In an era where truth feels like a vanishing act, how do we protect our voices and stay engaged without burning out? This vital conversation brings together Marley Diaz, founder of the 1000 Black Girl Books campaign, poet and writer Lenae 'Parking Lot Pimping' Gee, and New York Times bestselling author and advocate Anna Malaika Tubbs.
Dive deep into the history and significance of the First Amendment. Explore how its promise of free speech was never truly intended for all, and how that legacy continues to shape our struggles for rights and recognition today.
Discover why speaking out is more crucial than ever, especially as we navigate the challenges of misinformation and head into important civic moments. Learn how these powerful women exercise their rights daily and inspire others to do the same.
#FirstAmendment #ProtectYourVoice #Misinformation #StayEngaged
Dive deep into the history and significance of the First Amendment. Explore how its promise of free speech was never truly intended for all, and how that legacy continues to shape our struggles for rights and recognition today.
Discover why speaking out is more crucial than ever, especially as we navigate the challenges of misinformation and head into important civic moments. Learn how these powerful women exercise their rights daily and inspire others to do the same.
#FirstAmendment #ProtectYourVoice #Misinformation #StayEngaged
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NewsTranscript
00:05so right now we are currently living in a moment where the truth feels harder to find
00:11and easier to drown out misinformation is everywhere and staying outspoken
00:16staying informed has never mattered more so how do we protect our voice i guess you guys are
00:22wondering that right in a time like we are in it right now how do we stay engaged without burning
00:27out especially heading into the midterms y'all this is an important conversation right here
00:32please welcome marley diaz lenae benee and anna malika tubbs to the main stage they're going to
00:41answer all these questions let's welcome them y'all let's welcome welcome our ladies come on y'all
00:45take it away hello everybody my name is marley diaz i am the founder of the 1000 black girl books
00:56campaign and i am here with the amazing anna and amazing lynn to have a conversation on the
01:01first amendment so i want to see if you guys introduce yourselves first hey guys my name is
01:05lenae benee um you may know me from socials from parking lot pimping i'm a poet i'm a writer i'm
01:11an edutainer i do the things hi everyone i'm anna malika tubbs i'm a two-time new york times best
01:17selling author and a speaker and an advocate and i'm also a mom of three amazing and for me i
01:25am the
01:25founder of the 1000 black girl books campaign which is a global initiative to collect and donate
01:30books with black girls as the main character and i've written two books marley diaz gets it done
01:34and so can you and i am the dream come true which is i guess a product of my first
01:38amendment rights
01:39right you get to we all get to do what we do because we have the ability to speak freely
01:43so i'm curious for you guys why do you think um what is what is kind of the history of
01:48the first
01:48amendment mean to you slash what have been your interactions or abilities to exercise your rights
01:52that you feel like um are unique to this moment or have been really powerful for you do you want
01:57to take that yeah so i just recently put out a book called erased what american patriarchy has hidden
02:03from us and i think it's really important that we situate ourselves in the history of this country
02:10because none of this is new these attacks on our rights are not new this is the foundation of our
02:16nation that was started by men who were very insecure about other people having their own
02:24revolutions so when the founding fathers won the revolutionary war they were concerned that women
02:30also wanted rights they were concerned that the people they were enslaving also were going to fight
02:36for their rights and we're going to continue to fight for their rights and so they set up this
02:41nation so that they were the only ones who were going to be heard it is written into our constitution
02:47that they were the only ones who were going to get to vote they were the only ones who were
02:52going to
02:52get to own land they didn't want the rest of us to exercise our rights and so we see this
02:59trajectory
03:00throughout american history between these two stories one that says only one group gets to speak and be
03:08heard here and the other group that says that is not good enough we all deserve to be included we
03:15all
03:16deserve to be heard we all get to vote we all get to speak and so american history the last
03:22250 years
03:24can be summarized by that and so we've all been up against this fight from the beginning and it can
03:31feel
03:31really scary right now because we're in this continued tug of war between the two groups
03:37but we just have to continue to play our part in that and continue to pull on the rope on
03:43our side
03:43and say we do not believe that limited story that we're being told we're going to continue the legacy
03:50of those who knew we deserve to be heard here we're not going to be silent we're going to exercise
03:55our
03:56right and that's what i feel like i get to do every single day because of the black women who
04:00came before
04:02me i don't really have much to add i think you said everything that needs to be said
04:07just to piggyback if you ask me how i feel about the history of free speech i just know it
04:12was never
04:12intended for us that entire document the founding fathers and the documents that i guess seat this
