Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Leslie cam
Speaker 2: And hello, my name is Ty Sloan,
Speaker 1: And this is season two of the youth elders podcast, creating space for identities, histories, and perspectives across generations.
Speaker 2: This season takes a look at personal stories of coming out, navigating identity and finding home
Speaker 1: While also discussing the impact of institutional spaces and activist movements on the very places we find
Speaker 2: Community.
Speaker 2: This season's episodes are curated and recorded by myself, Thai Sloan, Leslie Lee cam, Naomi bane, bear Bergman and Roma Spencer.
Speaker 2: Most of our recordings were made in Toronto on the traditional territories of the Anishinabek.
Speaker 2: The Holden has shown a and the wind that in treaty territory of the Mississaugas of the credit today's conversation is hosted by Roma Spencer and Iommi bank.
Speaker 2: They're joined by Rania[inaudible] and Leroy nubile.
Speaker 2: You talk about what has changed for them in their work since a surge of support for black activism and organizing, following the murder of George Floyd in May, 2020
Speaker 1: And how they look both to the post and to the future as sources of hope,
Speaker 3: Anti oppression, which shops are fashionable.
Speaker 3: Now it's the newest lolly flavor post to George Floyd organizations and various places, uh, seeking out the services of consultants, working from an anti-oppressive equity and inclusive framework.
Speaker 3: What are you doing now?
Speaker 3: That is different pre George Freud Rania.
Speaker 3: What's different.
Speaker 4: I think, um, you know, first thing I want to say is the pre and post George Floyd moment is a kind of a, um, line of demarcation that exists mostly for whiteness, right?
Speaker 4: For a lot of us that struggle the resistance and the violence is not only made clear in that moment, right?
Speaker 4: That might've been a moment of transformation or an awakening, but for like a larger community of people who are not black for black people, that's the world we always live in.
Speaker 4: So that moment is in a lot of ways, perpetual for a lot of institutions, they're worried about their reputations are worried.
Speaker 4: They'll be accused of being anti-black.
Speaker 4: They're recognizing that a community of people is watching their choices quite closely.
Speaker 4: There's a lot more interest in anti-racism work, whether that interest is genuine, whether it's impactful, I think it remains to be seen.
Speaker 4: I think there's still a lot of ways that organizations are looking to train out problems that you can't train out.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot of focus on things like implicit bias or making it about people's hurt feelings rather than systems that are really deeply not only impacting the material realities and, uh, black life, but are also leading to faster, slow death for black people in communities.
Speaker 4: There's a lot more critical lens that communities of people are watching these trainings.
Speaker 4: We're not going to come in and do a workshop.
Speaker 4: And then you'll use this workshop as a shield to say, oh, well, we had the anti racism training.
Speaker 4: So we can't possibly have any issues going on anymore.
Speaker 4: Or we, we, you know, we worked with Rania, right?
Speaker 4: And I'm like, don't watch I, you speak on my day.
Speaker 4: And first of all, secondly, when I came in there, I said, this is not going to be enough.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 4: Organizations are still trying to transact that work and not recognizing the deep relationships you need to do it.
Speaker 4: Meaningfully.
Speaker 4: I think what's happening now is there's also impatience.
Speaker 4: Like a lot of us have seen this movie before and we just want to know, first of all, where's the money out?
Speaker 4: Where is the transformation out?
Speaker 4: Where is the power sharing ads?
Speaker 4: Where's the transparency out?
Speaker 4: Where is the accountability at?
Speaker 4: And not just the whole, oh, let's do a survey and see how people are feeling.
Speaker 4: It's communities.
Speaker 4: I've been telling you for a long time.
Speaker 4: So I think in a, in a lot of ways, everything has changed and nothing has changed at all.
Speaker 4: Nothing has changed at all in the sense that the sort of default responses are the same, um, things like, oh, we have a problem with anti black racism.
Speaker 4: Let's put out a statement.
Speaker 4: Uh, we have a problem with anti-black racism.
Speaker 4: Let's put a policy in place.
Speaker 4: Let's have a task force, a committee, a round table, a working group, let's have a workshop, always this like singular thing that is supposed to address what is on ongoing reality.
Speaker 4: And it cannot be addressed through any one of those things or even a combination of those things in a temporary way.
Speaker 4: So in a lot of ways that hasn't changed the sort of our default responses to racism, particularly anti-black racism at the institutional level have pretty much remained the same.
Speaker 4: I think everything has changed in the sense that people or communities of people who were previously demanding training are now saying training.
Speaker 4: And this is what we want.
