselves. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: That is so good, Bob, you’re so smart. Not that you should, and not that you like, obviously I watched you in Monet’s uh uh podcast, I just, I consume you, but like, it’s just, anytime you say something, I’m like, oh, you just, that that brain is working. Um.

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Oh, that’s very kind, thank you. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: But the, so I’m curious around when you’re talking when you’re talking about Darnell in his, I guess I would say like his uh his own anxieties around fame, I’m wondering what was, I guess, I’m trying to just get in your business. Like, what’s the what how much was like autobiographical. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Autobiographic. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And how much it just like um, just you pulling things down from the ethers. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Well, Darnell’s not quite me like, I mean. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Spoiler alert to everyone who’s reading the book. I’m just going to give you all one more spoiler. And this is also to you because you haven’t made it this far in the book yet. You know, you find out about half way through the book that Darnell was very, very, very publicly outed uh in a very betraying way. Like he thought that it was going to be this, this, this great thing and it just ended up blowing up and ruining his career. Um. So, you know, in the moment to be in a moment where he chose to go against his instincts and be vulnerable. He ended up losing everything. He lost everything. He had built up so much for himself and then he trusted someone and it did not work out for him and he felt quite vulnerable because of that. So I think that maybe some instances in my life where I let my guard down and it really backfired and it affirmed my worst thoughts about people and about society and about trust. You know, you can’t trust none of these folks. You know these hoes ain’t loyal. You know I don’t trust no nigga, I don’t feel no bitch. You kind of go back into that into that space again. And it’s showing how Darnell became that. You know, I have these moments where like, if you bump into someone at the grocery store, and then all you see is that you bumped this lady, and she turn around and she yells, fuck you! In your head, like this is out of control. But obviously a lot of stuff happened for a bump to set this lady off. A lot of stuff happened. We don’t know, we don’t know she woke up in the morning, she stubbed her toe, her dog died, her husband left her, you know, her kids are getting her kids are in trouble at school. Um, then she got to the place, the cart, the cart on the buggy was, was wobbling. She had to get a new one. She got the new cart. It fell over all her groceries spill out.

 

Myles E. Johnson: Okay you putting this woman through it. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Putting the groceries back in the thing. She’s finally thinking to herself, this is great. And then after all that, you bump her. You know what I mean? So obviously. Everything that happens in your life is just, every reaction you have is an amalgamation of all the things that have happened to you up to this point. And that is how we that is why we respond the way that we respond. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, yeah, no, I love, that’s that’s so thoughtful, just kind of like the domino effect of people’s emotions and how you end up there. So can you tell me a little bit about how you got into drag, like the what that story was? Your eyes got big, or you’re like, oh my God, this story. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Those are my listening eyes. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Oh, got it. I thought that that was–

 