04:18nation were only intended to protect the interests of the white men who wanted to be in power at the
04:23time and the interests of white men they felt reflected their personal interests and so i think there's
04:29also a point to be made there about the white men they envisioned because that didn't include poor
04:34white men either and so um i just think it's interesting also in history how free speech has
04:39been weaponized and manipulated to keep certain groups underneath like under the foot of the one
04:45percent of the wealthy or all the things and keep the proletariat stratified because of the way that
04:51speech is weaponized you know 100 i feel like so much of what we're experiencing now kind of reminds me
04:57of
04:57like the sedition act if you remember in like 1798 they came back around they said if you speak against
05:02the united states government this is you can no longer exercise your right to free speech and for
05:07many people nowadays they see the kind of contracts that the government is either signing with tech
05:11companies or signing social media companies and they feel that infringement upon them and i'm curious
05:16for you guys as people that speak out how do you navigate the risks that do come with the way
05:21that
05:21you speak on content or do you feel as though like do you feel protected in that or do you
05:25have those
05:26types of concerns i feel protected in it but like spiritually i think i think everything that we
05:32experience is some sort of spiritual warfare regardless of what you believe in the things
05:36that are happening on this plane are influenced by others and so the only really the only strong
05:41foundation and grounding i have is in my prayer in my connection with what i'm supposed to be doing
05:46here and staying committed to that and acting out of that no matter what the risk is like i think
05:51when
05:51i saw don lemon arrested i was like oh it's real out here you know i mean i just might
05:56as well prepare
05:57my things for somebody to come pick me up because i think if we allow things like that to scare
06:01us i think
06:02that just i go back to that one movie that jaden smith did with his daddy um is it i
06:08am legend it's not
06:09i am legend it's the one happiness after earth okay okay it's after earth and he's teaching his
06:16son about the difference between fear and danger and fear is not real like it's an emotion it's an
06:21anxiety that is built around how you respond to danger which is real so the danger is real it's become
06:27it's become very clear the type of things people like citizen journalists are facing but are you
06:32going to let the fear and anxiety and a threat of that stop you because if those things win we
06:37will never
06:37win it makes me think of audrey lord's famous quote that whether or not we are afraid or we speak
06:46they're gonna grind us to dust anyways and so we can use that fear to do something with it turn
06:53that
06:54fear into action and i think about the women that i wrote about in my first book it's about the
06:59mothers
06:59of mlk jr malcolm x and james baldwin and all of them were born in the early 1900s
07:06so they are born at a time when jim crow is the law of the land when lynchings are commonplace
07:14when
07:14they experience two world wars in their life they experience the great depression they have
07:20their children during the great depression and they are fighting all three of them did what their sons
07:27later became famous for before their sons were even born they were activists in their own right
07:32so when i think about what they were coming up against the attacks the threats the fear that they
07:39faced every single day to fight for all of us to be activists to march to lead boycotts to write
07:48and to inspire their children to do the same and how those children not because their parents wanted
07:56them to become civil rights icons right that's not what they were raising them to do they were raising
08:01them to live freely in a nation that told them that they didn't deserve to they were raising them to
08:07dream in a nation that told them that they shouldn't and that was the revolutionary activist part right that
08:15they were able to show their kids no matter what these threats are that are being waged against you
08:21you deserve humanity you deserve dignity you deserve to be heard and that is how these three sons go on
08:30to lead a civil rights movement alongside all of their peers and earn the right to vote earn the right
08:38for us to be heard so their mothers live long enough to see that right two of them live long
08:44enough to see
08:44the first episodes of the oprah winfrey show and so for me when i think about burtis baldwin james baldwin's
08:52mother she overlapped at the beginning of her life with harriet tubman and at the end of her life
08:59she overlaps with me right so if we feel any of that fear we have to think about those who
09:06came
09:06just right before us this is not ancient history this is not that long ago this is all recent and
09:14so
09:14we can't sit here in 2026 and say i'm too afraid to speak i can't i just physically cannot say
09:23those
09:23words knowing what i know about the legacies that we're carrying 100 and i think what's two things really
09:30stood out to me and what you guys said the first is the kind of sense of imagination right so
09:34in the same
09:35way that the founders imagined a world where we wouldn't have rights or where essence of us would never
09:39happen or where we may still be in oppressed or in a lower social strata we as the people that
09:45are being oppressed
09:46have to imagine a world where that's not the case and as you said those mothers had to do the
09:50same
09:50and for my generation i think we lack that imagination because of a lack of connection to that history or
