Back in America

This episode was originally published on December 17, 2020 In this episode, I interview three crew members of the EPIX / BBC docuseries Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. While 2020 has been a year of intense examination of racism in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, Enslaved takes a deep dive at the historical realities of the Middle Passage. Starring Samuel L. Jackson, The Guardian's Afua Hirsh, and investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici, the series travels across the globe to sites of slave ships to uncover what these sunken graveyards can reveal about life onboard––lives of which there is little historical record or archive.  Our first guest is the British marine archaeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley who served as a historical advisor to the series' diving crew.   Then two of the divers will join me: Kinga Philipps and Kramer Wimberley.  An award-winning journalist, writer, TV host, and esteemed member of the Explorer's Club, Kinga provided a European perspective to the shoot, and also was one of the few non-Black divers for Enslaved. Next, Kramer will introduce himself as the series' lead diving instructor who also leads “Diving with a Purpose,” a maritime archaeology program that protects the legacy of the Transatlantic slave trade shipwrecks. Each of the three interviews was broadcasted live and can be watched in full on the Back in America's YouTube channel.   As I conducted these interviews, I wanted to understand two things. First, what did diving on the wrecks of slave ships us about the history of the slave trade. Then, I wanted the divers to speak about their own experiences as they dived and explored these sunken mass graves, especially in light of recent activism in America.   Dr Sean Kingsley Wreckwatch Mag    Kramer Wimberly Diving With a Purpose   Kinga Philipps This episode was partially edited by Back in America's Podcast Editor Josh Wagner.   Read the Transcript

Back in America is a podcast exploring America's culture, values, and identity. This conversation was recorded live on September 17. You can watch the unedited version on our Youtube channel.  Listen to this episode to learn more about the release of the Pentagon report on UFOs to Congress. The importance of cosmos exploration. The chances of finding extraterrestrial life in our lifetime. After taking a long summer break during which my intern Josh Wagner took over Back in America with his excellent series Poetism I am happy to be back behind the mic. My guest, Seth Shostak is a Doctor in Astronomy, and an Alien Hunter working with the SETI Institute, a research organization whose mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe. In fact, SETI stands for the "search for extraterrestrial intelligence". He has published more than 400 articles on science including regular contributions to NBC News MACH, gives many dozens of talks annually, and is the host of the SETI Institute's weekly science radio show, “Big Picture Science.”  During our conversation, he said, “The equipment is getting faster and faster. We're looking at more and more of the universe. And on that basis that I've bet everyone a cup of Starbucks coffee, that we will find some evidence that we're not alone by 2035.   The SETI Institute https://www.seti.org/ Dr. Soth Shostak http://sethshostak.com/ The Big Picture Science Podcast https://radio.seti.org/

If the particular cannot be repeated, it remains forever lost; and this is why there can be no final closure to mourning. There can only be, alongside of mourning,​ learning to love new particulars ––Louise Fradenburg   In this week's installment of “Poetism,” we'd like to ask about how words, poems, songs, and other kinds of art objects help bring life to a world. And by world, we mean a perspective, something experienced and understood in the innermost part of our being. Whether faced by inner solitude or loss, words attempt to communicate a state of affairs. But do they have to? Is there a way of placing listeners and readers directly into an experience without only describing it? Are there more direct ways of touching or “worlding” or elegizing? Or, in the words of this week's poet, a moment: “Stands, the way a status / does in the mind.​​   Perhaps! And it is in this great abyss of a perhaps that this episode takes off. Our working theory is that the sonic qualities of words, and of language in general, can help transmit moods and sensations without the need for specific meanings. To ask such questions, Josh is joined by his college roommate Scott Stevens, a recent English graduate of Stanford University (and incoming Fulbright Scholar) who also speaks in Japanese and French. And, in the course of their dialogue, Scott they are assisted by the Cocteau Twins' 1984 track “Amelia” off of Treasure as well as Brigit Pegeen Kelly's “Field Song” from the collection Song (1995).   Over the course of their conversation, Scott and Josh touch upon the uniqueness of sound as a medium of communication, their difficulties of listening to the lyrics of a song, and poetry's collective oral tradition. *** For more Poetism, stay tuned for next week's two-part series finale on Rachel McKibbins, blackface, and FKA twigs.

The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.   These lines, from the opening pages of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, emphasize unseen background noises as constituting an environment. The bees, working through the grass, create the biological condition of possibility for nature and the world, especially in their unseen state. And, so too, does the roar of London create the background chatter that allows the plot of the novel to take off. In this week's installment of Poetism, we'd like to ask a similar question about our own age: what is the background noise that has made all this––society, labor, world–– possible?   Michael Leon Thomas, a professor of philosophy at Susquehanna University, joins Josh in the studio to tackle the vicissitudes and interisies of Alfred North Whitehead's conception of philosophy alongside Pharoah Sanders' 1973 album Izipho Zam, particularly the 28-minute titular track which closes the album. For Whitehead, a worldview is always in the process of emerging, and our language needs to follow suit. A reformed logician, Whitehead balks against a wholly systematic view of philosophy, suggesting that it is in the gaps, silences, and wetness of philosophy that something happens.   And to figure out what this something might be, we turn to Pharoah Sanders' enigmatic, if expansive, composition which traverses through various languages, instruments, and cosmologies. The bandleader himself cannot be heard until the last third of the track, creating and leaving space (a society?) in which music creation can happen. In other words, it's a slow reconditioning process.   Along the way, Michael and I talk about why he's decided to spend his life with philosophy, how experience feeds into our listening habits, the postcolony of American, and why philosophy might have more in common with poetry than one might assume.   To read more about Michael's work on music, check out an interview in Aesthetics with Birds.   Here is the 2016 Pharoah Sanders performance mentioned in the episode. ***   For Poetism, stay tuned for next week's episode on Brigit Pegeen Kelly and the Cocteau Twins with Scott Stevens    

Across Northern Europe, so-called “bog people” have often been discovered shuffling around in the peat. While no one is quite certain where these quasi-mummified bodies come from––some date as recently as the 1940s––they have posed a strange mystery for countless poets and artists. This week, Back in America's Poetism team takes a look at one of Seamus Heaney's bog-inspired poems “The Bog Queen” from his 1975 collection North. Written in the spring of the May 1968 movement and the beginning of the Irish “Troubles,” “The Bog Queen” ventriloquizes the voice of its eponymous queen, pretending to experience underground life before her eventual discovery. In 2014, Irish musician Hozier released a setting of the poem, “Like Real People Do, ”removing many explicit references to Heaney himself, while keeping the ethos of the poem. For Hozier, the relationship of the fallen queen to her discoverer is one of love, even if from afar. Is it possible to love those who we will never meet? Can such a love be anything more than one-sided or wonderfully ironic? To explore these questions, Stanford graduate student Lorenzo Bartolucci joins Josh in the studio to offer his take on love, Heaney, bog bodies, and American-ness itself. *** If you're enjoying this summer series, stay tuned for next week's installment, featuring Susquehanna Philosophy Professor Michael Leon Thomas and the works of Alfred North Whitehead and Pharoah Sanders.

Elegy Who would I show it to In this short one-line poem, W.S. Merwin condenses the anguish of loss, of being alive, and of the limitations of languages into a neat little package. Why write in the absence of finality? And what happens when mortality catches up with us? In this installment of Poetism, Podcast Editor Josh Wagner takes to the studio to ask about the honesty of writing––can writing ever reflect a true impression of reality? To field such questions about life, poetry, and everything in between, Stanford graduate student Gabriel Ellis takes the mic. Studying musicology, Gabriel focuses on contemporary pop music, and especially what he terms “anaesthetics,” music that describes, induces, or creates a sense of narcotic escape. Our conversation loosely tracks Gabriel's musical career before turning to Jos Charles' 2018 poetry collection feeld, which he reads in a faux-Chaucerian accent: “i care so much abot the whord i cant reed.” Then, we talk about the late SOPHIE's 2018 track “Immaterial” off of Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides to explore a sonic tapestry of vibe.   Stay tuned at your dials for next week's episode of Poetism, featuring dead Irish myths, Seamus Heany, Hozier, and more Stanford friends!   Note: Both Charles and SOPHIE identify as trans and use she/them pronouns, so we use both interchangeably.

She listen to a little of that D'Angelo music, some love's melody, sophisticated-type rap, which she say sounds more like real music, like intelligent music, than some of that other music, then she cuts the radio off ––Gayl Jones, The Healing   Like the narrator in Gayl Jones' The Healing, this week's installment of Poetism focuses on and around “black music,” that is music which conveys a specific feeling of a sensation or time without explaining anything. For me, it's like being a child at an adult's card table; no one tells you how the game works, you have to learn by being attentive and tuning into the tricks at hand. But the joy is in the puzzle, almost as much as in the rules of the game.   When his producer tried to market his serpentine music as “neo-soul,” D'Angelo rejected that moniker for the more expressive and expansive “black music.” There's history and respect in his 2014 collaboration with the Vanguard, “Black Messiah,” but also affection, nostalgia, and rage. In scholar D'Angelo's own words, “it's all about capturing the spirit. It's all about capturing the vibe. I'm kinda a first take dude.”    To tackle such questions of lineage and history, actor and tap dance instructor Johnnie Hobbs joins me in this week's episode. Our conversation starts with Johnnie's own background and love for films––especially the rare period piece that displays the mundane. As Sumana Roy and Xander Manshel have noted, it's rare for art made by people of color about the everyday to be accepted by mainstream culture. The vast majority of literary awards given to writers of color are for historical novels which focus on their ethnic identities. To be taught within the university, Indian novels need to be about what it means to be a postcolonial subject;––it's uncommon to see a novel about one's dreams of becoming a famous poet, midnight walks, and family fights.   And Johnnie has developed his own test to see whether a historical film can do more than just showcase violence against Black bodies. In the final minutes of the podcast, we turn towards Amiri Baraka's “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” (1961) to unpack it's own relationship to Black suffering and its future(s).   Stay tuned for next week's episode on bubblegum pop and Old English verse in Jos Charles' feeld (2018) and SOPHIE's “Immaterial” (2018)––guided by anesthetic wizard Gabriel Ellis, who you might remember from his cameo in last week's installment.

