Pattie Maes:
Hello and welcome everyone.
Thank you for joining us for what promises
to be an interesting, a very timely conversation
given what is going on in our country regarding
social issues with four of our amazing directors
fellows.
Let me just briefly introduce them.
We have Jamila Raqib who serves as the executive
director of the Albert Einstein Institution
where she works advancing freedom with nonviolent
action.
She's also a research affiliate at the Center
for International Studies at MIT.
We also have Kate Crockford who's the director
of the technology for Liberty Program at the
ACLU of Massachusetts and who works privacy
and civil liberties issues as they relate
to new technologies.
Adam Foss is a former assistant district attorney
in the juvenile division of the Suffolk County
District Attorney's office in Boston and is
an advocate for criminal justice reform.
Chris Bevans is an award winning designer
who has done work for Nike Adidas and celebrities,
such as John Legend, Daryl Hall, Jay-Z, The
Roots and Kenya West.
Welcome everybody.
I think Jamila and Kade will lead the conversation
today.
Kade Crockford:
Thanks.
Thanks, Pattie.
Hey everybody, it's a little weird to do these
digital talks where you can't see anyone in
the audience.
I'm just going to believe that there are people
out there listening to this, and that you
are actually listening.
How's it going, everyone?
Obviously, this time in our country is just
incredibly frightening.
We're seeing scenes that I didn't ever expect
to see in my lifetime unfolding all across
this country of federal security agencies
sent by the president of the United States
to brutally repress first amendment protected
speech, folks out there protesting in defensive
black lives.
We're seeing now of course new crises, the
hurricane that is hitting Texas and Louisiana
as we speak.
Disproportionately black folks down there
are likely to suffer as well.
Then on top of that, the pandemic and this,
I mean, honestly, horrific presidential election
that I think a lot of people are frustrated
with because it provides us with two pretty
terrible choices if we're concerned about
racial justice in this country.
Kade Crockford:
There's a lot to talk about.
I just want to kick off the conversation by
reflecting on some positive developments.
Last night, we saw almost like dominoes.
The WNBA, which has probably the most consistently
political and fearless of the athletes in
the leagues for years now, this is not new
for the WNBA to be political.
We saw black women leading in the NBA standing
up and saying, we're not going to play in
protest of what's going on here and went on
strike essentially.
We then saw NBA teams decide that they didn't
want to play even play off games yesterday,
which is incredibly powerful.
Like dominoes, you then saw even a major league
baseball team saying that they're not going
to go out to the pitch, which is for sports
fans, I think just incredibly surprising to
see a predominantly white league, a sport
that has a fan base that I think is predominantly
white, remains predominantly white in this
country, taking a step like that is huge.
Kade Crockford:
The Major League Soccer Association, MLS went
on strike their games and all of these are
player-led initiatives.
I want to be sure to be clear about that because
the leagues have now tried to say, this is
us.
No, it's not.
The players have been showing their power,
and it's really inspiring.
Tennis star has now come out and said, she's
not going to play tennis.
This is just incredible movement building
in the culture space, and so Chris, I want
to ask you about this in the context of the
work that you do in the cultural realm.
Sports like fashion, I actually think they're
kind of similar because there are two industries
that are hugely influential culturally, and
they are also two industries that produce
a lot of money for white people using black
creativity, black talent, black hard work-
Chris Bevans:
Black culture, just black culture, period.
Kade Crockford:
And black culture, right.
How are you thinking about the athletes' strikes,
and can you talk a little bit about the work
that you're doing in the fashion industry
and the ways that you see white supremacy
playing out in fashion?
Chris Bevans:
Sure.
Also, to add to that, Kenny Smith walked off
of the set on TNT live.
That says a lot.
Even as an ex-player, he identifies with what's
happening.
I applaud Kenny as well.
I've known him a long time and he's always
done so much behind the scenes for us, young
players, old school players, traders like
myself, just plugging me into the NBA to work
with good folks there.
It's also, like you said, it's the players
that are leading this charge and it's wonderful
to see because you touched on it briefly.
It's the money in the economy and the economics
that go around that.
I think sadly we're seeing that people aren't
going to really change unless you touch their
pocket books and the players, they know this
and a lot of them are making huge sacrifices
financially.
Chris Bevans:
We can say that they make good money, decent
money, but not all players make LeBron James
money, just to be clear.
It just shows such a great unity that we're
witnessing.
I've never seen this before in my lifetime
in sports, period.
I can't just sit here and applaud just LeBron
James or Chris Paul, it's really everybody,
everybody and just working with different
athletes through the years, getting a chance
to work behind the scenes and see what they
have to kind of maneuver around in their respected
organizations.
I've worked close with Marshawn Lynch and
you know that he doesn't say too much, and
that in itself says a lot because if you know
the research behind the man, if you've done
the research behind the man, you can see how
much he's done for his community.
Chris Bevans:
He doesn't need the accolades, he doesn't
need the press.
