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Speaker 1: Levels to This is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
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Speaker 2: You can find us on the iHeartRadio.
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Speaker 1: App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Speaker 3: Hey, what's up, everybody, it's your girl. Srika fostera Brasby, what's up, y'all?
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Speaker 2: It's your girl Cheryl Swoops And.
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Speaker 3: This is a levels to this. This is the show where we talk about all the shit that women go through, and we really do have an interesting episode for you today. However, before we get into that, I gotta say hey to my boo, Cheryl, because you know, last week I had to do this little thing without you, and I felt the way. I was like, oh my god, my girl is not here. I don't know what's happening. So welcome back. A.
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Speaker 2: Did you miss me?
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Speaker 4: I did?
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Speaker 1: I's I always miss you, girl. I was trying to get my coin.
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Speaker 3: You and was I am at at.
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Speaker 2: I was trying to get my coins. But I'm good.
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Speaker 3: You know what that is what we call on an excused absence. That is an.
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Speaker 2: Excuse thank you.
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Speaker 1: I didn't need a note or nothing, no nothing, I'm good.
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Speaker 2: I am m.
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Speaker 1: You know, I'm just probably like everybody else, just stressing over you know, life and this world and all the things that's going on.
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Speaker 2: So other than that, I'm trying.
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Speaker 1: I'm trying to keep my my my mental where I can keep it and still function, if that makes sense.
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Speaker 3: You're trying to keep it ground level.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I am. I am. I can't even yeah, because I can't even look at surface level in above. I'm just trying to keep it ground level.
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Speaker 3: Just trying to keep your ground level. Yeah, yeah, I got a question. I had a question for you in a minute, but it's in a minute. No now, no now, okay.
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Speaker 2: So can I give you my butt?
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Speaker 3: Yes?
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Speaker 1: How about my grandson is eight months old?
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Speaker 2: Hasn't really been that long?
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Speaker 1: Yes, girl, he is footing, crawling, probably crawling faster than I can walk.
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Speaker 2: He is going to be walking soon.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's only a matter of time at this way.
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Speaker 1: And I'm feeling some type of way because I'm missing all of his.
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Speaker 3: First Oh that's right, they're still wait that they're still like the season is still going on.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's still in Tunisia. They're in the playoffs right now. And I am gonna say shout out to my kid because he.
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Speaker 2: Is bowling and I like that.
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Speaker 3: Go Jordan, Jordan, Go Jordan. But I'm still not over that baby being eight months old. I feel like just yesterday he was born, Tarika.
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Speaker 2: Okay, wait look look, oh my, look at the chicks. Girl. Do the cheeks not look like the basketball? You see the basketball? The chicks not look like the basket? Y? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I just I just cried. Okay, wait, last one, last one, last one. I got to show you this one too.
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Speaker 1: This is one I was like, Oh my gosh, he's so gonna be walking in a minute.
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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he walking and dribbling. That's what he's gonna be doing.
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Speaker 5: Comes so cute.
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Speaker 2: Look, he's just so cute.
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Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, when chewing on me in something he ain't supposed to beat you? U? What is you chowing on now? I'm gonna need him to break the mold. I need him to go play football, baseball. I was I need him to.
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Speaker 2: Break the ball. Ill, No, we're not doing that.
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Speaker 3: Let this family starting to branch off into Look, you gotta talk to his daddy about that, because I'm gonna be there. Period black period regards whatever. You gotta just throw a bunch of stuff at him. Throw a baseball, a soccer ball, just see which one sticks.
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Speaker 2: How about gonna be the president? He do a better job?
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Speaker 3: What he could do a better job right now and be doing a better job than what the hell we.
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Speaker 5: Got going on?
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Speaker 3: Its mess?
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Speaker 4: And you know what, I'm so sick of Texas. I'm so sick of taxes. Just make just I was all proud of.
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Speaker 1: Because I did all my early voting because and you you know, I was gonna be moving around.
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Speaker 2: It's gonna be difficult, but.
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Speaker 3: Uh but I did hear because the issues was that people were struggling with finding where they were supposed to phone.
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Speaker 2: But Tea, here's my thing.
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Speaker 1: Yes, all those things I read I heard, are we surprised? No, But I'm going to tell you the last thing I heard, because you know, my brother lives in Dallas, and like I got family in Dallas, so yeah, one of my friends' friends posted on social media that she went to the same voting location that she went to, or that like her friends went to for early voting. But it's the same place that they were told to go to, and this was for the Democratic primaries, the Republican primaries, So she went there the worker showed up, and she said when she got there, some of the workers and all of the people who showed up to vote, they were told that it was only a Republican voting facility, and we start doing that right, right, And so she was like, and in the place that they told them that they could go vote Democratic was like an hour away from.
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Speaker 3: Where she was.
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Speaker 2: Shut the fuck up. Yes, yes, this is the type of shit that's.
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Speaker 3: Happening right now in the United States of America in the Year of Our Lord twenty twenty six.
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Speaker 2: Yes, it's real.
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Speaker 3: It's real. That is wild voter.
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Speaker 2: Suppression, all the things, like, all that shit is real.
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Speaker 3: It is so real. And you know what, I'm really happy that we have the perfect guest today. Not happy that all of this BS is going on, but very happy that we have someone joining us on today's episode who who is a leading voice in political strategy and civic engagement and she's no stranger to this bullshit and I cannot wait to get into it with her. We have Shanika McClinton joining us from Vote Save America, and I'm just excited to talk to her about all things. But it's just it's just incredible the ridiculousness that like it's just happening day in and day out, and I'm like, it's to the point where I'm not even surprised anymore.
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Speaker 1: No, like I'm not even surprised, You're not surprised, but it's still like what the fuck? But it's like, what's happening?
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Speaker 3: So anyway, let's just go ahead and take this to the next level and bring in Shika so joining us on today's show. We always have some great, incredible guests, but and I know I'll always be like, oh my god, I'm so excited about today, but I'm never lying, like I really am always excited about our guests, and I'm just as excited about our guest today. Originally heiling from North Carolina, when we talk about political strategists and political and civic engagement, she's certainly one of the first to come to mind, as she currently serves as the vice president of politics for Votes Save America and Crooket Media. Please make some noise, shout it out black women represent because we are the bomb. For our girl, Shinnika McClinton.
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Speaker 5: Thank you, hi, And you know, excitingly, I got a promotion recently, so now I am a senior vice president of political strategy. Come on now, I wasn't updated, but come on now.
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Speaker 2: That needs to be updated, ma'am.
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Speaker 5: I just put it on link in today.
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Speaker 2: That is congratulation.
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Speaker 3: Congratulation.
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Speaker 1: You said it about black women, and I don't y'all can't say this, but I wore this hat in honor of you. Yes, and it says black women are really everything.
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Speaker 2: Yes, yes are. Let's go during Black History months.
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Speaker 5: Come on, thank you.
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Speaker 3: I love that. That's how you start a show. Come on with some news, right, Like I don't like for, you know, to start a show. No, you come on with that good news early, because that's exactly what we love. So shout out, miss senior vice president. I love that. And let's start there right because it took some time to get to the level that you currently are, right. I know, we kind of all make it seem like we really woke up like this, but some of us have to grind and grind and grind. And you started your grind from doing a little bit of everything, including being a White House intern for the Obama administration. Just thinking back on that time and that experience, given where we are now, you know, are there some moments that maybe still shape how you move through spaces today from that experience.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, Barack Obama's election was really.
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Speaker 2: Pivotal for me just by you saying that name, but.
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Speaker 5: So many things and Okay, now I'm like bringing too much into this, but like you know, I still remember my senior year. That's when Barack Obama got elected. I went to UNC Chapel Hill and we me and my roommate ran out of our rooms at like eleven o'clock at night when they called it, and we were like, are we going to rush Franklin Street? Like what are people doing? So we just like we didn't know if people would be out there, but we drove out. It was like drizzling and there were like students running all around, and so the police like shut down the intersection so we could just celebrate. And so that was that. I mean, I was I became obsessed with politics when Barack Obama was running for office. I would put the news on, I'd fall asleep to it, I'd wake up to it, and I was just so enamored with him. And I thought Hillary Clinton would with the primary, but I still said, I'm giving I'm giving him my vote like he's going to get my vote. And so it meant the world when I ended up getting that internship and I was able to move up there or move up here to Washington, d C. And it's funny, Barack Obama is why I got interested in politics, but Donald Trump's why I stayed in it. You know, I went to grad school in twenty sixteen. I was about to I wanted to get out of politics. I find I really wanted to finally, you know, make a decent living. My first job on Capitol Hill, I made thirty thousand dollars a year and it was tough, and so my plan was to like go into the private sector. But my first semester in grad school, Donald Trump won and I knew that after school, if I didn't go back into politics, I would spend every other hour I had outside of you know, a different job doing it. So you know, I'm still here. I think I'll be here forever now. I mean, I enjoy this work, but I am really I'm sad how how needed the work is right now because things and that's why we have to have these moments of like celebration and these bright spots, because every day you wake up and there's something else, you know, you just shake your head about, and it's it's a lot. And I'll be interested in like decades when people look back on this time and just think about what it did to the psyche of those of us who are living through it.
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Speaker 3: Girl, Can I just say we have a couple things in common before I let Shirol go really quickly. Number one, I too went to school in North Carolina. I went to sag and Raleigh, and the day that President Obama was elected, I literally went to the club because they were playing jeez's my president is black. Yeah. And the last thing is my senior internship was working for the Obama campaign. I was the president of the student for Hillary Clinton's club, and then when she lost the primaries, I was like, well, your girl got to get an internship somewhere because I gotta graduate. And a little Obama office down the street, because you know they have like offices in every city, like field Field offices. I had. My job was not cool. I was literally delivering shit day to day to different people out in the field about why they need to vote for President Obama. But the people that I met was great, So that's it did. But I did not have a fun job. I knew I was gonna be like the girls sitting at the desk doing something. Girl, they had my black ass out there passed out these flyers.
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Speaker 2: Listen, Well, you passing that flyers made a difference?
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Speaker 5: Yeah?
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Speaker 3: He was right, right right and read yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, should well we have them.
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Speaker 1: I mean a long list of questions and just a lot of different topics to talk about.
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Speaker 2: But since we're here, I just want to stay right here for a moment.