  Why are we so blind, why do we see so little, when there is much around us to see?   So asks philosopher Alva Noë in Strange Tools, an exploration of how art objects contain, persuade, envelop, and direct our attention. What happens when we love a song, poem, or a moment in a day? How do these works of art direct and misdirect our attention? What––physically, emotionally, actually––happens to us in these moments of transport? And how can we talk about any of this without poorly paraphrasing that direct experience?   These are the questions Podcast Editor Josh Wagner was left with at the end of our last episode of Poetism. So, in this week's installment, Josh invited Mitch Therieau, a Stanford researcher working on contemporary literature, to unravel the interstices of Lisa Robertson's R's Boat (2010) and the Airborne Toxic Event's 2011 hit “Numb” off of All at Once.   Robertson's poetry captures fleeting moments of stillness and the everyday, placing them in complex and abstract forms, while Numb's soundscape desensitizes listeners to the world around them. Over the course of their conversation, Mitch and Josh plumb the surface-level depths of Robertson's avant-garde poetry and trace the music history at the core of the Airborne Toxic Event's track.   Longtime listeners might be interested to compare Mitch's idea of what America is with Josh's––way back from his first episode with Back in America.   Stay tuned for next week's episode with Los Angeles-based filmmaker and tap dancer Johnnie Hobbs, featuring Amiri Baraka and D'Angelo and The Vanguard.   Check out frontman for the Airborne Toxic Event Mikel Jollett's 2020 memoir Hollywood Park.  

  Happy July! While Stan and the usual Back in America podcast are on a hiatus this summer, Podcast Editor Josh Wagner will be hosting a new series entitled Poetism, tracing the foundations of and influences behind American poetry and music. Each week, Josh will invite a guest on the air to talk about an unusual pairing of a poem and song––seeing how they overlap and converse with one another. In the process, we hope to expose listeners to new poets and songs and make a case for the enduring relevance of poetry in an age of digital and visual media. In our inaugural episode, Josh is joined by Fang Liu, a linguistics major from Stanford, to talk about memory and imagination in Patrick Rosal's 2015 ekphrastic poem “Children Walk on Chairs to Cross a Flooded Schoolyard” and The Doors' “Wild Child” off of the 1969 record The Soft Parade. Stay tuned for next week's episode on sensations of loneliness through the Airborne Toxic Event's early 2000s bop “Numb” and poet Lisa Robertson's R's Boat (2010).

Before we dive into today's episode, a personal note: This summer, I will be going back to France for the first time in two years, and I will take a break from podcasting until September.  However, my interns Josh and Emma will be keeping the lights on by releasing podcast episodes and newsletter articles (subscribe here). Josh has been working on a series of episodes discussing American music and poetry, which will be released weekly in July and August. So, Back in America will be in summer mode, and I know you will love it! Now, it is time for our interview. Starting this podcast back in November 2019, I wanted to make sense of the Trump years, and the sadness I felt for a country I loved but no longer understood. In more than 50 episodes and countless conversations, I have time and time again asked my guests: What is America to them?. Careful listeners to this podcast might have gained a better understanding of the fabric of this country––I know I certainly have.  In this episode, I turn to Professor Douglas Steinel, a man whose life has been dedicated to just that: understanding America. His students have praised him for forcing them to confront opposing views, and his course syllabi require reading political critiques from both sides of the aisle. Professor Douglas Steinel has been a professor of American Political Thought since 1982 at the George Washington University, just a few blocks away from the White House.   Professor Steinel's book suggestions   Plato's Republic   Bertrand Russell Collection, Selected Works, 1912-1922: The Problems of Philosophy, The Analysis of Mind, Why Men Fight, Free Thought and Official Propaganda   Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects  by Bertrand Russell    The New Class War: Saving Democracy from the Managerial Elite by Michael Lind   

This episode was recorded live on May 26 and includes questions from the audience. It is part of a series on sustainable initiatives to save our planet. In his latest interviews, host Stan Berteloot spoke with Navi Radjou about the frugal economy and Bruno Sarda about how corporations are experimenting with sustainability.  Stan’s guest, Stefan Gallard, is a French-American working for Grain de Sail, a company that has built the first modern wind-powered cargo ships.  Grain de Sail transports wine, coffee beans, and chocolate across the globe in its 80- foot schooner. Its sailboat cargo is an essential part of the company’s green logistics chain. More information on Grain de Sel at: Graindesailwines.com

Subscribe to Back in America, the newsletter Back in America is a podcast exploring America's culture, values, and identity. This episode is part of a series on positive initiatives to save our planet. In his last interview, Stan Berteloot spoke with Navi Radjou about the frugal economy. Today, he is talking to Bruno Sarda, an internationally renowned expert in sustainability.  For years, corporations have advertised their green initiatives to reassure both investors and customers about their sustainable practices. Yet as we know, climate change is only getting worse, so we wanted to ask Bruno if this was just “greenwashing.”  On a personal note: Back in America now boasts more than 50 episodes, and we am very grateful to you, our listeners, for your support during all this time. This summer, Stan will be going back to France for the first time in two years, and he will take a podcast break until September.  However, Back in America’s interns Josh and Emma will be keeping the lights on by releasing podcast episodes and newsletter articles (subscribe here). Josh has been working on a series of episodes discussing American music and poetry, which will be released every week in July and August. So Back in America will be in summer mode, and we know you will love it!   To learn more about Bruno Sarda check out his Linkedin profile.

Careful listeners of Back in America may have noticed that we have expanded our team and welcomed two interns to research, record and write the podcast alongside me, Stan Berteloot. In the spirit of transparency, I’d like for you to formally meet my interns Josh Wagner and Emma Myers in true podcast fashion as they interview each other! They also discuss their own exciting projects coming soon: be on the lookout for Josh’s Poetry and Eugenics series both releasing this summer, and Emma’s deep dive into the history of vaccine hesitancy and medical ethics later this month.

In this episode, Back in America’s host, Stan Berteloot speaks with Navi Radjou, internationally renowned Indian-French-American scholar, innovation and leadership advisor, and bestselling author based in New York. Navi’s most recent book, Frugal Innovation: How To Do More With Less, shows how companies can innovate faster, better, and more sustainably.  The conversation focuses on Navi’s work on developing an alternative to capitalism and concrete actions individuals and businesses are taking to build a better, more sustainable world. “My job is to introduce Americans to new ways of doing business, new ways of creating economic and social value in a sustainable way,” says Radjou.  He describes the “frugal economy” as a new economy that is built on business-to-business (b2b) sharing, local production from micro-factories, the notion of regeneration, or how companies can consciously have a positive impact on society and the planet. Since Navi is multicultural, the episode focuses on the values, culture, and identity of America. Navi comments on an excerpt from a previous Back in America interview with American writer and thinker John Michael Greer.  In the audio clip, we hear Greer say that America is all about independence and every man for himself, while European countries have a more communal attitude. In response, Navi asked: “Why do we have to choose? Why can we have both? Why can we go into a kind of the third dimension where we try to integrate the goodness of America, the goodness of Europe? The ideal society,” he says, “is the one that tried to find the sweet spot between maximizing individual expression while contributing to social integration.” Navi backs up his theories with concrete examples of companies, such as Xometry, People + Work Connect from Accenture, Unilever, Civica RX, or Convoy that are currently working according to the frugal economy precept. Here are two of Radjou’s articles on Frugal Economy and B2B Sharing : The Rising Frugal Economy The sharing economy’s next target: Business-to-business Navi Radjou’s Movie and Books Selection The Evolving Self: A Psychology for the Third Millennium Paperback  by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi  The Life Divine Paperback  by Sri Aurobindo Movie Losers on Netflix    Watch the full, unedited, interview on YouTube

Bridging COVID-19 Isolation and the Digital Divide with Bridging Tech   In 2021, it is nearly impossible to get anything done without a laptop: apply for a job, go to school, safely connect with friends, or schedule a COVID-19 vaccine appointment. Yet, there are fewer laptops in existence than humans on this planet, presenting a unique challenge for unhoused students. Not only are they disadvantaged in terms of their living situation, but also have to deal with this extra technological hurdle known as the digital divide. Naturalized Americans have a unique set of familial and institutional knowledge about how to navigate the complex and confusing American system: What is an SAT? Who can I ask for help on my math homework? Where can I get free public Wi-Fi? While these questions might seem obvious to a second-generation resident, they are anything but for immigrant and first-generation communities. This week’s episode of Back in America, hosted by Podcast Editor Josh Wagner, highlights Bridging Tech, a charity devoted to providing hardware and other educational resources for unhoused students. Having donated nearly 1,000 laptops nationwide, Bridging Tech is developing infrastructure for companies and individuals to donate disused computers to be wiped/refurbished before being donated to unhoused communities. Founded by rising Stanford seniors, Isabel Wang and Margot Bellon, Bridging Tech is committed to listening to the unhoused community and creating actually helpful resources, rather than assuming what would be best and offering potentially unhelpful solutions. Holly Giang, Bridging Tech’s Foundation Relations Manager, also joins us for the interview. To find out how unhoused youths can go to online school, what policy measures are holding back their success, and how to get involved with Bridging Tech, listen to our episode! ––– In the coming weeks, the Back in America team will be launching an eight-part series investigating the relationship between music and poetry, tentatively titled “Rhythmic Verses.” Join Podcast Editor Josh Wagner as he poetically travels around the country, asking the age-old question: What is American to you?