Speaker 4: That it's not enough that these institutions are going to pay us platitudes during black history month are going to put out a statement.
Speaker 4: Then they continue to operate business.
Speaker 4: As usual are going to use the tokenized people from our communities as a way to avoid responsibility.
Speaker 4: There's a lot more that we can see through.
Speaker 4: We owe a lot of that to like, um, both historical and contemporary black organizing around it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But have you found yourself a little busy enough?
Speaker 4: Definitely.
Speaker 4: I think I'm lucky enough to be always busy.
Speaker 4: I'm lucky.
Speaker 4: I don't know capitalism.
Speaker 4: It's a little bit of both.
Speaker 4: I'll give you an example.
Speaker 4: So I usually get a hundred inquiries a month about there.
Speaker 4: I'm able to say yes to less than 10 of those inquiries.
Speaker 4: Usually my whole team is black.
Speaker 4: I don't want to put us through the kind of work cultures we're trying to escape out of.
Speaker 4: I want us to be able to have a good relationship with the work that we do.
Speaker 4: So that's normally before me, right?
Speaker 4: A hundred inquiries a month.
Speaker 4: Lots of them things I'm not even qualified to do or things that are not in my wheelhouse because people are like, oh, Rania, she's blocked.
Speaker 4: She does this.
Speaker 4: Let's just reach out to her.
Speaker 4: Right then came me.
Speaker 4: And in the month of may my team, I had to add two full-time people to my team just to answer the increase.
Speaker 4: So we got 1600 working Greece and 1500 media inquiries in one month, right?
Speaker 4: That's a hundred inquiries a day.
Speaker 4: So it changed drastically.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of interests and a lot of confused people who don't even know what they're asking.
Speaker 4: And a lot of media media requests that are really actually been the most upsetting part of that whole experience.
Speaker 4: 85% of the media requests that I got in the immediate aftermath of the death of our kin, the murder of our kin George Floyd were about what white people should be doing at this moment.
Speaker 4: What is it you think white allies should be talking about?
Speaker 4: What are the steps that white people need to take to end anti-black racism?
Speaker 4: What should white people be doing in this moment?
Speaker 4: How can white people talk to their racist family members?
Speaker 4: And I was like, wow, you really find a way to make this about you.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 4: Um, and it became such a really like indicative of the white centrism that exists even in anti-racism work.
Speaker 4: The first response is, oh, oh yeah, increase awareness.
Speaker 4: Get people to acknowledge it.
Speaker 4: Talk about it.
Speaker 4: People have been reading and reflecting for 10 months.
Speaker 4: Now we're coming up on a year.
Speaker 4: What now?
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 4: So there's a lot for me that is really frustrating about the media requests, centering wait experiences and not what do black communities need right now?
Speaker 4: Uh, what do we need to heal?
Speaker 4: Um, what ha what are black people experiencing in this moment that is beyond drama?
Speaker 4: What has enabled us to see this, uh, this revolutionary moment for what it is, or in a part of an ongoing resistance?
Speaker 4: What are the histories of black resistance?
Speaker 4: There's a framing in media that all of this has been a passive change as opposed to change that has happened because black people have fought and died for it.
Speaker 4: Um, and, and those that we have solidarity with have fought and died for it.
Speaker 4: Not in the same ways, but they've been there.
Speaker 4: I want to like really underline the fact that a lot of the media responses are things like, I'm never going to tell you something that someone hasn't said before, right?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I teach anti racism workshops.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 4: I sometimes teach, works opportunities.
Speaker 4: People had to talk to their racist family members, but I promise you, you can also Google it.
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 4: Like, so there's a, uh, an extractive tendency.
Speaker 4: And that's also what I mean when nothing has changed, right.
Speaker 4: That we'll go, we'll go to black people and black people will give us the answers.
Speaker 4: And yes, we have, we don't have all the answers, but we have most of them.
Speaker 4: But also we told y'all not only me personally.
Speaker 4: I told y'all last year, but every generation of my ancestors who came before has done this work.
Speaker 4: So I've taken no media requests, to be honest for my sanity.
Speaker 4: And also the other side of it is no sense of protection for the people you're going to take and put in front of you are racist readers and viewers, so on and so forth.
Speaker 4: Like you're going to bring me to an audience of people that is not had this conversation.
Speaker 4: And I'm going to deal with death threats on Twitter, not you.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 4: So the cost benefit analysis doesn't even begin to add up.
Speaker 4: And the damage it can possibly do to my communities is just not worth it.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, there's a lot more interest in the conversation, but also it's an interest.
Speaker 4: Like some people are not ready to have like a critical anti-racist education from the lens that I teach it from, because these are people who are still in, I don't see color.
