This summer has brought us the devastating reversal of Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction—but also something that feels a bit more like justice in the case of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned amid sexual harassment charges. With another trial about to begin for R. Kelly, accused of abusing women and girls over two decades, it’s clear that the Me Too movement continues to shape our culture in profound, and hard to simplify, ways.

Against that backdrop, there was no one Brittany Packnett Cunningham wanted to talk to more for her season-finale episode of UNDISTRACTED than Tarana Burke, the founder of Me Too. They sat down to discuss the movement’s journey—and Burke’s own—ahead of the upcoming publication of her memoir, Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement. (Trigger warning: This episode discusses sexual assault.)

“ME TOO HAS BEEN MISUNDERSTOOD”

Highlights of the episode include:

Burke on what people need to know about Me Too: “Me Too, and then the #MeToo movement literally since the day it went viral, has been misunderstood…. I really need people to understand why the work is important. I want people to be connected to just how deeply personal it was.”

Burke on the power of survival: “Every day that I wake up and I am able to function and move through life—even if I’m not doing anything that people think is particularly phenomenal—the act of surviving is powerful in and of itself…. People don’t understand that the violence we experience is akin to death. It is a killing of your spirit and your soul in a way that is very hard to reclaim…. And so survival is a big deal.”

Burke on how Black women get left behind: “When #MeToo went viral, you had white women lifted. And when Black Lives Matter had its moment, you had Black men lifted. Black women—who are the [leaders of] both of those movements—fell by the wayside…. It’s a classic case of Black women getting lost.”

Burke on what was missing when #MeToo went viral: “What you didn’t see were resources…that said, ‘We have to do something to make sure that we don’t live in a world where 12 million people can respond to a hashtag saying they also experienced this violence in 24 hours. That shouldn’t happen.’”

“We didn’t see people, you know, billionaires opening their pockets, saying, ‘What kind of programs can we do? How can we shift this?’ That just didn’t happen. We didn’t see massive legislation.”

“That’s really what the work is about: It’s about making sure survivors have what they need to heal, and gathering as many people as we can in this movement to interrupt and end [sexual violence]…. That’s exactly where we started, and where I stay.”

The Olympics is always a contrast of highs and lows, but the lows at this year’s Tokyo Games have been epic. First there was the controversial choice to hold the Olympics during a pandemic—and on top of that there was Sha’Carri Richardson’s disqualification, a ban on Black swimmers’ Soul Caps, and backlash against Simone Biles for prioritizing her mental health. All within the first 10 days!

So: Can these “cursed Olympics” be saved? Should they be? To find out, Brittany Packnett Cunningham sat down with sports journalist Jemele Hill, host of the podcast “Jemele Hill Is Unbothered” and a contributing writer at The Atlantic, this week on UNDISTRACTED.

“THESE TWO WOMEN HAVE SAID: ‘I CHOOSE ME OVER YOUR ENTERTAINMENT.’”

Packnett Cunningham and Hill got into everything about this year’s complicated games—from the message the Olympics sends to Black women athletes to exactly why the Games trail the rest of the sports world on equity issues. Highlights include:

Hill on Simone Biles’s and Naomi Osaka’s choice to prioritize their mental health: “What’s really bothering people when they are reacting so vehemently and angrily toward what they’ve done, is the fact that these two women have said, ‘I choose me over your entertainment, over your ability to watch me perform.’”

Hill on the hypocrisy of Sha’Carri Richardson’s disqualification for marijuana while Alen Hadzic, the U.S. fencer accused of sexual assault, is in Tokyo: “Sha’Carri Richardson is not in the Olympics, but there’s an Olympic fencer who right now is under investigation for multiple sexual assault allegations—multiple—and was allowed to compete. His own team went to the Olympic committee and said, ‘We do not want this guy around us.’”

“Instead, they came up with a ‘safety plan’…. You know that he’s dangerous enough that you need to develop a safety plan, but good enough to represent the country? That math ain’t mathing.”

Hill on the absence of childcare at the Olympics: “The one thing that allows the Olympic committee…to get away with basically not treating Olympic athletes with kind of basic dignity is the fact that we only pay attention every four years. Shame works…I have a feeling if there were just more eyes and more awareness…that they would not be allowed to get away with what they get away with.”

Hill on whether there’s hope for the Olympics despite its history of racism and sexism: “We’re a very segregated society, but when you love the same team, you root for the same athletes, it tends to knock down walls. And so, because of that, I still feel like there’s a lot of hope…what Naomi Osaka is able to do with bringing this conversation about mental health even more into focus. Simone Biles, same thing. Despite the fact they will receive criticisms, I still think it’s doing way more good than harm.”