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Speaker 1: You said Barack Obama is the reason why you got involved in politics, but Donald Trump is the reason why you stayed in politics. You kind of sort of explain that. My question to you is where are we right now?
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Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the simplest and most honest place I can say from my perspective that I think is I think it's factual, but it's still my opinion. We're in the midst of backlash to Barack Obama being president. You know, there were a lot of people who were really upset, including Donald Trump. You know, he started with the birtherism, saying that Barack Obama was not born in this country, and he opened up this permission for people to just kind of expose the hate that they had for Barack Obama, but for black people, people of color, anyone who's different in this country. And you know, since it's been ten years of this, and I know that a lot of this stuff was already under the surface. And Donald Trump didn't make people racist, he didn't make them who they are, but he did give them permission to be awful. You know. I think back to the twenty sixteen election when Hillary Clinton called his supporters deplorables, and she got ripped apart for it. And look where we are now. Some of his biggest supporters have joined ICE so that they can kill people. Some of his biggest supporters, I mean, he tweeted or whatever his social platform is, he posted this video of the Obama's being depicted as monkeys. He has fundamentally changed what is acceptable. And I don't think there is anything that is unacceptable now since he's been president, and so we're truly it's I can't even say two steps forward one step back like we took, you know, two steps forward with Barack Obama and we who have just been free falling backward for some time. But I think it's something we've seen throughout the history of this country where where there's progress for marginalized people, the people who have had power and privilege and you know, have been who have felt exceptional because other people being held down, they start to resent the fact that other people are starting to get ahead. And yeah, it's this was something one of my professors in grad school kind of left me with after we took this class about racism and democracy that I was. I was frustrated in the moment. I still think it's unfair, but I can honestly say it is kind of what we have to deal with that we're not going to get out of this if we're not the ones like fighting. And you know, people who are in the majority, be it around race, well gender, men, regardless of how much of the population they take up, still have the problem. But you know, regardless of how you are in the minority, we're the ones. We are going to have to speak up. We're going to have to push people, We're going to have to make people uncomfortable, We're going to have to teach people. And it's not fair because we already have the burdens of being marginalized on us, but no one's going to do it for us. People are fighting to maintain the privilege that they've had, and they're not just going to like hand it over to you just because it's the right thing to do.
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Speaker 1: No, No, I want to follow up with one question before you go. You know, I don't like to be that I told you so person right, but right now in this moment, I feel like we're all saying we told you so. When I look back at Kamala's messages, right everything that we're dealing with, we're seeing, we're going through, Kamala told us. So I know what I think and how I feel.
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Speaker 3: Why do you think.
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Speaker 2: People didn't vote for Kamala Harris.
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Speaker 5: It's a long list. I just want to pick up on what you just said about she kind of previewed everything that we would be experiencing right now. Hillary Clinton did too. Yeah, you know, obviously Kamala Harris had you know, she wasn't just a woman. She's a black woman. And that is something I often tell the story. I think back to two thousand and eight and the primary, and it was always something that I reflected on that you had a white woman and a black man running against each other and we got to see who would people actually support Because you have a black person, a black man, and a white woman. And in the end, Barack Obama was elected, and like I supported him, but I think that was a little reflective of what we saw in twenty twenty four. To have, you know, a woman of color, a president of color who's also a woman, was going to be really difficult. And so we heard a lot that, like, the economy is why so many people voted for Donald Trump. And I think a lot of people believe that. But part of the problem is they didn't believe Kamala Harris about what she wanted to do for the economy. It's not as if she did not have a message, it's not as if she did not have policies, but they didn't want to believe her. They wanted to believe that Donald Trump was going to be their savior. I went home to North Carolina to outdoors. I spent maybe twenty minutes talking to an older black gentleman and we're going back and forth about why he's supporting Donald Trump, and I am pushing back on everything, and he finally just relented and said, I just don't think a woman should be president.
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Speaker 2: That's yeah, regardless of race. Yeah, because they've had the same thing about Hillary a woman.
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Speaker 1: Listen, and I read this where they people were saying a woman, we as women were good enough to have your child too, you know, take care home, all those things, but we're not good enough to run a country. And my thing with the whole policy, right, people were like, well, I don't understand commalost policies or I don't agree with them. Well, Donald Trump had concepts of policies, right, so I've yet to know what were and are his policies. And to your point, I'm sorry. To your point, yes, she was a black woman, but I think I think it was more of the fact that it's a woman, regardless of her race.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, because we saw Barack Obama get elected and so we know that people are willing to kind of cross that racial line, but not gender. And you know, it's it's a double edged sword because she's a woman. But it's clear that she was brilliant, she's educated, accomplished, and that didn't matter either. But Donald Trump, who I mean, I don't think there's enough words to describe how I mean. He's an evil man, but he's also dumb. His entire tariff policy sugarcoated now dumb yeah he is. And you know something that has just driven me crazy. There's so many of these like billionaires who are in his orbit, in his cabinet. Even if I don't agree with them, they are smart. They know that what he's doing is ruining the economy, it's ruining their businesses, it's ruining their net worth. But they are still just kind of standing around him, propping him up, telling the world, oh, this is going to work out for us. And I don't know how these people go back into their companies after because if I'm on the board, I'm like, you help put us in this bad situation and for what? For what? So it's even though we've been here for ten years, I know more than I ever wanted to know about this man. Still just I can't believe we're here right now. But it's a reminder that most of the country does not like women. There are women who didn't want to vote for Kamala Harris because she was a woman. And you know what can you make of that? Like, how do you have a conversation with someone who like, we're women? Go have a conversation with a woman saying no, I just don't think a woman should be in the White House again, I'm knocking on doors. A woman said to me, well, women are just too emotional for those kinds of jobs. And you have someone like Donald Trump who gets mad at Canada for airing a commercial with like Ronald Reagan's own words and then puts tariffs on them, like that's emotional.
00:22:43
Speaker 2: Trade, Like what's better than free?
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Speaker 5: Exactly, exactly, You don't.
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Speaker 1: You can't say that she's too emotional or a woman is too emotional when every five minutes the commander and she the president of the US, is constantly going to true social tweeting.
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Speaker 2: About dumb stuff.
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Speaker 3: With no no real context, no real substance.
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Speaker 2: So don't talk to me about being too emotional.
00:23:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we literally saw an emotional breakdown between two people when Donald Trump and Elon Musk decided that they wanted to involve all of us in the group chat about their bullshit that affected the lives of so many Americans and their livelihood. We are seeing an emotional breakdown every time this man decides that he wants to send a message to blue and democratic states by removing things like teneth and welfare assistants. And clearly, as we are seeing now, when there are only one hundred and forty thousand undocumented immigrant into Minneapolis, but you've got all the ice up there acting a fool. Meanwhile, between Texas and Florida alone, you've got about five million and there's nothing happening there to the likes of what is happening in Minneapolis. But women are emotional, got it.
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Speaker 5: He's always in his feelings, I mean him always think about the super Bowl last night, the bad Bunny's performance is.
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Speaker 2: Come on Bunny exact.
00:24:28
Speaker 5: It was amazing.
00:24:30
Speaker 3: Ate it up?
00:24:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, he ate it up.
00:24:32
Speaker 3: But you know what, though, I want to kind of not switch gears because it's the same kind of gear, but maybe take a different avenue for a similar conversation because it feels like, I don't know, but it feels like people may be starting to put down the kool aid just a little bit. Right. They're still drinking it. They are very Jim Jones in it out here, but it feels like they are starting to maybe we think, wait a minute, stuff is really starting to not add up here. We're starting to see more and more people who have followed him and praised him for many years starting to backtrack and starting to say, first one that obviously comes to mind is MAJORI Taylor Green, and I ain't really got much for her, but I am hoping that the people who are in congressional seats, knowing that this is a midterm election year, that this can be that thing that those who have the voting power can start to kind of flip some of these things. You have worked in Capitol Hill and within Congress, so you've kind of got an idea of how these people see things and view things and understanding the power that they possess, but why they still may make decisions to not do a certain thing. We've been trying to figure out forever what has been Congress's reasoning for not following through with the removal of impeachment. We've been trying to figure out forever why are we still having these continual government shut downs because people are refusing to go on the other side of the aisle and work on bipartisan policy. We understand how politics work in that way, but given what we are starting to see now, do you believe that there will be a shift in congressional seats that could actually move the country in a different direction after twenty twenty six?
00:26:24
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, even before we get to the election. One thing I know about the people the members of Congress on Capitol Hill, the number one thing that they are worried about is being re elected. And that has been especially on the Republican side. That is what's been driving I think a lot of their decision making. And so when Donald Trump is popular with the base and people are showing up for him, they want to do whatever he wants because they're afraid that he's going to get someone to challenge them in a primary and then they'll never get to a general election where they need to not be as extreme. But they're more so focused on getting making sure that they don't get beat by a fellow Republican who's willing to go even further than they are. You look at someone like Lindsay Graham who used to hate I mean most of these Republicans used to hate Donald Trump. They used to say how awful he was, you know, even his vice president. And now because they're either afree of who's in reelection or someone like JD. Van's who I mean, Look, I'm an ambitious person. I'm not that ambitious that I will completely like change who I am what I think, you know, talk about immigrants in the way that he does when his wife's parents are immigrants. It's just and but then you think about just an indoctrination of people of color because she's sitting there along for the ride, about to have another kid with him, and so it's just it's it's it's crazy. But I think what I think with the elections coming and a lot of Donald Trump's base starting to kind of smell what's really going on now, you're starting to see Republicans say, oh, I didn't like that. Look at the video of that he posted with the President Obama and First Lady Obama. You had a lot of Republicans. I was actually surprised how many of them. Yeah, condemned that, but I don't actually have faith that they did it because they were offended. They are thinking about their re election and the ad that might be run, and largely the Republican Party saw games with black people in twenty twenty four, and like, how do you maintain that when you are just being overtly racist. They're not even trying to hide it anymore, so they're trying to distance themselves. But as far as the midterms, I do think we are going to see a shift. You know, I can't predict anything, but people are so frustrated right now. And when people see what's going on with Ice, people who voted for this, even then they say they didn't. They now have to contend with the kind of person they are and the kind of person who took that vote. And it's like, am I going to stick with this or back away from it? And there are some people who try not to do that. I told you something, but like they are finally they are slowly getting to a point of realizing that maybe they were tricked again. I think that's convenient. I think we all had the same information. But they're starting to shift away. I think it's too late, though, for a lot of congressional Republicans especially, it's not just the hatred. It's the economy. It's really bad. And you had all these Republicans saying, oh, this is great, tarists are great, like all of this is great. Healthcare subsidies expiring. A lot of those subsidies are in very red districts that are very poor, and now you are telling them they don't get to have their benefits anymore, and so all of this is coming back on them. And you see congressional Republicans, particularly in the House, trying to like have a little vote here, have a little vote there. But when people are missing out on those kinds of benefits, you can't just tinker around the edges. You have to actually be doing something. So I do think Democrats will win the House. They need a big margin to actually, you know, have the hearings they want, past the legislation they want. But I don't know what will happen in the Senate. But I feel much better than I did a year ago about Democrats' ability to take the Senate because again, people are hurting and they're seeing American citizens be murdered. Even if they were supportive of mass deportations, they did not. Now this, I will give them if you didn't think that they would be killing American citizens, but they are because the kinds of people who get recruited into Ice right now, when there's no rules and no standards, these are not people who need guns.