  As Biden announces new executive actions on gun control, the Back in America team invites you to re-listen to an episode on guns in America, initially published on Oct. 23, 2020. In his executive actions today, Biden restricted the sale of “ghost guns,” untraceable guns which are sold in kits. Today’s announcements are less expansive than the president’s initial campaign promises. Yet, administration officials suggest that these measures are only the first steps of Biden’s plans for addressing gun violence. Further legislation will require Congressional approval and include a nationwide assault weapons ban (something that Australia successfully adopted 25 years ago) and universal background checks.   The following episode is an edited version of live interviews that were recorded on October 20th and 21st. 2020. You can watch the entire broadcast on Back in America’s YouTube channel.     A few weeks ago Jon, a good college friend, visited us for the weekend. At night, we were joined by a couple living next door and we started to talk about politics as we drank beers by the fire pit in the backyard.   In the backyard were two French nationals (my wife and I) joined by three Americans.   I can't remember exactly how or why Jon started to talk about gun rights, but the conversation became serious when he professed not only his belief in the right to bear arms but also that it was essential to the protection of civilians against the tyranny of the government. Historically, the people most affected by governmental tyranny (forced displacement, slavery) have been denied access to firearms and the ability to use them.   This made me dig further into the American gun debate. I've learned that many citizens support the idea of owning any type of gun and that some believe that it is a God-given right.   What has God got to do with guns? How can a democracy work when its citizens trust their guns more than their votes? And with the recent bankruptcy of the NRA, will gun control actually work?   To try to make sense of all this we are going to hear from three people: first, my friend Jon Phebus will clarify his views; then David Treibs, a Christian and gun activist, will talk about his God-given right to bear arms. Finally, SUNY Cortland’s Professor Robert Spitzer, an expert on constitutional law and gun control, will offer his interpretation of the constitution and bring some historical context to the debate.   Books and Movies Recommendations:   David Treibs Love Letter to America by Tomas Schuman The Persecutor by Sergei Kourdakov  Marx & Satan by Richard Wurmbrand   Professor Robert Spitzer The Politics of Gun Control by Robert J. Spitzer Casablanca (1942)

In this episode, Stan Berteloot continues to explore how leading American collapsologists thinkers conceive of the collapse of our Western civilization. Since the 1990s, scholars have been predicting that the end of the Cold War and the struggle between capitalism/communism will also bring about “the end of history.” But, are these worries founded? What are we to make of the last 30 years? After previous episodes with John-Michael Greer and Richard Heinberg, Stan sat down with Derrick Jensen, an American author, ecophilosopher, radical environmentalist, and anti-civilization advocate. He once said that “We’re going to watch the end of the world on television until the TVs go out.” For Jenson, the solution is essentially to return to the Stone Age. You say that’s ridiculous?! Well, his movement, the Deep Green Resistance (DGR), is gaining international traction in the West. In any case, many people agree that, whether we want it, our civilization is on the brink of extinction.

Today is March 8, International Women's Day, and on this day I suggest that we listen to Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings and her work for civil justice. This episode was previously released on Jan. 22, 2021. In this episode of Back in America, I speak with Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, former chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, political consultant, and activist. She recently ran to represent Maryland’s 7th District in Congress after undergoing a double mastectomy. Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is the widow of Congressman Elijah Cummings, a good friend of former Congressman John Lewis. When Lewis died in 2020, hundreds of Twitter account accidentally posted memorial photos of Cummings since the two looked so much alike! On Back in America, Dr. Maya Rockeymoore. Cummings discusses the ongoing fight for civil rights. “I fight for the right to exist. I fight for the right of everyone to be recognized on the level of our common humanity. I fight for the history in this country that has been suppressed. I am the fourth generation from slavery in this country. My parents grew up in the Jim Crow South. My late husband, Elijah Cummings grew up in the Jim Crow South. They were born into a world that denied African Americans the right to exist,” she said. We also spoke of Black feminism and the importance for Black women to take charge of their struggle against racist and institutionalized patriarchy. In recent months, Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings has been working to publish We're Better Than This: My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy, her husband’s final, unfinished book. The book came out last September and she talks to me about the importance of getting her husband’s voice out there. We're Better Than This - My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy  

As countries worldwide scramble to vaccinate their citizens against the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, governments have to make the uncomfortable calculus of who deserves to get the vaccine right now. The ones who are spreading it the most? The ones in essential high-risk jobs? People over a certain age? That threshold is unclear and hotly contested. With several months to go before vaccines are readily available to any desiring American adult, legislators have to ask The Question: who first? And, as more vaccine becomes available, they will also have to ask whether it is morally justified for the U.S. government to mandate every citizen or every healthcare worker to take the vaccine? If many states mandate every child to be vaccinated against measles, mumps, and rubella, is COVID-19 significantly different?   In August 2020, Justin Bernstein, a philosopher at Florida Atlantic University, co-authored a paper answering precisely this question. And while the state of the world has changed significantly since then, the core question of how governments value their citizens, when, and why remains constant (if you’re curious, the U.S. government places the monetary value of a human life at roughly $10 million). Podcast Editor Josh Wagner sat down with Justin to ask precisely these burning questions. For Justin, vaccines are just like any other vital resource that the government needs to allocate. And, in his mind, while our government has been failing in its mandate to protect public health, it is still the best means we have.    Listen in to find out the answers to these questions and more!   Justin’s website Alexander Guerrero’s blog post about dividing up the United States

First published on November 18, 2019   When a French journalist returns to live in the US 25 years after leaving it as a student, he struggles to recognize the country he loves. He embarks on conversations with Americans of all backgrounds in a quest to understand what America means today.   This was the first installment of Back in America. The episode is part of a series on masculinity in America. Here I speak to Eric Marsh a Black activist and a social worker in Philadelphia.  We speak about being a Black man in America; the impact of slavery. The impact of the Trump election; consumerism. We discuss an art piece by Hank Willis Thomas, Branded Head, a photo of a Black man’s head with the shape of the Nike swoosh, and what Thomas called commodifiable blackness.

Witches are everywhere! Your neighbor might be a witch, you can run into one at the farmer market, the organic food store, the alternative medicine section of your bookstore, and definitely at feminist rallies––you could even be a witch without knowing it!Since the 1960s, the historical stereotype of the witch has been reclaimed as a feminist icon. In their everyday lives, American witches act just the same as anyone else. While it is forbidden for outsiders to enter certain covens, many sell protection spells on Etsy for $15 a pop. They post pictures of Midnight Sabbaths on Instagram and Livestream Tarot readings on YouTube.Beyond the folklore and the spells, the modern American witch is taking a stand against the patriarchy. You will hear from three witches in this episode: Amanda Auchter, an American writer, professor, and editor. Amanda has won several literary awards and is currently working on her third book of poems which focuses on how witchcraft and faith empowered women.Then, Cabra Woodwell, a witch “dedicated to changing the narratives of magic to decolonize, decarcerate, and liberate” comes in.   The third witch is Pixie from Salem, Massachusetts. The interview with Pixie was recorded live and can be watched in full on YouTube. If you want to learn more about Amanda, her books and her new witchcraft store, and if you want to explore what Pixie and Cabra are up to, see this episode's note.To explore even further witchcraft and feminism check out Back in America's Newsletter on Substack!Amanda AuchterAmanda is about to open an occult-based shop, Midnight Apothecary, on March 1, with her creative partner, Eddy Roberts. Their information and stories are available on Instagram, here: https://www.instagram.com/midnight.apothecary/.PixiePixie’s Instagram account is https://www.instagram.com/thisisreallypixie/Cabra WoodwellCabra Woodwell on Instagram is https://www.instagram.com/garlicwitchzines/Their astrology school can be found on https://starsdanceastrology.com/mystery-school/

This episode was originally recorded live and you can watch the entire interview on our YouTube channel.Trica Baker was the VP of Marketing Services at Merrill Lynch for 13 years before leaving her job to take care of her teenage son who was struggling with severe depression.After battling this disease for three long years, her son tragically committed suicide. In the aftermath of those dark days, Tricia fell into a terrible depression and suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress, barely able to leave her bed.Yet, her dog Miki, guided by a mysterious instinct, helped her deal with her depression and got her out of bed each day. “Miki saved my life,” says Tricia. In this episode of Back in America, the podcast we hear from Tricia who has since dedicated her life to training dogs to prevent suicide. You can find Tricia’s suicide prevention organization, Attitudes In Reverse, at  https://air.ngo/. 20 Paws is her dog training business: https://20paws.com/.  If you or a loved one is depressed or having suicidal thoughts, the suicide prevention text line can be found by texting ‘AIR’ to 741 741. To speak to a counselor call 1 (800) 273-TALK (8255) or go online: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/.  

 What is really at question is the American way of life. What is really at question is whether Americans already have an identity or are still sufficiently flexible to achieve one. This is a painfully complicated question, for what now appears to be the American identity is really a bewildering and sometimes demoralizing blend of nostalgia and opportunism. ––James BaldwinIn recent months, shows about Jewish thought and theology (Pretend it’s a City, Unorthodox) have populated Netflix’s “Trending Now” tab. But what does it mean to be an American Jew in 2021? Why are many Jews today turning towards Hasidism and more conservative forms of religion in a time of unprecedented secularism? Are spirituality and personal faith compatible with traditional Jewish precepts? Why is it the case that Jews have both benefited from and been victimized by white nationalism? And how does Zionism, Jewish nationalism, fit into this story?To think about these questions, Podcast Editor Josh Wagner spoke with Sam Shonkoff, Professor Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley, California as well as two of his students. Sam’s research delves into the intersection between secular spiritual practices and the contemporary Hasidic movement, especially in the thought of not-quite theologian Martin Buber. For Buber, religion was less about acting according to the letter of the law than cultivating a sense of “embodied theology” in the everyday––faith as less of a regulating authority than source of spiritual transformation (tiqqun). His students, Eva Sturm-Gross and Jonah Gelfand both took Sam’s Jewish Mysticism seminar at Oberlin College, and became fascinated with the downright CJS - People odd and weird mystics in Jewish thought. Eva is a junior from Vermont who works at a bakery and is majoring in Studio Art and Religion with a minor in Jewish Studies. Jonah just graduated from Oberlin last June and has followed Sam to the GTU and hopes to continue his personal and professional engagement with Jewish thought. Both Eva and Jonah grew up as secular Reform Jews, yet have decided to become more seriously devout. While their experience cannot speak for all American Jews, Sam, Eva, and Jonah tell a story about their return to a practical faith in a time of uncertainty and doubt.To find out more, listen to the episode on Podbean, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you usually find your podcasts! Links: Sam’s latest book on contemporary Hasidism, edited with Rabbi Ariel Evan Mayse: Hasidism: Writings on Devotion, Community, and Life in the Modern World The book on top of Sam’s desk at the time of recording this episode: The Obligated SelfMaternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought by Mara H. Benjamin Eva’s art InstagramMartin Buber’s I and Thou