09:57i love the kind of mental mapping you did of the historical timelines where even i was alive at the
10:01same time shirley chisholm was alive and then before that she was alive at the same time that other black
10:05women in history history were alive and we kind of passed the baton to one another um so and the
10:11second
10:11point being that kind of so much of what so much of people's fear comes from the digital space right
10:17that so much of what people do for activism nowadays or when they feel like they're engaging it has to
10:22be online so i'm curious about what kind of community practices or in-person practices you all follow
10:27that i think can help people unearth that kind of fear where it's like no you don't have to do
10:31everything online you don't have to post every video you don't have to engage but you have the
10:36communities you have these in-person centers so where do you guys find the time or find those
10:41community spaces to express yourself to organize who are those people for you yeah i'm actually
10:46about to go on tour um so i said that i'm a poet i have a short film that's out
10:51uh so the tour is
10:52called black women deserve poems and the way y'all coming y'all gonna be outside you're gonna meet me
10:57there anyways um it just kind of happened so that it just took a longer time for the tour to
11:05actually
11:05be executed and i got to see a lot of very difficult things black women in community were
11:10facing in a digital space physically through intimate partner violence i'm i actually need
11:15to talk to somebody because i think that one week where eight or nine black women were killed by
11:19intimate partners i think we need to make that black femicide week and like really invest research
11:24and funding and all the things into really breaking this curse of domestic violence on our communities
11:29but anyway there was that megan clay broke up and the men on the internet were tearing us to shreds
11:34um so many like jasmine crockett lost her election and then jasmine crockett's been raked over the coals
11:39ever since for not helping the man they thought was more electable than her so i'm seeing so many
11:44things and that made me want to make the tour less about oh here's this creative thing that i did
11:49yes
11:49there there's that but also let's boost morale let's come together let me pour into you because
11:54it is so hard for us i believe that black women are democracy's most indispensable vanguard
11:59i i'm writing a book right now and there's a lot of language even when it comes down to free
12:05speech
12:05there are so many words so many words in the english language that were never meant for us
12:09to fully execute fully realize and one of those things being feminism like there are waves of
12:15feminism before feminism thought of black women you know so anyways this is the space where i want to
12:21say hey i want you to come in i want you to have a good time but i'm also going
12:24to sit with other
12:25community leaders other creators like myself and we're going to talk about what's at stake for this
12:29midterm election as people continue to count on you even though you've been there at every stage and not
12:33been recognized let us give you some tools and opportunity to express and just alleviate but also
12:39leave this place knowing what to do locally and i think just to wrap up your question i think any
12:45space where we can encourage local organizing getting to know your neighbors resource sharing i know
12:51people like to use mutual aid as a call out for people to engage in we think we i think
12:54community
12:55gardens or salons it's all of those things but it's also understanding what skills you have
13:00and i'm and i'm saying a lot as a person who is very to myself who isn't the biggest people
13:05person
13:05but we got to get outside of ourselves right now it is about reaching across the aisle it is about
13:10creating networks and webs and i'll give one last analogy to illustrate the strength of the web i'm
13:16talking about so while i'm in georgia i don't know if anybody else in the south has experienced this but
13:21last year these spiders came they're called joro spiders they're green and yellow they're huge and
13:28they create these far-spanning webs that are so strong it's like dental floss and that's the type
13:34of web i'm talking about we need to be creating it needs to be menacing it needs to be a
13:38little
13:38intimidating but we we really have to link arms and be unwilling to let go i love that so much
13:48and i just want to speak to something lene brought up around why black women have always been so attacked
13:53in this nation is because black women were pushed the furthest away from any of the benefits of this
14:00american patriarchy and that is what made it for i'll wait no drums allowed in the building
14:11people repeat no i heard drugs no drones are allowed inside the convention center okay okay i heard
14:19drugs i heard the same thing i was like then there were strong um but that black women were told
14:26from
14:26the foundation of this nation that we were not human right and that our children were not human beings
14:33by law the law told us that our children were somebody else's property good morning good morning
14:41important notice no drones are allowed no drones allowed in the convention center
14:49but black women never said oh well because the law says so that must be true no black women said
14:57that
14:58is made up that is not that is bullshit i'm sorry for my language and i'm going to live differently
15:05and
15:05i'm going to make sure this country starts to see things through my eyes and so the power that black
15:11women have was given to us actually kind of by mistake right we claimed it because we were supposed to
