Transcript

- [Ijeoma Oluo] We keep being pitted against each other and keep acting like it's not connected, and that's been our downfall historically, and it will continue to be, until we recognize that we can imagine something better, we have it within us. We just have to stop acting like the way in which we look at these things was set in stone.

- [Aja Monet] Greetings listeners, this is The Sound Bath. And I am Aja Monet. This show is brought to you by Lush Cosmetics and I'm so excited for this conversation today. Ijeoma Oluo is a writer, speaker, and self-described internet yeller. She is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller, "So You Want to Talk About Race" & most recently "Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America". Her work on race has been featured in The Guardian, The New York Times, and the Washington Post, among many other publications. She was named the 2021 Time100 Next List and has twice been named to The Root 100. She's received the 2018 Feminist Humanist Award and the 2020 Harvard Humanist of the Year Award from the American Humanist Association. She lives in Seattle, Washington. Let's get into the show. I'm so excited to be in conversation with you today, Ijeoma Oluo, it's a beautiful name by the way. And I would like to just ask how you're feeling today? How are you coming to this conversation? What are you coming with? What are you bringing with you right now in this moment? And yeah, let's start there.

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Oh no, this is of all mornings to ask me this, actually 'cause I was just getting ready and someone was killed at the park right by our house this morning. So like literally about a hundred feet away from our gate. Yeah, so that was stressful, that was woke up to that, woke up to that reminder of, you know, desperation and violence in the world, in our neighborhood. And that kind of threw things off a bit to wake up to that. And the person that was shot has a car that's actually really similar to my son's and so it was a little, it was disconcerting. I knew my son was okay, I was actually on the phone with him when it happened. But yeah, so that took up most of my morning actually, was the police response and everything on the street and trying to explain to my younger son what was happening, you know,

- [Aja Monet] Yeah. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. It's not lost on me that it's like people are really hurting, you know, there's a lot of hurt and that hurt is manifesting and expressing itself in many ways. And so I think that I wanna just like hold space for that truth, but also to acknowledge, and I think that that's part of why so many of us struggle to keep giving, and growing and contributing in the ways that we know how. And so I wanna thank you for still showing up and being present today with me and for the work that you do, which I think helps give language and helps people process some of these things that they may be feeling or grappling with. And I wanted to, yeah, let's like, maybe you take a breath for a second, leave room for you to take a deep breath. Yeah, hmm. Yeah, so I'm just grateful for your presence. I wanted to leave also room for you to maybe introduce how, yourself, how you would like to be introduced. I think there's the things that we do and accomplish in the world that everybody knows us for, and then there's who we are and what we feel about ourselves. And we don't always get the chance to really vocalize that in the ways that we would like. And it changes, you know. So today I would love to give you the opportunity to perhaps share a little bit about who you are and how you see yourself in the world currently.

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Yeah, thank you for that. Yeah, I am a Ijeoma Oluo and I am a writer and a mother. There are a lot of things that I do around that work, but I am very happy to be a writer and excited to be a writer. And almost as long as I have had a love affair with writing, I've been a mother for most of my life as well. And I think both shape who I am and how I move through the world and relate to people in ways that feel almost intrinsic, you know, as a kid who's loved words, it shaped my friendships in elementary school. And as someone who's been a mother since the age of 20, it's shaped my entire adult life and also how I write. So first and foremost in how I see the world and how I relate to people and people relate to me, a writer and a mother is paramount to who I am.