00:30:30
Speaker 1: No, no, no whatsoever. So it's bad out there. So you mentioned midterms, and a lot of people are saying, with everything that's going on right you got Ice, Trump threatening to enact on the Insurrection Act and just.
00:30:55
Speaker 2: All the stuff that's going on. A lot of people are saying, we may not.
00:31:00
Speaker 1: Have midterm What do you think about that.
00:31:05
Speaker 5: I think we're gonna have that. I think we're gonna have midterms. And again back to what we're just talking about. You have Republicans who Donald Trump's out here saying the federal government is going to take over these elections. But you have Republicans who are getting nervous about that. They know things are already shaky, so they can't just stand behind him with that, who are saying absolutely not. And it's just crazy because Republicans are the party who's always talking about states rights and now you have Donald Trump trying to go in and take those rights away. But what I will say is I think we're gonna I feel very confident we will have midterm elections. But you know, I do think there's a concern. I think there's a concern with if the election doesn't go the way he wants, what is he going to do. We already saw what happened on you know, January sixth and twenty twenty one, and I know there's a lot of people who are like, stop telling me to vote. Voting is not the only thing that we'll fix all of this, but it has to be one of the things that we are doing, because every time people sit out and say it doesn't matter, they get more and more powered. And I don't just mean elected seats. Every time someone disengages from our process, that means that they have fewer people to kind of convince to be on their side, and they don't have a real opposition. And so voting is part of demonstrating that opposition. But so is showing up at protests, so is participating in mutual aid and making sure that the people in your community are okay. There's a lot of things that people can do, but voting is also how we got here, or a lack thereof. You know, one of my friends, he will never he'll just sometimes be on Twitter and just get frustrated all over again. About twenty sixteen, when people were saying it doesn't matter, you know, they're the same and all of that, and like, literally we are here right now because Donald Trump got elected in twenty sixteen. He has chosen three Supreme Court justices. You know, it's just it's all intertwined. And so when people sayvoting doesn't matter, there's so many other things tied to voting, and it's literally why we're here right now. It's why ICE has all this money to go into these places.
00:33:10
Speaker 2: Point.
00:33:11
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just all connected.
00:33:13
Speaker 3: One. It's there are so many things that are connected in the political landscape. And when we come back, we will talk more with Senior Vice President. Shouldn't build m Clinton's stay tuned. You know. One of the things that I often put on I probably shouldn't, but I don't give a fuck. I'll do it anyway. But one of the things that I usually put out here in the street is that there's a playbook that's being followed, right And if you pay attention, and if you are somewhat of a person who follows history and understands history, or at least understand world politics, then you understand exactly what playbook it is that I'm referring to. And as I look at our government, specifically Donald Trump, the things that he does, the things that he nacts the first in every the playbook that I am specifically referring to as mind Camp, which is Adolf Hitler's book that he wrote his biography, and there are parts of this book in how he was able to take over Germany to create this Nazi party and get people to buy in to the rhetoric that he sold is so similar to what I see day today that is happening. Then Netflix a few years ago decided to create this show called How to Create a Tyrant? Right, And in this particular episode he talks about, I mean, Flick goes through this documentary thing of all of these well known tyrants throughout history, and again the playbook remains the same, right in each and every one of them, and it becomes so incredibly scary that now, not only have you made people comfortable with their evil, not only have you made people believe that folks that don't look like you and think like you are also evil and need to be handled or dealt with, but you are starting to change policies of basic freedoms and Congress has not stepped up to stop any of it, things like most recently seeing Don Lemon being arrested when freedom of press is clearly right there sitting in that amendment, like it just just sitting right there right yep.
00:35:48
Speaker 2: How how scared?
00:35:53
Speaker 3: And I mean, and I don't mean this to be like a frightening kind of thing, because my goal here is not to scare anybody, but it is to be honest and to be true about how serious should people be taking the things that we are seeing with that conversation of folks not wanting to vote or folks not wanting to participate in the political process. But as you are seeing basic everyday freedoms be taken away in a way that is very similar to how we ended up with a or how we have historically seen dictatorships begin. How scared should the American public be if they do not begin to exercise their civic and political engagement?
00:36:34
Speaker 5: Honestly, I mean, we're like, you know, there has been a lot of conversation at least when Donald Trump was first reelected about you know, not marching toward authoritarianism, but like we're in We're in.
00:36:47
Speaker 2: It, We're in it, We're there.
00:36:50
Speaker 5: People should be afraid. I mean, I thought the first term was bad, thinking back to the Black Lives Matter protests where he had them, you know, to your gas he comes out, you know, for his little Bible photo op at the chart, you know, and now we're seeing Ice is essentially his like personal little army that he is sending out to keep people in order. They have masks on what law enforcement in this country is permitted to go into communities with guns and masks and do whatever they want. And you know, to Don Lemon being arrested, that is I mean, it's our first amendment, the freedom of speech, you know, and yes, and so we we should be really scared. Is particularly with Don Lemon, two judges refuse to you know, bring those charges against him, and they still went forward. And I'm hopeful that you know, this won't go anywhere. But the fact that they are trying to silence anyone who would dare cover them, it's like, what are you hiding? And look at all the things we've seen in the news, imagine what we are not seeing. I mean, we still even have all of the Epstein files out, and for Donald Trump to have worked as hard as he has to keep all of that under lock and key, God only knows what's in there. But on top of that, they have like rated you know, the amount of money that him and his family have made off of him being in the presidency, like all of this corruption. But they are using violence to keep people quiet. They are using the full weight of the government to keep people quiet. And I know that there's probably a lot of people who think that's not going to affect me, but it will when someone knocks on your door because you posted something that they didn't like or you made a joke, and yeah, it's getting you know. That is what we're marching to, where either you're on their side or the other side. And I know people like me, I can't go erase everything I have said, you know, on social media, on television that I've written. That's all out there, and so you know I.
00:39:00
Speaker 2: And to your point, nor should you have to, right it is your wife.
00:39:06
Speaker 1: But to that point, because to y'all want to add on something to that, because I think about that every day and my husband says to me, you know, like even if I'm reposting something, he's like, be very careful what you're putting out there about this administration, even though it's stuff that's real and it's true.
00:39:24
Speaker 3: Right.
00:39:25
Speaker 1: But as a as a woman, and particularly a black woman, because I know when Kamala lost, we all were like listen, since I'm tired. Yeah, so we were like, you know what, y'all got this one. But Chaniko, to your point, as black women, we've always held it down. We've always been on the front lines. We've always used our voices. We've always said, all right, y'all, we got to figure this shit out as a black.
00:39:57
Speaker 2: Woman who wants to engage civically.
00:40:02
Speaker 1: But again, we're just exhausted, like we're tired, but we know what's out there. What does sustainable participation look like to you in this next chapter?
00:40:15
Speaker 5: Yeah so, because no, I know, And the first thing I'm going to say is not going to make you feel less tired, but it's just a reality. I want to ground the conversation in. This is something my old therapist used to say to me all the time. Whose responsibility are you? And the answer was, I'm my own responsibility and we unfortunately are like at the intersections that put us kind of at the bottom. And so if we don't save ourselves like, no one else will. And I know it's unfair because whenever we save ourselves, we save everybody else. But to date, I wouldn't trust anyone other than us to make sure that we're okay. Now, as far as like sustainable activism or you know, ways to be engaged, you can choose where you decide to show up. I obviously work in politics, but the first year of Trump's term was hard, and when I was in my twenties, I used to spend a lot of time volunteering and I started doing that again this year because the people, you know, I volunteer at this soup kitchen I guess you call it, and you know they serve breakfast and lunch. And I needed something to remind me that I could help people quicker than the political process, and so getting involved in kind of direct services really helps. I think it helps remind you that, like the things we're fighting for, like people actually do need help. And it just grounds me to remember, like why I'm getting up every day to do this long term work. But for some people that just might be the extent of what they're able to do right now. But that does reinvest in the community and make sure people are okay. You can also if you want to do work to support Canadas, you can just work to support black women, Like you don't have to expend yourself for people that you're not sure and not all black women are working in the interests of black women, so keep that in mind. But you know, finding places where you can do that or mutual aid, you know, figuring out ways to raise money for people in your community who need help, or get them food. You know when snap benefits look like they were about to be cut off, Like how do we come together and help in our communities? And even if it's just having conversations, getting together once a month with other people and talking about the issues that are going on so that you're knowledgeable, so when you go talk to your family and friends, you have the information you need to help them. It doesn't always have to be you know, you're showing up at a campaign office three times a week to help someone get elected. It can look like a lot of different things, but it's really just about building your community and investing your time into things that can make a difference. And I was about to say that you feel can make a difference, but I actually I just want to add one more thing there, like if you don't know what can actually have impact, like find an organization via the NAACP or like the organization I run voats, say of America, but like make sure the work you're doing can have an actual impact. Because after Donald Trump got elected in twenty sixteen, a lot of bad actors got into the space just trying to make money. And so you don't want to get caught up in something that is just helping someone line their pockets. So make sure whatever you're doing is like contributing. But there are a lot of great organizations out there to help with that.