15:18be
15:18pushed away we were supposed to be controlled we were supposed to be told we were not human and black
15:24women
15:24with that knowledge said we know that this is made up we know that the way this these kind this
15:31law the
15:31laws in this country were made up were set up for us to be controlled and so we're always aware
15:37this is
15:38why black women's leadership is so powerful and also so feared why it's constantly being controlled why
15:46everybody wants us to be silent they want to tell us oh you're too afraid to speak you're going to
15:52hear
15:52all this propaganda black women are not unified enough and all of all of that is just propaganda
15:59to keep us from accessing the real history which has always been black women can see it for what it
16:06is
16:06it's made up that law doesn't dictate our lives and we are going to force this country as we have
16:13continuously done from the beginning to be better to include all of us to make sure that our children
16:19are protected to make sure we are protected and so we all play a role in that and another thing
16:25that
16:25lenny spoke to is the different roles we're playing on this team right you don't have to do everything
16:32but you have to do something so for me it's writing it's putting books out there that make it really
16:39easy
16:40for all of us to understand this history it's making sure that the erasure of our stories doesn't happen
16:45because we can't have people feeling hopeless right now that's a part of the propaganda it's a part of
16:51telling us you don't know how to stand up right now you should be afraid no let us tell you
16:57our
16:57stories because the more you know our actual stories the more you realize we have to keep making a new
17:03nation like black women always always have i love that you said that two things i just want to drive
17:12the
17:12point on the new nation we're not trying to restore anything in this movement the way it was before
17:18didn't work then we can't expect to work in the future or put things back this is not a reconstruction
17:23period this is a period of transformation amen and the imagination you spoke to earlier we are breaking
17:30the veils the the horse blinders whatever that they put on our imagination to create new worlds to create
17:36a new way of being here in america but you know i think white people's worst mistake was thinking that
17:48disenfranchising black men by restricting their access to higher education and career and all the
17:53things i think that they thought giving women those things was going to tear us to shreds because they
18:00only know patriarchy they only understand and experience patriarchy and any form of leadership
18:05they think means that one gender takes power over the other but to your point of black women having
18:10this instinct that these laws or whatever is not built or made for us we come from a matrilineal fabric
18:17and that matrilineal fabric means that men and women share like the spectrum whatever gender we share
18:24in leadership and the expression of leadership and decision making but also that nurturing means that
18:30everything we gain we give back and i know we have a lot of work to do in community
18:34between genders that's something that i am really trying to figure out how to ameliorate in my work
18:40but i think your worst mistake was believing that black women were going to leave everybody behind
18:44because we're doing nothing but using that education those resources to make us stronger yeah
18:49one one hundred percent that was so well said let me give a round of applause to our amazing panelists
18:54that was absolutely beautiful um i think there were so many good things in what you all just said but
19:01i i i feel like for my generation we've really we've really struggled to take that leap to know
19:08our history and to do that work and that's why for me what's really important is black girl book clubs
19:13and getting kids into reading and building that curiosity because as you both really mentioned when
19:18black women were looking at those laws they understood that there was that they were constructed
19:22and so much of what because gen z has grown up in such a kind of hyper finnish culture as
19:27you're saying
19:28where people think this is the the kind of end of america where we're at our peak we have artificial
19:31intelligence we have you know highways we have trains we have technology we have everything we need
19:36so we can't imagine what could be next yeah and when it comes to this concept of transformation that
19:41comes from afro-futurist texts it comes from political theory it comes from reading things that are dense
19:47and difficult and so much of what was kind of the so much of what has happened as you said
19:53is there's
19:53been a blocking from higher education and kind of career advancement for black people and what we
19:58can do is share amongst each other and that's the beauty of the kind of democratization of information
20:03so if you know how to read an article if you know how to proofread if you know how to
20:07actually engage
20:08with the information in front of you pass that on to the young person around you because so much of
20:12what you
20:13all really talked about is a propagandistic mechanism that people don't understand that
20:17so much of whether it's an ai flyer for some damn party or it's a a reel on instagram that's
20:23been
20:23edited or it's just you know your google notification sending you all this terrible news it's conditioning
20:29you to no longer imagine that there could be a world in which you thrive and it's really important
20:34that we create practices for thriving so i'm curious and this will be my final question because we're