Speaker 4: People would have to do a lot of their own foundation building.
Speaker 4: And self-teaching, so that's generally been my experience over the last year or so, but it's always been my experience doing this work just to a smaller extent or an extent.
Speaker 4: That's not as widespread.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about post George Floyd.
Speaker 3: Give me an a scenario.
Speaker 3: Let's say an organization like buddies in bad times, theater call you in to do some work for them, with regards to looking at their own policies and systems and so on.
Speaker 3: What would that ideal day look like for, for you?
Speaker 4: So the first thing that I'll say is that it's going to look different in every context for an institution like buddy's, for example, yeah.
Speaker 4: You might come in and want to do some diagnostics, right?
Speaker 4: In a community level, through conversations, engagement, listening, listening to historical critiques you've already gotten.
Speaker 4: So we don't go back and ask people to tell us things.
Speaker 4: They've been screaming for years already, again at our convenience now, because we decided we want to listen at this moment.
Speaker 4: Um, uh, and analysis of systems like, uh, you know, an anti-racist anti-oppressive policy review and, uh, rethinking, because buddy's also is a place with a space there's a really strong need for a de-colonial and indigenous sovereignty lens, um, and support.
Speaker 4: So I would work collaboratively with some indigenous educators to make sure that we are, um, aligning our needs and the sort of values and frameworks of our communities and our ways of doing things because we're in a colonized place.
Speaker 4: The other piece around that is that it would look like, like a serious giving up space, serious power sharing, rarely do I come into a space like that and think I'm qualified to do all that work by myself, to be straight about all of this, like, look at the way that I look right.
Speaker 4: I have shade privilege in black communities.
Speaker 4: I have phenotype privilege in black communities.
Speaker 4: Feature is in privileges me more broadly in the world.
Speaker 4: My education privileges me broadly in the world, but the black people who are not always getting invited, we're not getting 1500 emails a month who definitely whose experiences and perspectives are valuable.
Speaker 4: So that would be an opportunity to bring in other voices, not this idea that they're going to hire me and I'm going to fix everything.
Speaker 4: Um, and then for that to be a relationship based approach and not a transactional approach, I hate how much requests for proposals.
Speaker 4: There are right now, a black, you know, our artists or educator organizer have to sit there and do all this unpaid work.
Speaker 4: You spend like two days putting together a proposal three days, you got to get samples of your work.
Speaker 4: You lay out all your best ideas.
Speaker 4: And then the institution decides to hire the cheapest consultant.
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 4: So to me, it looks like finding the right person for your context and being open to the fact that you might reach out to me and either you or me might realize I'm not the right person for this context or this space.
Speaker 4: And recognizing that when we come in to do this work, we leverage our personal relationships.
Speaker 4: And so that transparency and respect are non-negotiable when I come into a space like that, I don't only like put my energy on the line, but I put the relationships that I have in community on the line, right?
Speaker 4: So there's, there needs to be a recognition of that and institutional level.
Speaker 4: And then also like a buy-in that I'm not going to come in and train your junior staff.
Speaker 4: And your board is not going to care.
Speaker 4: Your senior leadership is not going to care.
Speaker 4: And it can't be this idea of inclusion or come as inclusion has come, as we are not come as you are.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 4: Like if you can come as we are, we are, will include you.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 4: But sometimes communities don't want to be included in the it nonsense.
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 4: Sometimes it makes absolutely no sense for them.
Speaker 4: So flexibility, openness resources, a willingness to account and apologize, um, and ability to say we made a critical error.
Speaker 4: We made a series of critical errors.
Speaker 4: We operated in ways that are harmful and then an ability also to engage in reparation.
Speaker 4: So almost all of my clients, I insist on resources for reparation.
Speaker 4: Sometimes it looks like cutting a check to someone, right?
Speaker 4: Like an ability to do that is important at this point.
Speaker 5: Thank you for turning it over.
Speaker 5: So Leroy, you have been doing activism and community organizing for how many years now?
Speaker 6: Um, since I was, I would say about 20 years,
Speaker 5: 20 years.
Speaker 5: So I want to know from when you started organizing to where we see organizing and activism going right now, what shifts has happened, if there have been major shifts in this era of activism, post George Floyd, what do you see the difference really being
Speaker 6: Well, when I was young, I always wanted to be part of a time where there would be a black liberation movement that felt like it has the momentum and power of the movement for black lives.
Speaker 6: And around 2015, I really noticed that the prominence, um, of the discussion around abolition and the discussion around police brutality really was taken to another level by black organizers and pushed to the forefront.