Bob the Drag Queen: So. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: This is the millionth time I answered that eyes. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: I mean, it is. But that’s but that’s not why. I mean. I also have like I have a lazy eyelid, so sometimes I have to actively open my eyes wide so that one of my eyelids doesn’t droop. Um. When I was um when I moved to New York City when I was 22 years old, I moved here to be a Broadway actor. Um. I dropped out of college and I want to go make it on Broadway, honey. They’re going to gag for me. And then the real gag was um I didn’t realize that you really have to be able to really sing and dance really well to be on Broadway. I did not know that. Um. So I did not I never got cast in anything obviously because I’m not a great singer, I’m not a great dancer like that but um when I when I got there uh the year I moved to new york city I believe the next year RuPaul’s drag race came out I saw it on tv and I had done some makeup in in in college like during the Makeup course where I had dressed up in drag before but I had never taken it much further than that. Um and then I just saw it on TV and I thought to myself my god this looks like so much fun I was really inspired by seeing BeBe Zahara Benet, the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 1. [?] drag race, I loved how regal she was, I thought she was funny at times I had a different I have a much different um approach to my performance style than BeBe Zahara Benet does but I was still so captivated by her beauty and her grace and how regal she was and I wanted to embody some of that myself. So I just I just bought myself a little makeup kit from Ben Nye online I applied the little skills that I had and I hit the town. I started doing drag I started I fully immersed myself in the New York City drag scene. Like I worked at so many bars in New York City, almost all of them. If a bar existed when I was in New York City especially if it was in Manhattan, I probably worked at it at some point. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Right, right. That’s I love that, um that going to New York, uh that’s almost like parallel to RuPaul speaking of. God knows that I read RuPaul’s book. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: RuPaul’s California, Atlanta, Atlanta, New York. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, yeah. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: But the Atlanta, New York thing to me, it’s a certain type of trajectory from Georgia to New York. [?]. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Yeah, no. That’s valid. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: It’s a certain type of um a certain type of girl. While this question’s in my head, I want to go back to the book really quickly because we’re talking about drag. So here’s what, I’m always fascinated with Black people who perform. Um I’ve performed, I think Black people on the stage and music go together. But to me, you’re always tangoing with minstrelsy, because that’s the legacy of Black people in performance in America. And I think that sometimes I overthink it or um get a little bit too like nervous around it and maybe subdue myself. And huh? 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: I have a theory on that too. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: No, there is um Black people, because of our relationship to this country and how our bodies and our minds have been um commodified in negative connotations, um we we are the only people who I can think of who have been taught to be ashamed of basically our ingenuity. We’re the only people who are taught to be ashamed and embarrassed by our ingenuity and the things that we create and the things that we do. Because no matter what we do, its ghetto, its stupid, its trashy, its yada, yada yada. Or someone else did it to make fun of us. Right. Like, for example, uh you a lot of Black people are like, I’m not going to eat watermelon in public. Japanese people don’t think twice about eating sushi. Mexicans don’t think twice about eating burritos. You know what I mean? They don’t uh uh people from India don’t think don’t think twice about eating curry. They just fucking do it because they don’t have the they don’t have in this country, they don’t have a long lasting shame surrounding liking things that your culture likes, you know what I mean? And I think a lot of Black people have this feeling like if I do the thing they think niggas do then they gonna think I’m one of them niggas. You know what I mean? Um. And I don’t want to and I don’t want to be uh uh you know, I don’t want to I don’t want to come off that way. Um. But it’s really interesting because when we’re when we’re in our own spaces and we’re not being perceived by other races Then people tend to be more free, right? So the difference between we were talking about Tyler Perry before the cameras turned on, the difference between Tyler Perry when he was just doing the the chitlin circuit and he was doing those plays versus the way he was perceived once he became Tyler Perry. Once he made that first movie Diary of a mad Black woman. Then all of a sudden holy shit white folks are watching now. So you have to ask yourself do I have to act different now because white people are watching? Some will people say yes. Some people will say no. I guess it all really depends on who you are, how you were raised and how you feel how you feel about being perceived? Um, and then the other question is, is it wrong to behave, is it wrong to continue? Is it wrong to not code switch? Is it wrong to not, you know, make yourself more palatable so that you won’t embarrass other Black people? Why is our behavior embarrassing? If it was good enough for Black folks in a Black context to laugh, why is it bad when white people are watching? What about white eyes changes what you’re doing, making it more embarrassing? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yes, like round of applause in my brain, um or like around everything you said. It reminds me of when I was watching Arthur Jafa, a cinematographer, like speak and talk about how Black people, once the camera be comes into play, the whole interaction with the performer changes because the camera is a is a replacement for like the white gaze and people automatically shift how they act when they know they’re gonna be recorded or they’re being surveilled. So I definitely agree with you that my only piece of pushback would be, not that you need any, but just for the sake of conversation is that I do think Black people’s cultural productions, specifically Black Americans’ cultural productions have always been produced out of um humiliation or out of um or out of dire needs. So it’s not just that we have soul food, it’s because of how we needed to have soul food. It’s not just because we were on the stage having minstrels and it was and we were having fun on stage it was because we were being mocked and made fun of on stage so there is this little paradox in us that wants to be free and unrespectable but also doesn’t want to perpetuate things that would seem disrespectful. Which long way leads me into my question around was any of that–

 