In this episode of Back in America, I speak with Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, former chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, political consultant, and activist. She recently ran to represent Maryland’s 7th District in Congress after undergoing a double mastectomy. Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings is the widow of Congressman Elijah Cummings, a good friend of former Congressman John Lewis. When Lewis died in 2020, hundreds of Twitter account accidentally posted memorial photos of Cummings since the two looked so much alike! On Back in America, Dr. Maya Rockeymoore. Cummings discusses the ongoing fight for civil rights. “I fight for the right to exist. I fight for the right of everyone to be recognized on the level of our common humanity. I fight for the history in this country that has been suppressed. I am the fourth generation from slavery in this country. My parents grew up in the Jim Crow South. My late husband, Elijah Cummings grew up in the Jim Crow South. They were born into a world that denied African Americans the right to exist,” she said. We also spoke of Black feminism and the importance for Black women to take charge of their struggle against racist and institutionalized patriarchy.In recent months, Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings has been working to publish We're Better Than This: My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy, her husband’s final, unfinished book. The book came out last September and she talks to me about the importance of getting her husband’s voice out there.We're Better Than This - My Fight for the Future of Our Democracy 

In this week’s episode, Podcast Editor Josh Wagner takes a look at transhumanism, the philosophy, and ideology that the next stage in human evolution will arrive through artificial enhancements. Started in the early 1990s in Silicon Valley, transhumanism has accrued a wide variety of adherents, ranging from Ray Kurzweil and Elon Musk to Jeffrey Epstein, who believe that the human body itself needs to be upgraded. In their minds, such technological enhancements will increase the quality of life and abilities of every human being––“if nature is unjust, change nature!” But, are such transhumanist dreams even possible, and would such biological enhancements actually help transform the human race rather than reinforcing the social, racial, and economic divides which are tearing at the foundations of our democracy? Joining us this week is James Clement, director of BetterHumans, the world’s first transhumanist-oriented biomedical research lab. A former international tax lawyer and brewpub founder, Clement now works on the scientific side of anti-aging, often collaborating with Havard geneticist George Church to discover why certain humans are able to live for more than 100 years. At the heart of his transhumanism rests a fundamental belief in human capabilities and their liberation, beliefs which motivate his biological research. For him, transhumanism is a real technology, fundamentally linked to medical vaccines, stitches, and contact lenses. The only difference is that, like any new technology, transhumanism is not fully understood, especially by Americans who are resistant to such changes. At the core of this interview lies a concern that a so-called transhumanist utopia, while possible, may not be entirely desirable. Like Odysseus’ searching beyond the limits of human cognition in Dante’s Inferno, transhumanism crucially aspires to alter our relationship with our own bodies, potentially increasing carbon emissions, overpopulation, and racial/social inequalities. James Clement: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jwclement/  Transhumanist Manifesto: https://natashavita-more.com/transhumanist-manifesto/  Humanist Manifesto: https://zelalemkibret.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/humanist-manifestos.pdf 

 In this episode, I interview three crew members of the EPIX / BBC docuseries Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.While 2020 has been a year of intense examination of racism in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, Enslaved takes a deep dive at the historical realities of the Middle Passage. Starring Samuel L. Jackson, The Guardian’s Afua Hirsh, and investigative journalist Simcha Jacobovici, the series travels across the globe to sites of slave ships to uncover what these sunken graveyards can reveal about life onboard––lives of which there is little historical record or archive. Our first guest is the British marine archaeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley who served as a historical advisor to the series’ diving crew. Then two of the divers will join me: Kinga Philipps and Kramer Wimberley.  An award-winning journalist, writer, TV host, and esteemed member of the Explorer’s Club, Kinga provided a European perspective to the shoot, and also was one of the few non-Black divers for Enslaved. Next, Kramer will introduce himself as the series’ lead diving instructor who also leads “Diving with a Purpose,” a maritime archaeology program which protects the legacy of the Transatlantic slave trade shipwrecks.Each of the three interviews was broadcasted live and can be watched in full on the Back in America’s YouTube channel. As I conducted these interviews, I wanted to understand two things. First, what did diving on the wrecks of slave ships  us about the history of slave trade. Then, I wanted the divers to speak about their own experiences as they dived and explored these sunken mass graves, especially in light of recent activism in America. Dr Sean Kingsley Wreckwatch Mag  Kramer Wimberly Diving With a Purpose Kinga PhilippsThis episode was partially edited by Back in America’s Podcast Editor Josh Wagner.

Richard Heinberg is a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute and is regarded as one of the world’s top advocates for a shift away from our current dependence on fossil fuels. He is also the author of thirteen books on climate and energy.Today, in this episode I am releasing the complete interview I had with Richard on November 11. This interview was broadcasted live and you can watch it on Youtube. Richard and I talk about the election and what impact the new government might have on the environment.Richard asks, who's going to cleaning up the fracking mess as the oil and gas companies go bankrupt? We wonder if Trump in the time he has left at the White House can do more damages to the climate and Richard warns that Biden will need to prepare Americans for the hard change looming ahead.If you enjoy this podcast please share it with your friend and leave us a review on Apple podcast.I would like to wish you all a happy holiday and to thank you for your incredible support in 2020. A big shout out to my top fans: Celine, Missy, Jon, Caroline, Natja, Nicolas, Mark, Aurelia, Ben, Zoe. Our Intern is Josh Wagner and he is busy editing the episode on the BBC Series Enslaved: The Lost History of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. I hope to be publishing it before the end of the month. make sure you listen to it as we are working on a new no linear format mixing the interviews with great soundtracks. Bye for now and have a great day.   

The 2020 election cycle has been wracked with scandal, accusations of fraud, and uncertainty. Fearing the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of Americans voted by mail, and have little idea what in-person polling looked like in this historic year. Join us this week as Stan sits down with Back in America’s new Podcast Editor and poll worker Josh Wagner.  A native Los Angeleno, Josh worked the polls in Downtown Los Angeles at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, site of the Los Angeles Opera. Amid a startling amalgamation of modernist and abstracted artworks, voters took to the polls, casting their ballots in the decisive 2020 presidential election. To make sense of the opulence of the polling station alongside the monotony of the democratic process (not to mention the scores of unhoused people living just blocks away), Josh spoke with several of his fellow poll workers––comic Chistine Medrano, high schooler Emilee Salas, and assistant lead Harrell Greene––as well as several voters.  How were poll workers kept safe? Who voted at The Music Center? Listen to find out what it was really like to vote in the 2020 election downtown!You can find Josh’s published works here and make sure to look out for future episodes with him.

 Today is The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.In this episode, first published a year ago, I speak with Sheri Kurdakul the CEO and founder of VictimsVoice an app that provides a legally admissible way for victims to document abuse incidents. Sheri speaks with Back in America about her father’s abuse that started when she was a toddler, her recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD and how she reclaimed her life to become who she is today.Since I first interviewed Sheri Kurdakul the pandemic has struck and VictimsVoice experienced massive growth.“The law enforcement officers that I've spoken with have said that while the number of reports has decreased, the severity of the incidents, by the time they do report, they are pretty much at the life or death stage,” says Sheri. She adds, “You have people who probably have lost their jobs, money is tight, the Feeding America saw a double increased need in food distribution, for people needing food. You have people that normally are being watched all the time when their spouses or significant others are home. And now they're forced to be home all the time. So whereas an abuser may have gone to work, or, left the house for any length of time, that was an opportunity for a victim to be able to talk to a nonprofit and put together a safety plan to get out or be able to just have some downtime, where they're not being controlled and abused. They don't have that anymore. They don't have the luxury of having any downtime at all. And if the victim is also employed, now they must act professionally in a space where they're being abused."Sheri says, “We saw six states between January and February. And then we compared it to March and April. We had six states in the US that had triple-digit percentage increases, Utah saw a 450% increase in usage. And we had over 30 states that had double-digit percentage increases as well. New Jersey is one of those.” For more information about Victims Voice https://victimsvoice.app/

Twenty-four years ago, I was living in Washington D.C. while studying at the University of Maryland. I came back to America in August of 2016, this time with my family. It was just a few months before Trump's election. As I settled in the US and tried to understand why Trump got elected, I noticed how much the country had changed.I believe that two major crises have determined the shape of what the country is today: the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the subprime economic crisis in 2008.Then came Trump. A man loved by half the country for being anti-elite, playing tough, and speaking his mind and hated by the other half for pretty much the same reasons. Trump has polarized America and the world at large, pushing what we thought was politically possible. Lies and mediocrity became the new normal.For a year now, with this podcast, Back in America, I have been exploring and questioning America's culture, values, and identity. In every episode, I ask my guests “What is America?”. Quite often, they say that America is a story, an idea in the making.By many standards, the 2020 election is historical and will once again help define what America is. The pandemic, the foreign interferences, the mistrust in the democratic voting process, and now the legal attacks against Biden's victory. I have asked Americans what they thought of the outcome of the election.Here they are: Jake Hoffman, the president of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans. Mark Charles, an independent candidate who ran in the 2020 Presidential Election who holds dual citizenship to the United States and the Navajo Nation.https://twitter.com/wirelesshoganPrevious episode https://pod.fo/e/a048d and https://pod.fo/e/a048e Richard Heinberg, a Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, and one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels.https://twitter.com/richardheinbergLive Interview David Treibs, a Constitutionalist, Christian, and gun-rights activists from Fredericksburg, Texas.Previous episode https://pod.fo/e/a2f78Live Interview Chivona Renee Newsome, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Greater NY.https://twitter.com/newyorkvonniLive Interview Majid Padellan, social justice warrior, social media expert, Twitter celebrity, an author, a digital designer, and a proud father of 5. His Twitter handle is BrooklynDad_Defiant. https://twitter.com/mmpadellanPrevious episode https://pod.fo/e/9f4f2Live Interview