- [Aja Monet] Yeah, thank you. Something you talk a lot about is race. That's like a big part of how people come to know about your work and what you have shared with the world, and I wanted to offer in this conversation something I've been thinking about when doing the work that I've been doing around gender violence and harm. You know, we worked with Bell Hook's book, "The Will to Change", and she talks a lot about the ways that women can internalize patriarchy and perpetuate it as well, but that some of the biggest victims of patriarchy are men. Oftentimes we look at the people who are hated or harmed as the quote unquote victims, but rarely actually turn it back on its head and say, wait, but the person who's doing this harm, right, there's something there, and that in fact they are also victims, if not even more so victims. So I wanted to ask you, because you've been grappling with these ideas with race and challenging folks about it, what have you noticed in your work over the course of the years that you've been doing this work that has uprooted your initial ideas around race and how race plays out in our society? What are some of the confrontations or conflicts that have shown up for you, that have challenged the mainstream conversations that we see being had around race? Something that maybe came up and you thought of differently after doing this work for so many years?

- [Ijeoma Oluo] You know, I think that one thing that becomes increasingly clear to me as I do this work, is that it's not our work to do. And that's a hard thing for people to accept because it's our lives on the line, so we end up doing the work because we have to, but it's not actually our work to do. You know, we do not host, we do not nurture, we do not give birth to systemic racism. And the people who are birthing it and who are nurturing it are the people who have to do the work to dismantle it. And the fact that for multiple generations now, and because people who should be doing the work haven't been doing the work we have felt forced to, but there's also a societal expectation that we would do the work, that we would love to do the work, that we were born to do the work, what that means is the really vital work that actually we should be doing around our healing doesn't get done. And that's something that for me, as someone who must honestly say, I recognize a large portion of the people coming to my work are white people or people with skin tone privilege, trying to figure out what they can do and thinking that they depend on me and without me they wouldn't be able to move forward. I recognize that, that there's a base that believes that and that a lot of my work feels geared to that. But I also recognize that when I set this down, the real work begins, and the real work is looking at my trauma, looking at my community's trauma, looking at how we relate to each other. I was talking to Richie Reseda the other day and he was saying, you know, we talk about these systems and how the systems relate to us, but when we change these systems, when we have this revolution, then what do we have? Then how do we treat each other? You know, how do we heal? And that's the thing we need to work on because that's the thing we can have right now, right? And, and I think that recognizing that we can let it down, we can set that down and we're not actually letting our people down is vital, while also knowing we have a reality, right? If your child is being treated a certain way in school, that's a battle you have to fight because no one else is fighting it. But know that we shouldn't have to and know that where we can set it down we should, is definitely something that I'm becoming increasingly aware of in this work.

- [Aja Monet] Hmm, yeah. One of the things that I have found challenging in our movement space is as someone who's been deeply organizing for the past eight years or more, with an organization called Dream Defenders, which was founded after Trayvon Martin was murdered, and I believe was a bit of where you began some of your writing, but one of the things that I'm so grateful for is critical discourse about our ideas and the ways that we move through the world. And I think a lot of people read a book and they think they know something, right? They like read Malcolm X and they can quote Audre Lord, and there's a lot of knowledge, there's so much information out there, and not a lot of understanding and critical discourse about how we come to understand or what we are trying to understand. But what are the limitations that we find around the conversation of race when it comes to class and even gender struggle, right? Like I think one of the things that I realized in the movement to elect Bernie Sanders was, there was a real divergent of ideas among the left, right? About like, well, race is the primary concern and if we don't address race then like nothing else will be addressed, and everything else doesn't matter, or gender is the primary concern. And you know, and it's this assumption that they can't coexist and that we can't have an intersectional fight and struggle. But what role have you seen in the movement against poverty, the fight for people to have decent living wages, affordable housing, access to healthcare, et cetera. We find that the gap between the rich and poor is larger and larger and there's still people who garnered positions and new opportunities as Black people, but by and large, the material conditions of the poor have not changed. So I think what I'm wondering is someone who deals in the conversation of race, where does race begin and the conversation about capitalism begin, where does it end, where does it intersect what do you find in your work has been the challenge in kind of creating an intersectional lens when you are trying to discuss race with people?