He's bare, and so many athletes do this.
I've witnessed this, but now it's like, I'm
not calling it the plantation effect where
uprising against the man, but that is what
it is.
You are owned by your organization, and this
is a revolt that we're seeing.
I guarantee you, there are some owners that
are not happy right now because of the finance.
Now, you look at Goodell going back in the
NFL saying, "Man, four years to the day yesterday
is when Kaep Colin took the knee to the deck."
He's now saying, "We should have stood with
this brother right here."
Is it the pressure from the economics or is
it truly his conscious that is speaking to
him?
Hard to tell, but Kenny Stills and all the
football players that are speaking up, it's
encouraging because now we need the college
players to do the same thing because it's
the whole cycle.
Chris Bevans:
It's the whole cycle of sports that has to
take a stance, right?
We know some college conferences are starting
to address this, but those college players,
they're hoping to become professional players
and this is where it starts and then it trickles
down to high school, high school students
taking a stand for what's right.
From the top down, it's amazing to see.
Just to go back, I'm a creative fashion designer
and just a little bit short history about
myself.
My grandmother's from Jamaica and she was
a well known dressmaker in New York city.
I remember her telling me stories of her being
asked to leave certain sets and photoshoot
sets for Vogue, for WWD that she worked close
with for.
She was the head seamstress for the Catwoman
on regional Batman series.
Chris Bevans:
She couldn't be on the set, but she was making
these garments for people.
She made garments for Mrs. Nixon.
She was really well known.
I remember her touching on these stories and
it just inspired me to fight through any racial
injustice because I'm talented and I'm good
at what I do, and I always rested on that.
I let that lead, but then I quickly realized
that I'm in an industry that's dominated by
white men and white women.
There's times where I'd made special requests
on the set.
I'm not going to call out anybody in the magazine
at this moment, but that was overruled because
I wanted a brown skin person on the set with
me to balance my story of what I was trying
to tell and to show.
It was in the tennis world, and I'm a big
tennis player and I requested a black tennis
player to be with me on set and it was overruled.
Chris Bevans:
That's one instance and there's been others,
but I found my first entry point into the
industry, thanks to Puff.
It took a black man to help me get into the
industry, and through that door, I don't know
if it was...
I didn't need creative validation because
I was killing interviews.
I'm showing up with collections at a young
age looking for an assistant design job and
still you can't get those jobs.
I'm fortunate that Puff's assistant found
me in the isles of fabric store in Manhattan
and that opened up so many doors.
Here I am today, 20 years later still addressing
those same issues, but now I'm let's level
the playing field with how about our own fashion
platform, where we can control our voice and
our narrative around the world.
Chris Bevans:
I'm working with many, many different organizations
that are looking to help the black community
in fashion.
It's amazing the amount of support that I'm
getting with this platform that I'm crafting
to centralize in our conversations, uplift
each other, share resources because for me,
access was a big, big hurdle just to get to
the cutting room floor.
I've built a vast Rolodex over the years and
I'm sharing it with the community now, and
the black community, from kids from here in
the States and I'm on calls with kids all
the way to Africa, Central Africa, Northern
Africa, Europe.
It's exciting to see what's happening, and
I think we have allies out here that are willing
to help us.
It's important to educate in these conversations,
so thanks to you and the whole gang here and
MIT Media Lab fam.
Thank you.
Kade Crockford:
Thanks, Chris.
I'm struck when you're talking about your
experience by your refusal to do what so many
people who are denied power and then access
it do, which is to pull up the ladder behind
them, and say, I got mine, so I'm not worried
about anybody else.
You're doing something that is the exact opposite
of that saying, I wish that someone like me
had provided access opportunities, networking
opportunities, resources, information to me
when I was a young man so that I could have
accessed to industry.
I just want to commend you for that.
It's beautiful, and it makes me wonder, Adam
about the work that you're doing because power
sharing is, I think a really thorny subject
when we think about the role that prosecutors
play in the criminal legal system.
Kade Crockford:
Here in Boston, I was supportive of Rachel
Rollins who was a DA, black woman DA who ran
on a very progressive platform and now she's
in office.
I'm appreciative of a lot of the things that
she's doing, but she's also done some things
that I find to be really apparent actually
that I have called out publicly because I
think that they're the wrong things to do
and they're not progressive decisions.
I'm wondering how you and your work with reform
prosecutors trying to make prosecutors more
politically progressive, less carceral, how
you sort of view the relationship between
the community and the prosecutor's office,
how you see how power sharing operates in
that space, if at all, and to talk kind of
about the tension between the role of prosecutors
as agents of change in the criminal legal
system and simultaneously as cops basically.
I mean, they're police.
They're law enforcement essentially.
Can you just talk a little bit about what
you think about those issues?
Adam Foss:
Yeah.
First, thank you to the Media Lab for making
this happen.
It's great to be back with my family and just
coming into this space with Jacob Blake on
my mind today as well as the countless of
others of people who don't make it in the
news.
