- 6 months ago
A Coffee Conversation
Category
š ļø
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hello, can y'all hear me? Amen. Hi guys, how's everybody doing tonight?
00:07Well, you guys heard all the lovely names of the people we have sitting here with us today.
00:13Just a brief introduction to some of the things that they are doing.
00:17We have Miss Nicole Hannah-Jones.
00:20They said they can hear me. Y'all can hear her?
00:24Y'all can hear her? Oh. Y'all can hear her?
00:27You guys can't hear me. Okay. Well, I'll project. How is that?
00:33Alright, so we have some other people on panel with me today, and we're going to hop right into questions.
00:37We have Miss Nicole Hannah-Jones. You might know her for the 1619 Project.
00:41Yeah. Woo!
00:44We have Mr. Rashard Robinson. You might know him for Color of Change and Voting While Black.
00:49Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we have Miss Stevie Elm Rogers.
00:54And Stevie, you actually just wrote the 30th anniversary cover story for Essence.
00:58Can you share more about that experience?
01:01Hey everybody, welcome to New Orleans.
01:04Woo, woo. I wrote the cover story, which is how I got on the panel. I love that for me.
01:10I have been coming to Essence Fest since I was 14 years old, and my mom would drag me here,
01:16and we would see like Susan Taylor, Oprah, so I really feel like, yeah, I did that.
01:21I'm excited to be up here.
01:23In the cover story, I wrote about New Orleans and how I got to New Orleans, which was through Essence Fest.
01:28But in the story, I also talk a lot about New Orleans being the, outside of Haiti, one of the only places to be a free black,
01:35that dared to be a free black republic. I talked a lot about being an educator here, which is how I became to,
01:43how I initially came to New Orleans was through education. And I talk a lot about the resilience of the people of New Orleans,
01:51and how we really have to put some respect on New Orleans' name, because these are people that gave us music.
01:57We would not be at Essence Music Fest without the Bambula Drums and Congo Square and the whole nine.
02:02So I wrote a lot about just like my experience in the city, and how we have to really give back to our people here in New Orleans as black people.
02:11This is not just a place where we come and we turn up and have fun. This is a place that deserves investment.
02:16I totally agree. I've been coming to Essence for about three years now, and usually I'm working,
02:22but I always feel so refreshed and replenished when I leave Essence. Does anybody else feel that way?
02:27Like any panel or any brunch or anything that I'm hearing, really black women talk about our experiences
02:33and what we're going through in the moment. It always feels like I'm feeling seen and like my cup is being filled.
02:38So amazing, amazing, amazing. And as you guys know, as creators and writers yourself, that is so important,
02:43so we can continue to create and write and innovate. So first question, I actually want to come back to you
02:48just for a little bit of, just to give us a little bit of a foundation for our conversation.
02:53You speak passionately about your dedication to the innovative examination of black culture and women.
03:00What does that mean? Innovative examination?
03:03Yeah, I think I'm very interested in how black people, but specifically black women, move through the world.
03:10So for instance, we're all from different places in the room, correct?
03:15If I say, God is good all the time, your response is?
03:19And all the time, God is good.
03:21I'm interested in why we all know that. That is what my work is about.
03:26So I co-lead an organization called Black Education for New Orleans.
03:30And in this, we deep dive into like, what does it mean? How do we have all of these ways?
03:35What is our call and response, right? How do we show up in the world?
03:40And so for black women in particular, if anyone has heard of something called Black Women Are For Grown Ups,
03:45that is, I love them, and it's the truth. That is my project that I love so much.
03:51But in it, a part of it is to figure out like, who we are, how we move through the world,
03:56how we can like really deep dive into how we can be a better collective.
04:01And so that is what that work is about. I'm interested.
04:05And I know that all of us are interested in how we kind of, how we come to be,
04:10how are we fully human, right? We have all of these things that have been put on us.
04:14And so the examination is without all of the titles, without all of the sayings, right?
04:19Who are we really?
04:21Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, thank you so much for that.
04:23Our first question is, given all of that information,
04:27in what ways do you feel like creative expression and innovation are crucial
04:32to this ongoing fight for equality?
04:36Either of you, can hop in.
04:40First of all, it's great to be here.
04:42It's great to see all of you at Essence Fest.
04:45You know, I think a lot and do a lot of work in that the intersection of cultural power and political power
04:55and the ways in which they intersect is so critically important.
04:59I would love to build off of what you were just saying in terms of New Orleans
05:03and to sort of both honor and think about sort of the place that we are at
05:09and its connection to cultural power and political power.