00:43:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's for sure. I know. You know, Ryl and I are both members of a sorority, and I know one of the pillars that we definitely did was to make sure during the time when snap benefits we're running out, how can we get families money, How can we get families food? How can we stop these pantries to make sure that they are going to have what they need? So there are definitely tangible ways that people can get involved in their communities. But you know, before we get you out of here, I'm just and again, I want to thank you so much for your time, because this is a conversation that we could literally have and this is the on record conversation. Don't even get me started off the shit that I want to say when I stop this recording. But you know, we are in twenty twenty six, which there's only a couple of more years left before we're going to start gearing up for a presidential election, and there is a lot of conversation around what it would look like if there was some change to the constitution that would allow presidents or people to stay in power a lot longer. But the idea that we have right now is that come twenty twenty eight, we'll be looking at someone else sitting in the highest office in the land. And my question to you is just.
00:44:44
Speaker 2: What do you.
00:44:46
Speaker 5: What do you hope a.
00:44:48
Speaker 3: Post Trump era for the US would look like five ten years from now, once we've gotten past this, Like, what what has America learned? If anything right? Because history tends to repeat itself. I'm a bit of a historian. I love to look at what we've done, where we are and how we're doing the same shit we've already done again. But what do you think a post Trump America could and should look like?
00:45:13
Speaker 5: You know this, My answer is not about the economy or like costs. I think whoever is h and presumably it would have to be a Democrat for this to happen. I think whoever's in the White House next? These people need to go to prison. Yeah, you think about Germany and they took care of all their Nazis and there was just like a culture there where it's like never again.
00:45:38
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:45:38
Speaker 5: Here, after slavery, we paid the people who enslaved black people to like make them, I don't know, to compensate them for their losses. But the black people who were coming out of that did not get anything. And we put statues up to commemorate the people who were leading the Confederacy. And so we have just like uplifted the worst part of our history. And if we do that again and we don't hold these people accountable, we are going to repeat history again. And so that yes, I want better schools, I want better healthcare, I want all of that. But the reason we don't have those things is because of the racism that undergirds this country. And so like we have to really like the bad actors. They need to be dealt with in real ways. And so that is and to me, that's the only way we get past trump Ism, because even when he's gone, you look at people like JD. Vans, Marco Rubio, who has just become a completely different person. If those people are still here and willing to carry Trump's mantle forward, then he can be gone and we're still going to be dealing with this stuff.
00:46:43
Speaker 2: That's a great point. It's a great point, and I am totally.
00:46:48
Speaker 3: Agree with you, girl.
00:46:53
Speaker 1: Gone.
00:46:54
Speaker 3: I tell you the way I would be tuned in if there was a US version of the Numberg Trials, I would be locked in, honey, Like, yes.
00:47:04
Speaker 2: Lock them all up.
00:47:05
Speaker 3: Throw them away. It's crazy, but yeah, I just I hate to see history repeat itself when this is the type of history that we're continually repeating.
00:47:15
Speaker 5: Again.
00:47:17
Speaker 3: To that point in twenty twenty, when this happens, when we were seeing people murdered on TV, and we were seeing people murdered in videos, the country did feel some type of way, I like to say white guilt kicked in and they were like, what can we all do in order to help and save black people?
00:47:34
Speaker 2: But we did have.
00:47:35
Speaker 3: Enough to put a Democrat in office, right, And I'm not saying Biden didn't have his faults, but at the end of the day, we were at that point smart enough to make some change. Here we are again in twenty twenty six, and we're seeing this thing happen live in our face, and I am hoping that that is enough to get people to say, hey, we need to really make some type of formidable change. Just unfortunate people have to lose their lives in order for folks to know.
00:48:03
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, I know, we already have so many examples.
00:48:07
Speaker 3: Girl. Enough we got enough. We don't need no more. We got enough. But Shanika, thank you so much. Shanika, thank you so much. My sister's name is Shanika, and I was like, oh, I feel like your family. But thank you so much for joining us. Can you give our audience just uh more information on where they can find you, how they can check out you know, cricket media, just you know, give them some some way to stay connected.
00:48:35
Speaker 2: And about Sorry, Vote Save America.
00:48:38
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you know. We are trying to pull as many people in a Vote Save America as possible as we head into the midterm. We haven't released our upcoming strategy yet, but if you go to vote Saveamerica dot com and just sign up, you will be one of the first piece people to get our updates. But we're making sure that everyone who is part of that community, you know, we want them to take action. But something else we want our audience to do, and this comes out of the spirit of crooked media being created. We want everyone to be a messenger. We want you to have the information you need to go talk to people, whether you're talking to a voter, your mother, your sister, or your cousin or you know, some crazy neighbor. Like, we want everyone to be able to do that because twenty twenty four showed us when you own the communication and the narrative, you can win an election even when you are awful. And so we have to compete in those in those places, and so we're excited about the work that we have coming. And yeah, yeah, I don't know how to underscore this more, but every time we disengage or say it's not worth our time, like, they are just moving forward and that means that they are going to get more done and they have like one less soldier going up against them. And so whatever you can do, just sign up to do it. You know, I hope it's with votes, say of America. But there are so many ways that people can get involved. And if your first step is to just or something online, do that. If it's to go do volunteer at a soup kitchen, or participate in mutual aid, do that. But all of those small things and if more people do it, it actually does have an impact.
00:50:12
Speaker 2: I love that.
00:50:13
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much for your time, we appreciation. I really did have to end that conversation because the way that shit was, like, it's all like we just kept opening Pandora's box for more and more conversation, Like seriously.
00:50:42
Speaker 1: Well, but because there's so much that we could talk about, right, we could go on and on and on. To me, I'm like, yes, this is a conversation that needs to be had, Like everybody needs to be having some type of conversation around politics and what's going on. Even if you say I don't do politics, listen all the shit that's happening in our country right now, you better do politics because this is going to affect you as much as it's affecting those.
00:51:09
Speaker 3: Who do do politics.
00:51:10
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:51:10
Speaker 2: So yeah, anyway, yes, yes we needed to cut it off.
00:51:14
Speaker 3: We needed to, but we needed to have it in conversation. It was it really was. And I you know, for the people out there who are saying, you know, we're part of that ninety two percent who needed a break, Okay, I was too. I was part of that ninety two percent that needed a break. But the break is over because for me, at least, I have to go day in and day out with the foolishness and I'm fortunate to live in a blue state, But that don't mean that I'm not affected. That don't mean the people who I have family in states like Florida and North Carolina. I've family in Georgia, Texas, like I have a cousin in Austin. Like I literally you got Ken Houston, see sis, Sis, I ain't worry about you because I know they ain't gonna come down there fucking with you. You ain't gonna allow that. I ain't that, but like that's just what I'm saying, Like, you can only take so much time off and rest and then it's time to get back out there, because if not, then it will be too late, you know, Like there what is the saying go there's no rest, rest for the weary, Like it's just like it just kind of is what it is.
00:52:28
Speaker 5: Right.
00:52:28
Speaker 3: But but I am happy that we got a chance to have Shanika join us, and I am looking forward to following her and getting reacquainted with her later on because I'm pretty sure something else is gonna happen in which we're gonna need her to come on here and help break it down for us. But with that, Cheryl, last week, I did not provide a positive affirmation like I really wanted to because I was like, I don't do positive affirmations. That's cheryl, I ain't got nothing positive for you. But I ain't got nothing. I ain't got nothing, but.
00:53:04
Speaker 2: In my absence, I need you to hold it down.
00:53:07
Speaker 3: I need I need you know what My positive affirmation is, Go be great, every great, be great.
00:53:16
Speaker 1: I should I got a good one. I got a good one today, Okay. And I almost speak for you because I already know this. You're gonna feel this one.
00:53:25
Speaker 2: Oh what you got? Because no, because I felt it.
00:53:29
Speaker 1: And I'm also gonna say our sister Jasmine, don't feel it.
00:53:33
Speaker 3: Because it's it just is here, it goes.
00:53:38
Speaker 1: No matter how good you are, in the wrong place, you won't be valued.
00:53:46
Speaker 2: Growl ma'am. That's a whole word. Dup listen, and that that applies to everything.
00:53:59
Speaker 1: Your friends, life, your job, whatever, whatever. Like I saw that, it was like damn ouch because I questioned a lot of stuff, right, like why am I not? Why do you not think I'm good enough? Because I know I'm good enough to be here for you all the things, but no matter how good you are.
00:54:25
Speaker 3: And then the space place, Yeah.
00:54:28
Speaker 1: You won't be valued. You won't be valued, point blank period.
00:54:35
Speaker 3: That one spoke to my I gotta get that one. That one spoke to my soul. Okay, you know what I got to go? Bye, goodbye, y'all Like that's it. Mike is dropped. That's it, y'all ain't getting you, ain't getting none else but a goodbye. Oh my god, but no. Thank you all so much for continuing to listen to Levels to This. This is always the best part of my week being able to chop it up and record. But listen, this is not just our show. It is our show, so we want to hear from you. Leave us a review in Apple Podcasts let us know what you thought about this week's episode, or you can definitely send us an email at Levels to This Podcast at gmail dot com. We do check these emails like we do look and see some of the amazing things that you guys send us. We have seen topic suggestions, guest suggestions. We love that, so keep sending that our way, and of course you can follow us on Instagram at lttpod So until next time, friends, keep your mentals ground level and we'll be back next week.
00:55:42
Speaker 1: Peace. Listen to Levels to This on America's number one podcast network, iHeart, Open your free iHeart app and search levels to this with Cheryl Swoops and Tarika Foster Brasby and start listening.
00:56:00
Speaker 5: Yeah,
Speaker 1: Levels to This is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment.
00:00:05
Speaker 2: You can find us on the iHeartRadio.
00:00:07
Speaker 1: App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:00:17
Speaker 3: Hey, what's up, everybody, it's your girl. Srika fostera Brasby, what's up, y'all?
00:00:21
Speaker 2: It's your girl Cheryl Swoops And.
00:00:24
Speaker 3: This is a levels to this. This is the show where we talk about all the shit that women go through, and we really do have an interesting episode for you today. However, before we get into that, I gotta say hey to my boo, Cheryl, because you know, last week I had to do this little thing without you, and I felt the way. I was like, oh my god, my girl is not here. I don't know what's happening. So welcome back. A.