Bob the Drag Queen: I wanna stay on the topic just for one more second. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah yeah yeah. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: But it’s also when you think about things like, for example, um popper food, like fish and chips, is based out of being poor, being broke, and only being able to afford fish and chips. When the Irish were eating potatoes, it’s not just because they love potatoes, it’s because they couldn’t get anything else. They had to have potatoes. It was the cheapest thing they can get their hands on. And I do believe that there is a, what you’re saying, it is true. A lot of what we have as Black people in America, it a lot of it comes from degradation. A lot if it comes from persevering through the hardest times. And I ask myself, like, how strong is that? What’s more strong than taking pig brain and turning it into hog head cheese? What’s stronger than taking chitlins and turning them into a delicacy that you could pay $50 a plate for today because people in the house didn’t want to eat pig intestines. What is stronger than taking chicken, and making it the most common protein in America, when the truth is back in the day, they gave us the chickens and they would eat the turkeys because the turkeys were huge and full of protein and full of all this life. And they would give us the puny little chickens. You know what I mean? What is stronger than that? But then again, the feeling of embarrassment is so valid because the relationship that Black Americans have to this country is probably the most complex relationship in the history of the world, especially in America. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: It’s absolutely, absolutely. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: But I derailed your question. Sorry. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: You no, it was it was a great derailing. So I was just wondering because of the reverence and I’ll I’ll name it like the ancestral gaze. So if there’s a white gaze, I think a lot of Black artists and thinkers probably have an ancestral gaze where they have this Harriet Tubman finger being like, Oh, don’t you disrespect our legacy. Don’t you you know. And you’re kind of like having anxiety. It feels like with this book, you broke through that and just as a drag performer, because so much of it is about that kind of meta commentary on gender, on expectation. It feels like fuck you and your stereotypes and fuck you for and fuck you trying to make me respectable and scaring me with this ancestral gaze. I’m gonna perform anyway. Um. I’m just wondering how did you get, how did you get to the space to write like that, and I kind of asked a similar question to Jeremy O’Harris who did Slave Play. I’m like, how did you get to the point where you didn’t think that you were gonna be haunted for doing that? Athiest or not. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Well, I don’t–

 

Myles E. Johnson: Right. I was like. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: I don’t even have a [?], so that didn’t bother me so much, but when you think, history would let lead you to believe that you didn’t have any ancestors who thought the way you do. History would have you believe that all of your ancestors were Christian. History would you believe that there were no gay people, there wasn’t a single queer walking around anywhere. But your brain should let you know, obviously, queer people exist in a vacuum. Like, for example, you need Black people to make Black people. You need Asian people to make Asian people. You need white people to make white people. You do not need queer people to make queer people. We pop up anywhere. If you started a new nation on a colony, on an island, probably within one generation, a queen is gonna pop up. You know what I mean? You don’t need queer people to make queer people, yet we still have that common thread that connects us throughout all of our societies because of the way that we’re treated by the majority as the minority. So I know that I know that I have ancestors who were like me, who were funny like me who were queer like me who bucked against gender stereotypes like me. Um you know if you look up William Dorsey Swan, you’ll know that there were a gender-bending enslaved people formerly enslaved people who were throwing balls and encouraging other people to dress up and get up in gowns and walk around and parade and have fun and express themselves. Even though history would tell you those people didn’t exist. They’ll wipe Bayard Rustin away from the history books as if he was not there on the you know, on the mall on Washington. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Right, right. No, that certain parts of what you just said, just kind of like, you know sometimes I do see like a separation even with reading. Um. [?]