I think it's really important for us to just
pause and recognize that what we're talking
about are the things that are actually recorded,
the things that we actually see, and while
these incidents are catalysts of a lot of
conversation and discussion, there's lots
of things that are happening every single
night that either don't result in a death
or they result in a death and are deemed justified
by somebody else that we never get to see.
When you think about the ones that have been
ruled as justified because somebody looked
like they had something or the cop was afraid,
we're not even talking about ones where as
a prosecutor, I saw lots of cases where young
kids had hand guns on them, but we're running
away.
Adam Foss:
I can imagine that in cases where the person
is actually armed, but poses little to no
threat to the officer and they're killed,
that we don't even hear about those or the
constant interaction between law enforcement
and people in the community.
I was reflecting this morning on how little
training I got as a prosecutor, but one of
the things I remember being trained on was
this term of art that is in almost every police
report having to deal with a young person
being stopped was, he was walking with the
characteristics of an armed gunman.
Just thinking about the tens of thousands
of police reports that I read over my career
that have those words in it, that a fraction
of the time resulted in someone getting caught
with a handgun, but most of the time just
resulted in a kid getting stopped and mistreated
by officers, which for the law enforcement
community, I want them to understand that
that degrades our bottom line.
Adam Foss:
Every time this stuff happens and we stand
there defending our actions, we are degrading
our bottom line because on the other side
of the coin, when you look at things like
homicide clearance rates, when you look at
things, nonfatal shooting clearance rates,
we do an abhorrent job of that.
Again, as a white supremacist culture, we
blame that on the community.
We never once have the accountability that
because of our conduct, people don't feel
like cooperating with us.
I just wanted to put those out there and not
try to obfuscate the question because it's
a good and important one.
If I had to articulate sort of the future,
the vision that I have of the criminal justice
system and the reason that I go to work everyday
is to reduce barriers for people to become
prosecutors themselves.
That is not an ethereal belief that I have,
that is something that I carry around because
I learned how to be a prosecutor from law
school, an institution that is built on white
supremacy.
Adam Foss:
Everything that happens in law school, the
way that it happens, the things that I study,
the people that I'm supposed to hold up and
honor and respect, the truth that I'm just
supposed to swallow because it is being taught
to me by people with holding up books that
are 200 years old.
The idea that I was prepared to then go into
a community that I've never been into and
make really important decisions about people's
lives there as a young prosecutor.
Literally learning on the job, how to do this
thing and creating harm the entire time that
I was doing that would never be allowed if
the exertion of that power discretion was
on the lives of people who I was attending
law school with.
If this was happening in other communities
and you were having a 24 year old brand new
lawyer going into that community and deciding
who gets to stay and who gets to go to jail,
and using language about people as if I had
ever once met them, it would not happen in
a society where the criminal justice system
had that interaction with affluent white people.
Adam Foss:
Everything that I learned about the way that
I prosecuted and the reason that I was able
to do the work that I did as a prosecutor
and continued to support others in doing was
because I learned from the community what
they needed.
I listened to the people that were coming
into my front door as victims and saying,
"I actually don't want to go to the grand
jury."
Instead of doing the thing that I was taught
to do, which was to undermine them or to threaten
them or to judge them or to disregard them,
I asked like, "Hey, why?
Why is that?"
Learning from them all of the things about
why it was, this wasn't the one avenue they
wanted to get to around harm and safety.
I tell this story all the time, that the moment
that I felt the most like a prosecutor was
never when I was standing there at the end
of the two week trial giving my closing argument
and hearing that I had convicted someone.
Adam Foss:
It was when I was sitting in Norfolk Prison
in a circle of 30 men who were predominantly
from the neighborhood that I was living at
and hearing those 30 men tell their life stories
and tell their crime stories, and then intersperse
with those men seeing victims of crime, seeing
survivors of crime, moms and dads and guardians
who had lost children to homicide.
Listening to those stories and receiving that
information and receiving that accountability
and that apology, and then asking questions
of those men that they are deprived of in
the criminal justice system.
All of that was the things that I believed
in the system was about, safety, accountability,
harm, repairing of harm and it was all happening,
not in the dusty old halls of Suffolk Law
School, but in the basement of Norfolk Prison.
To relinquish this grasp that we have on the
criminal justice system that says only privileged
people with this degree that literally means
nothing.
The degree means nothing.
Adam Foss:
I made it through law school.
I took a bunch of tests, I did all right enough
on those tests to still get this degree.
That should not dictate my emotional intelligence,
my ability or my life experience, my understanding
of communities to go and make those decisions.
The only people who should get that are the
people who are coming from those communities
and have to live with the consequences of
those decisions.
The fact that I could then get into my car
for the first years as I was a prosecutor,
I lived in Harvard Square, and the fact that
I could at the end of the day after I spent
the day in Roxbury making decisions about
all these people's lives, the fact that I
can get my car, cross back over to the river,
go to my nice little bartending job in Harvard
Square, and then crip walk back to my three-story
walk up in Harvard Square and smoke weed and
have nothing happen to me is the problem.