00:00:52
Speaker 2: Did you miss me?
00:00:54
Speaker 4: I did?
00:00:55
Speaker 1: I's I always miss you, girl. I was trying to get my coin.
00:01:00
Speaker 3: You and was I am at at.
00:01:04
Speaker 2: I was trying to get my coins. But I'm good.
00:01:08
Speaker 3: You know what that is what we call on an excused absence. That is an.
00:01:11
Speaker 2: Excuse thank you.
00:01:13
Speaker 1: I didn't need a note or nothing, no nothing, I'm good.
00:01:17
Speaker 2: I am m.
00:01:20
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just probably like everybody else, just stressing over you know, life and this world and all the things that's going on.
00:01:28
Speaker 2: So other than that, I'm trying.
00:01:30
Speaker 1: I'm trying to keep my my my mental where I can keep it and still function, if that makes sense.
00:01:42
Speaker 3: You're trying to keep it ground level.
00:01:44
Speaker 2: Yeah, I am. I am. I can't even yeah, because I can't even look at surface level in above. I'm just trying to keep it ground level.
00:01:57
Speaker 3: Just trying to keep your ground level. Yeah, yeah, I got a question. I had a question for you in a minute, but it's in a minute. No now, no now, okay.
00:02:06
Speaker 2: So can I give you my butt?
00:02:08
Speaker 3: Yes?
00:02:09
Speaker 1: How about my grandson is eight months old?
00:02:18
Speaker 2: Hasn't really been that long?
00:02:20
Speaker 1: Yes, girl, he is footing, crawling, probably crawling faster than I can walk.
00:02:29
Speaker 2: He is going to be walking soon.
00:02:31
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's only a matter of time at this way.
00:02:34
Speaker 1: And I'm feeling some type of way because I'm missing all of his.
00:02:38
Speaker 3: First Oh that's right, they're still wait that they're still like the season is still going on.
00:02:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's still in Tunisia. They're in the playoffs right now. And I am gonna say shout out to my kid because he.
00:02:52
Speaker 2: Is bowling and I like that.
00:02:55
Speaker 3: Go Jordan, Jordan, Go Jordan. But I'm still not over that baby being eight months old. I feel like just yesterday he was born, Tarika.
00:03:10
Speaker 2: Okay, wait look look, oh my, look at the chicks. Girl. Do the cheeks not look like the basketball? You see the basketball? The chicks not look like the basket? Y? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I just I just cried. Okay, wait, last one, last one, last one. I got to show you this one too.
00:03:32
Speaker 1: This is one I was like, Oh my gosh, he's so gonna be walking in a minute.
00:03:36
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he walking and dribbling. That's what he's gonna be doing.
00:03:40
Speaker 5: Comes so cute.
00:03:41
Speaker 2: Look, he's just so cute.
00:03:43
Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, when chewing on me in something he ain't supposed to beat you? U? What is you chowing on now? I'm gonna need him to break the mold. I need him to go play football, baseball. I was I need him to.
00:03:58
Speaker 2: Break the ball. Ill, No, we're not doing that.
00:04:03
Speaker 3: Let this family starting to branch off into Look, you gotta talk to his daddy about that, because I'm gonna be there. Period black period regards whatever. You gotta just throw a bunch of stuff at him. Throw a baseball, a soccer ball, just see which one sticks.
00:04:21
Speaker 2: How about gonna be the president? He do a better job?
00:04:24
Speaker 3: What he could do a better job right now and be doing a better job than what the hell we.
00:04:32
Speaker 5: Got going on?
00:04:33
Speaker 3: Its mess?
00:04:37
Speaker 4: And you know what, I'm so sick of Texas. I'm so sick of taxes. Just make just I was all proud of.
00:04:52
Speaker 1: Because I did all my early voting because and you you know, I was gonna be moving around.
00:04:58
Speaker 2: It's gonna be difficult, but.
00:04:59
Speaker 3: Uh but I did hear because the issues was that people were struggling with finding where they were supposed to phone.
00:05:07
Speaker 2: But Tea, here's my thing.
00:05:09
Speaker 1: Yes, all those things I read I heard, are we surprised? No, But I'm going to tell you the last thing I heard, because you know, my brother lives in Dallas, and like I got family in Dallas, so yeah, one of my friends' friends posted on social media that she went to the same voting location that she went to, or that like her friends went to for early voting. But it's the same place that they were told to go to, and this was for the Democratic primaries, the Republican primaries, So she went there the worker showed up, and she said when she got there, some of the workers and all of the people who showed up to vote, they were told that it was only a Republican voting facility, and we start doing that right, right, And so she was like, and in the place that they told them that they could go vote Democratic was like an hour away from.
00:06:19
Speaker 3: Where she was.
00:06:20
Speaker 2: Shut the fuck up. Yes, yes, this is the type of shit that's.
00:06:27
Speaker 3: Happening right now in the United States of America in the Year of Our Lord twenty twenty six.
00:06:36
Speaker 2: Yes, it's real.
00:06:38
Speaker 3: It's real. That is wild voter.
00:06:41
Speaker 2: Suppression, all the things, like, all that shit is real.
00:06:45
Speaker 3: It is so real. And you know what, I'm really happy that we have the perfect guest today. Not happy that all of this BS is going on, but very happy that we have someone joining us on today's episode who who is a leading voice in political strategy and civic engagement and she's no stranger to this bullshit and I cannot wait to get into it with her. We have Shanika McClinton joining us from Vote Save America, and I'm just excited to talk to her about all things. But it's just it's just incredible the ridiculousness that like it's just happening day in and day out, and I'm like, it's to the point where I'm not even surprised anymore.
00:07:31
Speaker 1: No, like I'm not even surprised, You're not surprised, but it's still like what the fuck? But it's like, what's happening?
00:07:38
Speaker 3: So anyway, let's just go ahead and take this to the next level and bring in Shika so joining us on today's show. We always have some great, incredible guests, but and I know I'll always be like, oh my god, I'm so excited about today, but I'm never lying, like I really am always excited about our guests, and I'm just as excited about our guest today. Originally heiling from North Carolina, when we talk about political strategists and political and civic engagement, she's certainly one of the first to come to mind, as she currently serves as the vice president of politics for Votes Save America and Crooket Media. Please make some noise, shout it out black women represent because we are the bomb. For our girl, Shinnika McClinton.
00:08:39
Speaker 5: Thank you, hi, And you know, excitingly, I got a promotion recently, so now I am a senior vice president of political strategy. Come on now, I wasn't updated, but come on now.
00:08:55
Speaker 2: That needs to be updated, ma'am.
00:08:58
Speaker 5: I just put it on link in today.
00:09:01
Speaker 2: That is congratulation.
00:09:03
Speaker 3: Congratulation.
00:09:05
Speaker 1: You said it about black women, and I don't y'all can't say this, but I wore this hat in honor of you. Yes, and it says black women are really everything.
00:09:16
Speaker 2: Yes, yes are. Let's go during Black History months.
00:09:21
Speaker 5: Come on, thank you.
00:09:24
Speaker 3: I love that. That's how you start a show. Come on with some news, right, Like I don't like for, you know, to start a show. No, you come on with that good news early, because that's exactly what we love. So shout out, miss senior vice president. I love that. And let's start there right because it took some time to get to the level that you currently are, right. I know, we kind of all make it seem like we really woke up like this, but some of us have to grind and grind and grind. And you started your grind from doing a little bit of everything, including being a White House intern for the Obama administration. Just thinking back on that time and that experience, given where we are now, you know, are there some moments that maybe still shape how you move through spaces today from that experience.
00:10:17
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, Barack Obama's election was really.
00:10:21
Speaker 2: Pivotal for me just by you saying that name, but.
00:10:26
Speaker 5: So many things and Okay, now I'm like bringing too much into this, but like you know, I still remember my senior year. That's when Barack Obama got elected. I went to UNC Chapel Hill and we me and my roommate ran out of our rooms at like eleven o'clock at night when they called it, and we were like, are we going to rush Franklin Street? Like what are people doing? So we just like we didn't know if people would be out there, but we drove out. It was like drizzling and there were like students running all around, and so the police like shut down the intersection so we could just celebrate. And so that was that. I mean, I was I became obsessed with politics when Barack Obama was running for office. I would put the news on, I'd fall asleep to it, I'd wake up to it, and I was just so enamored with him. And I thought Hillary Clinton would with the primary, but I still said, I'm giving I'm giving him my vote like he's going to get my vote. And so it meant the world when I ended up getting that internship and I was able to move up there or move up here to Washington, d C. And it's funny, Barack Obama is why I got interested in politics, but Donald Trump's why I stayed in it. You know, I went to grad school in twenty sixteen. I was about to I wanted to get out of politics. I find I really wanted to finally, you know, make a decent living. My first job on Capitol Hill, I made thirty thousand dollars a year and it was tough, and so my plan was to like go into the private sector. But my first semester in grad school, Donald Trump won and I knew that after school, if I didn't go back into politics, I would spend every other hour I had outside of you know, a different job doing it. So you know, I'm still here. I think I'll be here forever now. I mean, I enjoy this work, but I am really I'm sad how how needed the work is right now because things and that's why we have to have these moments of like celebration and these bright spots, because every day you wake up and there's something else, you know, you just shake your head about, and it's it's a lot. And I'll be interested in like decades when people look back on this time and just think about what it did to the psyche of those of us who are living through it.
00:12:34
Speaker 3: Girl, Can I just say we have a couple things in common before I let Shirol go really quickly. Number one, I too went to school in North Carolina. I went to sag and Raleigh, and the day that President Obama was elected, I literally went to the club because they were playing jeez's my president is black. Yeah. And the last thing is my senior internship was working for the Obama campaign. I was the president of the student for Hillary Clinton's club, and then when she lost the primaries, I was like, well, your girl got to get an internship somewhere because I gotta graduate. And a little Obama office down the street, because you know they have like offices in every city, like field Field offices. I had. My job was not cool. I was literally delivering shit day to day to different people out in the field about why they need to vote for President Obama. But the people that I met was great, So that's it did. But I did not have a fun job. I knew I was gonna be like the girls sitting at the desk doing something. Girl, they had my black ass out there passed out these flyers.