Speaker 6: Um, again, and that's been a really powerful thing to be a part of and post George Floyd.
Speaker 6: I think that there's a resurgence, like people have been talking about of interests in, um, black organizing and finding abolitionists solutions, um, finding transformative solutions.
Speaker 6: But there's also a lot of, um, surface level engagement and performative engagement in so far as the reputational risk aspect, where companies are doing performative things to address anti-black racism on a surface level.
Speaker 6: And, um, Naomi and I do a black liberation comic book club for youth.
Speaker 6: And we were just in session with them right before this call.
Speaker 6: And they were even calling it out at 12 and 13 years old, talking about how, um, you know, companies are saying, okay, uh, we recognize that there's problems with anti-black racism.
Speaker 6: We are going to stop locking up our black hair products.
Speaker 6: Um, so, um, and like one people are admitting that that's their practice, that they have these severe anti-black racist practices.
Speaker 6: And to, that's not what we're asking for.
Speaker 6: We're not asking for that.
Speaker 6: We're asking for an end to police brutality, we're demanding that black people stop being killed by police.
Speaker 6: We are demanding that black people stop being incarcerated at alarming rates.
Speaker 6: We're demanding real solutions in terms of allowing communities to self-direct education.
Speaker 6: So there's also a lot of that performative engagement happening.
Speaker 5: I think he touched on something that was really important.
Speaker 5: I thank you for bringing that up, which is our children and the way that they interact with the world around them and even understanding these concepts.
Speaker 5: Um, what has the shift been from, let's say in 2016, to when we first started introducing freedom school and these concepts, how have you seen, uh, kids in youth understands these movements and what has been their response to these things?
Speaker 6: Well, I think that kids and youth black kids and black youth always have been engaging in creative ways, very differently from adults or people who, um, grew up when I did.
Speaker 6: And I think the difference is that a lot of times this is so important, but we fight against systems.
Speaker 6: Um, we fight against systems for our survival.
Speaker 6: We fight it against systems because they're detrimental to our existence.
Speaker 6: And there is ways that systems respond.
Speaker 6: So they respond with the consultations.
Speaker 6: They respond with prove anti-black racism exists.
Speaker 6: They respond with, okay, we'll give mandatory anti-racism training to our staff.
Speaker 6: Uh, they respond like that.
Speaker 6: And young people have, um, watched black activism unfold over decades in this country and have moved from not only fighting against systems, but creating parallel spaces and new spaces where blackness is centered.
Speaker 6: So for example, ballroom scene is creating a space where there isn't going to be a fight with the system for recognition of our humanity and our beauty and our brilliance.
Speaker 6: There's just going to be a space where black trans women are.
Speaker 6: It they're at the center.
Speaker 6: They are, you know, the most beautiful and everybody else who would like to engage is going to be part of that space.
Speaker 6: It's by black and trans people for black and trans people.
Speaker 6: And I think those are the type of activism that are so energizing because we really just get to create the spaces that we see and love and value, um, blacks, blackness within those spaces.
Speaker 6: So, um, freedom schools and another example, it's important for us to continue to engage within the system because many of our young people don't have a choice about whether to be there, whether to go to school.
Speaker 6: Um, so we'll never turn our backs and not engage with the system, but at the same time, we can be energized by creating solutions outside of it and not having to follow the frameworks and policies of institutions that are harmful and violent to black people.
Speaker 5: Thank you for that.
Speaker 5: Um, there's so many things that you just touched on from, uh, black libertarian movements, like ballroom and the reclaiming of space, the reclaiming of not having to look to the mainstream or into white, uh, colonized spaces for our freedom or what we're doing inside of the school systems with a lot of our black youth, what do you think a decolonized, uh, school system could look like as we're continuing to push back and fight for these things?
Speaker 5: How do you see education playing a role in where we are going with activism right now?
Speaker 5: And how was that being formed in the class?
Speaker 6: Well, I think it's really important that, um, institutions who are harming black children acknowledge that there is no need to invent a way to engage black youth.
Speaker 6: That's safe.
Speaker 6: That honors them, that is creative because these spaces already exist in the community all over the place.
Speaker 6: There's tons of black community organizations that engage, um, black children through the arts, um, through different movements based practices, um, in like so many different ways.
Speaker 6: And there just needs to be an acknowledgement that that's happening.
Speaker 6: What are these tenets of black liberatory education that community organizations are using?
Speaker 6: For example, intersectionality, land-based learning, uh, transformative justice, disability justice, bringing the family in and respecting parents and family as the first educators of black children approaching black families and parents with love and respect.