Adam Foss:
While I want this entire adversarial system
to go away, while I think that this is the
vestiges of a justice system that was created
hundreds and hundreds of years ago, I hear
a lot of people saying the system is acting
exactly the way it was designed.
I have a problem with that because our system
was designed at the signing of the Magna Carta.
At the signing of the Magna Carta, people
still believed witches existed.
People still believe that the earth was flat.
There were no cities, the institution of American
slavery was a fiction to people still.
The fact that we still operate in the same
way today in 2020 the way that we did in 1592,
and don't have the humility to be like, we
have a 70% recidivism rate.
We are one of the most dangerous countries
to live in on the planet.
It costs a ton of money.
Adam Foss:
We have these tremendous racial disparities,
and the people who are interacting the most
with law enforcement are the people who are
out in the street protesting about it, and
yet the people who have no interaction with
law enforcement, except as my dad or my [inaudible
00:24:06] officer, those are the people who
are supporting blue lives matter.
There's a fundamental problem until we relinquish
that and have the humility to do that, which
really is about urgency from the proletariat.
Black prosecutors are frankly just young prosecutors
who have had the privilege of growing up at
a time where they have the access to information
that just isn't forced down their throats
by the institution of law school and college
in the higher ed, but they come into law school
with mass incarceration as part of their lexicon.
Adam Foss:
That is sort of like the harm reduction strategy
that I've evoked.
I'm saying harm reduction to signal or maybe
just be very directive about, I understand
that this is not the lightning bolt, zeitgeist
best case scenario, but tonight 30,000 people
are going to be arrested and most of them
are going to be my people.
Tomorrow, I want 30,000 prosecutors standing
there to understand that they can either make
this decision right now and be on this side
of history and that.
For the first time, I can remember a long
time, there's actually an urgency, quite like
the NBA where workers are saying, I'm not
going to fly under this banner anymore.
I'm not fucking supporting these people anymore.
I'm certainly not going to let you boss say
that you're a progressive person and tuck
my tail and genuflect.
I'm going to be a problem for you unless things
change.
That is, I think the best place that I can
put my energy right now.
Chris Bevans:
Amen.
Kade Crockford:
I mean, this is definitely a which side are
you on moment, right?
We're seeing, for example, a couple nights
ago in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the same police
department that murdered Jacob Blake by shooting
him seven times in the back because he dared
to get into his own car-
Chris Bevans:
He's not dead, he's not dead.
Kade Crockford:
That's true.
Sorry about that.
Shooting seven times and paralyzing him, excuse
me.
Chris Bevans:
In front of his kids.
Kade Crockford:
Exactly, because he dared to get in his car
has allowed a young, white man, 17 year old
Kyle Rittenhouse who murdered two people in
cold blood in the streets, basically right
in front of the cops, just allowed that kid
to go home the night that he was walking around
the streets with a massive weapon.
This is the system that we're talking about.
I'm curious, Jamila from your perspective,
the work that you do is about movements, right?
It's about movement building, it's about protest,
and there's a very deep history that you study.
I'm wondering what you can share with us,
coming from your knowledge of protest movements,
of racial justice movements and about protest
in general, what do you see happening right
now and how do you contextualize the movement
that we're seeing across the country within
what's going on around the world and within
a historical context?
Jamila Raqib:
Thanks, Kade and thanks everyone.
I'm really glad we're having this conversation.
I'm sorry that it comes in the wake of another
brutal shooting.
I appreciate what Adam said.
This is only one of the cases that we hear
about.
The particularly egregious ones are the ones
that are caught on camera when in fact it's
the system itself that's egregious and a system
that applies the law so unjustly.
I think it's important to keep all of that
in mind.
I think there's so much to celebrate and honor
in this moment.
Clearly, it's a massive display of anger and
rage at a system that has left so many behind
and punished so many, and I think that's all
very positive in terms of what it's done to
raise awareness.
I don't think that's good enough though, right?
I mean, clearly we all agree.
Jamila Raqib:
This is not about raising awareness.
I think we already knew there was a problem.
I think at this point, it's about really...
I think it's not an information problem, right?
This is a power problem, this is about access,
and who has it and who doesn't and who's denied
justice.
I think this is where it is helpful to see
it in the context of other movements, ones
that have actually led to fundamental change
and others that have been large scale mobilizations
that unfortunately fizzle out.
The problem with these large scale mobilizations
and displays of anger is that unfortunately
they're pretty easy to kind of just wait out.
Opponents are really good at that.
They have massive capacity to do that, and
I think that we've seen that in movements
around the world that we've seen sort of how
technology, access to information, even the
cell phone camera of being able to film, stuff
like that.
Jamila Raqib:
It really raises this massive anger and it
shows people that injustice exists, that a
lot of people are really angry about it.