- [Ijeoma Oluo] I think that it's really important that we recognize that the words that we use to describe the situation we are in, weren't the words that the people who designed these systems we're using, right? These are the words that we looked at and tried our best to name oppression. Because a lot of times it feels very much, you know, and I say this too as a political science major, right? I remember in college you would have these debates, which economic school are you in? You know, who are you, you know, are you ? You know, what do you believe? And, and it always baffled me because I'm like, you realize like we're literally just looking at some words that dudes came up with to try to describe a preference for how they want the world to work or to describe a pattern of behavior. But it isn't scientific in that sense, it isn't this is this and this is this. And so what that means is a lot of times we're trying to look at a system that moves and shapes where you have multiple different oppressions coming together and weaving and coming apart to accomplish particular goals. And we want to say, which bucket does that go into all of the time? And that's not how it works, you know, it's not the same people in power who are, you know, reaping the most profit from racism are also reaping the most profit from hyper capitalism, are also reaping the most profit from ableism, are also reaping the most profit from the destruction of the environment, from the exploitation of workers, right? And they don't care what it's called. And they will shift their resources to whichever part of that system, whichever tentacle of that system serves them the most. And so if we aren't willing to look at it all, if we keep saying, this is just this issue and we are less flexible than our oppressors, we're going to lose. And we have to recognize that, that these are just words that people no better than us, no more capable than us, came up with. And it's not set in stone. And I would say one thing that, you know, I feel like when we look at the limitations, you know, you were talking about limitations within our movements, imagination is discouraged, and that's the biggest limitation I think we have. It's discouraged deliberately, like when we talk about this and people say, you know what, there's only so much you can do. There's only so much you can accomplish. Let's stick with this, let's do this. And that's a tactic to stop us from actually setting down the mental limitations placed upon us by oppressive structures and saying, if we could start from scratch, what would this look like? And that can truly help you find out what's in your way in a way that thinking, let me just move this one barrier, let me just move this one wall because that's the thing right in front of me, and you don't actually get a chance to look up and say, oh, these are being set down by this, you know, if I can get rid of that, then the walls stop coming, you know, and that's something that I think we have to look at and we have to start encouraging. This idea that we always have to be pragmatic is harmful because it's not actually pragmatic to keep trying to repair broken systems. And so when we say, let me find the rules with which I think this is, let me find the bucket that I think this is in, we're already saying I'm gonna stick to the language the way that this appears, the way that our oppressors have set this down. And it doesn't mean that we don't look at race and how it functions in everything. It doesn't mean we don't look at class and how it functions in everything, but we have to recognize that the moment we start saying, okay, fine, then you know what we're gonna tackle just race here, that the powers that be are gonna immediately shift the class. They're gonna immediately shift to ableism, right? They're gonna immediately shift, because those are all resources at their disposal. So if we aren't able to be as flexible, if we aren't always looking at it all, if we aren't always creating communication where everyone impacted by these systems can speak their truth and we can find common cause, and we can support people when we don't have common cause, we're always gonna be playing catch up, because our oppressors do work together in that way. The cooperation I've seen between oppressive sexist groups of color and white supremacists who want them dead because they have a similar goal is astounding to me. And yet we keep being pitted against each other and keep acting like it's not connected. And that's been our downfall historically, and it will continue to be, until we recognize that we can imagine something better, we have it within us. We just have to stop acting like the way in which we look at these things was set in stone.

- [Aja Monet] Hey there listeners, this is The Sound Bath and my name is Aja Monet. This show is brought to you by Lush Cosmetics. We are currently in conversation with Ijeoma Oluo. In a minute, wanna talk to her more. But first-- I had a piece that I wanted to share with you that I don't know if you've ever read or heard about, but Langston Hughes created an anthology around humor in Black literature and plays etc, and he wrote in the introduction a note on humor and he said, "Humor is laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it. Of course you laugh by proxy, you're really laughing at the other guy's lax not your own. That's what makes it funny. The fact that you don't know you are laughing at yourself. Humor is when the joke is on you, but it hits the other fellow first before it boomerangs. Humor is what you wish in your secret heart were not funny, but it is and you must laugh. Humor is your own unconscious therapy." And I wanted to ask you about humor and what role humor has played, I think there's racial justice and the fight for race, you know, racism to be over, right? But there's also beautiful cultural truths about who we are and our differences, when you start to realize what made us who we are, even in spite of the struggles that we've had, our survival tactics have often been how creative we are in our joy and in our expression of our loves for one another. And I wanted to ask, where does humor show up for you in this discussion around race? How have you seen humor playing a really strategic role in dismantling racism and even getting us to have difficult conversations about it?