Speaker 6: So there are definitely models out there in the community for how to engage.
Speaker 6: And I think it's just a matter of how much the school system is willing to observe humbly and incorporate some of those tenants.
Speaker 6: And I also think that ultimately it's a movement for self-determination and education and that black parents should have control of what our kids are learning and that, um, the most marginalized black families should be centered within that as well, too.
Speaker 6: So I love to see just any initiative of community self-determined education.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for that.
Speaker 5: I'm going to hand it off to Roma right now.
Speaker 3: So Rania black lives matter movement has made white supremacy, a national narrative, pretty George Floyd, white supremacy was spoken in tempered tunes.
Speaker 3: How have you pivoted around this and anti systemic racism without having to speak from a place of caution, not wanting to ruffle feathers?
Speaker 3: Or were you ever in that position around here?
Speaker 3: No,
Speaker 4: I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't know that any of us who like live in the world in the bodies we live in, or, you know, especially those of us who are artists and who are organizers and who are educators just being in a space ruffles feathers, right?
Speaker 4: Just being in a space where your hair, the way you want to wear your hair, speaking in the way that you speak, you ruffle feathers, you're unprofessional, your, you sound educated.
Speaker 4: You're making people uncomfortable.
Speaker 4: People feel unsafe around you.
Speaker 4: You're aggressive.
Speaker 4: You have an attitude problem.
Speaker 4: And I have an attitude problem before I even said anything by virtue of the body that I walked into the room with, let alone demanding to be treated with any level of respect.
Speaker 4: So I learned a long time ago that there is a level of this that you do subconsciously and is part of protecting yourself in his face.
Speaker 4: And there's a level of it that is about centering white feelings and white comfort over the actual safety of people and going into spaces that don't have a good distinction between discomfort and harm.
Speaker 4: They expect their own comfort, even at the expense of your harm.
Speaker 4: So I think a long time ago, I just made my peace with saying what I wanted to say and naming white supremacy for what it is I think what's happening right now is yes, there's an openness about explicitly talking about white supremacy, but it's still thinking of white supremacy as something that white supremacists specifically being overt, Neo Nazi, KKK white power affiliated folks do, but can't see the white supremacist ways and thinking that, you know, it's it a community's job to let you know what's wrong with your institution, or can't see the white centric ways in which they say, well, no, we just pick the art on based on how good the art was, this idea of merit.
Speaker 4: I can't see the white supremacy in, at their kitchen table.
Speaker 4: So yeah, people are more openly talking about white supremacy.
Speaker 4: I think it's trendy.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of the people talking about white supremacy are white supremacists themselves.
Speaker 4: And can't see the ways in which, you know, white supremacy shows up in their practice and the space between them and the work that they do in the institutions they uphold, it's the water that we were in and that some of us are struggling to, to survive it.
Speaker 4: And for other people it's the perfect climate.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 4: And can't see it because it's so normalized.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I don't think that I have any level of caution any more than I normally do.
Speaker 4: I think because I've been an organizer for so long and because I'm a femme, people feel a certain type of entitlement to like speak to me a certain way or to do threaten me or feel that I'm going to make myself smaller.
Speaker 4: So I've always had really good safety planning.
Speaker 4: I've been an organizer now for 16 years, I've just learned to like tread the water in the ways that I need to, I've learned to keep myself safe and have safety planning.
Speaker 4: You know, I organized in a frontline capacity with sex workers, um, with people escaping, you know, intimate partner violence.
Speaker 4: So I learned a lot from my community about keeping myself safe.
Speaker 4: So I have strategies.
Speaker 4: I have support networks, but generally speaking, I don't think they have, I have any more caution.
Speaker 4: Do I get more hate?
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 4: Do I get explicit threats?
Speaker 4: Always.
Speaker 4: It's always been a part of my work.
Speaker 4: And I now just have better systems and ways of dealing with keeping myself safe and a lot better safety planning and a lot better emotional and community interventions.
Speaker 4: I think a lot of people have fallen into a false sense of safety around explicitly talking about white supremacy.
Speaker 4: What we forget to understand is these institutions deal in liberation only as theory.
Speaker 4: They don't know what it looks like in practice.
Speaker 4: So any actions that are tangible towards black freedom feel like a threat to the institution.
Speaker 4: So while it can talk about black freedom in a lot of ways, when it comes to doing the work, it punishes black people for those things.
Speaker 4: So a lot of people are feeling like, yeah, I can call out anti-black racism at my work.
Speaker 4: Now there's a space for that.
Speaker 4: And they do.