00:13:34
Speaker 2: Listen, Well, you passing that flyers made a difference?
00:13:37
Speaker 5: Yeah?
00:13:37
Speaker 3: He was right, right right and read yeah.
00:13:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, should well we have them.
00:13:45
Speaker 1: I mean a long list of questions and just a lot of different topics to talk about.
00:13:50
Speaker 2: But since we're here, I just want to stay right here for a moment.
00:13:57
Speaker 1: You said Barack Obama is the reason why you got involved in politics, but Donald Trump is the reason why you stayed in politics. You kind of sort of explain that. My question to you is where are we right now?
00:14:21
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the simplest and most honest place I can say from my perspective that I think is I think it's factual, but it's still my opinion. We're in the midst of backlash to Barack Obama being president. You know, there were a lot of people who were really upset, including Donald Trump. You know, he started with the birtherism, saying that Barack Obama was not born in this country, and he opened up this permission for people to just kind of expose the hate that they had for Barack Obama, but for black people, people of color, anyone who's different in this country. And you know, since it's been ten years of this, and I know that a lot of this stuff was already under the surface. And Donald Trump didn't make people racist, he didn't make them who they are, but he did give them permission to be awful. You know. I think back to the twenty sixteen election when Hillary Clinton called his supporters deplorables, and she got ripped apart for it. And look where we are now. Some of his biggest supporters have joined ICE so that they can kill people. Some of his biggest supporters, I mean, he tweeted or whatever his social platform is, he posted this video of the Obama's being depicted as monkeys. He has fundamentally changed what is acceptable. And I don't think there is anything that is unacceptable now since he's been president, and so we're truly it's I can't even say two steps forward one step back like we took, you know, two steps forward with Barack Obama and we who have just been free falling backward for some time. But I think it's something we've seen throughout the history of this country where where there's progress for marginalized people, the people who have had power and privilege and you know, have been who have felt exceptional because other people being held down, they start to resent the fact that other people are starting to get ahead. And yeah, it's this was something one of my professors in grad school kind of left me with after we took this class about racism and democracy that I was. I was frustrated in the moment. I still think it's unfair, but I can honestly say it is kind of what we have to deal with that we're not going to get out of this if we're not the ones like fighting. And you know, people who are in the majority, be it around race, well gender, men, regardless of how much of the population they take up, still have the problem. But you know, regardless of how you are in the minority, we're the ones. We are going to have to speak up. We're going to have to push people, We're going to have to make people uncomfortable, We're going to have to teach people. And it's not fair because we already have the burdens of being marginalized on us, but no one's going to do it for us. People are fighting to maintain the privilege that they've had, and they're not just going to like hand it over to you just because it's the right thing to do.
00:17:25
Speaker 1: No, No, I want to follow up with one question before you go. You know, I don't like to be that I told you so person right, but right now in this moment, I feel like we're all saying we told you so. When I look back at Kamala's messages, right everything that we're dealing with, we're seeing, we're going through, Kamala told us. So I know what I think and how I feel.
00:18:01
Speaker 3: Why do you think.
00:18:04
Speaker 2: People didn't vote for Kamala Harris.
00:18:09
Speaker 5: It's a long list. I just want to pick up on what you just said about she kind of previewed everything that we would be experiencing right now. Hillary Clinton did too. Yeah, you know, obviously Kamala Harris had you know, she wasn't just a woman. She's a black woman. And that is something I often tell the story. I think back to two thousand and eight and the primary, and it was always something that I reflected on that you had a white woman and a black man running against each other and we got to see who would people actually support Because you have a black person, a black man, and a white woman. And in the end, Barack Obama was elected, and like I supported him, but I think that was a little reflective of what we saw in twenty twenty four. To have, you know, a woman of color, a president of color who's also a woman, was going to be really difficult. And so we heard a lot that, like, the economy is why so many people voted for Donald Trump. And I think a lot of people believe that. But part of the problem is they didn't believe Kamala Harris about what she wanted to do for the economy. It's not as if she did not have a message, it's not as if she did not have policies, but they didn't want to believe her. They wanted to believe that Donald Trump was going to be their savior. I went home to North Carolina to outdoors. I spent maybe twenty minutes talking to an older black gentleman and we're going back and forth about why he's supporting Donald Trump, and I am pushing back on everything, and he finally just relented and said, I just don't think a woman should be president.
00:19:47
Speaker 2: That's yeah, regardless of race. Yeah, because they've had the same thing about Hillary a woman.
00:19:53
Speaker 1: Listen, and I read this where they people were saying a woman, we as women were good enough to have your child too, you know, take care home, all those things, but we're not good enough to run a country. And my thing with the whole policy, right, people were like, well, I don't understand commalost policies or I don't agree with them. Well, Donald Trump had concepts of policies, right, so I've yet to know what were and are his policies. And to your point, I'm sorry. To your point, yes, she was a black woman, but I think I think it was more of the fact that it's a woman, regardless of her race.
00:20:36
Speaker 5: Yeah, because we saw Barack Obama get elected and so we know that people are willing to kind of cross that racial line, but not gender. And you know, it's it's a double edged sword because she's a woman. But it's clear that she was brilliant, she's educated, accomplished, and that didn't matter either. But Donald Trump, who I mean, I don't think there's enough words to describe how I mean. He's an evil man, but he's also dumb. His entire tariff policy sugarcoated now dumb yeah he is. And you know something that has just driven me crazy. There's so many of these like billionaires who are in his orbit, in his cabinet. Even if I don't agree with them, they are smart. They know that what he's doing is ruining the economy, it's ruining their businesses, it's ruining their net worth. But they are still just kind of standing around him, propping him up, telling the world, oh, this is going to work out for us. And I don't know how these people go back into their companies after because if I'm on the board, I'm like, you help put us in this bad situation and for what? For what? So it's even though we've been here for ten years, I know more than I ever wanted to know about this man. Still just I can't believe we're here right now. But it's a reminder that most of the country does not like women. There are women who didn't want to vote for Kamala Harris because she was a woman. And you know what can you make of that? Like, how do you have a conversation with someone who like, we're women? Go have a conversation with a woman saying no, I just don't think a woman should be in the White House again, I'm knocking on doors. A woman said to me, well, women are just too emotional for those kinds of jobs. And you have someone like Donald Trump who gets mad at Canada for airing a commercial with like Ronald Reagan's own words and then puts tariffs on them, like that's emotional.
00:22:43
Speaker 2: Trade, Like what's better than free?
00:22:48
Speaker 5: Exactly, exactly, You don't.
00:22:50
Speaker 1: You can't say that she's too emotional or a woman is too emotional when every five minutes the commander and she the president of the US, is constantly going to true social tweeting.
00:23:08
Speaker 2: About dumb stuff.
00:23:12
Speaker 3: With no no real context, no real substance.
00:23:18
Speaker 2: So don't talk to me about being too emotional.
00:23:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we literally saw an emotional breakdown between two people when Donald Trump and Elon Musk decided that they wanted to involve all of us in the group chat about their bullshit that affected the lives of so many Americans and their livelihood. We are seeing an emotional breakdown every time this man decides that he wants to send a message to blue and democratic states by removing things like teneth and welfare assistants. And clearly, as we are seeing now, when there are only one hundred and forty thousand undocumented immigrant into Minneapolis, but you've got all the ice up there acting a fool. Meanwhile, between Texas and Florida alone, you've got about five million and there's nothing happening there to the likes of what is happening in Minneapolis. But women are emotional, got it.
00:24:17
Speaker 5: He's always in his feelings, I mean him always think about the super Bowl last night, the bad Bunny's performance is.
00:24:24
Speaker 2: Come on Bunny exact.
00:24:28
Speaker 5: It was amazing.
00:24:30
Speaker 3: Ate it up?
00:24:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, he ate it up.
00:24:32
Speaker 3: But you know what, though, I want to kind of not switch gears because it's the same kind of gear, but maybe take a different avenue for a similar conversation because it feels like, I don't know, but it feels like people may be starting to put down the kool aid just a little bit. Right. They're still drinking it. They are very Jim Jones in it out here, but it feels like they are starting to maybe we think, wait a minute, stuff is really starting to not add up here. We're starting to see more and more people who have followed him and praised him for many years starting to backtrack and starting to say, first one that obviously comes to mind is MAJORI Taylor Green, and I ain't really got much for her, but I am hoping that the people who are in congressional seats, knowing that this is a midterm election year, that this can be that thing that those who have the voting power can start to kind of flip some of these things. You have worked in Capitol Hill and within Congress, so you've kind of got an idea of how these people see things and view things and understanding the power that they possess, but why they still may make decisions to not do a certain thing. We've been trying to figure out forever what has been Congress's reasoning for not following through with the removal of impeachment. We've been trying to figure out forever why are we still having these continual government shut downs because people are refusing to go on the other side of the aisle and work on bipartisan policy. We understand how politics work in that way, but given what we are starting to see now, do you believe that there will be a shift in congressional seats that could actually move the country in a different direction after twenty twenty six?