People take to the streets if you will, and
then not much comes of it.
Now, we've seen in this case that we've had
some incremental wins, and so we need to celebrate
those, right?
It's really, really important as a way to
say, we built power here.
We showed that there's a problem, and we've
made these changes in terms of reducing police
presence in schools, in different places,
shifting funding from police departments,
try to increase transparency around these
issues.
Clearly, the problem continues and the problem
is systemic, right?
Just as the problem stems from systems failures
on a number of fronts, not just police brutality,
right?
Jamila Raqib:
Racism is so deeply ingrained.
I mean, if you look at, this is occurring
in the context of, as you said Kade, it's
in the context of a pandemic that is disproportionately
affecting these very communities' access to
healthcare.
We're seeing that this is happening in the
midst of attacks on science, on experts, attacks
on the media and how we're creating a narrative
of what kind of action is allowable in society.
Really, what is the role of the individual
and the citizen when you disagree with the
power of the state, what is allowable?
I think that's all really important to look
at also in the context of a rise in authoritarianism
around the world and here in our country,
what this means for the elections.
I mean, these are all really, really important
things to be thinking about right now to make
sure this is not a momentary expression of
anger, but something that is really, really
fundamental.
Jamila Raqib:
I think this is where it really helps to look
at the historical cases, at the global cases,
what's happening around the world.
A lot of what we're seeing here in this country
are precursors of extreme backsliding to authoritarianism
in a lot of places, either throughout history
or around the world today.
I think a lot of people make the assumption
Germany 1930s analogy, which is sort of helpful,
but I think it's really important to actually
look at the failed cases of where these kinds
of attempts were made and how they were blocked.
Then when they were blocked, they were usually
done spontaneously without much planning and
preparation.
They were usually done as expression of de-legitimizing
whatever kind of attempt was made.
In spite of that, they were sometimes successful.
We need to take it to the next level.
Movements have to be more organized than opponents.
There are a lot of powerful forces that are
working very hard to make sure that nothing
more comes of this than we have already achieved,
and we know what we've achieved is not enough.
Jamila Raqib:
I would say we really, really need to go back
to the drawing board, really strategize here
about what's needed for the community, for
BLM and also for all the other movements that
are simultaneously working on climate, on
immigration reform, on gun reform and on democracy
and elections defense, because all of that
is very, very much related.
The same cops that have become even more militarized
in the context of the past few months are
going to be used against other communities.
That is inevitable.
We've seen a huge spike in access to crowd
control stuff.
I'm sure Kade, you've been watching this.
There's a huge spike in tear gas.
I mean, they can't even keep up with the supply
of tear gas, and that should frighten all
of us.
I just urge us all to kind of see this that
it both stems from multi-system failures and
it will contribute to multi-system failures,
but it's not all dark and dreary.
We know that these systems have been defeated
before, and I just think we need to push for
the next step, celebrate the wins, but keep
going.
Kade Crockford:
Actually on that note, so often these conversations
can turn into kind of just doom piles, piling
doom on doom.
Jamila Raqib:
I didn't help in that regard.
Kade Crockford:
I mean, it's important to talk about the world
as it is as well as to talk about the world
that we want to live in.
I don't think we should be sugar coating any
of these problems, that doesn't help us solve
them.
I want to wrap up this conversation by asking
each of you to reflect for a few minutes on
both the things that are making you the most
afraid right now and the things that are giving
you the most hope because I think oftentimes,
people only kind of aspirationally focus on
hope.
Miriame Kaba, prison abolitionist of our day
says that hope is a discipline, and I firmly
believe that as well.
Hope is crucially important and I want to
end on that note, but I also think it's really
important to actually give voice to our fears
because this is a frightening time and it
doesn't help anybody to just pretend like
it's not.
I'm wondering if you could all share just
a little bit and starting with you, Chris,
about what keeps you up at night these days,
what you're afraid of, what is making you
sad, and then also the things that are giving
you hope and what, what helps you wake up
in the morning and get going?
Chris Bevans:
I'm an optimistic person by nature.
That's just who I am.
Through all of this, I'm trying to just stay
positive because it is heavy.
It's brought our family tighter here.
We're talking about a lot of very deep issues,
our 12 year old daughter, my wife and I. I
don't walk in fear per se, but what concerns
me and what I always keep my eyes open to
is just the ignorant ones that are near me.
We're discovering new signs of people that
have been maybe friends or acquaintances,
colleagues and that they don't know.
Some of them do know, but still ignore, some
just need to be educated.
That lackadaisical attitude, if you don't
want to be educated is dangerous to me, and
that trickles all the way down to law enforcement.
Those are regular civilians that put on a
uniform and we could pass them in a grocery
store, so it's the ignorance that keeps me
up, I'd say that I'm concerned about because
we have to educate.
It's just we have to continue to educate,
to break the systems.
Chris Bevans:
Again, I go back to the money, just follow
the money because they're not going to change
their nature.