Speaker 4: And they experienced consequences, right?
Speaker 4: The consequences black people always experienced for addressing racism in their lives.
Speaker 4: It's created a false sense of safety that is not actually safe for black people, but this idea that you can talk to us, you can tell us what's wrong.
Speaker 4: We want to work with black communities and the punishment, and that might not be as swift or direct, but these institutions pretty much only deal in punishment, right?
Speaker 4: That I can come to a space and I can say, Hey, if you're going to work with me, I'm an abolitionist.
Speaker 4: Which means when I look at your policies, I'm literally going to build systems in the policies for divesting, from policing, for not calling the police.
Speaker 4: It means if you have a program that is presented in conjunction with the police Squire, that's not happening anymore.
Speaker 4: Otherwise I'm not going to be in this space.
Speaker 4: And so that exposes you to like real harm and vitriol because people are attached to their institutions, are attached to the things that keep them safe in a culture of white supremacy, and can't understand the ways in which they need to divest from those spaces.
Speaker 4: So yeah, people talk about white supremacy, but people deal in white supremacy every single day.
Speaker 4: And we forget that we still live in a world where anti-black racism is still the most accessible currency of white supremacy.
Speaker 4: So everybody deals in it and that it's not just the black people versus white people think that every community of people is deeply invested in anti-black racism and anti-blackness.
Speaker 4: And so we're navigating spaces where people who claim to be allies, um, will trade in your dehumanization if it means greater access for them and a system that rewards them for it.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, I don't know that I, I tread any differently than I always have.
Speaker 4: I just know that I'm way more weary of anybody who proclaims their politics, just as something they articulate.
Speaker 4: In words, I saw a tweet the other day that was like, don't tweet, support black women tonight and talk over me in the zoom meeting tomorrow.
Speaker 4: And then first thing, when we're working tomorrow, you're going to talk over me in a zoom meeting, right?
Speaker 4: You're not.
Speaker 4: So you're disrespecting you right now.
Speaker 4: The same people who talked to me, who talk a particular political game, and can't actually back up those politics with the ways they treat actual black people in their lives, not random strangers on the internet, so I'm jaded and weary, but I'm also, I also know freedom is, and is a constant struggle.
Speaker 4: And liberation is an achievable outcome that hasn't changed for me either, but I'm just looking upon everybody with a lot of suspicion
Speaker 3: And Naomi, Hey,
Speaker 5: Hey friends.
Speaker 5: One thing that is always very interesting for me is that when we look at a lot of these movements and when we start talking about love, these moments, it is often talked about from an Americanized point of view.
Speaker 5: Even in this conversation, we approached it from the perspective of what happens after George Floyd.
Speaker 5: Um, one thing I do know is that while George Floyd was happening in Canada, we had our own story happening as well, once it came to Regis.
Speaker 5: Um, so, and it is often believed that, you know, here in Canada, we don't experience the same racism.
Speaker 5: We don't have the same issues that America does.
Speaker 5: Um, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the myth of the great free north.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 6: A lot of times when this conversation comes up, um, about comparing us to the United States, um, especially, uh, in the area of police brutality, I feel that it's so bizarre because it's just such a strange moral compass to look at a place where black people are killed by police every, what was it, eight to 28 to 28 hours or something like that, and then decide based on that moral compass, whether or not you have a problem.
Speaker 6: And I think that even without looking at that, considering that as a moral compass, Canada just clearly does have an urgent and out of control issue with police brutality.
Speaker 6: And I think that, um, the myth of the great free north is, um, what contributes to the ongoing eraser of black activism in Canada.
Speaker 6: So Canada has its own history of enslavement, its own histories of segregation, its own, um, present realities of incarnations of enslavement and police brutality.
Speaker 6: But yet when we ask youth about what they learn about blackness in school, they tell us that they learn nothing or they learn about Martin Luther king and Rosa parks, or if it is about Canada, they learn about the underground railroad.
Speaker 6: And I think that this is really deliberate because it means that, um, in Canada, we could pretend white people could pretend that, um, this was the safe Haven and this is not the place that has its own shady history and its own shady ways of continuing to operate.
Speaker 6: Um, and the stories of people like Chloe Cooley, like Maddie, Joseph Angelique, those stories will just be erased.
Speaker 6: And I think it's also very connected to, um, to now, because if we erase those histories activism, then we won't be aware of how to resist.
Speaker 6: So for example, um, black action defense committee was very active in fighting against police brutality in the 1990s within the education system.
Speaker 6: And what kinds of things were they offered?
Speaker 6: Um, they were offered free anti-black, uh, they were offered anti-black racism training for every level of staff within the TDSB within the board.
