Episode 11: “Are We the People We Said We’d Be?” UNDISTRACTED #100 with Alicia Garza
Please note: This transcript has been automatically generated.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow.. Hey, y’all. I cannot believe it, but this is our official 100th episode celebration. I cannot believe that this little podcast that we started back in October of 2020 has reached a hundred episodes, and that y’all are still rocking with your girl like. I can’t tell you how absolutely stunned and humbled and completely grateful I am because listen, there’s not a hundred episodes if there aren’t each of you all listening, subscribing, downloading, sharing with your friends and family over these 100 episodes. My very favorite thing is when someone tells me, Hey, someone sent me an episode of your podcast and now I can’t stop listening and I can’t wait for the next one. It means so much to me that you all have invited this UNDISTRACTED family into your lives, into your homes, into your ears, into your minds, and your hearts, because that’s not something we take for granted. You don’t have to care, but you do. You don’t have to push us, but you do. And you don’t have to invite us into your most sacred and intimate thoughts, but you do. So from the very, very bottom of my heart. Ah, thank you, thank you, thank you for a hundred episodes.
You know, when we started this back in 2020, we were on the precipice of potentially a second Trump presidency, which we were able to prevent in 2020 and weren’t quite so lucky this time. And in the light of these four years where people have been more intentional, more thoughtful about the role that each of us are responsible to play in the world, to make it just and free, I am so glad that Undistracted has found a place in all of that, that we’ve been able to be of some kind of service to people who wanna take that seriously.
In 2020, when COVID started, I spent so much time asking myself, what was this going to mean for the world? And how did I have to operate in it? Along with so many of you, I started thinking about accessibility differently. I started thinking about community more intentionally. I started taking seriously my health and wellness journey and, and not disconnecting that from my spiritual and emotional wellbeing. I finally went to the doctor about these migraines and got more serious about taking care of some of those things I had been putting off because I was spending too much time on planes and then meetings and having destination addiction. And when I committed to better practices, to more intentional living, to sharing power with purpose, I kept telling myself what I expect of myself to be this person when the pandemic ends, ends, of course, comes with an asterisk because it’s still going.
And now four years later, I keep asking myself the question, am I the person I’d said I’d be when this all started, when that pandemic started, when this podcast started, when my marriage started, when my parenthood journey started. So many things about my life have become different over the last four years. And the fact that I’ve been able to share them in transparency and imperfection with each of you has grown me up so much. And I continue to ask myself that question. I encourage all of us to ask that question of ourselves. Are we the people we said we’d be when this all started? To do that, to be that we have to consistently remain UNDISTRACTED. And for 100 episodes, we are so grateful that you’ve remained UNDISTRACTED with us. Here’s to 100 more love, y’all. Real big.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
On today’s show, we begin at the beginning: with movement. I speak with Alicia Garza, a profound freedom fighter, and the co-founder of Black Lives Matter and the Black Futures Lab. Alicia was the perfect guest for our 100th episode because her smooth voice and even smarter brain helped me really reflect, slow down and take stock of what it takes to build stronger movements going forward. Particularly ones that center the most marginalized.
ALICIA GARZA:
How do we reconcile that change is not linear? We go forward and there is…opposite reaction to our forward motion. This is why we call it a struggle.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
But first, the news.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
We are a little less than two months out from Inauguration day, and yet fallout from the election results is already underway. You probably remember the nasty, vile, disgusting comments that Trump made about the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio. You know – they’re eating the pets. Which they 100% were not doing, and is a virulently anti-Black stereotype. And people wanted to pass it off as a joke, but you might also remember the extreme threats of violence that the community faced as a result. Well now, leaders in Springfield’s Haitian communities say that 60,000 Haitians have fled the city in recent days for fear of being deported under a Trump administration. Trump has vowed that once he returns to office, he intends to end Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, which is the provision through which many Haitian migrants are legally authorized to live and work in the U.S. He also plans to use the U.S. military to conduct mass deportations. And as somebody who has resisted vile governments on militarized streets, it ain’t fun. Y’all.