While the discovery of mass graves at former residential schools in Canada has drawn attention to the ongoing violence toward Indigenous communities in North America, these crimes—and many others—have already been well documented. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland has called violence against Indigenous people in general a “crisis,” and the stats show how vulnerable women in particular are: 80 percent of Indigenous women in the United States have experienced some form of violence.

What will it take to turn this moment of awareness into action? To find out, this week on UNDISTRACTED Brittany Packnett Cunningham sat down with award-winning Cree journalist Connie Walker to talk about the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Host of the Gimlet Media podcast “Stolen: The Search for Jermain,” Walker is from the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan and has spent decades telling the stories of Native communities. As an investigative reporter at Canada’s CBC News, she hosted the podcasts “Finding Cleo” and “Who Killed Alberta Williams?”

Packnett Cunningham and Walker broke down the long history of violence toward Indigenous communities, and what the growing awareness of the issue could mean. Highlights of their conversation:

Walker on how this current news cycle feels different: “We’ve been trying to kind of raise this alarm for so long…Now when people actually finally seem to be understanding the magnitude of what Indigenous people have experienced and they’re feeling the weight of it in the way that we have felt it for our entire lives, it kind of takes my breath away and makes me feel the weight of it all over again.”

Walker on why she tells the stories of Native women: “There’s this long history of people coming into our communities and taking our stories and portraying us in ways that reinforce terrible stereotypes about who we are or the lives we lead. And so I really want to make space for people to understand and empathize with the human beings at the heart of these stories.”

Walker on why Indigenous women are so often the target of violent crime and why so many cases involving them go unsolved: “We did a database at CBC where we tried to document as many unsolved cases as we could of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada…So many of them had been in the child welfare system at some point in their lives. So many of them had struggled with some kind of form of addiction. So many of them had experienced childhood sexual abuse. So many of them had family members who are residential school survivors. If you spend any time looking at this crisis, it does not take much investigation to unearth the bigger themes that are at play.”

And what Walker wants people to know: “I am so lucky to be an Indigenous woman. And I come from an incredible family and community that is rich and full of strength and laughter and beauty and culture…Along with raising awareness of the violence that we experience, we also need to make space to showcase the diversity in our communities.”

These days the news is filled with Republicans ranting about the dangers of Critical Race Theory (CRT). And multiple states have introduced legislation to ban its teaching—as well as topics of racism—in schools.

What is CRT and why are state legislatures so focused on doing away with it? This week on UNDISTRACTED, Brittany Packnett Cunningham sat down with the legal scholar who helped pioneer CRT, Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, to find out.

You won’t want to miss their conversation—featuring an entire primer on the issue. “Our side wants to tell the truth to set us free,” Crenshaw says. “The other side wants to bury the truth to sustain their access to power and dominance over the rest of us.”

Co-founder of the African American Policy Forum, Professor Crenshaw is on the faculty at UCLA Law and Columbia Law School. In addition to her groundbreaking work on CRT, she also coined the term “intersectionality” over 30 years ago—making her, as Packnett Cunningham explains, “the godmother” of UNDISTRACTED, our intersectional feminist podcast.

The military’s failure to address sexual assault is an ongoing and widely recognized problem: Of the estimated 20,000 sexual assaults against service members in 2018 (the most recent numbers from the Department of Defense), only about 200 ended in conviction. And the problem has actually gotten worse, with rates of prosecution and conviction going down over the last few years.

Why is it so hard to do right by military survivors? And how can we make the armed forces do better? Brittany Packnett Cunningham sat down with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand this week on UNDISTRACTED to talk about the New York Democrat’s 10-year campaign to ensure more accountability for military sexual assault—and why justice may finally be on the horizon. (Trigger warning: This episode discusses sexual assault.)

A candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Senator Gillibrand has represented New York since 2009. And after years of pushing her colleagues on the issue, she now has bipartisan support for the Military Justice Improvement and Increasing Prevention Act, which aims, among other reforms, to move sexual assault cases out of the military’s “chain of command” and over to independent prosecutors.

Packnett Cunningham and Gillibrand dug into why the military’s prosecution of sexual assault cases has worsened, what needs to change, and, of course, whether the senator will run for president again. Highlights of their conversation:

Sen. Gillibrand on what needs to change: “We have done a terrible job in actually prosecuting these cases. The percentage of cases moving towards prosecution is going down. The percentage of cases that are ending in conviction is going down. And so under no measurable is the military getting this right. And so we’ve been asking to take the decision making of whether to prosecute these crimes out of the chain of command and give it to trained military prosecutors who are unbiased and professionalized.”