Speaker 6: That's the same thing that's being offered to activists now.
Speaker 6: Um, you know, how many decades later, so we need to be aware of these histories of resistance so that we can avoid the same pitfalls.
Speaker 6: If those histories of resistance continue to be erase, it makes progress very challenging.
Speaker 6: In 2008, um, we were told that the Afrocentric alternative school is going to open, and this is the first public Afrocentric school that's going to open in Canada's history.
Speaker 6: That's not true.
Speaker 6: Black people have been fighting for, um, a black focus public school for decades and have achieved that many times over in the seventies.
Speaker 6: There was programs that were implemented.
Speaker 6: So it's so important that we fight back against this constant eraser and that stories like, um, resistance in Africville are really pushed to the forefront.
Speaker 6: This is one of the things that, um, freedom school really wants to focus on is what are our histories of black resistance here in Toronto, here in Canada and in the places that we're from the global diaspora as well, those places that were connected to
Speaker 5: You bring up such an important thing.
Speaker 5: When you talk about the anti-black racism that we face here in Canada, um, as I travel and as I go to different places, people are often so surprised when I tell them that yeah, there's racism in Canada.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 5: There's police brutality in Canada.
Speaker 5: We are not safe and we are all affected by this no matter where we are.
Speaker 5: Um, so I thank you for touching on that.
Speaker 5: Um, and I thank you for coming up with some of those solutions of how we resist these things and it's forthcoming and how we fight back against police.
Speaker 5: Um, what do you think the future of activism holds in Canada?
Speaker 5: Moving forward, looking to the future, looking to a brighter future, where our kids are growing up, where kids are able to take on this role, uh, what are your hopes for what activism looks like after George Floyd, after whoever the next case is going to be?
Speaker 5: What is your ideal world looking like?
Speaker 6: Well, I think, or kids are already so involved in activism.
Speaker 6: I feel like, unfortunately we're probably never going to see a world, um, in our lifetime or theirs where there isn't a need to resist against anti-black racism, but I hope that, um, and like I see with this next generation that, um, they're so confident in expressing who they are in terms of intersectionality, um, the movement for black lives.
Speaker 6: Wasn't the first movement to be led by black and trans people by any means.
Speaker 6: I think that anytime that there's been black liberation movements or black resistance movements, it's always been and trans people at the forefront of those movements.
Speaker 6: Um, black, CIS women, black people, black trans people at the forefront, but in this movement, people were no longer comfortable with putting that to the side or saying that, okay, we're going to focus on, um, CIS male black experiences now because we need to center that, um, people aren't willing to put up with that anymore and people are bringing more of their whole selves to activism.
Speaker 6: Um, and I feel like that's really important and beautiful to see.
Speaker 6: And I feel like our young people are like that even more they're insisting on bringing every part of them to a space.
Speaker 6: And they are also, um, very, just so informed, so brilliant and having some of those transformative justice solutions.
Speaker 6: So thinking outside the box in terms of, um, abolition doesn't mean that instead of having prisons, we have, um, you know, um, bracelets that people wear at home, that it means that we need whole new solutions and we can look into our histories to find those solutions of how to reduce harm and violence, um, that are not punitive.
Speaker 5: Thank you for also saying that that was something that you just sparked in my head is the intersectionality of activism.
Speaker 5: I feel like when you say people are no longer having to hide who they are to be on these front lines, um, that is super important as well.
Speaker 5: But I feel like looking at movements like BLM, looking at things like this, a lot of resistance has come about with these conversations, still trying to exclude, uh, folks, trans folks, um, disabled folks.
Speaker 5: Can you also touch a little bit on the intersectionality of activism for the future and why that is so important?
Speaker 6: Well, it's important because the movement for black lives was founded by black women, black women, but just as quickly as it started, we then, um, so quickly had a need to say all black lives matter and a need to say trans lives matter because although we may be moving from a certain intersectional standpoint, the media is still not interested in the survival of black trans people.
Speaker 6: So things are always that focus is always going to be recentering black, CIS men, if anybody.
Speaker 6: So there's just a constant need for us to look at intersectionality and look at whether those of us who are most marginalized in the community are actually having our voices listened to.
Speaker 6: And whether, you know, um, like Rania was talking about before, it's like people who have light-skinned privilege, voices will be prioritized within the movement.
Speaker 6: People who are cisgendered, um, will be prioritized within the movement.
Speaker 6: So we have to be vigilant in ourselves to, to make sure that, um, space and power is being shared as well.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much Roma.