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Yeah, that's a great question. And it's funny because, you know, I definitely, I grew up in comedy spaces. My brother's a long time comedy writer and a lot of my friends are comedians and comedy writers. And so I was always used to being the unfunny one, you know, like I was the one who was like, oh I can't come up with things just at the drop of the hat. But it definitely works between in my work and I don't notice it, but the amount of people who are like, oh, right, when I think I'm drowning, you say something funny. And that really, you know, puts air back into me. And that I do think is one of the beauties of comedy. Sometimes it gets so hard that you feel like you're suffocating and you only know you're breathing when you start laughing. And comedy can do that. And I think to be even more specific, comedy injects reality in the sense that good comedy that touches on these sorts of issues reminds you that it's absurd, reminds you that it should not be like this, you know? And that's, and you need that, you know, like you need to remember, I am not actually built to withstand this, this is ridiculous, you know, like, and that-

- [Aja Monet] That's part of the critique I had of Dave Chappelle where it's like, I was like, man, like bro, like you're supposed, you're not getting it, like there has to be a moment where you make fun of how absurd patriarchy actually is. Like, it's just absurd that it's so fixed on gender, you know?

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Right, but if you don't get that because you're not the one being, that you don't know you're being harmed by it, then you don't think that's absurd, right? And I think that's probably the difference between why the comedy that hit on just on issues of race that he had hit, right, you're like, oh, okay, you are more aware of how that hits and how that harms and the absurdity of it, but you haven't gotten the absurdity of the rest, you are the absurdity, you are what other comedians commenting on you are gonna get the laughs for, right? And I think that that's the thing, you know, that humor can do when done well is, you know, I remember recording actually my last audio book and I was reading through this absolutely like horrific statistics around violence and it was a really brutal time actually, our house had burned down, I think three days earlier, and my son had called from college to say he had COVID, this is in 2020, you know, when it was even more terrifying. And I'm trying to record an audio book in a studio my brother was producing and trying not to just, you know, completely fall apart. And then I'm reading these horrific statistics around violence, these numbers over and, you know, and getting it wrong, right? And having to read it over and over and over again. And I just started laughing and I was like, I'm sorry, but this is like, you know, if this was in a film, you wouldn't believe it, it's so ridiculous how awful this is. And you know, and I could see my brother chuckling too. And it, you know, and he mutters like Jesus, you know, as I'm reading this for the fifth time, you know, this is like the absurdity of it. Like, oh, we have to do this, I have to get my audio right because I sound like I've been crying, I have to say for the seventh time like, how many people have been raped and murdered by, you know, and it's just like, this is absurd, this is so absurd, yeah.

- [Aja Monet] There was a week where it was multiple things happening and just the notion of saying what was on the newscast in that week or something like, I don't know if you remember that big fire that was in the ocean like that-

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Yes.

- [Aja Monet] I remember, and like that was happening, it was like we were on lockdown, people couldn't go nowhere. People was fighting over toilet paper. Everybody was just, it was just like a hot mess. And me and my friend were on the phone, we were just like listing how of a hot mess life is right now. And you're right, it was the absurdity that like at some point we could not stop laughing, right? And we didn't even know what we were laughing at, it was just the sheer ridiculousness of it all that like, we are living through this time, can you believe this? Like, this is normal.