Now, back in Haiti, ongoing political turmoil means that tens of thousands of people have been displaced. And many of those people made the treacherous, difficult, challenging journey to move here. And now we intend to deny them safety? That’s just not right. Like that’s not what that lady who we know is a Statue of Liberty is all about. These folks who did not ask to be anybody’s political punching bag need local elected officials to protect them now so that when Trump returns to office, they don’t have to live in fear.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
And while we’re on the topic of Trump’s presidential promises, his return to the White House combined with a Republican Senate and house…a trifecta, y’all, it means that we’re going to be hearing a lot about something. The GOP calls quote – “universal school choice.” Now on its face, it sounds like something that would give parents the autonomy to pick their children’s schools. Cool. But this week a new investigation from ProPublica shows that school choice will actually bring back something that should have stayed in the last century. Segregated schools. I know what you’re thinking. Plenty of schools across the country are segregated, and you’d be absolutely right, but there’s a difference between de facto segregation, which is situational and conditional, and de jure segregation, which means that it is totally legal and by law.
Now, the report from ProPublica found that segregation academies, which are private schools that were established for white children during desegregation, are still operating and receiving millions of tax dollars from vouchers that were intended to boost enrollment for students of color. In North Carolina alone, there were 39 of them. The problem is that state lawmakers have made these vouchers available to all students, including the majority white student body already attending the segregation academies. Yeah, that’s real backwards. One school’s enrollment was 99% white in a county with only a 40% white population. These schools have no requirement to serve the communities of color that they’re in. And these policies let them use the tax dollars anyway. You’re gonna be hearing a lot about school choice and take it from me both as a former third grade teacher and as a former student of one of those majority white high schools. It does not serve all of our children well. Listen, my high school was not a segregation academy, but it might as well have been. I want you to imagine being the only Black kid in your eighth grade social studies class, reviewing the segment about African Americans and getting to that chapter in the book about desegregation, listening to your classmates talk about how their parents took them out of their local public schools, which by the way, were already majority white and putting them into our private school because their parents wanted to get them away from “those kids.” Well, guess who those kids were <laugh>, what they looked like, where they came from. Yeah. The same zip code I grew up in. They were trying to get away from me, which is why I was the only Black kid in their class. All schools have to be held to account to serve all of our children well, and that is not what’s happening here.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Whew. Okay, now I wanna move on to some much needed wins coming out of this election, because I know looking at it, it can feel like there are none, but we’ve got some. The Working Families Party recently announced that several of the candidates they endorsed, who they call Working Families Party Champions, they were elected on the local and the federal level. This includes wins and competitive swing districts with candidates that are fighting for everyday people. The dominating narrative about third parties has been understandably negative and hopeless. Listen, when one of the most prominent candidates for a third party only seems to show up every three to four years, there’s gonna be some valid criticism. And then justifiably, people think that third parties are just a way for spoilers to ruin everything, which to be clear, absolutely does happen. But there is a different story. When you look at alternative parties like the Working Families Party that choose competitive races where they know they can make a difference. They build from the ground up, investing in community and making sure that they’re not just going for the top spot. You can listen back to that episode where we had Working Families Party National Director Maurice Mitchell, tell you all about that. If we keep that momentum and continue building from the ground up, I think we’ll be on our way to a better future and a true multiracial democracy no matter how long it takes.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
And finally, my adopted home team, the Washington Spirit DC’s team in the National Women’s Soccer League, is headed to the League finals against the Orlando Pride this Saturday night. This comes as Michele Kang, the owner of the spirit has pledged $30 million over the next five years to US soccer, marking the largest donation ever made to women’s and girls programs in the organization’s 111 year history. This is a win for soccer and spirit fans alike. And you know what they say? Everybody watches women’s sports. And that’s all for the news.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Y’all. We started this show four years ago. Since then, we’ve had 100 episodes of UNDISTRACTED goodness. And now with hitting such a milestone and having it coincide with such a complex, and I will say it scary time, I wanted to look back, unpack and, and, and really start anew with someone who has truly helped change the world.
She’s a freedom fighter who’s been at it for a long time. She’s affected the culture in profound ways, and she’s my girl, Alicia Garza. A longtime organizer, she helped co-found the Black Lives Matter Organization way back in 2013. She and I met a year later on the ground during the Ferguson uprising in 2014, and alongside thousands of our comrades. Those critical moments have continued to bring about a long overdue conversation and reckoning with racism, police violence, and systemic oppression.