20:38running out of time is what are your practices for thriving so when it comes to what news do you
20:43like
20:43to read do you meditate do you said you do prayer how can people actually regulate themselves to be
20:49able to take an information critically well i think i'm going to answer your question but just like with
20:55a little bit of a slant i just want to i want to reiterate how important it is for us
20:59to be reading
21:00physical books to be using physical pen and paper again um in my book writing process i'm in my research
21:06phase and it's so grounding to print out an article or to take a book with my highlighter and circle
21:11words
21:11that i don't know what they mean i'm saying that as somebody with two degrees and it's 31 there's
21:15still a lot of words i don't know what they mean but to be able to look at these things
21:18use context
21:19clues and also like reading in community book clubs and a lot of in the audience from what i can
21:25see no
21:25shade you seem a little bit older the kids and the young people in your life if you have not
21:29seen these
21:30index card videos the babies cannot read they cannot read and they do not have comprehension if they can
21:36read there is such a chasm between gen z and millennials in terms of reading comprehensions and
21:42yes the um pandemic messed that up but also no child left behind really really made a case for the
21:50um
21:51d the the d education of american citizens period so it is just so important that we are looking at
21:58we
21:58are getting physical books that we're teaching our kids to question things that they read not just
22:02accept things they read and understand that reading one thing is not the source of all information
22:07you have to read additional information around and also making sure that we understand who is who is
22:13qualified to speak on a subject and that's all i'll say because we're out of time and that's the only
22:18thing i want to say within that is that i love that point you made about understanding that what you
22:21read is different from what you experience and so many kids will read something about their experience
22:26and say well that must be how i'm supposed to feel amen so if they're because there's so much and
22:30legally
22:31are kind of in our kind of our illegal documents that says that black people are free so many
22:35people in my generation see that and we're like all right we're good we're done they say we're fine
22:39they say i'm protected and then they go out unorganized and they're like wait we still exist in
22:43this racist white supremacist society and that that idea of questioning your lived experience based
22:47between what you read and what you consume is really critical for gen z yeah and i would just add
22:53that anytime someone is being censored or silenced that's a signal from this larger system that's trying
23:00to control us oh that person is a threat that person we we want to silence them we don't want
23:05to hear
23:05from them anymore so for us that's actually our indication to say oh that's the person i should
23:10be following right so if someone gets fired from a tv show right tiffany cross joyann reed that's who you
23:17go and you find on substack and say what is it that they don't want me to know because those
23:21they must
23:21have the power right any book that gets banned go and read that book immediately any person who on social
23:29media is being censored in that way go and find them so there's a lot of ways in which social
23:34media
23:34is censoring us but it's also opening up a lot of space for those of us to say directly from
23:40independent
23:41journalism substacks we don't have to rely on these larger networks that are being paid to make us
23:50particularly black people feel hopeless right there's money being poured into that so anytime they signal
23:58this person shouldn't be heard that actually tells us similar to what i was saying before
24:04that person has the power i need to go find what that person was talking about and i need to
24:10support
24:10them we all know the power of black money this whole country knows that where we put our attention where
24:17we put our money where we put our time we're the ones that will dictate that so we can't fall
24:23again for
24:24the propaganda of these larger networks saying who we get to listen to right with films coming out it's
24:31the same exact thing independent films are incredibly important right now those who have the decision making
24:39power are aligning themselves with an administration that has told us directly they don't care about us right so we
24:48can not continue to fall for mainstream media
24:53we have to continue to seek people independently support them with our money and with our attention
25:00absolutely amazing amazing can we give an amazing a big round of applause to our panelists this was such
25:04a great conversation thank you guys this was amazing and i wanted to ask how can we support you guys
25:09is the
25:09last question um you can follow me on our platforms at lanaveni as i said i'll be touring i'll be
25:14on the east
25:14coast and west coast in july and august and i'll be back in the south close to the midterms in
25:19like
25:19october you can buy any of my books the first is called the three mothers how the mothers of mlk
25:26malcolm x and james baldwin shaped a nation my second book is called erased what american
25:32patriarchy has hidden from us i'm also on instagram thank you all so much thank you and
25:37i'm marley dyess and i have a book called marley dyess gets it done and so can you with scholastic
25:41and i am the dream come true which is a children's book just came out this summer you can check
25:45that
25:45out with scholastic as well so thank you all so much
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