 Join our mailing list for exclusive informationI am publishing this episode once again for all of the listeners who might not have heard it yet. I find it strangely prophetic and visionary which if you know my guest shouldn't be much of a surprise.John Micheal Greer a widely respected author and blogger in the fields of nature spirituality and the future of industrial society.He is the author of more than fifty books and his blog, Ecosophia. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife Sara.John, a look at your Wikipedia page made me realize that you are a pretty complex person. The most striking aspect of your life for a layman is probably that you are a Druid. When I realized, thanks to you that Druids made their way from Europe to the US was a surprise and I want to learn more about it. The reason for my reaching out to you, however, is that you’re one of the leading minds, in the US, behind the concept of societal collapse.You were quoted on this topic back in 2008. In 2016, you wrote Dark Age America: Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the Hard Future Ahead. Since then you published 8 books and countless articles on collapse.Collapse means that our fossil fuel-based civilization, cannot sustain itself and will fail.As our world is going through an unprecedented pandemic and is bracing itself for recession I am delighted to get your view on the situation.John’s blog can be found at https://www.ecosophia.net/Here is a link to his books on Amazon https://amzn.to/3cANDom Read the Transcript 

 Rejoignez notre mailing list exclusive Aujourd'hui, et une fois n'est pas coutume,  Back in America est en français et contrairement aux épisodes précédents nous n'allons pas traiter de la culture, des valeurs et de l'identité des Etats-Unis.Mon invité, Thierry Sauvage, va me rejoindre dans quelques instants. Si je lui ai demandé de partager son expérience avec Back in America c'est qu'à l'image de beaucoup de mes invités interviewés depuis le début de la pandémie de COVID, cette période a été pour lui l'occasion de réfléchir sur sa vie. Eric Marsh nous disait que les Américains ont profités du confinement pour réaliser l'ampleur du racisme systémique aux Etats-Unis. Glenda Wrenn de son côté à redécouvert ses enfants et l'intérêt de diner ensemble chaque soir. D'autres ont été confrontés à la dépression et aux violences domestiques. Positivement ou non, le COVID n'épargne personne.A New York, depuis mars, plus de 246 000 personnes ont quittés la ville ce qui représente une augmentation de presque 100 % par rapport à la même période en 2019. En France, d'après le magazine Capital, 1 cadre parisien sur 2 envisage une mobilité régionale. Pour mon invité, la COVID 19 a été le déclencheur d'un changement de vie radicale. En février il vivait avec son épouse chinoise et son fils de 4 ans à Shanghai. Cadre de l'industrie automobile, il est également DJ et producteur de musique électronique pendant son temps libre. Il est booké un an en avance pour jouer dans les plus grands clubs de Shanghai ! Quatre mois plus tard et après de nombreuses nuits blanches, c'est au Croisic, petit port de 4000 habitants en Loire-Atlantique, qu'il vit avec sa femme et son fils.  Retrouvez la video de l’entretien en direct sur YouTube.

 Join our exclusive mailing list!The following interviews are edited versions of live interviews that were recorded on October 20th and 21st. You can what the entire broadcast on Back in America's Youtube channel.  Welcome to Back in America, the podcast. I am your host Stan Berteloot, and in each episode, I trace America’s identity, culture, and values back to its source: its people.A few weeks ago Jon, a good friend from college visited us for the weekend. At night we were joined by a couple living next door and we started to talk about politics as we drunk beers by the pit-fire in the back yard.You had two French persons: my wife and I, and three Americans.I can't remember exactly how or why Jon started to speak of gun rights but the conversation became intense when he said that not only did he support the right to bear arms but that it was essential to the protection of civilians against the tyranny of the government.This made me dig further into the gun debate. I've learned that many support the idea of owning guns, any types of gun and that in the US some people believe that they have a God-given right to carry a gun.What has God to do with guns? How can a democracy work when its citizens trust their guns more than their votes?To try to make sense of all this we are going to hear from 3 persons: first Jon Phebus, my friend will clarify his views; then David Treibs a Christian and Gun Activists will talk about what he believes is a god-given right to bear arms. Finally, Professor Robert Spitzer from SUNY Cortland, an expert on constitutional law and gun control will give us his interpretation of the constitution and bring some historical context to the debate.Book RecommendationsDavid TreibsLove Letter to America, by Tomas SchumanThe Persecutor by Sergei Kourdakov Marx & Satan by Richard WurmbrandProfessor Robert SpitzerThe Politics of Gun Control 8th Editionby Robert J. SpitzerCasablanca by Michael Curtiz

This episode is an edited version of a live interview that was recorded on September 16, 2020, and streamed on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.My guest, Majid Padellan might be better known under his Twitter name BrooklynDad_Defiant and his handle @mmpadellan.He is a social justice warrior, social media expert, and Twitter celebrity, an author, a digital designer, and a proud father of 5. And I will add that he is pissed off!He has been upset at the politics of this country since November 8, 2016, and the election of Donald Trump. So upset that he decided to change his twitter handle to BrooklynDad_Defiant.When asked if his online rage could be polarizing Majid Padellan said, "If if what I say is polarizing, so be it, but you have to you do have to pick aside, [Trump] is not somebody who is a regular leader. This is not a George W. Bush. This is not a Ronald Reagan. He's not a Jimmy Carter. He's not a Gerald Ford. This is a guy who has lied 20,000 times."He rapidly grew his Twitter fans to over 682K followers (665K at the time of the interview) becoming one of the most popular anti-Trump commentators on Twitter. BrooklynDad_Defiant has been quoted across the globe from L’Obs in France to Newsweek and CBS in the U.S."I realized that not very many people have an audience the size that I have. I understand that I have a responsibility to use that audience for good. And I think the best good I can do right now is to help not only elect Joe Biden but elect as many Democratic candidates across the country so that we can give Joe Biden a helpful Congress so he can actually get something done," said Majid Padellan.In this episode of Back in America we will try to go beyond the Twitter persona to understand who’s the man behind the handle. Majid Padellan's BookThe Liddle'est President can be found on Amazon  His website is brooklyndaddefiant.com  

The podcast is an edited version of the first live interview of the podcast Back in America.  The original can be seen on the Podcast YouTube or FaceBook page. My guest is a model, a dancer, a singer, and an incredible performer. Look him up on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music and you will understand why he is such a rising star in this industry. Getting where he is today has been a long and challenging journey. A Journey that started in New York with a drug addict father and abusive stepfather. A journey that took him through homeless shelters and psych wards. Despite the pain and humiliation he somehow managed to make it to school, to rehearsals, and to castings. His determination and hard work paid off.  The Alvin Ailey Theater hired him to do a series of recitals. He won a modeling contract for 7 for Mankind and for Marc Jacob, which lead to his now 8th year as a  professional model. While working as a dancer and a model in New York City, He teamed up with Nate Beats, and D.Gatez, who produced and released his early singles.  Now living in Los Angeles he is working with Grammy award-winning producer Ebonie Smith. He’s recording his latest music at Atlantic Records and Warner Music studios. He was even invited to become a member of the Recording Academy and is now recognized by the Grammy Board as a recording professional. Derrick Cobb can be found:https://www.instagram.com/d_cobbhttps://www.dcobbnow.com/

"COVID-19 has created a worldwide public health crisis, and the resulting lockdowns and social distancing measures have sent most country’s economies into a severe downturn. But we believe these crises are only the tip of the pandemic’s iceberg," writes Mario Iacobacci and Mathieu Laberge in a recent Deloitte study."There is another crisis looming – a human crisis," they add.  "Our past research ... has revealed a potential for increased incidences of mental illness, poorer educational outcomes, an increase in substance abuse and crime, and the weakening of the community fabric." The researchers called on the governments to get ready for the looming crisis. It is particularly striking that they stressed the need for employers to address employees' mental health, reviewing the mix of employee benefits and to see how to better accommodate employees in this stressful period, sometimes by introducing flexible benefit options that respond to different needs from employees at different stages in life. Since 1989 in France, employers must 1989 ensure the physical and mental well being of their employees. This is in line with the European tradition of social class differences and community solidarity. The American tradition is influenced by the like of Locke, Jefferson, Smith, and Mill, and favors individual freedom and economic freedom.In the US, a country of hard work, individualism, and personal privacy culture, many corporations are hesitant to tackle employees well being.Indeed, The COVID-19 pandemic has deeply impacted our lives as families sheltered in place and juggled homeschooling, work from home together with keeping their household afloat. According to a poll conducted in mid-July, by non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation 53% of adults in the United States reported that their mental health has been negatively impacted due to worry and stress over the coronavirus. This is significantly higher than the 32% reported in March.In this episode of Back in America: corporate America, COVID and Employees well being, or lack of.Back In America speaks with Glenda Wrenn a psychiatrist, chief medical officer for Franklin, Tenn.-based 180 Health Partners, and previously the founding director of the Kennedy Satcher Center for Mental Health Equity in the Satcher Health Leadership Institute at Morehouse School of Medicine."I think we are addicted to working in our culture," said Glenda Wrenn. "it is promoted by our work environments. What is the incentive for your employer to get you to slow down? You're rewarded for working more. I know this from personal experience as a true recovering workaholic. I love working. I do. I really love working. And it has been such a process for me to redirect that energy to my home. The same excellence that I put into doing mental health policy work, now I'm just redirecting it at home. I'm giving it to myself and my family. I was honestly incapable of doing that before this pandemic."Glenda's Book RecommendationA People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn Between the World and Meby Ta-Nehisi CoatesAcross That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of Americaby John Lewis 

Monday at 3 pm EST with Derrick Cobb a singer, model, and performer.Wednesday at 1 pm EST Majid M. Padellan known on Twitter as @BrooklynDad_Defiant!. Majid who has over 260K followers is an anti-Trump political commentator.The event will be streaming live from Linkedin, Twitter, and the podcast Facebook page. Facebook @backinamerica.podcastTwitter @Back_in_AmericaLinkedin @Berteloot  

Back in America is a podcast exploring America's culture, values, and identity.After my interview with Cadex Herrera a lead artist of the memorial mural of George Floyd in Minneapolis, I asked Eric Marsh a Black community leader and activist in Philadelphia what he thought of controversy around the mural.Some black activists, including Keno Evol, the executive director of Black Table Arts, have voiced their concern about the fact that Black artists had not been invited to participate in the mural creation. 