00:26:24
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, even before we get to the election. One thing I know about the people the members of Congress on Capitol Hill, the number one thing that they are worried about is being re elected. And that has been especially on the Republican side. That is what's been driving I think a lot of their decision making. And so when Donald Trump is popular with the base and people are showing up for him, they want to do whatever he wants because they're afraid that he's going to get someone to challenge them in a primary and then they'll never get to a general election where they need to not be as extreme. But they're more so focused on getting making sure that they don't get beat by a fellow Republican who's willing to go even further than they are. You look at someone like Lindsay Graham who used to hate I mean most of these Republicans used to hate Donald Trump. They used to say how awful he was, you know, even his vice president. And now because they're either afree of who's in reelection or someone like JD. Van's who I mean, Look, I'm an ambitious person. I'm not that ambitious that I will completely like change who I am what I think, you know, talk about immigrants in the way that he does when his wife's parents are immigrants. It's just and but then you think about just an indoctrination of people of color because she's sitting there along for the ride, about to have another kid with him, and so it's just it's it's it's crazy. But I think what I think with the elections coming and a lot of Donald Trump's base starting to kind of smell what's really going on now, you're starting to see Republicans say, oh, I didn't like that. Look at the video of that he posted with the President Obama and First Lady Obama. You had a lot of Republicans. I was actually surprised how many of them. Yeah, condemned that, but I don't actually have faith that they did it because they were offended. They are thinking about their re election and the ad that might be run, and largely the Republican Party saw games with black people in twenty twenty four, and like, how do you maintain that when you are just being overtly racist. They're not even trying to hide it anymore, so they're trying to distance themselves. But as far as the midterms, I do think we are going to see a shift. You know, I can't predict anything, but people are so frustrated right now. And when people see what's going on with Ice, people who voted for this, even then they say they didn't. They now have to contend with the kind of person they are and the kind of person who took that vote. And it's like, am I going to stick with this or back away from it? And there are some people who try not to do that. I told you something, but like they are finally they are slowly getting to a point of realizing that maybe they were tricked again. I think that's convenient. I think we all had the same information. But they're starting to shift away. I think it's too late, though, for a lot of congressional Republicans especially, it's not just the hatred. It's the economy. It's really bad. And you had all these Republicans saying, oh, this is great, tarists are great, like all of this is great. Healthcare subsidies expiring. A lot of those subsidies are in very red districts that are very poor, and now you are telling them they don't get to have their benefits anymore, and so all of this is coming back on them. And you see congressional Republicans, particularly in the House, trying to like have a little vote here, have a little vote there. But when people are missing out on those kinds of benefits, you can't just tinker around the edges. You have to actually be doing something. So I do think Democrats will win the House. They need a big margin to actually, you know, have the hearings they want, past the legislation they want. But I don't know what will happen in the Senate. But I feel much better than I did a year ago about Democrats' ability to take the Senate because again, people are hurting and they're seeing American citizens be murdered. Even if they were supportive of mass deportations, they did not. Now this, I will give them if you didn't think that they would be killing American citizens, but they are because the kinds of people who get recruited into Ice right now, when there's no rules and no standards, these are not people who need guns.
00:30:30
Speaker 1: No, no, no whatsoever. So it's bad out there. So you mentioned midterms, and a lot of people are saying, with everything that's going on right you got Ice, Trump threatening to enact on the Insurrection Act and just.
00:30:55
Speaker 2: All the stuff that's going on. A lot of people are saying, we may not.
00:31:00
Speaker 1: Have midterm What do you think about that.
00:31:05
Speaker 5: I think we're gonna have that. I think we're gonna have midterms. And again back to what we're just talking about. You have Republicans who Donald Trump's out here saying the federal government is going to take over these elections. But you have Republicans who are getting nervous about that. They know things are already shaky, so they can't just stand behind him with that, who are saying absolutely not. And it's just crazy because Republicans are the party who's always talking about states rights and now you have Donald Trump trying to go in and take those rights away. But what I will say is I think we're gonna I feel very confident we will have midterm elections. But you know, I do think there's a concern. I think there's a concern with if the election doesn't go the way he wants, what is he going to do. We already saw what happened on you know, January sixth and twenty twenty one, and I know there's a lot of people who are like, stop telling me to vote. Voting is not the only thing that we'll fix all of this, but it has to be one of the things that we are doing, because every time people sit out and say it doesn't matter, they get more and more powered. And I don't just mean elected seats. Every time someone disengages from our process, that means that they have fewer people to kind of convince to be on their side, and they don't have a real opposition. And so voting is part of demonstrating that opposition. But so is showing up at protests, so is participating in mutual aid and making sure that the people in your community are okay. There's a lot of things that people can do, but voting is also how we got here, or a lack thereof. You know, one of my friends, he will never he'll just sometimes be on Twitter and just get frustrated all over again. About twenty sixteen, when people were saying it doesn't matter, you know, they're the same and all of that, and like, literally we are here right now because Donald Trump got elected in twenty sixteen. He has chosen three Supreme Court justices. You know, it's just it's all intertwined. And so when people sayvoting doesn't matter, there's so many other things tied to voting, and it's literally why we're here right now. It's why ICE has all this money to go into these places.
00:33:10
Speaker 2: Point.
00:33:11
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just all connected.
00:33:13
Speaker 3: One. It's there are so many things that are connected in the political landscape. And when we come back, we will talk more with Senior Vice President. Shouldn't build m Clinton's stay tuned. You know. One of the things that I often put on I probably shouldn't, but I don't give a fuck. I'll do it anyway. But one of the things that I usually put out here in the street is that there's a playbook that's being followed, right And if you pay attention, and if you are somewhat of a person who follows history and understands history, or at least understand world politics, then you understand exactly what playbook it is that I'm referring to. And as I look at our government, specifically Donald Trump, the things that he does, the things that he nacts the first in every the playbook that I am specifically referring to as mind Camp, which is Adolf Hitler's book that he wrote his biography, and there are parts of this book in how he was able to take over Germany to create this Nazi party and get people to buy in to the rhetoric that he sold is so similar to what I see day today that is happening. Then Netflix a few years ago decided to create this show called How to Create a Tyrant? Right, And in this particular episode he talks about, I mean, Flick goes through this documentary thing of all of these well known tyrants throughout history, and again the playbook remains the same, right in each and every one of them, and it becomes so incredibly scary that now, not only have you made people comfortable with their evil, not only have you made people believe that folks that don't look like you and think like you are also evil and need to be handled or dealt with, but you are starting to change policies of basic freedoms and Congress has not stepped up to stop any of it, things like most recently seeing Don Lemon being arrested when freedom of press is clearly right there sitting in that amendment, like it just just sitting right there right yep.
00:35:48
Speaker 2: How how scared?
00:35:53
Speaker 3: And I mean, and I don't mean this to be like a frightening kind of thing, because my goal here is not to scare anybody, but it is to be honest and to be true about how serious should people be taking the things that we are seeing with that conversation of folks not wanting to vote or folks not wanting to participate in the political process. But as you are seeing basic everyday freedoms be taken away in a way that is very similar to how we ended up with a or how we have historically seen dictatorships begin. How scared should the American public be if they do not begin to exercise their civic and political engagement?
00:36:34
Speaker 5: Honestly, I mean, we're like, you know, there has been a lot of conversation at least when Donald Trump was first reelected about you know, not marching toward authoritarianism, but like we're in We're in.
00:36:47
Speaker 2: It, We're in it, We're there.
00:36:50
Speaker 5: People should be afraid. I mean, I thought the first term was bad, thinking back to the Black Lives Matter protests where he had them, you know, to your gas he comes out, you know, for his little Bible photo op at the chart, you know, and now we're seeing Ice is essentially his like personal little army that he is sending out to keep people in order. They have masks on what law enforcement in this country is permitted to go into communities with guns and masks and do whatever they want. And you know, to Don Lemon being arrested, that is I mean, it's our first amendment, the freedom of speech, you know, and yes, and so we we should be really scared. Is particularly with Don Lemon, two judges refuse to you know, bring those charges against him, and they still went forward. And I'm hopeful that you know, this won't go anywhere. But the fact that they are trying to silence anyone who would dare cover them, it's like, what are you hiding? And look at all the things we've seen in the news, imagine what we are not seeing. I mean, we still even have all of the Epstein files out, and for Donald Trump to have worked as hard as he has to keep all of that under lock and key, God only knows what's in there. But on top of that, they have like rated you know, the amount of money that him and his family have made off of him being in the presidency, like all of this corruption. But they are using violence to keep people quiet. They are using the full weight of the government to keep people quiet. And I know that there's probably a lot of people who think that's not going to affect me, but it will when someone knocks on your door because you posted something that they didn't like or you made a joke, and yeah, it's getting you know. That is what we're marching to, where either you're on their side or the other side. And I know people like me, I can't go erase everything I have said, you know, on social media, on television that I've written. That's all out there, and so you know I.
00:39:00
Speaker 2: And to your point, nor should you have to, right it is your wife.
00:39:06
Speaker 1: But to that point, because to y'all want to add on something to that, because I think about that every day and my husband says to me, you know, like even if I'm reposting something, he's like, be very careful what you're putting out there about this administration, even though it's stuff that's real and it's true.
00:39:24
Speaker 3: Right.
00:39:25
Speaker 1: But as a as a woman, and particularly a black woman, because I know when Kamala lost, we all were like listen, since I'm tired. Yeah, so we were like, you know what, y'all got this one. But Chaniko, to your point, as black women, we've always held it down. We've always been on the front lines. We've always used our voices. We've always said, all right, y'all, we got to figure this shit out as a black.
00:39:57
Speaker 2: Woman who wants to engage civically.
00:40:02
Speaker 1: But again, we're just exhausted, like we're tired, but we know what's out there. What does sustainable participation look like to you in this next chapter?
00:40:15
Speaker 5: Yeah so, because no, I know, And the first thing I'm going to say is not going to make you feel less tired, but it's just a reality. I want to ground the conversation in. This is something my old therapist used to say to me all the time. Whose responsibility are you? And the answer was, I'm my own responsibility and we unfortunately are like at the intersections that put us kind of at the bottom. And so if we don't save ourselves like, no one else will. And I know it's unfair because whenever we save ourselves, we save everybody else. But to date, I wouldn't trust anyone other than us to make sure that we're okay. Now, as far as like sustainable activism or you know, ways to be engaged, you can choose where you decide to show up. I obviously work in politics, but the first year of Trump's term was hard, and when I was in my twenties, I used to spend a lot of time volunteering and I started doing that again this year because the people, you know, I volunteer at this soup kitchen I guess you call it, and you know they serve breakfast and lunch. And I needed something to remind me that I could help people quicker than the political process, and so getting involved in kind of direct services really helps. I think it helps remind you that, like the things we're fighting for, like people actually do need help. And it just grounds me to remember, like why I'm getting up every day to do this long term work. But for some people that just might be the extent of what they're able to do right now. But that does reinvest in the community and make sure people are okay. You can also if you want to do work to support Canadas, you can just work to support black women, Like you don't have to expend yourself for people that you're not sure and not all black women are working in the interests of black women, so keep that in mind. But you know, finding places where you can do that or mutual aid, you know, figuring out ways to raise money for people in your community who need help, or get them food. You know when snap benefits look like they were about to be cut off, Like how do we come together and help in our communities? And even if it's just having conversations, getting together once a month with other people and talking about the issues that are going on so that you're knowledgeable, so when you go talk to your family and friends, you have the information you need to help them. It doesn't always have to be you know, you're showing up at a campaign office three times a week to help someone get elected. It can look like a lot of different things, but it's really just about building your community and investing your time into things that can make a difference. And I was about to say that you feel can make a difference, but I actually I just want to add one more thing there, like if you don't know what can actually have impact, like find an organization via the NAACP or like the organization I run voats, say of America, but like make sure the work you're doing can have an actual impact. Because after Donald Trump got elected in twenty sixteen, a lot of bad actors got into the space just trying to make money. And so you don't want to get caught up in something that is just helping someone line their pockets. So make sure whatever you're doing is like contributing. But there are a lot of great organizations out there to help with that.