Then as strategy and partnerships director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, Alicia spoke to another group of often overlooked people in policymaking: nannies, house cleaners, and other care workers, many of whom are women of color, many of whom are our most cherished loved ones. She also helped found the Black Futures Lab to organize Black communities and build out our political power. Now, her work with the JPB Foundation involves grant making and building connections between and across movements. And yeah, we gonna need a whole lot of that.
So Alicia is here today because I wanna reflect on the question at the top of my mind, like I said at the very beginning: are we the people we said we’d be when the world changed and whenever your world changed, that was your day one. Have we lived up to our values? Have we stood up for what we believed in even? And especially when it’s been hard, have we been real about the state of our coalitions? ’cause we’re gonna get real today. How can we build stronger, more connected movements? And always how can we center and support the dignity of Black women? Let’s get into it.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Alicia, welcome back to Undistracted.
ALICIA GARZA:
Hi. It’s so good to be here with you, Brittany. How you doing, babe?
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
I’m doing well. I’m so glad to see your face.
ALICIA GARZA:
It’s good to see you, and it’s good to be seen.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Oh, listen, we are like giving each other a warm virtual hug in this abysmal state of the world in which we currently exist. And it feels good. <laugh>.
ALICIA GARZA:
Mhmm. It does feel good.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
I know we were talking earlier in the group chat about how like we’ve both been bearing ourselves in recipes and cooking because we’re just like this, I can control.
ALICIA GARZA:
<laugh> Right.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
I know how to make this make me feel good.
ALICIA GARZA:
<laugh>
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
This will not disappoint me.
ALICIA GARZA:
<laugh> Right, right, right. No, that’s exactly right. It’s like it’s the puzzle that I wanna figure out.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Exactly. Yes.
ALICIA GARZA:
<laugh>
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
And that I can figure out in like 45 minutes to three hours depending on what I’m making.
ALICIA GARZA:
Exactly. Exactly.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM ():
And not like, over an entire election season slash several years slash decade slash century slash millennia.
ALICIA GARZA:
Yeah. And if I get it wrong, I’ll eat out. You know what I’m saying? <laugh>
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Hello. Hi. DoorDash.
ALICIA GARZA:
<laugh>
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yes.
ALICIA GARZA:
This other dumpster fire. I don’t know,
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Like how are you doing today? Right now? What stage are you currently in?
ALICIA GARZA:
I, I’m oscillating between grief. I’m just in, like, an eternal state of grief. Like, why are we here? Why are we here? That’s the question I ask myself every day. Uh, rage. I definitely have a lot of rage and I’m kind of in that like, you know, like during COVID there was probably just like a time when we were just all not making good decisions. <laugh>
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Where you’d be like, it’s five o’clock somewhere, I’m just gonna have this drink.
ALICIA GARZA:
Totally.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
But meanwhile, it’s not five o’clock here. It’s 10:00 AM. Yes.
ALICIA GARZA:
So. I am in that. I am in the, like…
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
I Think that’s the coping stage. I don’t know if that a real stage, but it sounds like it.
ALICIA GARZA:
It should be, it should be a stage because it is a part of the process Yes. Where you just do dumb <laugh>. Yeah.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
And I gotta get through the day. I mean, for me, the coping is, I, I literally sat up the other day and I was like, I want a roasted chicken. So I’m going to make one.
ALICIA GARZA:
<laugh> Yes.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Have I ever roasted a chicken before? No. <laugh>, but will I today? Yes. And it was delicious to be clear. It was a good…
ALICIA GARZA:
You know what? I’m sure it was slamming.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Mm-Hmm. Sometimes it feels like we’re grieving progress that I know we made, but that feels so distant right now. Right. Sometimes it just feels like the grief is that we are going back to square one. Like here we are again. Do… does this moment feel any different to you from, let’s say 10 years ago when Michael Brown Jr.. was murdered, or gosh, almost 12 years ago when Trayvon Martin was killed. Right? Like these moments in the movement for racial justice that you and I have both been so deeply involved in. Does this moment differ for you at all? Is it a different kind of grief?