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Right, and we need that because if we don't have that laughter, we do normalize it. We do think like, oh, it's supposed to be this way and it's not. And so I think that that's where laughter can be really important, but it has to recognize the absurdity. Humor that harms and punches down hasn't realized that it's playing a part in that absurdity, that it is the absurdity. And that I think is often the difference. And that's bad comedy too, like outside of the harm, it's just bad comedy.

- [Aja Monet] Yeah, that's the thing I would say, I was like, bro, it just doesn't feel, it's not skillful.

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Right.

- [Aja Monet] It's not even that I'm mad, you're making fun, like if the person you're making fun of is not laughing, then it's not funny. The whole goal is to make sure everybody's laughing, you know? So I don't know. It's I hear you, I'm glad I asked that question and I'm, you know, I'm sad you're not a comedian, but you are sort of in my mind.

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Having spent years around comedians honestly I could say, comedy requires a painful amount of self-awareness, good comedy, and that's why honestly, like if you spend time with a lot of comedians, you're like, oh man, you need therapy. Like you need so much therapy, like, this is, like you are hurting because you're so aware.

- [Aja Monet] There's the other spectrum of poetry, it's like literally when I was at open mics, it was like the poets and the comedians that were there. It's like-

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Exactly.

- [Aja Monet] Sometimes the actors.

- [Ijeoma Oluo] And the good ones are self-aware to a really painful degree and the bad ones aren't, right? And I think that's something people don't understand and that you can lose that self-awareness, if you're really successful at comedy and suddenly your jokes suck, it means you stopped seeing yourself, right? And we have to recognize that painful level of self-awareness is what makes, 'cause you have to not only be able to observe the outside world, you have to observe your place in it, because that's where people connect to you. If they don't see where their place in this world is, if they don't see the role, you know, that they play in this and the absurdity that they participate in, it doesn't connect. And so when comedians lose that, the jokes fall flat, or where they try to reach outside and think they can apply the same formula, to something they have absolutely no personal experience in, or they haven't opened themselves up to it falls flat.

- [Aja Monet] Yeah, thank you for that, this is a turning a bit to a more serious question around this current moment, and the status of people who have and carry wombs right now. And thinking about, you know, the struggles that we're having around this post Roe v. Wade decision. And this is a thing that we started this conversation by just naming, you know, people are hurting, there's a lot of hurt. And it feels like a lot of stuff is going backwards in terms of some of the policies that are being implemented and the struggle for some of these legislative things to be implemented against queer folks, against non-binary people, against women, and I wanted to, I guess just hear how you're feeling and what you're grappling with and thinking about this at this time. How are you responding to this time? What ways are you trying to be engaged and thinking through the best way to show up in this moment?