Sen. Gillibrand on how the current system is biased: “We know there’s bias in which cases go forward on sexual assault. And we know there’s bias in prosecution and punishment of Black and brown service members. They’re up to 2.6 times [more likely] to be punished than a white service member. So you need this reform for both plaintiffs’ rights and defendants’ rights—to fix the bias in sexual assault cases and fix the bias against Black and brown service members.”

Sen. Gillibrand on the urgent need for justice: “When I sit down with service members who have been brutally raped and then denied justice by either being disbelieved or being directly retaliated against, it truly breaks my heart because these are men and women who will die for this country…And justice is absolutely something that’s part of our Constitution, our democracy, and something we believe in. And for them to be denied justice, I think, is an outrage.”

Sen. Gillibrand on her political future: “Well, I certainly hope I get the chance to run for president again someday. I loved it. I had such a wonderful and powerful and inspiring opportunity to learn from people all across the country to develop a different set of skills—and greater strengths.”

Consider this your Pride reading and viewing list: We’ve got recommendations for your summer downtime from The Meteor Fund’s 21 For ’21 Syllabus, featuring works that center the LGBTQ+ community’s past—and future. (If you’ve never read June Jordan, now’s the time.)

Plus, keep reading to hear from the ACLU’s Chase Strangio (one of the lawyers behind last year’s major Supreme Court victory on LGBTQ+ workplace rights) about the new wave of anti-trans legislation—and why “queer survival” should matter as much as “queer magic.” He’s the guest on this week’s UNDISTRACTED, and it’s a good one.

First, that reading and viewing list. We asked some of the most interesting people we know for works that help point the way toward a more feminist future. (Download the full Syllabus at The Meteor Fund.) Plenty of their recommendations center LGBTQ+ creators, characters, and perspectives:

FILM Lingua Franca, by Isabel Sandoval. It’s “a story about a character that is rarely seen on-screen: an undocumented, Filipina trans woman.” —Shared by Define American founder Jose Antonio Vargas 

BOOK The Selected Works of Audre Lorde, with an introduction by Roxane Gay. “When I think about feminist futures, I think about what we can carry from the past too, about the women who carved space so we might have these visions now.” —Shared by Gabriela Garcia, best-selling author of Of Women and Salt, and feminist and migrant justice organizer

PLAYLIST SOUL(SIGNS) by Brandon Kazen-Maddox (which will debut on the new streaming platform Broadstream). “SOUL(SIGNS) reimagines 10 songs by iconic Black women like Gladys Knight and Nina Simone as ASL music videos…Brandon’s work has expanded my own thinking around communication as well as how important it is to make space for accessibility, queerness, exploration, and joy.” —Shared by interdisciplinary artist Natalie Frank  

POETRY Affirmative Acts by June Jordan. “My all-time favorite poet who explores Blackness, feminism, and liberation through her beautiful poetry.” —Shared by Alicia Garza, principal, Black Futures Lab and the Black to the Future Action Fund 

SPEECH “Ain’t I a Woman?” by Joy Ladin. “Ladin’s writing is wise and lyrical: She writes better than anyone else I know about the way trans people search for God.” —Shared by professor, author, and The New York Times opinion writer Jennifer Finney Boylan 

Image (top): Getty Images/NurPhoto
The 21 For ’21 Syllabus is produced by The Meteor Fund, an affiliated charitable project of The Meteor.

Over 100 anti-trans bills have been introduced across 33 states this year, making 2021 the worst year in history for legislative attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. Many of these bills seek to prevent trans kids from playing on sports teams or receiving gender-affirming health care.

What’s behind this war on transgender youth? And what can we do about it? To find out, Brittany Packnett Cunningham sat down with lawyer Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice with the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project (and one of Time’s 2020 “most influential people in the world”), on this week’s episode of UNDISTRACTED.

Strangio argues that the current wave of anti-trans legislation is fueled by a right wing that realizes it’s lost the battle against same-sex marriage and is desperately searching for a new enemy. But more than that, he says, “It’s a eugenics project”—and that fact should terrify us.

“What Republican lawmakers are saying is: ‘It’s bad to be trans. It hurts people to be trans. Let’s use the power of the government to stop people from being trans,’” says Strangio. “And I think we should be responding with the urgency of a project that has a lot of genocidal impulses, because that is ultimately what’s going to happen.”

Watching transgender youth be targeted by these attacks has been particularly hard, adds Strangio. “I love being trans, and having the ability to exist as myself has been so liberating…The idea that the government or private actors with power would try to constrain people’s opportunities to realize their full magic and potential…I just can’t stand for that.”

Brittany Packnett Cunningham sat down with writer and author Natalie Baszile on this week’s episode of UNDISTRACTED to discuss the history and current revolution of Black farming.