Back in America is a podcast exploring America's culture, values, and identity.The death of George Floyd, a black man killed by a Minneapolis police officer has triggered protests against police brutality, police racism, and lack of police accountability. Three days after Floyd's death a group of artists painted a mural on the Cup Foods building at the corner where George Floyd was killed on May 25. The artists started at about 7 a.m. on May 28 and finished the mural at  5:30 p.m. the same day. Most of us have seen an image of the mural since almost every American TV station live-streamed the George Floyd funeral whose backdrop was a digital version of this mural.Inspired by this work, artists across the globe started producing similar tributes to George Floyd, and a digital database of such art has gathered a repository of 1324 pieces of art so far.In this episode, I speak with Cadex Herrera a co-artist behind this iconic memorial mural of George Floyd. Cadex immigrated to the United States from Belize when he was 19. Today at 45, he works as an elementary school behavioral specialist and social justice art is his passion.Cadex can be found on Instagram His website is www.cadexherrera.comHe recommended the following book and movies:One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez The PlatformFOUTAISES (THINGS I LIKE, THINGS I DON'T LIKE) 

About Back in AmericaBack in America explores the American's identity, culture, and values.  In this podcast, journalist Stan Berteloot explores American life stories from his French perspective and questions the way we understand this nation. ​Each episode explores why and how Americans do what they do. While easy and entertaining to listen to, Stan doesn't shy away from difficult and personal questions and explores issues from different angles and perspectives. Every topic is game; politics, social issues, climate crises, gender issues, racial issues, sex, and diversity... and everything else in-between.Provocative ideas for inquisitive and open-minded listeners.  Read the episode's transcriptThe TrailerThese soundbites are taken from 12 episodes of Back in America, recorded between November 2019 and August 2020. They are representative of the diversity of the guests and of the topics addressed. Here are in order of appearance in the trailer the list of interviewees.  Eric MarshEric is a Black activist and social worker in Philadelphia.We speak about being a black man in America; the impact of slavery. The impact of Trump election; consumerism.Sheri Kurdakul Sheri is the CEO and founder of VictimsVoice an app that provides a legally admissible way for victims to document abuse incidents.Sheri speaks about her father’s abuse that started when she was a toddler, her recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD, and how she reclaimed her life to become who she is today.Denis DevineDenis Devine a 46 years old man from Fishtown, Philadelphia. Denis, an ex-journalist, is the organizer of Dad's night a monthly meeting of men.For the last 6 years, Denis' Dads Night has brought together dads from his neighborhoods at different bars.This safe space allows men to address topics related to dad-hood, dads-related cause, and non-traditional understandings of masculinity.Elan LeibnerElan Leibner is the chair of the Pedagogical Section Council of North America and a teacher at the Waldorf School of Princeton. Elan grew up in Israel, lived in a kibbutz, and moved to the US at the age of 23. He was a class teacher at there for 18 years, before directing the Teacher Education program at Emerson College in England.John LamJohn Lam, is the principal dancer at the Boston Ballet.His parents immigrated to California from Vietnam. He grew up in an underprivileged household and discovered his love for dance at the age of four.Imani MulrainI met Imani at the Kneel for justice protest in Princeton.She was one of the speakers. She is a Prospective Molecular Biology Major at Princeton University.Gil LopezGil Lopez is the founder of Smiling Hogshead Ranch an urban garden in Queens New York. The Smiling Hogshead Ranch started 9 years ago as a “guerilla garden” on a set of abandoned railroad tracks. After many backs on forth with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Gil managed to secure a lease.Lieutenant Colonel Bryan PriceLieutenant Colonel Bryan Price talks to Back in America about the current racial unrest, about meritocracy, the values, culture, and identity of this country. We speak about the separation between the military and the government and of the current administration.Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price is known for his published research on terrorism and counterterrorism. Mark CharlesMark is a candidate running as an independent for president of the United States. A man who's not white, not black but a dual citizen of The United States and The Navajo Nation.For three years he lived with his family in a one-room hogan with no running water or electricity out in a Navajo reservation. He dreams of a nation where 'we the people' truly means 'all the people'.Richard HeinbergRichard Heinberg is a Senior Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and one of the world’s foremost advocates for a shift away from our current reliance on fossil fuels.Erden EruçErden Eruç, a Turkish-American adventurer, is the 1st man to do a solo a circumnavigation by human power. He has done it on a 24-foot ocean rowing boat. He & his wife Nancy Board joined Back in America to discussed the challenges and the mental health issues experienced by Erden upon return.Louise KekulahIn July 2020, according to the census bureau, nearly 25 million people would not be able to pay rent in the next month and almost 30 million people said they didn't have enough to eat.Without federal intervention, housing experts and advocates warn of an unprecedented wave of eviction in the coming month. Louise Kekulah is a woman who grew up in Liberia, Africa. Moved by herself in the US as a child. Had a baby, graduated from Rutgers, and now works as a counselor for families at risk of losing their children. 