ALICIA GARZA:
Oh yeah. It’s, the way in which this moment feels different to me is that it’s the backlash. It’s the backlash moment. Um, and we’ve been in it for a while and it just got sharper. And this is a moment in this country where everybody is seeking answers to similar questions, which is how did we get here? And what do we do next? And who do we do it with? And, um, in the midst of that, what I’m seeing Brittany, um, which feels different than the prior moments, um, is people looking for someone or some grouping of people to blame. I am seeing people try to navigate their instinct to either clique up or isolate there’s this thing, right? Where people are like, I’ve done my job and now I’m not gonna deal with nobody else at any other point in time and that kind of thing. And I’m like, we don’t have that luxury. While it’s important to take care of ourselves, take a beat, rest, rejuvenate. Um, we cannot give into that instinct of “I’m just about me and mine.”
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah. I think what’s been, what’s been hardest for me in that is that I, and watching that sentiment is that I understand the instinct, and there is an extent to which I believe it is critical that Black women stop operating, that we collectively stop operating in a way that does not hold the standard of reciprocity. Because for so long we have been right. Like we’ve just been like doing the things and committing and putting it all on the line knowing that people are, like, rarely ever going to do it for us in return. Um, and so I, I wonder how we hold that standard because we absolutely have to, um, in a different way and people have to hold it differently for us. Um, but I’m also very clear that like I don’t have the luxury of sitting back and watching the world born. It’s going to consume me too.
ALICIA GARZA:
I resonate with that.Um, there’s no way we get out of this without each other and inside of that, yeah, we have to build. If people are acting against their own self-interests, it’s saying something about what we need to build. If our bonds and our relationships are not as strong as they need to be, it’s saying something about what we need to build. And in a context of authoritarianism, the first thing that happens, right, is nihilism. The second thing that happens is collective acceptance of the new reality. And part of that new reality is based on deep divisions. That is a part of the authoritarian project. It is also deeply baked into this country. And so to change that we have to not reenact it.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah. Changing that requires some of the real conversations we have yet to have with each other. What are those questions that you feel like still need answering? What are those topics that still need to be put on the table that we’ve been avoiding, but need to do the hard work of maneuvering through now?
ALICIA GARZA:
Yeah. Um, one of those questions that I think we have to like honestly ask ourselves is who are we talking to?
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Hmm?
ALICIA GARZA:
Who are we talking to?
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
And not like “who you think you’re talking to?” You say, who are we talking to? Okay.
ALICIA GARZA:
Who are we talking to? Yeah. Not like who you think you’re talking to, right? Although some, there are some
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Sometimes we gotta ask that too.
ALICIA GARZA:
But there are some of those conversations that need to happen. ’cause you know, are we talking to each other or are we looking for people who are looking for us? So this whole question about who participated and how they participated, it’s the wrong conversation. It is that so many people never participate, right? And that’s not a voting question, that’s a belonging question.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
The, see, this is why I was like, I need to talk to you. These are the questions. And I think what’s even harder is that in the 10 years that you and I have known each other and the 10 years that we’ve seen, I would say a transformation in how everyday people both engage with the work of justice and metastasize messages about what this world is and what the world can be. We’ve specifically watched the place where we were initially able to send a lot of those messages digitally shift dramatically, right? And digital organizing has never ever been a replacement for good old fashioned <laugh> community meetings, house meetings, knocking on somebody’s doors, breaking bread, and real grassroots work. And we know that in terms of mobilizing and engaging large numbers of people, we have seen the movement very creatively, very thoughtfully master the technique of leveraging social media such that Elon said, oh, y’all can’t, y’all can’t keep doing it this, well, <laugh>. And he and his buddies came along and broke that thing. So specifically when we’re talking about who are we talking to, what are we building and how are we communicating and, and, and, and involving people in what we’re building, what recommendations do you have for everyday people who wanna engage with movements on social media?