00:43:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's for sure. I know. You know, Ryl and I are both members of a sorority, and I know one of the pillars that we definitely did was to make sure during the time when snap benefits we're running out, how can we get families money, How can we get families food? How can we stop these pantries to make sure that they are going to have what they need? So there are definitely tangible ways that people can get involved in their communities. But you know, before we get you out of here, I'm just and again, I want to thank you so much for your time, because this is a conversation that we could literally have and this is the on record conversation. Don't even get me started off the shit that I want to say when I stop this recording. But you know, we are in twenty twenty six, which there's only a couple of more years left before we're going to start gearing up for a presidential election, and there is a lot of conversation around what it would look like if there was some change to the constitution that would allow presidents or people to stay in power a lot longer. But the idea that we have right now is that come twenty twenty eight, we'll be looking at someone else sitting in the highest office in the land. And my question to you is just.
00:44:44
Speaker 2: What do you.
00:44:46
Speaker 5: What do you hope a.
00:44:48
Speaker 3: Post Trump era for the US would look like five ten years from now, once we've gotten past this, Like, what what has America learned? If anything right? Because history tends to repeat itself. I'm a bit of a historian. I love to look at what we've done, where we are and how we're doing the same shit we've already done again. But what do you think a post Trump America could and should look like?
00:45:13
Speaker 5: You know this, My answer is not about the economy or like costs. I think whoever is h and presumably it would have to be a Democrat for this to happen. I think whoever's in the White House next? These people need to go to prison. Yeah, you think about Germany and they took care of all their Nazis and there was just like a culture there where it's like never again.
00:45:38
Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:45:38
Speaker 5: Here, after slavery, we paid the people who enslaved black people to like make them, I don't know, to compensate them for their losses. But the black people who were coming out of that did not get anything. And we put statues up to commemorate the people who were leading the Confederacy. And so we have just like uplifted the worst part of our history. And if we do that again and we don't hold these people accountable, we are going to repeat history again. And so that yes, I want better schools, I want better healthcare, I want all of that. But the reason we don't have those things is because of the racism that undergirds this country. And so like we have to really like the bad actors. They need to be dealt with in real ways. And so that is and to me, that's the only way we get past trump Ism, because even when he's gone, you look at people like JD. Vans, Marco Rubio, who has just become a completely different person. If those people are still here and willing to carry Trump's mantle forward, then he can be gone and we're still going to be dealing with this stuff.
00:46:43
Speaker 2: That's a great point. It's a great point, and I am totally.
00:46:48
Speaker 3: Agree with you, girl.
00:46:53
Speaker 1: Gone.
00:46:54
Speaker 3: I tell you the way I would be tuned in if there was a US version of the Numberg Trials, I would be locked in, honey, Like, yes.
00:47:04
Speaker 2: Lock them all up.
00:47:05
Speaker 3: Throw them away. It's crazy, but yeah, I just I hate to see history repeat itself when this is the type of history that we're continually repeating.
00:47:15
Speaker 5: Again.
00:47:17
Speaker 3: To that point in twenty twenty, when this happens, when we were seeing people murdered on TV, and we were seeing people murdered in videos, the country did feel some type of way, I like to say white guilt kicked in and they were like, what can we all do in order to help and save black people?
00:47:34
Speaker 2: But we did have.
00:47:35
Speaker 3: Enough to put a Democrat in office, right, And I'm not saying Biden didn't have his faults, but at the end of the day, we were at that point smart enough to make some change. Here we are again in twenty twenty six, and we're seeing this thing happen live in our face, and I am hoping that that is enough to get people to say, hey, we need to really make some type of formidable change. Just unfortunate people have to lose their lives in order for folks to know.
00:48:03
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, I know, we already have so many examples.
00:48:07
Speaker 3: Girl. Enough we got enough. We don't need no more. We got enough. But Shanika, thank you so much. Shanika, thank you so much. My sister's name is Shanika, and I was like, oh, I feel like your family. But thank you so much for joining us. Can you give our audience just uh more information on where they can find you, how they can check out you know, cricket media, just you know, give them some some way to stay connected.
00:48:35
Speaker 2: And about Sorry, Vote Save America.
00:48:38
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, you know. We are trying to pull as many people in a Vote Save America as possible as we head into the midterm. We haven't released our upcoming strategy yet, but if you go to vote Saveamerica dot com and just sign up, you will be one of the first piece people to get our updates. But we're making sure that everyone who is part of that community, you know, we want them to take action. But something else we want our audience to do, and this comes out of the spirit of crooked media being created. We want everyone to be a messenger. We want you to have the information you need to go talk to people, whether you're talking to a voter, your mother, your sister, or your cousin or you know, some crazy neighbor. Like, we want everyone to be able to do that because twenty twenty four showed us when you own the communication and the narrative, you can win an election even when you are awful. And so we have to compete in those in those places, and so we're excited about the work that we have coming. And yeah, yeah, I don't know how to underscore this more, but every time we disengage or say it's not worth our time, like, they are just moving forward and that means that they are going to get more done and they have like one less soldier going up against them. And so whatever you can do, just sign up to do it. You know, I hope it's with votes, say of America. But there are so many ways that people can get involved. And if your first step is to just or something online, do that. If it's to go do volunteer at a soup kitchen, or participate in mutual aid, do that. But all of those small things and if more people do it, it actually does have an impact.
00:50:12
Speaker 2: I love that.
00:50:13
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much for your time, we appreciation. I really did have to end that conversation because the way that shit was, like, it's all like we just kept opening Pandora's box for more and more conversation, Like seriously.
00:50:42
Speaker 1: Well, but because there's so much that we could talk about, right, we could go on and on and on. To me, I'm like, yes, this is a conversation that needs to be had, Like everybody needs to be having some type of conversation around politics and what's going on. Even if you say I don't do politics, listen all the shit that's happening in our country right now, you better do politics because this is going to affect you as much as it's affecting those.
00:51:09
Speaker 3: Who do do politics.
00:51:10
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:51:10
Speaker 2: So yeah, anyway, yes, yes we needed to cut it off.
00:51:14
Speaker 3: We needed to, but we needed to have it in conversation. It was it really was. And I you know, for the people out there who are saying, you know, we're part of that ninety two percent who needed a break, Okay, I was too. I was part of that ninety two percent that needed a break. But the break is over because for me, at least, I have to go day in and day out with the foolishness and I'm fortunate to live in a blue state, But that don't mean that I'm not affected. That don't mean the people who I have family in states like Florida and North Carolina. I've family in Georgia, Texas, like I have a cousin in Austin. Like I literally you got Ken Houston, see sis, Sis, I ain't worry about you because I know they ain't gonna come down there fucking with you. You ain't gonna allow that. I ain't that, but like that's just what I'm saying, Like, you can only take so much time off and rest and then it's time to get back out there, because if not, then it will be too late, you know, Like there what is the saying go there's no rest, rest for the weary, Like it's just like it just kind of is what it is.
00:52:28
Speaker 5: Right.
00:52:28
Speaker 3: But but I am happy that we got a chance to have Shanika join us, and I am looking forward to following her and getting reacquainted with her later on because I'm pretty sure something else is gonna happen in which we're gonna need her to come on here and help break it down for us. But with that, Cheryl, last week, I did not provide a positive affirmation like I really wanted to because I was like, I don't do positive affirmations. That's cheryl, I ain't got nothing positive for you. But I ain't got nothing. I ain't got nothing, but.
00:53:04
Speaker 2: In my absence, I need you to hold it down.
00:53:07
Speaker 3: I need I need you know what My positive affirmation is, Go be great, every great, be great.
00:53:16
Speaker 1: I should I got a good one. I got a good one today, Okay. And I almost speak for you because I already know this. You're gonna feel this one.
00:53:25
Speaker 2: Oh what you got? Because no, because I felt it.
00:53:29
Speaker 1: And I'm also gonna say our sister Jasmine, don't feel it.
00:53:33
Speaker 3: Because it's it just is here, it goes.
00:53:38
Speaker 1: No matter how good you are, in the wrong place, you won't be valued.
00:53:46
Speaker 2: Growl ma'am. That's a whole word. Dup listen, and that that applies to everything.
00:53:59
Speaker 1: Your friends, life, your job, whatever, whatever. Like I saw that, it was like damn ouch because I questioned a lot of stuff, right, like why am I not? Why do you not think I'm good enough? Because I know I'm good enough to be here for you all the things, but no matter how good you are.
00:54:25
Speaker 3: And then the space place, Yeah.
00:54:28
Speaker 1: You won't be valued. You won't be valued, point blank period.
00:54:35
Speaker 3: That one spoke to my I gotta get that one. That one spoke to my soul. Okay, you know what I got to go? Bye, goodbye, y'all Like that's it. Mike is dropped. That's it, y'all ain't getting you, ain't getting none else but a goodbye. Oh my god, but no. Thank you all so much for continuing to listen to Levels to This. This is always the best part of my week being able to chop it up and record. But listen, this is not just our show. It is our show, so we want to hear from you. Leave us a review in Apple Podcasts let us know what you thought about this week's episode, or you can definitely send us an email at Levels to This Podcast at gmail dot com. We do check these emails like we do look and see some of the amazing things that you guys send us. We have seen topic suggestions, guest suggestions. We love that, so keep sending that our way, and of course you can follow us on Instagram at lttpod So until next time, friends, keep your mentals ground level and we'll be back next week.
00:55:42
Speaker 1: Peace. Listen to Levels to This on America's number one podcast network, iHeart, Open your free iHeart app and search levels to this with Cheryl Swoops and Tarika Foster Brasby and start listening.
00:56:00
Speaker 5: Yeah,