This part two of a series on housing assistance. I am publishing these episodes at a time when nearly 25 million people reported they will not be able to pay rent in the next month and almost 30 million people said they didn't have enough to eat.In this episode, I talk with Carol Golden the chair of Housing Initiatives of Princeton and also a member of the affordable housing Board of Princeton. If you haven't listened to episode one of this series I encourage you to do so. Carol and I talk about US politics and the crossroad at which is America according to her.She regrets the lack of government social safety nets and blames the current situation to a "loss of devotion to public education and to the antagonism to teachers and public schools. As the chair of Housing Initiatives of Princeton (HIP) Carol talks about the challenges facing HIP, its successes, and upcoming initiatives such as an emergency rental assistance program HIP is working on. TranscriptStanislas Berteloot  0:00  Carol Golden is the chair of housing initiatives of Princeton, our hip, and also a member of the affordable housing Board of Princeton. Welcome to Back in America Carol.Carol  0:12  Thank you, Stan, happy to be here.Stanislas Berteloot  0:15  While we were preparing this interview, you told me that a lot of this patient for volunteering and helping other comes from maybe your parents, your dad was a lawyer. Your mom was a teacher. Can you take me back to those early days and maybe how that has forged who you becameCarol  0:37  both my parents were basically civil servants. My father was a lawyer, but he was appointed to be a judge of worker's compensation for the state of New Jersey, when he was pretty still young in his career as a lawyer. He had been an assistant US Attorney briefly. But so most of his career was as a you know, administrative law judge overseeing cases. of workers comp, which is, for those of you who don't know is when people get hurt at work. We have a system that New Jersey was one of the most progressive states in the country. A system of compensating people for being for the pain and suffering and medical bills company, that kind of injury. And my dad was a softy, and he, he really saw the worker side of things. we'd hear about his cases. We even went to hear him in court a couple times watch him on the bench. I definitely sensed from him that the workers or people, all walks of life, all kinds of people get hurt at work and the people they deserved to be taken care of. It was not the you know, the days of you know, let them eat cake and whatever happens it's your problem. You know, the 12 hour work days and children working. He was a he was a liberal MP. He's he saw that I was important. And then my mom was a public school high school English teacher, and just really loved the kids. And then, and I, she taught in my high school. And so that was weird. But she was also she was the teacher that the kids were the least academically inclined. The ones where the home wife wasn't so great. And homework wasn't always perfect. She's the, those are the kids that she felt the most passionate about. And I just, I definitely picked up on that. They were not highly paid people, but we've lived fine. And they, they show that we're a part of a community. And I think I want to be I want to be part of the community. I want to be someone who's above or below but different from just want to be in it.Stanislas Berteloot  2:51  Yeah. And we are going to touch on that very soon. But I still want to stay in your early days. How do you think that being first ration Eastern European immigrant, as forge your personality.Carol  3:05  Well, my parents were the first generation right?Yeah, seeing my parents I knew one of my grandparents actually one of my great grandparents who spoke no English, I'm seeing what they could, how they could make lives for themselves in America, the stories of their grandparents and their parents that were not so great from Europe. Um, you know, I think I wanted to follow in their footsteps. I wanted to be part of the community that that can help people like, like they they probably needed help, like they were, they were smart and they did well in school. But in those days, I and I think I may have mentioned this to you before my my father passed in January. So you know, he's been in my mind a lot and my brother was just very ranting at me recently about in those days public education was, was wonderful. They went to Trenton High School. Trenton high was one of the best high schools in the nation. Money was put into public education, it was a priority. And then you get educated people, and then educated people can go off and get the jobs and have careers that are meaningful and fulfilling and participate in the democracy. And I mean, me, I'm going off on a tangent here, but I I do see a connection that where we've gotten in our country now. We have lost that devotion to public education and and there's been too much antagonism to teachers and public schools. And I think that has an impact on the electorate, and then you get people voted into office who don't believe in these policies. So it's a cycle. Um, yeah, I guessStanislas Berteloot  5:00  You touched on on the government. And I wonder, you know what you think of the following. This country doesn't seem to have a social buffer, right, like some countries in Europe. And this is why you exist. Right, you and the housing initiative of Princeton to provide for what some countries government provide for their their own citizen. I mean, are you advocating for the government to provide more support and social service? Or do you think that the model that is in place today is efficient?Carol  5:39  I am very much advocating for the government to be more involved in providing social safety nets, you know, housing and all kinds of ways. HIP is a member of a national organization called the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which is a huge lobbying advocacy firm in DC and We, you know, I try to stay on top of what kind of legislation is out there nationally and statewide that in terms of housing, going to try to make things better without little agencies like housing initiatives, Princeton trying to, you know, keep people afloat. So, you know, there's a state, I don't know if you're aware, but they we do have a rental assistance program that just got put into effect. In the midst of COVID crisis. There's 100 million dollars going to be coming. I think some of the money is federal, but it's coming through the state for rental assistance, just because of what this problem that we know is happening right now where people aren't working in and unable to pay their rent. But it's, it's, um, it's going to start you can apply in July, the money will start flowing in September. So let's just say it works smoothly and it worked and it gets to the people who need it. There are people right now on June Whatever we are 24th. Fifth, they don't have any money to pay to rent right now, and they don't have money to pay rent in July, that money payment in August. And so, um, and the government's doing nothing about ball. Right now, the federal level, you know, the Congress is trying to get a second wave of money to come flowing called the I think they're calling it the heroes Act, the cares act was that first tranche of money, but it's not coming. They're not agreeing. And one of the big pieces is the democrats want emergency rental assistance in the bill. Now, now because people cannot pay their rent. But you know, you're not going to see that. I don't know what kind of compromise they'll come up with. But now, clearly, European countries, many European countries do better at this. And, you know, I would not think I would like nothing more than to have HIV, you know, become obsolete because we're not needed because people aren't getting evicted from their homes.Stanislas Berteloot  7:58  So when to stop That I try people vide a roof for people who don't have a roof. Can you tell us a bit more about what exactly is it a tip? When does it jumps into to help people? How do people actually what do people have to do to be to be part of this program and how many housing you provide?Carol  8:24  Okay, well, we have basically two programs and one is the actual as you say, roof over the head for what we call transitional housing with wraparound services. That program is for families because we have our housing units are only two bedroom. So we can unfortunately help single people and we can help people with too many kids because we don't have units that are large enough at this time. With this program, we really help five families at a time It's small, but it's very deep. So a family that is working low wage earning with a kid or a few couple of kids can apply to us. And we will try to provide a safe, clean, nice apartment unit in Princeton, where the public schools are excellent. And you'll help them move in, provide them with furniture, and then over the course of one to two years, which is the time frame for the being part of the back program. We will provide the family with many services that we think it takes for a family or an individual who is at the low end of the earning scale, who maybe has limited education, who has had some hard knocks in life. That's what they need to get to a better place. Place be able to be self sufficient to provide for their families. So, for example, we have a case manager who is a trained social worker. We have a financial counselor or we contract with financial counseling. So that early on, our folks learn how to look at the budget figure out you know what it is they need, they're making, we're charging 30% of their their income to rent, which is, you know, the low end of affordable. But there we are working and they should pay for their rent, but then they can budget the rest of the month. And it should be it should be doable, because whatever their income is, we'll do all will take only 30% and will subsidize the rest. We also have a career council we have a couple different types of career counselors that can help with resume and interviewing and looking for jobs, or counseling on what kind of education you might want to do while you're here in this safe bubble. And to take some risks, maybe, you know, maybe work fewer hours and go get us go go get take some classes because you're here with HIV. We'll adjust your rent. We'll work with you.And we have had some great successes in that program.Stanislas Berteloot  11:16  Yeah, we had Louise explain how you helped her actually network. I mean, I was quite fascinated to hear her mentioned that you provided her with sort of a how-to mingle and get to meet other people in the community. And that was a big plus for her.  Carol  11:40  Yeah, Louise was very young and new to the community. And you know, it's always hard to move into a new place, but when you're coming from growing up in Trenton, it's a different type of upbringing, a different kind of world. You know, it can be intimidating to come into a whole new community and integrate Your child into the system in the schools and but Louise is such a hard-working and so enthusiastic person that you know her irrepressible personality and perseverance. You know, is it's hard to matchStanislas Berteloot  12:23  perseverance. I think you're right. She also mentioned how she was on your back day after day trying to see if there was an opening.  What did you you know, how did you react to this perseverance?Carol  12:41  It workedIt actually did work. Um, yes. I don't know. I haven't heard your interview with her. But I will say that, um, when she first applied I just thought, Man, I don't know if we can help this young woman. We didn't have a unit at the time. So we couldn't and she was She didn't have her child yet. And I said, You'll just have to wait. We'll see if something opens up. I'll be back in touch. And I definitely kept her on the list. And I did. I didn't forget her. But nothing was opening up that quickly. But Louise wasn't waiting. So yes, it's true every whatever how, what period I would get an email or call from her and sure enough within them not too long. We did have a unit open and we were delighted to have her join us be part of the HIV program.Stanislas Berteloot  13:32  So Louise is one of you know, the person that you've helped. Do you have other stories of people that you would like to share with us?Carol  13:46  Yes, we have many stories we have. Um, there's a woman who is an immigrant from South America. Where, and she really wanted to be a physical therapy assistant. And she was with the program for almost two years, which is usually when it ends, but she got she was so close to finishing her PTA degree at Mercer County Community College, that HIV just extended her time with HIV, helped her with her rent, helped her get through, helped her pay for the tests you have to take to get certified. And now she is a PTA. well compensated. It's a good job, a physical therapy assistant. She lives in over in West Windsor, she's looking to buy. She and her daughter are doing great and she's and she's help like she's someone who reaches out to me. We meet for coffee, she always asked what she can do. It's a wonderful thing like Louise when folks graduate from the program. Get on there. Get to pursue what they wanted to pursue and follow their own trajectory, and then look back and see how they can help. Yeah, help each IP and help others.Stanislas Berteloot  15:10  Yeah, incredible hip started in 2010. How many families have transitioned through the program already?Carol  15:19  Since 2010, about 180 families have transitioned through, I believe, and just for the sake of history, it was established in 2001 hiep as part of a consortium of nonprofits that was called the Princeton outreach projects that was started by Trinity and Nassau Presbyterian churches. And that so that's an interesting like, history of the of the organization and they helped only a one or two people over many years and then in 2010, branched out on on our own and became our own independent 501 c threeStanislas Berteloot  15:59  and how long have you been involve yourself withCarol  16:01  the process 2016. Okay,Stanislas Berteloot  16:04  okay. We started this conversation saying how much activity have been in the vicinity of walk. I've also read that in 2018, you were awarded the the bird Vivian award for community service. So that truly speaks about your involvement with the community. What are the most proud memory you've got of the watch done?Carol  16:33  Well, that's a hard one. I'm very proud to have been very active on the planned parenthood board for many years, and I was chair of that board for three years. And given where we are now in our political world, you know, it really does feel like I was fighting the good fight by sticking by Planned Parenthood all those years and being an ambassador for Planned Parenthood, you know, I feel very strongly about a woman's right to choose and women's reproductive health. So that and that has such a big impact, you know, it's such a national thing. So I feel very proud that I devoted that much time, money and effort to that. But you know, for HIV is really in my heart now because because of the kind of work we do, it is so hands on. You know, Planned Parenthood was big picture, you know, getting out there and be an advocate, telling everybody, you know, how important these rights are giving money. So the money would go to the right people to get things done, and preserve this important right that women need. HIV is like the other end of the spectrum where you're just looking, you're really helping individual women, many, many, many, most of our clients are single moms, and you're getting into their lives in a way that isn't judged. And isn't telling people what to do. But it's trying to, you know, be a partner with them and say, let's, let's figure out how we can get this better for you and get your you and your kids on a better track. And I want to help and I can do that.Stanislas Berteloot  18:16  Right. As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?Carol  18:22  I wanted to be a lawyer like my father. Do you sometimes. Wish you had been a lawyer? No, I never wish I had been a lawyer. No, I was a lawyer for a brief time and I really did not enjoy it. So I regret that I wanted to do I really do I wish that someone had said I could have been a social worker. Hmm. I think that would have been what I want. I think I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to help people. I didn't want to be a lawyer because I love the law. Right.Stanislas Berteloot  18:54  So what's next for yourself or for heap you know what's on the calendar as a big project.Carol  19:04  I'm glad you asked that because when I earlier said we do two things that HIV one is the transitional housing that Louise's an example of graduating from that program, and it's been wonderful. But the other big thing that we do and what is on the horizon to be doing much more of is this is emergency rental assistance, which hiep started doing, I think, the year before I joined so in 2015. Seeing that, you know, the five families, it's, again, not narrow, deep, but not a wide, you know, impact, wanting to have an impact on more working families. The idea of keeping people out of evictions safe in their homes, because research shows that evictions can really if you once you have an eviction on your record, it can spiral the rest of your attempts to get straightened out. So if you can avoid eviction, when things get rough, like many of us, things get rough. For us, we have a safety net, we have some savings, we have friends that might help us family members. Research shows that for people working poor people only know other four people, right? They can't help each other. They may want to, but they really can't. So this emergency rental assistance is a way for folks who may have hit a hit a rough patch, how to step back, something as easy as a sick parent that you have to stay and take care of. So you couldn't go to work. Our sick child, we were we've been stepping up and providing funds for that money goes right to the landlord. And we avoid the eviction for the family and what's coming next. As you know, in the pandemic. A lot of unemployed people are unemployed people who are not going to be able to pay their rent and are already not paying the rent. And that's where I think we're going to be doing a lot in the next few months and we're fundraising lot for that. We have been surviving on private money. And what we like about having only private money to provide rental assistance is no strings attached. For example, there's some government money that you can't, you can't help the person until they have an eviction notice. That's how they prioritize, and conserve, you know, resources. So unless you have an eviction notice, you can't even get help. So you're being proactive and you're being you realize you're getting behind and you realize what's coming down the pike. You go to some of these agencies, you can't get any help. And I'll say, Well come back when you start to be evicted. But then once you have the eviction proceeding against you then fees start. And so what hiep can do with all private funding, is nip it in the bud earlier, people can come to us and say I'm falling behind. Here's how, you know, this is what I was making. This is what's happened. This is why I can't afford it. Can you fill this gap for us? And then we can do that.Stanislas Berteloot  21:58  The last question, I always ask is what is America to you?Carol  22:03  America is not right now, it's not what I thought it was. And I feel duped. And I feel kind of silly for having the blinders on that I did. It's not as if I didn't know there was racism. And I didn't know that there were bad actors. And there's greed. I knew it.But I thought it was more contained.And I thought that people who went into leadership positions, I really did. I really thought that many elected officials did it for the right reasons. And thought that they had some something to give, you know, they were smart, they were good at this. They were good at that. They cared about their community, and they were going to go represent their city, their state or their district in Congress and do good and maybe they had different political views from me. I'm not saying they all had agree with me on every policy, but I thought they were basically well-intentioned. with us. They'd like to say a few bad apples. But what I think I think I was wrong. I think that power is a very dangerous thing and people in power right now. And I'm thinking about Mitch McConnell thinking of politicians in the, in the Congress, not so much the president because he's in a different category on its own. But he's been enabled. And I just didn't think that we would innate that, that these people would enable it this way. I thought that I thought there was more of a consensus of what we want for our country. And the fact that this guy can still exist.And not there's not a just complete up, you know, uprising among his own party to say, Oh, this is what we are. It really makes some very, very sad. So America right now is at a crossroads. You know, I mean, America right now can go in a direction that will at least help us get back to some of the values that I believe that we originally stood for. But it's tough and a good part is I need to be so negative. So the good part is we are looking at things. Maybe this was good. Maybe we had to get so low to see the racism, see the ugliness, face it, see our own past and not brush it over, and then work towards what I thought we were kind of working towards in the 60s and 70s. I was young, and I was a little you know, mini hippie.Stanislas Berteloot  24:36  Okay, thank you so much Carol, thank you for your time today.Carol  24:40  Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it. 