We hope that they do and we preach it, not
preach, but we try to educate, but if you
touch the money, that somehow changes the
whole conversation.
I go back to the NBAs, not trying to sidetrack
us, but what they're showing us is that you
can take that same stance in all industry,
all discipline, all corners of business.
What I'm optimistic about is I want to believe
that this younger generations are going to
take the charge and I want to be here for
them to come to for support and guidance.
I might not be on the front lines every night
out there, but we are the generation of, I
remember not having a cell phone and I remember
having a cell phone, so I can talk to my parents
and grandparents and I can also talk to my
12 year old daughter.
I can relate, so I'm optimistic that the younger
generation are fed up and they're going to
band together to really lead the charge.
Chris Bevans:
I want to take some responsibility to say,
we got to support, not just our generation,
not just educating the older generations,
but we have to have a solid foundation for
that younger movement.
I'm not an old head hating on young rappers,
spit your game.
I might not understand what you're saying,
but you know what, I get down with you and
what you're standing for as long as it's not
anything that's derogatory to women, men and
heavy drug related culture.
At your core, are you about this shit?
I'm here, you can lean on me.
Do you need finance?
I can help you get finance.
Do you just need emotional support?
Do you need to talk about how to navigate
through the system?
I know a good brother named Adam.
He knows the law.
It's about us banding together to help the
younger generation.
That's the optimistic sunshine that I like
to have to walk in.
Kade Crockford:
I mean, Generation Z, these Zoomers are something
to behold.
I mean, I've never seen any generation like
them.
Adam, what about you?
What makes you fearful, hopeful?
Adam Foss:
I'm actually inclined to ask you the question.
Your voice is so important and you've taken
over moderator duty and I feel like you haven't
had the space and I kind of just want to yield
my time.
Kade Crockford:
I can answer quickly and then you can maybe
answer as well.
For me, I'm scared of what Jamila said about
the rising authoritarianism in this country
and around the world.
I'm scared about that with the toxic brew
of that, white resentment, the coming economic
depression, which I think is going to exacerbate
those issues of racial capitalism at its worst,
both at the upper end of the spectrum where
you have people like Jeff Bezos and a handful
of other people controlling half the wealth
in the country, and then folks at the bottom
fighting over scraps.
Fred Hampton, I think was probably the most
effective political organizer of his day.
Kade Crockford:
That's why I believe the FBI and the Chicago
Police murdered him because he was not only
saying, but actually building bridges between
black poor people on the South side of Chicago
and white Hicks and Appalachia who were dirt
poor as well and saying, "I understand that
you may think that you're a racist because
you've been taught to hate me to these white
people in Appalachia, but the reality is that
since slavery, since Africans were first brought
here in this country, capitalism has tricked
poor people and working class people to hate
each other."
It's tricked the white man to hate the black
man because that's all you have, right?
If you don't have hatred for the black man,
you have nothing because you're at the bottom
of this pit, if it wasn't for the black man.
Kade Crockford:
Fred Hampton knew that, and he didn't just
talk about it, he actively built relationships
between those groups of people to try to build
a multiracial, anticapitalist movement in
this country.
That was so threatening to the powers that
be that they killed him pretty fast.
He was what, 22, 23 years old when they killed
him.
Sort of like what Chris was saying, I'm terrified
that exacerbating economic inequality is going
to make the appeal of white supremacy to the
masses of white people in this country stronger,
that it's going to strengthen that appeal,
and that's things like climate crisis on top
of that are going to push people to be more
and more desperate and expand that division
and exacerbate that division.
At the same time, I'm hopeful.
Well, I had to say, and like Jamila said,
the cops are armed to the teeth.
They've been ready for this shit.
Somebody in one of those-
Chris Bevans:
They actually feel obligated to use these
new instruments of war psychologically.
It's like, it's provided for us, so we have
to test this out.
We have to try these things out on our own
people, on our civilians.
The psychology of it is just war.
Kade Crockford:
Yeah, it's bananas.
I saw the smart tweet, I forget who said this
a while back, but somebody said, it was when
the migrant caravans showed up at the border
and there were images in the New York Times
of women with their children running across
a dirt patch near the fence, near the border
wall being shot at with tear gas by United
States security forces.
Somebody said, people keep saying that the
Republican party doesn't have a climate plan.
This is their climate plan.
That's it, it's just war.
It's just militarization.
It's just an anti-immigrant, anti-migrant,
xenophobic carnival of violence.
It's the toxic brew of all of that, that makes
me really fearful actually.
I don't even know if I want to have children
as a result of my fears about these things.
At the same time, it is the work that young
people and not just young people, people my
age and older are doing across the country
to not just, again talk about building a multiracial
working class movement, but actually to build
that movement, right?
Kade Crockford:
It is the fact that we saw across this country
after George Floyd was killed.
So many more white people out in the streets.
As Jamila said, I don't think going out into
the streets is going to solve the problem.