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Well, they try to make you think they they they try to make believe and this is this is a product of I think of white supremacy, but it affects Black people really strongly where some Black folks try to make you believe that your queerness is completely separate from your Blackness. Like they’re two different things as or as if your queerness makes you less Black than a Black person who is not queer, which is crazy, by the way, that’s obviously not how that works at all. You know what I mean? I remember the the the quote, I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams. Maybe my ancestors couldn’t even imagine that I’d be able to be up here doing what I’m doing to this day. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Well, I guess, so everything that you just said, but just to complicate it just a teeny bit further, it’s not hard for me to believe when it comes to sexual or gender identities that those things existed. I think the part, and maybe you were, I don’t know how purposefully you were offering this, but I think that part that really hit me was that the irreverence. So like, so if you’re Bob the Drab Queen, it’s not really just about what you’re doing in your bed. And your sexuality and stuff, you’re still showing up as a disruptive, irreverent, force against a heteropatriarchal dynamic that is pushing up against it and not um and not doing respectable things. So it’s one thing to be Bayard Rustin. It’s another thing to say, actually, I don’t believe in none of this shit, and I’m actually gonna spend my life being this kind of um enlightened trickster energy around these things that you think are real. I’d like, to me that’s different and bolder. And um that and that’s why, A,   I respect your artwork. But also, that’s whythat kind of illuminated me where I’m like, well, yeah, if you’re here now, then of course, somebody was just as irreverent then if only in their mind, you know. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Um. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: No 100%. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yeah, but that was just some great uh such great points that you’ve made. There’s some things around Quakers and just historical tidbits that you put in the book. I’m wondering how many of those historical tidbits you put inside of the book on purpose. Cause I thought as I was reading it, I was like, well, where education is going, this is really good to have in a book so you know it. Was that how much of that was intentional? Um. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: It was all intentional. I mean, I really well one I really wanted to have this Quaker character because I do think it’s really funny, especially when I envision him. Have you ever seen Marshmello or uh Deadmau5? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yes, with the big mask during the–

 

Bob the Drag Queen: In my head DJ Quakes has this giant Quaker hat that goes all the way down to his, it’s like a huge hat with like an LED going across the screen. I just love the visual of that, that DJ in there. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yes. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: And um and I did want to point out that, um, you know, Quakers were, were a pretty big part of the abolitionist movement. Some of them, they were actually banned from certain towns because they were too, they were too, uh, anti, uh slavery. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Right. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: They were, you couldn’t be a Quaker in certain towns or not legally, but you’d be run out of town because they knew what you were up to. And they knew that you’d probably be helping because they were, they were deeply convicted. Um, and it’s really interesting how how, uh, white people and Black people, but specifically white people could use the Bible to come to drastically different conclusions, but using the same book, right? Like if you look at John Brown, John Brown was on paper, a maniac. He was so religiously convicted that he would ask you to your face. And this was like [?] on multiple occasions. He would ask to your face, are you pro-slavery or are you for the free state? And if you said pro-slavery, there were times that he would literally kill you right where you stood because he felt so convicted. He’s a white man. He felt so convicted by God that his that his duty was to help Black people become free that he was like, but I’m not wrong, though. But there there’s an account of him going to a judge’s house in the middle of the night and dragging him out and killing him and his sons because they had ruled against they had unjustly ruled against an enslaved person who was trying to petition for their um manumission. And, um, and he just killed them and went about his business and just said, and now off to my next thing. But then you have the exact people who are reading the same book being like, you’re literally not even a person. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Right, right, right. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: It’s crazy how it’s crazy to me how you can read the story of Moses and justify– 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And not connect the dots, not like. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Early bad media literacy, that was that was pre–

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Or is it cognitive dissonance, you know what I mean? 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And I think they both feed each other, you know? 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I think that probably that is feeding media illiteracy. Um so cause I know you have a hard out and I have so many questions, I’m so nosy. Um but so I wanna just kind of get to a juicy one, but we kind of talked about it. Um. So I know that you’re an atheist, but in the book, you kind of, A, position Darnell as an atheist but then you talk about Harriet Tubman’s praying and you talk about um like her belief in the Lord. I know, I think it’s iconic. I’m in kind of like African and Black spiritual communities. So Harriet Tubmen, understanding, um getting a lot of her direction from the Lord, and then and her having these kind of like psychedelic experiences in order to be able to figure out where to go. That is something that people inside of the um Black, like, who do community use as um as significant. As significance of being like, oh, what we’re doing does lead to freedom no matter what age you’re in. But I thought, A, I thought it was so beautiful to talk about Black atheism in your book. I’ve never seen a character engage with a Black character, engage with the discomfort of seeing people do Christian things and and and engage with that. And I thought it was also really um generous for you to acknowledge that belief, even without holding that. And I guess, you know, like, just can you can you just dig into how you wanted to, how you wanted to–