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Yeah, it's a tough time. I think that for the last couple of years especially this has been a tactic of warfare against us, to inundate us with so many assaults on our liberties, on our autonomy, on our personhood, that we don't know where to react, that we can't catch our breath, that we can't figure out what our resources are. And this is another stage in that, that really, I think has felt like a gut punch even though we saw it coming for so many people. And so I'm trying to balance that, that real human reaction of like, this is too much, right? And have space for that for the times where I need to grieve and let my fear kind of sit with me for a while. And then I have to stop and remember like, what this onslaught is trying to stop me from realizing, right? Which is that for hundreds of years we have survived because we have built these networks outside of these systems, and that is what's going to save us, and that's what I keep leaning into. The assault on reproductive rights and reproductive autonomy has been ongoing against populations of color and disabled populations and transgender people for the entire history of this country. And we are here even though many of us have been lost, even though there have been great harm, because of how we operated outside of these systems. And so even though we can feel the gut punch of this really, you know, this real thing that's happened, that's been done to us that will have real repercussions, we have to remember that our solutions don't lie within the systems, that our solutions lie where they always have, which is us working outside of it and coming together. And so the networks that have been trying to protect people of color who have not had access to reproductive choice, who have been trying to protect disabled people who have been denied reproductive choice, those networks that were in place, but a lot of people didn't care about it because it wasn't impacting cisgender middle class people, are the sort of things we need to be modeling and supporting. And it also means we have to be more aware. The truth is is that the people who've been pushing through these changes to remove our right to choose when and if we have a child, have been testing it out on other populations that people cared less about for a long time, and recognizing that that's where the groundwork was laid and they're gonna keep going. And so the lesson there is we have to be aware, we have to treat every one of these injustices like they're coming for us. Even if you can't see in that moment how it will impact you, because it absolutely will. And if I can't appeal to your love of general humanity, I hope to appeal to that, you know what I mean? Like, like it should matter just because it's people, but if you can't get that to matter, at least let this be a lesson to you, it will come for you. And so we have to be more aware and it also means we have to invest in the people working in these communities that are most impacted, like they're saving our lives because they will, right? But only if we put into it, only if we partner with it. Only if we give enough resources that it can help us. And so that's really what I'm looking at right now, you know, that's where I'm putting my concentration in my hope, is that we will learn these lessons, that we will pour our love into that. And that we will continuously say it's important to recognize that when we treat certain people as canaries in the coal mine, that we're expecting that canary to die in the coal mine. And instead we should say, if we were to let that canary fly free where would it lead us? Because it would not lead us down into a place that would suffocate us. And right now we treat marginalized populations like canaries in the coal mine. We say, okay, we'll wait until it gets close enough to us, we'll wait till you come back to us dead, and then we'll decide we don't want to go there. And instead saying, what would it look like if we invested in your liberation? What would it look like if we said, where do you want to go? What would you do differently and we followed you there? That's never gonna kill us, you know. And that's what I think we have to remember right now, because people were really biding their time and saying, I'll wait till it comes to my door. I'll wait until I can fully see what the impact of this is on all of these other people before I decide to take it seriously. And then we don't have a way out, you know, and that's a really hard lesson to learn and that's a lesson learned off of the backs of marginalized people. And that's really heartbreaking and hopefully we won't keep doing that.

- [Aja Monet] It reminds me of that quote by Angela Davis, but it's, "If they come for me in the morning, they'll come for you at night". And my question for you is a question around the word solidarity and the action of that word, and how it shows up in our relationships with one another. I think oftentimes we think of solidarity in this very strategic tactic or you know, etc, but I think it's important in just parent to children relationships, it's important in love relationships, it's important in familiar relationships. It's just important, it's important in every relationship, like the act of solidarity, the choice to be in solidarity. And I wanted to ask you, what does solidarity feel like to you? What is an expression of solidarity that you've experienced in your life that is truly demonstrated for you, the epitome of what solidarity can be in our society and in our world, is there a moment that you have experienced that really gave you hope for the possibility of our collaboration and our liberation movement to really, to really move us in the direction that we want to go?