ALICIA GARZA:
What you and I both know, Brittany, from being in movement for a long time, is that where it’s rooted is in people’s real relationships. And what the internet does is it helps us telegraph and amplify. There are ways, lots of ways in which people meet on the internet. There is something to be said in this moment for like – gathering. I actually think we need to figure out in every way possible how we meet each other in like real life.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
In as much as we need gathering and community intentionally. The folks that know we are returning to that or undergirding that are also going to intentionally be trying to break that. The house last week, thankfully did not pass this particular bill, but had this bill passed, it is a bill that would’ve given the Trump administration broad authority to revoke the tax exempt status of nonprofits that he disagrees with. And the issues of the nonprofit industrial complex aside, we know that many of these nonprofit organizations, community organizations, et cetera, are the sites of gathering for people. They are the people who have the resources, the infrastructure. How should we see this particular bill as a signal of things to come?
ALICIA GARZA:
That is something that we should all be very, very, very concerned about. and we should not take lightly. Um, we have already been through that in this country, it was called McCarthyism, right? we have already gone through this in the 1.0 version, Where, uh, there was a whole new category that was created, for Black activists. So we should…
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
What did they call us? Black identity extremists?
ALICIA GARZA:
Black identity extremists.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah.
ALICIA GARZA:
And this is part of the backlash. It’s intended to put a chilling effect on organizing, on resistance on movements, It is intended for that. And so as a part of these like honest conversations that we need to be having with each other, um, it is really how do we protect each other and ourselves in these kinds of conditions? Um, and, and how do we not succumb to the chilling effect?
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah. I know that, you know, we’ve often discussed that part of that chilling effect is overwhelm, right? That one of the strategies is just to make sure that we are doing so much doom scrolling that there is so much horrifying news on top of horrifying news coming at us in such a clip that we feel like at best we’re playing whack-a-mole, right? Which means that then we become futile because we say, what’s the point? I can’t even keep up with it all. Like, I, I can’t keep up with the pace of terrible cabinet appointments, right? Like each one is literally worse than the next. There’s essential information in there for us to know so that we can be prepared and protect ourselves. But how do we navigate through all of that knowing that it is a heavy, heavy weight on anybody’s spirit?
ALICIA GARZA:
You know, my friend Max, um, runs marathons. OG Max and…
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
God Bless Max.
ALICIA GARZA:
you know, I’d be asking him as have others, how do you do 26.3 miles <laugh>? Don’t you cramp? Don’t you hurt, don’t you? Whatever. And he is like, yep, yep, yep. All of that is true. It’s true every race and you have to find peace in the pain, you have to find peace in the pain. It’s not gonna go away. You have to learn to be with it. And so I want us to just sit in that a little bit. Like, how do I not, how do I get used to what’s going on? That’s not the thing. It’s how do I have enough mental and physical and emotional control to keep having ever expanding capacity? You gotta pace yourself. You gotta make choices about what you’re prioritizing and what you’re not, what you’re letting in, what you’re not. But it’s not a choice to tune out. It’s a choice to say, these are the things that I’m gonna focus on…
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
That’s right.
ALICIA GARZA:
for the sake of.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah. The old folks will say, I’m, I’m gonna run on and see what the end gonna be. I’m trying to see what the end gonna be, and I can only run my race. Right? Like, I can’t run yours. I can’t run your time, I can’t run your pace. I have to run the one that is designed for me to run.otherwise I’ll, I’ll peter out right when I’m needed.
ALICIA GARZA:
Listen. And we can’t sprint either. So I have done a thing where I’ve started to regulate how much news I’m consuming, which doesn’t mean I’m not consuming news. I give myself 30 minutes in the morning and then I’m done until I turn on joy at seven.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
There you go.
ALICIA GARZA:
And in between…
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Shout out to our sister Joy Reid.
ALICIA GARZA:
You know what I’m saying?
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
And the Reid Out.
ALICIA GARZA:
Yo. But like, that’s all I can do. I’m not tuned out. But I’m also not being a martyr for absorbing all the bad things, just so that I can say that I did.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah. The baby just kicked when you said that. I want you to know Absolutely. The <laugh>, the church just said. Amen. Amen.
ALICIA GARZA:
Amen.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah. One of the other things though, when I think about this marathon that you’ve been really, you’ve been organizing for years, this is definitely not easy. But one of the things I think you’ve been so clear-eyed about continuously is that solidarity really does play a necessary role, right? We, we, I say all the time, it’s not freedom if we don’t get there together just factually, we need each other. And you’ve even gone so far as to say that, you know, if you don’t have the quote unquote wrong people in your movement, you’re not winning, right? We’re not, you’re not recruiting anybody. You’re not expanding. You’re not adding to the numbers. Can you share a time when you feel like you’ve done that successfully? Because I think people have difficulty envisioning what that can look like.