We need to have organizing to bring those
people into movements that can actually shift
power systemically in this country, but it
does give me hope to see that compared to
the protest against the killing of Mike Brown,
I was at those protests too.
There were way more white people in the streets
of all ages, but particularly young people
after George Floyd was killed.
That movement, I think I saw something like
10% of the US population attended one of those
protests.
I mean, that's like nothing I've ever seen
in my lifetime, so I'm hopeful that we're
going to start to see the views of people
who care about economic justice, climate justice,
racial justice, and the movements that are
working for those things fighting together
start to have some real power in government
at the local level, at the state level, at
the federal level.
That's what gives me hope.
Chris Bevans:
Thank you, Kade.
Adam Foss:
Yeah.
Needed that, Kade.
Chris Bevans:
That's for real.
Adam Foss:
It's funny as you were talking about it and
thinking about George Floyd and everything
that was happening in those days and watching
it literally in the front row in my apartment,
I chose not to be in the streets for a variety
of reasons, safety being paramount and tied
in with that, my temper, and just the frustration
and the head space that I was in and have
been in around these issues.
This urgency that I felt, Chris and I, I think
we rapped about this a little bit and I have
a few people out here in LA, a few brothers
and sisters who I can talk about this stuff
with.
We live in this weird space where we've had
the privilege of being invited into these
very, very white affluent spaces, whether
it's because of the work that we do or because
of the platforms that we've built, or because
these organizations that we are all a part
of.
Adam Foss:
The urgency of all those folks because we're
literally the only black people that they
know or we're the safest black people that
they know, calling us and being like, help
us, help us, help us.
Every day, hours of our time being spent helping
white people along this journey and white
people who had influence and power, and then
feeling like that urgency just really, really
diminish, and all of a sudden just go away.
When Jacob Blake was shot, I expected sort
of the rising back up of that energy, and
certainly there was a bump, but all of the
corporations that were reaching out to me
because their employees are freaking out,
they didn't pick up the phone yesterday.
They haven't followed through on the commitments
that they made in mid-May about all this stuff
that they were going to do for their employees,
and in fact, began to take that tack that
I think a lot of white folks do, which is
just calm down, wait, we had a meeting, we
had a training.
Adam Foss:
My fear is both
the psychology that maybe this administration,
but ultimately just our society has inbred
in people so that when Ann Coulter tweets
this morning that she wishes this kid is her
president, that she isn't immediately just
fucking arrested and canceled.
I'm not a cancel Coulter person, but Tucker
Carlson saying what he said on the news last
night and not having a group of people to
have the empathy and humanity and be like,
I believe a lot of stuff, but I'm not going
to ride with you on that one.
I'm still a human being and I understand that
politics has gotten in the way, but that is
a fear for me. on the hope side, and I am
not an optimistic person.
I'm a very pessimistic person, but it is a
mechanism of self preservation because when
you're a pessimist, you're either right or
pleasantly surprised.
Like around this urgency piece, I never was
that person that was like, this is the moment.
Adam Foss:
This is the one.
I always just like, I've gotten speeding tickets
before too.
You keep it clean for a few months, but then
soon you're driving faster than you ever were
before.
With that said, I still have optimism around
this power dynamic because what I see in these
cockroaches who are saying the things that
they are based on nothing except for feeling
and emotion.
They have nothing to go on, except the lies
that they've been told.
There's a certain amount of power that I feel
in one, just having empathy for everyone,
for most people, understanding that the manifestation
of the things that are coming out of their
mouth is conditioning, that that was happening
to them without them even knowing it.
Having that power to be like, I'm really sorry
that you don't have Chris Bevins in your life,
that you don't have Kade in your life, that
you don't have Jamila in your life because
you have so much hatred in disbelief.
You are missing out.
We are dope.
Adam Foss:
The power that I feel when I see, I was in
a group discussion.
We've been hosting prosecutors from all over
the country for the last several months.
At first, it was like the choir.
The people were just like, I want to be a
progressive prosecutor, but slowly but surely
as I think people, they've come to that point
where they're like, I'm either going to be
remembered as one of those prosecutors or
someone who has a little bit of time left
in my career and I want to do something.
I was in a room with two white guys from the
Midwest and down South who had been on the
job for 35 years.
In the privacy of our little confidential
chat room, we're just asking questions that
I could never have imagined.
Feeling that transition of power of understanding
that you're actually just afraid and I'm the
antidote, I'm the cure.
I'm saying I as in the collective black people
because the thing that I think about, and
I really want Jamila to close this out.
Adam Foss:
The thing that I think about, and the thing
that must be so like where all this anger
comes from is imagine that you were given
perhaps one of the biggest headstarts in the
history of mankind.
You have been given everything, everything.
They kept us back for 450 years, either physically
in chains as slaves or incarcerated or instructions
that are impossible to get out of, can't get
educated the same way, can't get the same
health care, can't live in the same place.
