F L A U N T
I've been involved in fighting for civil rights and human rights most of my adult life.
Hi guys, I'm here today with amazing activist and writer, Shaun King. Shaun actually has a new book called Make Change that I think everybody should read. Today, we're going to be talking about activism in 2020, the election, and how we can make the most change. Let's get into it.
It's a longer story, but a huge part of my story is, I was very badly assaulted. This is all the way back in... What year were you born?
'91.
In 1995, when you were four years old, I was a high school student. I was very badly assaulted by a group of racist white students in my high school and I missed two years of high school.
Wow.
I had three spinal surgeries, fractures in my face and ribs, and it was a painful, painful experience physically, emotionally. That experience, when I finally recovered from all the surgeries and even the emotional harm of it, gave me a huge heart for racial justice, but also it gave me a huge heart just for people who are hurting.
Yeah, I think having that moment of trauma or something happens to you, is a really quick way to become engaged.
Yeah. Up until that point, I mean, I think I was a stereotypical teenager that didn't understand just how the world could be both good and evil. As a kid, you live in this flex phase for a long time until the world teaches you otherwise.
What do you think the intersection is between politics and culture?
Well, I think there are lots of intersections. I hardly even see them as two separate things. Culture informs politics and politics informs the culture, and they're always responding to one another, stereotypical political establishment fighting back against youth culture or black culture or hip hop culture, skater culture, whatever it could be. Part of why I love this Bernie Sanders campaign is it's a deeply cultural campaign. Bernie loves to have local artists open up for him. He loves music himself. People don't know that. It's pretty cheesy and I don't think he would be mad at me for saying it but he actually has some really bad spoken word albums, Bernie does. You Google it. Bernie's got... he's got a couple of tracks.
This is going to be the next thing. It's going to be like, "Release the spoken word out. Why aren't you releasing them?"
We can't release tracks. But the point is Bernie's always been into culture, music, art. We don't use this word so much, but he's really a hippie at heart. On my shirt is Bernie being... This is Bernie being arrested in 1963 during the civil rights movement. And so he came out of just a deeply rich cultural place. His leadership, I just think, has a level of soul and color and depth and culture that a lot of other politicians and campaigns just don't have.
What are your thoughts about government in this country and electoral politics and the way that our government system works?
Well, I mean I have so much to say.
I know, I'm sorry.
I mean, I can critique the electoral college. I could critique how we do our elections, the safety and security of them. But there's still a lot to love about the promise of America. I think most of us regularly feel like America doesn't live up to its promise or its creed, but our democracy is an opportunity for us to fight back and put people in power that actually represent us.
I love Donald Trump, but... I've traveled now to 47 states all over the country, just over the past few years. What I learned is that people who felt abandoned by the government were looking for somebody to represent them, and Donald Trump took advantage of that. Yes, he's a liar. Yes, he was a bigot. Yes, he's a sexist homophobe. But there were legitimate people whose jobs had been lost, who in their town their factories had shut down, who felt abandoned by both Democrats and Republicans. Donald Trump saw that opportunity and filled that void. Some of these folk haven't had people even express that they cared about them. That's what's beautiful about this Bernie Sanders campaign, is that he can go to those same communities and say the same thing.
What Donald Trump did is capitalize on that hopelessness, capitalize on that feeling that there's nothing that you can do, and so may as well just vote for the person who's at least speaking to me because-
Who at least shows up and-
Yeah, Hillary Clinton wasn't there.
Hillary Clinton didn't go to Wisconsin, didn't campaign in Michigan. People make the mistake of misunderstanding that people are hurting all over the country, through the rising cost of healthcare, drug addiction, the flatlining of wages in this country. When all of a sudden somebody expresses that they actually care and they come see you, it makes a difference. And so Trump saw that opportunity. He's a con man at heart. He exploited this real opportunity that existed. Our democracy allows us to fight back against him. Instead of filling that void with bigotry and hatred, we can fill it with hope and policies and ideas and authenticity. I think no campaign contrast better with Trump than Bernie's. Anybody who compares Bernie and Trump is ignorant. Bernie is the antithesis, he is the anti-Trump in every way. I think it takes that to beat Donald Trump.
For sure. I think a lot of what you're saying is why he flips Trump supporters.
Yep. I'm deeply skeptical of politicians. I have now worked alongside Bernie very actively for five years. I still have my guard up even with him, and he's proven himself over and over and over again, to me and to others, to be trustworthy, to be a man of his word, to be a man of the people, who is trying to represent marginalized people. That's why when people try to attack him, they're grasping for straws. To attack Bernie they go back and find a video from the '70s or something like that. There's nothing there.
There's nothing there. I've heard a lot of disenfranchisement and a lot of hopelessness in terms of, "Well, it doesn't matter who's there, it doesn't matter if I vote or not, I'm not voting because those people are not going to affect me. My life will not change." What are your thoughts on that?
Well, it's not true, but I understand why people think it's true. Because people have experienced hopelessness in Democratic administrations and Republican administrations. I think one of the reasons you see, I think, a historic surge in Latino voting is because the Latino community understands personally, that know who you elect president deeply impacts your community, your people, your family, your citizenship, your status, your wellbeing. I think this is the first campaign in my lifetime, really in American history, Bernie's campaign, that I think is fueled by Latino support, fueled by a group that's been attacked by Trump in a way that we've never seen in our lifetime. And so it's a powerful moment.
If you were talking to somebody who is telling you right now, "I'm not going to the polls, it doesn't change anything for me." What would you tell them specifically?
Well, I meet people that say that all the time. First I have to tell them, "I regularly see elections where people lose by a few votes." This idea that your vote is just a drop in the bucket, that it doesn't matter, it's not true. Secondly, there are major differences in candidates within the Democratic Party, certainly there may be even bigger differences between Democrats and Republicans. But the news doesn't tell you that, social media doesn't educate voters. I just think we have a low voter IQ across the country, of people aren't even aware of who's running for school board, who is running for city council. We have to figure out how we better educate voters.
I think this campaign is helping so much with that engagement.
I hope so. Yeah, I think so. I mean, young people believe in Bernie, and so it's up to us to expand that base bigger and bigger the best we can.
I feel like the media is bringing up a narrative that black folk are not for Bernie.
There's really more of an age gap than anything else.
Yeah.
He actually won the youth black vote in South Carolina. Well, he wins young black people, 17 all the way to 45, nationally. It's when you begin getting 45 and older that other candidates fill that gap. In some ways it's because the older you are, the more comfortable you are with the status quo. That's if you're white, black, Latino, older voters tend not to be for deep systemic change. For me personally, I'm always fighting for criminal justice reform, racial justice reform issues. Those are the issues that are passionate to my heart and Bernie has... I literally was part of the team that helped write it, the best, most robust, progressive racial justice and criminal justice reform plan, I think, ever written for any presidential candidate.
What is the importance of activism?
What I tell people all the time is, "You don't have to be like me. You don't have to fight the issues I fight, you don't have to fight it in the way I fight the issues that I fight for." But all of us should be able to look at the world and say, "Yeah, this could be a whole lot better." I've been surprised, even in my own life, by things that we have fought for and won. I think people just have to understand that it is possible to fight for real change and actually see it.
Creator/Host: Juliann McCandless
Director/Producer: Danielle Oexmann
Cinematography: Alexander Girav and Quinton Dominguez
Photography: Sophia Schrank
Editing: Sofia Kerpan
Digital Editor: BJ Panda Bear
Design: Sandro Grison