ALICIA GARZA:
There’s no wrong people in a movement.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
That’s what my air quotes were real heavy. Yeah.
ALICIA GARZA:
Yeah. Like it’s more so, um, people who are growing in a movement, right? So people who come in for whom politics is not what they do all the time, every single day. They don’t get paid to do it.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Which at some point, to be clear is all of us.
ALICIA GARZA:
Correct. Um, people who are in the process of being transformed and as we have all been, these are folks who are not gonna have the lingo. These are folks who are a product as we are of our society. And so are gonna say and do things that contradict themselves. It might even be hurtful. When I was organizing in the Bayview, and we used to have community meetings all the time, we had a coalition that didn’t share every part of each other’s agenda. But we had a common mission to stop gentrification and displacement. In one of the last remaining Black communities in San Francisco, there was a lot of things we didn’t agree on. We would have people who <laugh>. ’cause we had, it was also a faith-based coalition. We would have people who would be like, I don’t mess with the Muslims. We would have people <laugh> who were like, I don’t mess with the Samoans, I don’t mess with the Blacks, I don’t mess with them. Right? But the thing that would happen, Brittany, is that people couldn’t shake the feeling of those meetings where we were inspiring each other, where we were challenging each other, and where we were in community together. So for that night, they did mess with the Muslims
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Mm-Hmm.
ALICIA GARZA:
Yeah. And the Blacks and the Samoans and the Latinos.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
We all bang with each other.
ALICIA GARZA:
Everybody bangs with each other in those meetings. But the more you meet, the more you start to do that outside of those meetings. Yeah. I think this happened with BLM all the time. BLM felt like a coalition in a lot of ways. Different approaches, different strategies, different worldviews, different ideologies. Right? And we had to practice not throwing people away. I don’t think we perfected it. It’s a thing that we struggle with still as a movement. If you don’t have the correct line, you don’t say the right thing. You don’t string the right words together all of a sudden, like you’re an enemy of the movement. We can’t afford that. I think my assertion around remembering that everybody’s in process is a way to humble ourselves around the ways that we’ve been transformed and what it took and what it continues to take. We’re still being transformed. There’s no, like, final level that you unlock until you die.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah I wish there was, I wish there was like a nice badge achievement unlocked. You are fully enlightened.
Mm-Hmm.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Social justice.
ALICIA GARZA:
Mmm mm.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Queen, king, sire, liege.
ALICIA GARZA:
Mmm mm.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
That’s not how it works, babe.
ALICIA GARZA:
Mmm mm.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
A particular question that keeps coming up for me, especially as we celebrate our 100th which is wild.
ALICIA GARZA:
Yes. <laugh>. Congratulations.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Thank you, sister. And as I think about moving through 100 episodes over these particular four years, I keep asking myself, are we the people we said we’d be when the world changed? Like I, you remember as well as I do COVID first hits, we realize it’s not gonna be a weekend or a couple of weeks. That this is actually about to be our new reality for a while. And we start to adjust, right? We start learning how to make sourdough bread. We start, in deeper ways, we start getting back in touch with community, with spirit. We, we, we started to engage in actions of accessibility, that in particular the disability justice community had been fighting for, for a long time and kept being told we impossible or too expensive. And suddenly it is possible for people to work from home. It is possible for people to receive assistive aid…
ALICIA GARZA:
Surprise!
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
<laugh> Right? And technology, right? It is possible for people to have essential, uh, items delivered, right? And we experience all of this. And we said, you know what? It is so good that we got back to some of these essential things, that we made progress in some ways that would’ve taken another 10 years had it not been for crisis forcing us to that place. And then it quote unquote ended again, heavy air quotes. And I keep asking myself, am I the person I said I’d be when the world changed? Are we the people that we said we’d be when the world changed? And I think this is a time for us to once again, recommit to being those people because another seismic shift has happened. So where to from here? How do we go about being those people?