We have been squished and pressed down and
beaten and brutalized and murdered for centuries,
and yet when you turn around as a white man
in this country, we're still right there.
We still have the ability to shut down all
of the things you enjoy in a night and have
the support of people to do that.
You can still shoot us and beat us down, and
we are still out here having empathy.
I hear people having empathy for Kyle, whatever
the fuck his name is.
I had empathy for Dylan Roof.
The ability to be that beautiful and magnificent
group of people, despite the fact that all
this happens, must be really terrifying to
the group of people who got the biggest headstart,
and I feel sorry for them.
That gives me a ton of hope.
Kade Crockford:
Excellent.
Jamila, you want to close us out with your
fears and your hopes?
Jamila Raqib:
Yeah.
I think I talked a bit about my fears.
By the way, thank you both for sharing or
thank you all for sharing.
I was born in the middle of a really, really
brutal war, so I'm a catastrophist and I think
definitely worst case scenario.
When you tend to talk like that sometimes,
people think you're kind of, I don't know,
some of these scenarios are farfetched and
not really rooted in reality, and we're seeing
actually things are really, really bad and
they can get a lot worse.
I think the danger there though is that I
hear from people even who are sort of sounding
the alarm, because some people think that
things are okay, right?
That somehow there's this inevitability that
either things are going to be okay because
the US is really special, we're exceptional,
we invented democracy, all of this.
Jamila Raqib:
Things will be okay, at least in terms of
the status quo, they can't get much worse.
Then there's another group that basically
says that if the bad thing happens, there's
nothing we can do, right?
We're really powerless in the face of these
overpowering forces, and that's totally normal
to think that.
I mean, people have been beat down for, so
many have pointed out, for centuries.
I think that kind of really resisting this
inevitability thing, we don't know what's
going to happen.
A lot of things are up in the air.
There's been a massive, massive display of
power.
It's not power to achieve fundamental change,
at least power to massively disrupt to make
sure if we don't win, neither will anyone
else, right?
Jamila Raqib:
This is a really, really, in that way, a hopeful
moment in terms of the display of power, also
a dangerous moment in that people feel like
maybe they have nothing to lose.
I think that's a kind of dangerous thing.
I mean, in terms of the more hopeful thing,
I think in terms of the anxiety of this moment,
it's still fundamentally hopeful because people
are reclaiming dignity.
They're saying what's happening is not okay.
A bunch of other people that have been sitting
on the sidelines are suddenly agreeing with
that.
That's, I guess really good.
I think being heard for the first time sometimes
is like kind of reducing this atomization,
everyone being these separate little things
that make collective action impossible.
That's new.
That's amazing.
Jamila Raqib:
I mean, we're seeing largest mobilizations
in our country's history in spite of a pandemic.
Who would have called that one, right?
In the midst of a public health crisis where
people are actually fearing for their own
health, they went out and thought this was
important enough.
I think that's really good.
I think if we take it to the Arab Spring,
which was also this kind of in this initial
days, it was like change is inevitable, right?
People have spoken out.
They cast off the fear that they had for decades,
and they went out and said, we deserve better.
People felt like that was inevitable that
we're going to have lasting change.
Obviously, we didn't see that.
We didn't see that in a number of cases, but
we saw something very special happen there
too.
Jamila Raqib:
I think we're in that moment, that kind of
first days, early days of Arab Spring, where
there was this massive power potential exposed.
We all realize that we at least can raise
the cost of violations.
We can raise them to the point where they're
unbuyable.
We don't have to ask for change, we don't
have to ask for justice, we don't have to
ask for all of these things.
We can actually make sure that we leave you
no choice, but then actually how to get that
is the tricky part.
I just want to say that Khalid Saeed campaign
was also started on police brutality.
It started as getting justice for one person
and it expanded into something that fundamentally
changed, at least in the short term, and then
other obviously unwanted things happened.
Anyway, these things tend to kind of become
very big and very, very important and I guess
in that lies the opportunity and danger.
I guess it's up to us to figure out which
way it goes.
I will remain hopeful because we have no choice.
It's not on us to give up.
It's far too important.
Kade Crockford:
That's right.
We cannot give up, and so I just want to close
this conversation by thanking you all.
This inspired and energized me a lot, and
sharing that, I think one of the ways that
we can remain hopeful is to connect with each
other, right?
I mean, alienation is like a death sentence
in this society.
Chris Bevans:
Exactly.
Kade Crockford:
Thanks to MIT for giving us the opportunity
to speak today.
The last thing I'll say is that I heard this
the other day that Malcolm X said, "We are
not outnumbered, we are outorganized."
Never forget that because that remains a fact
in the year 2020.
Chris Bevans:
I love that.
Thank you, Kade.
Jamila Raqib:
Great.
Thank you so much.
Thanks everyone.
Kade Crockford:
Thanks, everybody
Chris Bevans:
I appreciate everybody.
Kade Crockford:
Thanks everyone.
Pattie Maes:
Thank you.