Speaker 3: And this is something I think, um, both Leroy and, um, and Rania could chime in on.
Speaker 3: Um, I think, uh, Leroy has touched on it to bring Ronnie in as well.
Speaker 3: Would we ever reach the future without having to continuously be a watch dog for Reese?
Speaker 3: I mean, in other words, would your work ever become redundant?
Speaker 4: I mean, that's, that's the goal.
Speaker 4: I don't want to, whatever work we don't do, we leave for our children around this.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 4: And I think for me, when I became a parent, it became the future became less abstract.
Speaker 4: It was like right in front of me asking me for apple juice.
Speaker 4: Like it wasn't this maybe time.
Speaker 4: So I think definitely there, we will get to freedom.
Speaker 4: I don't know that I'll see it in my lifetime.
Speaker 4: We have to acknowledge that helps us feel less heavy, is that our resistance as possible because of the resistance of those who came before us.
Speaker 4: And what we do now is we build a stronger foundation for the resistance that comes after us.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 4: We have taken our freedom by our own hands, literally and figuratively time and time again.
Speaker 4: Um, and to me, that's the inevitable trajectory of black life is towards our own freedom.
Speaker 4: So exactly a Leroy many times over.
Speaker 4: So we've done this already.
Speaker 4: We know how to do this.
Speaker 4: Um, and it's freedom is an iterative thing.
Speaker 4: It isn't a destination we arrive at and we remain there.
Speaker 4: It is something we struggle for every day and constantly, um, it's just softening that struggle and not making it the kind of space where we have to martyr ourselves to get these wins, um, to build a foundation for the generation that comes after us.
Speaker 4: I don't want my kids and their children to have to be doing anti-racism training.
Speaker 4: Honestly, people sometimes call me obsessed with race.
Speaker 4: And I say, listen, I would rather never talk about race, but it's not an option because it defines so much of my life.
Speaker 4: So that I would like for that to be the place that we get to that black people are able to just live full lives in which we're not defined against a backdrop of whiteness as the measure.
Speaker 4: So I know we'll get there.
Speaker 4: It's just, I want to do my part in it so that our future generations have it a little bit easier, but I know that freedom is coming.
Speaker 3: Freedom is coming.
Speaker 3: Um, Leroy, how do you feel about that?
Speaker 3: Do you think that there will be a time, you know, future when we don't have to think about, you know, policy?
Speaker 3: No worries
Speaker 6: In a war lifetime?
Speaker 6: I don't think so, but I do think that whenever I hear, um, young black people open their mouth and speak, I just feel like all power over the society should be relinquished to them.
Speaker 3: I am hopeful that optimism came to me post George Floyd.
Speaker 3: When I saw in the middle of a pandemic, we were told to isolated, separate, pointy, and stay at home and post job Floyd people took to the streets.
Speaker 3: They, they disbanded that whole notion of isolation.
Speaker 3: People took the sheet mask or without class to say enough is enough.
Speaker 3: Black lives matter all over the world.
Speaker 3: There is some kind of optimism.
Speaker 3: I feel that, you know, um, in time to come may not be in, you know, in my, in my time because I mean, I am approaching my sixth decade in a year's time.
Speaker 3: So maybe, you know, it may not happen in the next 40 years, but I know that someday we don't have to, or we don't feel the need to continuously be a watchdog or police to our race.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Um, I personally think that the more things change, the more it remains the same and that black lives movement stands on the, on the shoulders of, of the black action defense of the seventies and eighties in Toronto, we must continue to be a Sentinel for our Reese and our wellbeing.
Speaker 3: I call into existence, such people sins as Charlie Roche.
Speaker 3: Um, there's another guy, a Jamaican guy whose name is feeling me.
Speaker 3: That's the man Douglas.
Speaker 3: I want to call into existence.
Speaker 3: These ancestors today, as we speak about, um, black lives matter and his interventions, I would like to thank very much today.
Speaker 3: Our guest Rania, Majima Leroy Newbold, and my cohost being Naomi, do you have any parting words for us today?
Speaker 5: I just want to say thank you to everyone for this amazing conversation.
Speaker 5: As I look to the future nature of what activism holds this conversation is going to be close to my heart.
Speaker 5: I'm going to hold the hope that, you know, the youth, the children are not going to have to fight as hard as the generation before them.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the youth elders podcast.
Speaker 1: A big thanks goes to our sound editing team.
Speaker 1: Denato heparin and M Lovells with support from Maddie bowtie sta
Speaker 2: The youth elders podcast is produced by buddies and bad times theater and is funded in part by the theaters community and education partner.
Speaker 2: Ady bay.