ALICIA GARZA:
What I think we’re grappling with right now is how do we reconcile that change is not linear? We go forward and there is opposite reaction to our forward motion. It’s a, this is why we call it a struggle. It’s like tug of war, right? When you pull, if the other side just comes bumping along, you win <laugh>. That’s not tug of war.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Right. It ain’t no stru. That’s not struggle.
ALICIA GARZA:
That’s just tug. You know what I’m saying?
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah.
ALICIA GARZA:
So, um, and I say that to us because there have been a lot of victories. We have changed the landscape of this country and everything that it thought it was. And that is why we are experiencing what we are experiencing right now because we were so successful in changing people’s hearts and minds around race and gender and class, right? That the people in power wanted their power back. Okay? So that’s what they’re doing. Power grab. If we see it in that context and we understand exactly what to do moving forward, we keep fighting. We have to fight differently. This is not a similar moment in terms of, like, massive protests and it’s not the same resistance moment, right? This is a reorganize, rebuild, realign, experiment, innovate, reconnect, build, gather, dream. That’s what moment it is right now. And you asked me earlier, Brittany, what are the cycles that I’m going through this last two weeks? I’ve been on some, all right, it’s time to figure out how we get outta this. That has been my focus and it’s doing something for my spirit. Honestly. I unrolled myself from a ball
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
<laugh>
ALICIA GARZA:
And said, let’s find the path. When I interviewed, uh, OG Linda, that’s what I call her during COVID, it was her first podcast that she ever did. OG Linda. She was a part of starting the third World Women’s alliance, long time fighter. That’s why…
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
The OG title is earned. Okay?
ALICIA GARZA:
A hundred percent. And somebody who just helps give us perspective on what time it is. I asked her a similar question about late seventies, early eighties. There was all this social upheaval and everybody thought that revolution was around the corner. And then the state smashed movements, literally, like threw people in jail, killed people, like all that. And the world started to change and realign. And I said, God, that must have been heartbreaking. Like, what did you, what did you do? And she said, uh, we just tried to leave breadcrumbs in the forest so that you guys could find us. And I’m sitting with that for this moment. Like, I’m still looking for those breadcrumbs <laugh>, right? But I’m also like, which ones are we leaving? And um, where do we gather and what do we do? Right? So that’s what I’m sitting with. Like how do we leave some breadcrumbs? I’m also sitting with, um, you know, our sister Harriet Tubman.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah. Because she kept going back
ALICIA GARZA:
Every single time. But imagine That first trip
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah.
ALICIA GARZA:
That first trip. To not know, but do it anyway.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yeah.
ALICIA GARZA:
To not know, but do it anyway.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
That’s right.
ALICIA GARZA:
I think that’s where we’re at. Not know, but do it anyway.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
And try some shit.
ALICIA GARZA:
A hundred percent. and build some shit.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
That’s right.
ALICIA GARZA:
With serious people doing serious things.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
I love you so much. Thank you for offering, um–, your always centering and healthfully provocative, uh, if gifts and thoughts to us.
ALICIA GARZA:
I appreciate you.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Always moves us forward.
ALICIA GARZA:
I appreciate you, Brittany, and thank you for building a platform where we can have the right conversations at the right time. This is exactly what we need. Happy hundredth episode anniversary <laugh>.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Yay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank
ALICIA GARZA:
You. Love you sis.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
I love you too.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
A hundred episodes down and prayerfully hundreds more to go. Thanks for riding with us the entire UNDISTRACTED way.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM:
Brittany Packnett Cunningham:
Undistracted is a production of the Meteor and our friends at Wonder Media Network. Our producers are Hannah Bottom, Vanessa Handy, and Brittany Martinez. Our editors are Grace Lynch and Maddie Foley. Thanks also to Natalia Ramirez and Sara Culley. Our executive producers at The Meteor are Cindi Leive and myself. And our executive producer at Wonder Media Network is Jenny Kaplan. You can follow me on all social media @mspackyetti on all social media. And our team @TheMeteor. Subscribe to undistracted and rate and review us y’all on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or all the places your find your favorite podcasts. For the 100th time <laughs> thanks for listening, thanks for being, and always, thanks for doing. I’m Brittany Packnett Cunningham. Let’s go get free.