05:12The organization that I lead, Color of Change, was actually founded in the aftermath of a flood here,
05:19which was Hurricane Katrina, that was caused by bad decision makers
05:23and turned into a life-altering disaster by bad decision makers,
05:27with black folks literally on their roof, begging for the government to do something and left to die.
05:33And the thing about those moments is they oftentimes illustrate things that we already knew.
05:39Geographic segregation, generational poverty, the impacts of choices that have been made on our planet, on so many systems.
05:48But at the heart of this moment, no one was nervous about disappointing black people.
05:53Government, corporations, and media.
05:55When institutions are not nervous about disappointing your community, it doesn't matter what kind of research report you have
06:01that illustrates all the facts and figures.
06:03You need people power and narrative change.
06:06And how do you get to people power and narrative change if you don't have cultural presence?
06:11If you don't have the ability to build energy and aspiration through joy?
06:16Because people need to see a way when there is no way.
06:20They need to have possibility for their own life and for community life, even when it hasn't been in front of their face.
06:25And so in so many ways, the work that we do at Color of Change is that work to translate presence into power.
06:33Visibility, awareness, retweets, shoutouts from the stage are not enough if we don't actually have power.
06:40Because when we mistake presence for power, we can think we've done something that we haven't actually done.
06:45We can think that a black president means that we're post-racial.
06:49We can think that America loving and celebrating our celebrities means that America loves black people as much as America loves black culture.
06:59And America can love, celebrate, and monetize black culture and hate black people at the same time.
07:04Amen.
07:05And so it is on us in so many ways to build the type of cultural presence, to build the type of cultural power that changes the rules.
07:14Because at the end of the day, power is the ability to change the rules.
07:17And without joy, you can't do any of that.
07:20And so black joy is not the absence of pain, but the presence of aspiration.
07:24Not just what we are fighting against, but what we are fighting for.
07:28And through action taking, and through the ability to translate people into campaigns that provide strategic action, that connect our connection to one another, our connection to be with one another, but also our belief that something bigger and better is possible.
07:44That is part of the work ahead and that I believe is how we connect this idea of culture to the sort of fights that are in front of us and the fights that we need to take for the years ahead.
07:56Amen.
07:57Thank you so much.
07:58Beautiful answer.
07:59Beautiful answer.
08:00And you also made me think back.
08:01It might have been 2020.
08:02It might have been 2021 when people was posting in black boxes, thinking we was going to do something.
08:06Another one of those things that's sort of like a monetization or capitalization or commercialization of what we're going through without the actual people power.
08:14So thank you so much for those words.
08:15So eloquently stated.
08:17Any addition to that, Nicole?
08:20Sure.
08:21So I think the word that's important in what you said, well, there were many words that were important.
08:27Hello, Essence, in what you said, but we all do narrative work up here.
08:34And the reason that narrative is important, the reason I became a journalist is I understood from a young age that narrative drives policy.
08:42It's not, and you know this in the work you do, it's not peer reviewed research.
08:47It's not what is the data say.
08:49It's none of that.
08:50It is what is the narrative and who gets to shape the narrative about why a policy is necessary.
08:55And that determines who wins what policy.
08:58So that's also then the reason why we see the types of attacks on things like the 1619 Project, attacks on what they call critical race theory, attacks on DEI.
09:10That was about attacking who can control the narrative about the United States.
09:15And therefore, what policies we will pass?
09:18Are black people a pathological people, a problem that need to be solved?
09:22Then you pass regressive policy to try to fix black people.
09:26If the narrative is there's something wrong with America, there's something wrong with a country that would import human beings, traffic them in slavery, force them to go under 100 years of racial apartheid.
09:37And so what needs to be fixed is the country and not black people.
09:40Then you pass policy that tries to fix the institutions, right?
09:44So there's a danger in that in those who are in power.
09:47And I was thinking as you were talking, just in 2020, right, what was the narrative?
09:54The narrative was that there was something systemic and structural wrong with the United States.
09:59And you had all these brands that wanted to hop on that narrative, right?
10:03And they saw that narrative as a way to be lucrative.
10:06And now we look four years out and we have a different narrative of the country.
10:10The narrative is black folks asked for too much.
10:12We went too far.
10:13We need to establish a new counter movement that they called anti-woke, which is how they subvert our own terms and our own narratives and use them against us.
10:22And now we don't see any talk.
10:24We know in Hollywood what movies are getting made, right?
10:28Where are all those pledges that were made to help black folks after 2020?
10:33Where's the money that was pledged?
10:34All of those things.
10:35So I think the most important work that we do is narrative because narrative is what paves the way for the country that we're going to build or to maintain the country that we already have.
10:47Amen.
10:48Once again, couldn't have stated any of those things better.