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Yeah. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Address spirituality and stuff in the book? 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Well, it happens to me a lot, you know, I remember being on the set of We’re Here, the show I did for HBO, and uh I was not raised atheist, to be clear, like, I met a few people who were raised atheist later in life, obviously, there’s not a lot of them in the south, and I remember thinking to myself how crazy it is to be raised to be like, there, there is not a God, that is so wild to me, I had to come, I have to come to this conclusion on my own, or through my own research and through listening to other people or just, you, know, trying to weigh the things out, like well that doesn’t make sense. Um. But I remember being on set for We’re Here and uh someone was like, we should all pray before the before the show. And everyone was like grabbing their hands. And I was so uncomfortable. I was so uncomfortable. I felt like I was surrounded by Christians and like if I did not participate in their ritual, then because Christians are not like if a bunch of witches say, let’s all get together and be witchy and you say no, they’ll be chill. But if you tell the Christians no, they’re gonna be like, oh my God, you’re of Satan. You are of Satan. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Who sent you. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: So you’re of Satan, so you’re an enemy. So you’re literally an enemy then. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Right. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: You know what I mean? And I’ve been in a lot of situations, I don’t wanna pray, I don’t wanna fucking bow my head. I don’t wanna be with y’all in this like, you know let’s thank the Lord for all this stuff because I don believe in that. It makes me very uncomfortable. Um. And I remember um going to Las Vegas and going to see Monique in Vegas. And I had never seen a famous Black person stand on stage and call out the church in a way that wasn’t just like they stealing money. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Right. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: It was in a way that was like the church is fucking us up I had never and I could see the room on her and I was like go bad bitch go bad bitch go. Because it is really brave to do that it’s bold to do it in a room full of Black, you don’t know how it’s going to be received and there were some of us there who were like, thank I remember going to her and being like thank you for speaking on that like thank you so she was basically talking about how the how the church is holding us back and and and making us treat our queer family members because you know Monique has a queer son um. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And she’s queer. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Yeah and she’s queer, she’s queer, she talks about her whole queer experience in this show that I saw about her lesbian, her, her first lesbian date. Um.

 

Myles E. Johnson: Oh, wow. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: And that she, that she went and, and it was her first polyamorous lesbian date. So she like, she like her husband helped her get ready for this date with this woman. It was so, it was so beautiful and liberating. And I never got a chance to see Black people talk like that without calling it some white bullshit. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Ever. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Without acknowledging that what is what a lot of Black folks are doing today is actually the epitome of white people shit. Christianity is the way that its that its produced in America is literally white people shit. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Yes, yes and I just–

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Meanwhile, they acting like being atheists is white people shit. No, no. No, no. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: And like I haven’t experienced polyamory and I haven’t um, and I just told you I wasn’t an atheist, but I can see myself in solidarity with people who are complicating what it means to be Black. And I feel like that story and Monique and what she was doing is doing that. And then what that segment of your book did, I was like, oh, I love that representation of a Black person not just being like, yes, Jesus. When something happens and being like no, I feel uncomfortable, I don’t like this. Last question I have for you before I have to um before I have to let you go is, what is the future for um this series? I guess what I’m really trying to say is, I think there should be more and more and more books. And I do think the theater ideas should still be revisited, so I’m just wondering where your imagination’s at when it comes to this. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Well, so for Harriet Tubman live in concert, I’m still I am still working on the play. I will get this play up on stage. I cannot wait. I really believe it’s going to be a I think this will be probably one of my longest lasting legacies in my career. To be honest. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: I do too. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: When I think about the things that I’ve done with this with this intellectual property and the people who have helped me create it. Um. I’m working with a really remarkable producer named Kevin Antunes who I met on the Madonna tour. He was her music director. He’s worked with everyone from Janet Jackson to Ciara to N*sync to Shakira. Everyone he’s an amazing producer from Boston and my dear friend from Atlanta, Ocean Kelly, we’re working on um we’re workin on the musical together still to this day. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Okay. Oh, I love that. I’m so excited. I, yeah, I just want you to keep on going with it because it’s just so important and so special. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: Thank you Myles. 

 

Myles E. Johnson: Bob, the drag queen. I’m so happy to have spoken with you. I am so appreciative and thank you for putting really good, thoughtful art in the world, specifically at a time like now. I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and the beauty that you’re injecting into the world with this work. 

 

Bob the Drag Queen: It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much. [music break]

 

DeRay Mckesson: 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 A.J. 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. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

 

[AD BREAK]