- [Ijeoma Oluo] That's a great question. You know, I think solidarity at its core is a relationship. And I think that's the thing people wanna skip. They wanna think it's an action they can turn on or off. Oh, I'm in solidarity with this community. Are you though? Do they know you? You know, like, do you talk with them? What, what does your relationship look like? Because it's not just an action and it shows inaction, the way any healthy relationship does, right? Any healthy relationship isn't just sentiment, it's how you live that sentiment. But it also means loving and respecting someone. And so when I think about good solidarity, I think about healthy relationships. I think about the fact that like even with my, my children, right? I love my children. But I also see them and I see and appreciate how they differ from me, and how they have different needs from me. And I want to support them in their needs and I expect them to want to support me in mine. And that's a relationship, and that's an investment in their success knowing they have an investment in mine. That's seeing our futures tied together, that's seeing them in my home, in my community, in my family. And solidarity really has to be a broader practice of that. If you can't see and appreciate not only where you have things in common, but appreciate where you have differences, you won't be able to effectively practice solidarity. It's only something that pops up when you have mutual interest. That's not solidarity, that's self-interest. And so I think that where I've seen that practiced a lot in this work, a lot for me often shows up when I am talking with disabled activists, especially disabled activists of color, where we look and practice solidarity and have conversation in a relationship about how things impact us differently. Also, I see a lot of solidarity with Indigenous activists where I've seen that practice personally, where Indigenous activists I've seen, you know, come side by side when we're fighting and working for Black lives. And here in Seattle, often Indigenous people are targeted by police and, you know, having Black activists show up side by side. And then I think one of the more inspiring ones for me has always been the solidarity between Black activists and Palestinian activists. And watching that solidarity from across the globe, you know, watching people saying, you know what, this is our struggle is connected. That these systems of white supremacy are global and I am invested in what happens in Palestine and Palestinians are invested in what happens for us. Seeing Black Lives Matter written on walls in Palestine, is such a beautiful deep reminder that we matter. And when I get to speak out in solidarity for Palestinian voices and they see that and I hear from them and they know that they matter and that we all see where white supremacy is harming us, and that we see that our liberation will probably look quite different, right, is is a really beautiful thing, and we actually got to practice that just a few months ago. I was supposed to be in Hamburg, Germany speaking at a conference and was informed about two days, two or three days before I was supposed to get on the flight that they had canceled a Palestinian speaker because they felt that he spoke about what was happening too harshly in his critique of Israel as a state actor.

- [Aja Monet] Was that Mohammed el-Kurd?

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Yes.

- [Aja Monet] Yeah, that's a good friend of mine. He's also on our first season.

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Wonderful. Yes, and I was supposed to be on a panel discussion with him, so they had to inform me because they had to let me know my panel was canceled. I was also supposed to give a keynote. And I was so looking forward to that, you know, and I was so upset and the act of solidarity around that, of people recognizing solidarity on multiple levels, not only like as a Black woman feeling, you know, intense connection to the Palestinian struggle, and as someone who has Palestinian family as well, that was directly impacted by the nakba, I felt that on a personal level, but also as artists, right? The entire artistic community around this event, recognizing that we had to come together as artists and say, no, you know, we have the right to talk about the world around us and you don't get to step over these curators and say this is uncomfortable for us 'cause that's not, because that's not what art does. And so we ended up canceling so much that the entire conference got canceled, so many artists and speakers ended up canceling their appearances because of this. And it was a really beautiful thing to see, as sad as it was that we didn't get to have those conversations, a much more important conversation, about how we will or will not be co-opted and how we can recognize harm done to others and say that this is my community, even if it spans the whole globe. And you know, the organization tried really hard to make it seem like it wasn't, they told me on the phone, well, you know, this conference isn't really about Palestine, so it's not that big a deal. And, you know, recognizing the absurdity of this, that they were trying to put a wall between me and Mohammed el-Kurd was amazing. And I was like, no actually it does matter, and we are connected and I'm going to show this by canceling my speech. And so many other artists and speakers did the same. And it was really inspiring and hopefully we'll all have future opportunities to have some of the important conversations that we were gonna try to have in that space. But I think that it was really, really important for people to see what it means to let go of a commission, what it means to cancel travel plans. And so many artists did that all at once and it was really lovely.

- [Aja Monet] Yeah, there's nothing more that I love than people recognizing their power to not participate in the efforts of supporting a greater cause, I think that that's a really beautiful demonstration of solidarity and I hope that the people of this country can learn that power together and step into it a bit more. Thank you so much for that answer. Thank you so much for your time and for this very meaningful conversation. I wish you so much, just good loving vibrations and, yeah, just a good journey and I hope that it's bringing you some peace of mind and purpose.

- [Ijeoma Oluo] Thank you so much. It was really lovely to chat with you.

- [Aja Monet] Yeah, yay. I wanna thank all the listeners for listening and I encourage you to tune in next time to The Sound Bath. Please enjoy this beautiful sonic meditation.