10:51Before we move on, did you have anything to add to your panel mates?
10:54Okay, yeah.
10:55They pretty much read the room with those.
10:57I would say that I feel, I'm actually going to come back to some of that a little bit later if we have time.
11:02But I would say that I feel in terms of examples of creating narrative that moves the needle.
11:08The 1619 Project is by far one of the most salient in the cultural atmosphere at this time.
11:14So once again, thank you for that work.
11:16I thank her like six times backstage, but I can't thank her enough.
11:19But would you guys be able to share, someone like myself might look up to you, might look up to you, might look up to you for the various things that you're contributing to the culture right now today.
11:28But might you be able to share any examples of either new or old individuals or organizations using creative means to drive social change?
11:36So I, I'm actually, are y'all having a hard time hearing too?
11:42I'm having a hard time hearing.
11:43I'm so sorry.
11:44All right.
11:45So is there anyone basically that inspires you right now?
11:48Oh.
11:49As far as using creativity as a means for social change and impact?
11:56Yeah.
11:58I'm inspired by a lot of people.
12:01Um, I think what is most interesting and what I've been talking about a lot and thinking about a lot that I want to bring up is that our world now is a place where we attach ourselves to institutions.
12:15Okay.
12:16And I think that I grew up at a time where people were just institutions themselves.
12:22So like I learned how to read from like a phenomenal black woman, Ms. Woods in Birmingham, Alabama.
12:29And like, Marian Woods would be like, you need to read all the books with the Kente stickers first.
12:34This was the Coretta Scott King, dah, dah, dah.
12:36She didn't like actually have to be attached to an institution or a place.
12:41And I think when I think about New Orleans in particular, I think about all the people that have poured into me and they, they weren't necessarily attached to big brands.
12:49They weren't attached to, you know, I run an organization, you run an organization.
12:53They were everyday black folk who just cared about black folk and black children.
12:58And I think that that matters.
13:00I think now we're so used to putting everything online and putting everything as a thing.
13:04Right.
13:05And I'm like, actually, it's just about the work.
13:07It's just about us like leaning in with our community.
13:10And so I'm inspired by like the black teachers that you will never, they'll never be, you know, on billboards.
13:17They'll never, I'm inspired by black artists that when I'm popping up in New York, they're like, yeah, we're putting together this zine about black women.
13:25Like, and the zine is dope.
13:27I'm inspired by like the free black women's, you know, the free black women's library that Ola does.
13:32Like I'm, I'm inspired by where we're at black girl.
13:34I'm inspired by Nicole.
13:35Like the work is dope and not even the 16, 19 project, which is everything.
13:39But the fact that I know that there's like a, and I might get it wrong, but there's like a black salon that you're pulling together.
13:44Right.
13:45That you've been doing.
13:46And that, that was just your, under your agency.
13:48Right.
13:49To do that.
13:50Um, I think that that's really important.
13:52I think that I get to work around people every day that are just everyday black folk making it happen.
13:57And a lot of y'all in the audience.
13:58So give it up for you, you know, it matters.
14:01I mean, the, the thing that I think I would add just picking up off of that is, um,
14:08you know, the work that we do at color of change is driven by members is driven by everyday black folks, particularly black women who live in community and do the work to raise their voices.
14:22They start petitions on our platform around local issues that bring people together and help us move people to action.
14:30And particularly as we head into this election cycle, they will be the folks involved in the conversations through our digital platform, walking people through why voting in a district attorney election is so important.
14:44Why, despite some of the missing disinformation around what's happening federally, we need to actually engage people around why their vote matters and push past all the sort of, um, information people are getting around what it means to stay home.
14:58What it means to stay home, but pushing people past that.
15:01And it will be thousands upon thousands upon thousands of volunteers, some people engaging people in conversations, not in communities where they even live, but through this idea of black joy and centering black experience.
15:14And when people, um, want to give their time and their energy as volunteers because.
15:19I am sorry.
15:20I am sorry.
15:21I am sorry.
15:22I am sorry.
15:23I am sorry.
15:24I am sorry.
15:25I am sorry.
15:26I am sorry.
15:27I am sorry.
15:28I am sorry.
15:29I am sorry.
15:30I am sorry.
15:31I am sorry.
15:32I am sorry.
15:33I am sorry.
15:34I am sorry.
15:35I am sorry.
15:36I am sorry.
15:37I am sorry.
15:38I am sorry.
15:39I am sorry.
15:40I am sorry.
15:41I am sorry.
15:42I am sorry.
15:43I am sorry.
15:44I am sorry.
15:45I am sorry.
15:46I am sorry.
15:47I am sorry.
Comments