Baszile’s 2014 novel, Queen Sugar, about a young Black woman who inherits a sugarcane farm, is the inspiration for the crazy-popular TV series of the same name, produced by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey. Baszile’s new book, We Are Each Other’s Harvest, is a nonfiction anthology of the past, present, and future of Black farmers.

Baszile hopes to shift the narrative on Black farming, highlighting its potential to promote land ownership and food sovereignty. And while there are only about 45,000 Black farmers today (compared to one million a century ago), she says a new generation is returning to agriculture with an activist lens:

“I understand all of the reasons why, over the generations, the narrative has been: Get as far away from the land as you can, right? Get as far away from putting your hands in the soil as you can. This is part of what the great migration was about. Right? Part of it was about the violence and terror, and people being run off of the land—but part of that was about people seeking other opportunities in the industrial north or Midwest or west. I understand why this has been part of our history, but as Fannie Lou Hamer said, when you leave the land, you leave everything.”

If laughter is the best medicine, then this week’s episode of UNDISTRACTED is the drug we all need. Brittany Packnett Cunningham sat down with actress Yvonne Orji to talk about, among other things, the comedian’s new advice guide, Bamboozled by Jesus: How God Tricked Me Into the Life of My Dreams.

Orji, who received an Emmy nomination last year for her role as Issa Rae’s best friend Molly on HBO’s “Insecure,” recently starred in her debut HBO comedy special “Momma, I Made It!” The Nigerian-American actress is also at work on an upcoming autobiographical comedy series, “First Gen,” produced by Oprah Winfrey and David Oyelowo.

Packnett Cunningham and Orji covered a lot of ground, including faith, the resistance of Black joy, her “homie” Jesus, and, of course, Molly and Issa’s friendship.

Orji also shared her desire “to make the Bible something that’s accessible in 2021”: “I’m not ignorant to why people are like, ‘I’m good on church’ or ‘I’m good on religion’—because humans run religious organizations, and humans have tricked off religion in the worst way. And even God is like…I don’t need your help. Please stop trying to help me—’cause you’re getting it wrong.”

You won’t want to miss their conversation…and if you need a little taste of what’s ahead next season on “Insecure,” yeah, we’ve got you covered.

It’s been over 80 years since Billie Holiday first recorded “Strange Fruit,” about a lynching in the South, and yet in a week that saw multiple Black and brown people killed by police, the song—and the activism that Holiday brought to it—remains painfully relevant today.

Holiday’s legacy was top of mind on UNDISTRACTED, as Brittany Packnett Cunningham sat down with singer, songwriter, and actress Andra Day to talk about her Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role as the jazz icon in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.”

The Grammy-nominated singer’s stage name is inspired by Holiday—and the film represents her acting debut. Day took home a Golden Globe for her performance, and if she wins the Oscar Sunday night, she’ll be only the second Black woman after Halle Berry to do so.

Packnett Cunningham and Day dug into the role, the history behind “Strange Fruit,” and the need for more stories about “complex” Black women. Just a few highlights:

Day on Billie Holiday’s legacy: “She truly was the great godmother of the reinvigorated civil rights movement…We know about the death of Emmett Till—how it sparked things, but we don’t know that her singing ‘Strange Fruit’ in defiance of the government emboldened a lot of the civil rights leaders that we’re familiar with today. She represents truth to me. She represents freedom fights. She represents conquering your fears. She knew that she would probably be killed every time she got up on stage and sang that song, and she did it anyway.”

Day on Billie Holiday being “complicated”: “I don’t know that she was complicated. I think that the circumstances were complicated. She was complex, the circumstances were complicated. Because the reality is, she was just a Black queer woman trying to live freely in the thirties, forties, and fifties—trying to do what was right.”

Day on what was so threatening about “Strange Fruit”: “We live in a system, a system of oppression—and a system of racial inequality is one that is built on controlling the narrative. So that means deception, lies, misleading, suppressing certain narratives…Truth threatens. The only thing that can dismantle a system built on lies is probably truth. So when you think about it like that, it depends on your agenda. If your agenda is to continue white supremacy, to continue racial inequality; if you’re threatened by the presence of other people living fully and in totality, then yeah, that’s a scary song.”

Packnett Cunningham on the guilty verdict of Derek Chauvin: “Folks will say, you know, ‘Justice was served. The system works.’ But one guilty verdict does not justice make—not when an entire institution is still hunting us. Listen, ‘guilty’ was the only correct call to make, but we can’t be satiated by a single conviction. The point, the entire point, is that the whole system is guilty as hell and it needs to be dismantled in its entirety. If you don’t believe that, look no further than the fact that as the verdict was called out and we were all processing it, Columbus, Ohio police shot and killed a 15-year-old girl.”