In July, according to the census bureau nearly 25 million people reported they had little to no confidence they would be able to pay rent in the next month and almost 30 million people said they didn't have enough to eat.Without federal intervention, housing experts and advocates warn of an unprecedented wave of eviction in the coming month and one far more devastating than the 2008 crisis.Today I am releasing a series of two episodes on housing assistance.In this episode, I speak with Louise Kekulah, a woman who grew up in Liberia, Africa. Moved by herself in the US as a child. Had a baby, graduated from Rutgers, and now works as a counselor for families at risk of losing their children.The fact that Louise is very bright and highly driven probably explains how she managed to do so well. Yet, she says that the Housing Initiatives of Princeton has changed her life and allowed her to bounce back and secure a better carrier. You will hear Louise mention Carol. In part two I then speak with Carol Golden the chair of Housing Initiatives of Princeton and also a member of the Affordable Housing Board of Princeton. Transcript Stanislas Berteloot  0:31  Thank you so much for accepting to share your story with me, and with Back in America.Louise  0:38  Yes, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. When I joined HIP, I graduated from undergrad and then I had a baby. Right now I work for a center integrated health. I'm a counselor.Stanislas Berteloot  0:54  I wonder if you can take me back to a very, very old story for you. Before you move to the US, I know you moved when you were seven. Did you have any memories of your country, of Liberia?Louise  1:10  Very little, I have very little memories of my country. Um, I do recall that there was a war going on back there. And so in order to escape the war, my family stayed like my my mom stayed. My entire family stayed, except for me. So we had my mom had brought me over with one of her friends on to a refugee program. back then. I don't know if you heard of DACA. Back then it was really easy to come into the United States. Unlike now. My memory of back home isn't very fond, honestly.Unknown Speaker  2:00  Yeah, what? Tell me more.Louise  2:03  So I left my family. We went to what do we go? I think we went to Ivory Coast because we were there for quite some time. Um, and I was what? When I left my mom, I want to say I was about five or six. Because we came to this country February, I remember was February 14. I'll never forget it, because it's always Valentine's Day, February 14 2001. So I think I've been here for what, like about 19 years. So when we went to Ivory Coast, I was I was probably there for a few months, and then we came on a plane. And when I landed here, it was actually my first time seeing snow. It's like I it doesn't snow. You know, it doesn't snow back home. So the call it was a culture shock for me. Honestly, they didn't take me a while to adapt Cuz like I know like once I started school like once I cuz I um I actually used to live in Ewing so when we first when we first got here not when we first got here we were in Hamilton because I attended Greenwood elementary school and there I got a lot of help with like because you know my English wasn't really well. So I got like a lot of ESL help and things like that but I was always bright for lack of better words so I've always had like this mindset of just like striving and not giving up. So not being able to like I had difficulties understanding the teachers they try to sent me they try to put me back a grade but that that didn't happen because I was able to just like adapt. So like I would go home and take the extra time to just like Studying and I remember just being envious of other kids in the classroom and things like that. Soit didn't take a while to adapt at all, to the American culture.Stanislas Berteloot  4:14  And so your mom moved back to Liberia, or did she stay with you?Louise  4:18  She's not my mom's state. My mom has always she's on. She's back in Liberia.Stanislas Berteloot  4:23  So what happened? Because you moved here, were you on your own? No,Louise  4:27  I was actually with a friend of my mom, a very good friend of hers.Stanislas Berteloot  4:31  Was it tough for you to be alone? Not seven.Louise  4:35  Yeah. Um, but back then.It wasn't as tough back then as it is now. To be honest, now, it's really tough. But back then I always had, like, moral support. Um, I had support as a kid. I can genuinely say that Did so it wasn't like, and my mom did really well in terms of communication. So imagine from seven up until now, like she, she kept she kept in contact with me and she still does. So that helped a lot too.Unknown Speaker  5:17  Yeah.Unknown Speaker  5:20  So you just said now it's tough. Yeah. Why is it tough?Louise  5:26  I would say, you know, with a baby, and lack of support.Definitely needing my mom. I see a lot more now.Stanislas Berteloot  5:39  Yeah. So that brings us to, to that situation right? The the baby but maybe before we get there, I wonder if you can take me back to high school and then moving on to college. That was a good time for you. Right. You One.Louise  6:02  Yeah, high school. So I first I started at you in high school. I finished ninth grade there, but then I had to leave to go to New Brunswick. And then I graduated from tour in high school and actually graduated number four in my class. So I was top five.Stanislas Berteloot  6:24  And then you went to college?Louise  6:27  Yeah. Then I went to Rutgers, um, I did a double major. So I graduated with criminal justice and psychology. And right now I'm actually getting my master's at Karen University for counseling. So I want to be a therapist senior year was when I found out that I was gonna be a mom. It was spring semester. I think I found out in February because there's like a question. They're so that's when that was when, I guess my entire world just shiftedfor the better, honestly.Unknown Speaker  7:14  Yeah, I was not expecting that.Stanislas Berteloot  7:18  Because that brought a lot of noise. Also.Louise  7:25  Yeah, it was, um, initially it was, but then again my mom, you know, my mom was the first person that actually told about the baby. And she actually encouraged me to have the baby. She's very religious, like, she's very religious. So having an abortion was just something that was just not an option for her. And so, you know, and I and I always remember my mom's words. You know, she She, she practically told me she said, This baby is going to be the best thing that has ever happened to you. And like, I don't I can't read the future and neither can she. So it's kind of like I was getting myself set up for something like the unexpected, but I just like I maintain my faith, I would say that I genuinely like I got a lot closer to the Lord. And even though I had no idea because I was 23 you know, I had no idea about any you know about a baby or anything like that. But, you know, I was willing to go ahead and take that risk.Unknown Speaker  8:44  I can hear the baby, the baby.Unknown Speaker  8:47  Go ahead.Unknown Speaker  8:50  That is him.Louise  8:58  Okay, thank you.Stanislas Berteloot  9:04  That's great. All right, I'm myself might be interrupted anytime, so we know what it's like. So, you were about to graduate. And that baby arrived. What did you do? You had to find housing. You had to? Yeah,Louise  9:21  I did. So originally, I was at my cousin's house, but um, the environment just wasn't for me. So I ended up staying with a friend, um, who I was renting like a room there. But then it was kind of like, so I was there. There wasn't any baby at the time. So I'm staying at my friend's house and just working because at that time, I was actually working on a quick check. So I'm just working and just trying to secure fundings. A lot of fun things. You know, in preparation for a baby I had a baby I just, I remember just feeling so empty. I don't want to say it was like postpartum depression or any of that stuff. But I just like I genuinely was not happy with my living condition. I just wasn't happy. I just it was kind of like, from day one, I knew that I needed to provide a decent living for my son. So, and my mindset was always, you know, I got to give them a better life than I had in the midst of, you know, still working. So being a mom and things like that I started reaching out to people for help. So this is where hyp comes in, because I was just pretty much applying for like, a lot of programs. But one thing I'm big on education, you know, I'm big on school and things like that. So for me, it was kind of like, you know, Princeton was it. For me, it was kind of like I need to go to a place where Where the school district is good for my son. And I came across him. I had no idea what it was. But as it was like I was just filling out a bunch of applications. And then when things got really, really bad, I started like, practically harassing this, Carol.Stanislas Berteloot  11:17  Sorry. How about was it and why was it bad?Louise  11:22  I was just like, it was like a lot of turmoil with where I was living, because now we're talking babies there. There was no heat. So she stopped turning on the heat. So now it's kind of like I'm in a room. A little room, a little space with a baby, and no heat. Stanislas Berteloot  11:46  So is the landlord turn of the.Louise  11:49  Yeah,Stanislas Berteloot  11:50  she didn't want the baby there or whatLouise  11:52  I would, I guess so because you know, a newborn baby. There's like a lot of demands. You know? With like, the noise level, and things like that, so I guess I don't know. But I do. I do believe that was one of the reasons and just like, but my thing was, I could have left, but I wouldn't have been able to afford it. Um, my income was just not.Unknown Speaker  12:27  How much were you making?Louise  12:28  Like about $9.60 an hours, I was not making much at all. About $200 a week. Stanislas Berteloot  12:37  Wow, for you and Malcolm?Louise  12:40   Yes, for me and Malcolm. So it's just like, I couldn't take it. I did like Princeton Community House. I did like a lot of housing applications. And then I kept hearing the same thing you know, takes time there's a waitlist and things like that. So when I called When I send my application and to hip, I got a call, I think I got a call from like Miss Carol. And I think she was just telling me that the place was like filled up or something like that and just be something like that. I was kind of like the call that I got, she gave me hope. So then, I just started I know, I started reaching out to her out, like a lot more in just like, out of desperation. Um, and I don't know something, something must have clicked because next thing you know, I went for an interview because they do like their, you know, initial interview and things like that. Two weeks later, she she called me and said, congratulations. And I literally moved into the apartment. I want to say March 1 of like, 2017.Unknown Speaker  13:49  Okay.Louise  13:51  Yeah. So from September to March, that's not really very long when it comes to like this housing thing, you know, because there'sStanislas Berteloot  14:00  Being in a new housing like that, well, you know, what difference did it make to you? Oh,Louise  14:09  significant. Oh my gosh, it's I, I mean, I was already responsible, but it just it was just so surreal to me. And, like, I knew that this was an opportunity of a lifetime. So for me, it was just, you know, feeling secure, you know, not feeling like I have to walk on tippy toes and somebody else's home, I was able to get a lot of support from them. So I had a counselor, I remember Miss Glenda and then I had like, she was my liaison at the time, career development. So I think when I got into hip, that's when literally things just started moving forward for me in a positive way. correction, because then it was kind of like I'm I went on from quick check to a decent job beneficial enough to get my feet wet a little bit, give me that experience that I needed. And then once I got that job, I secured it for at least a year, which was what? I was at a halfway house. Yeah, I was a program counselor there. And then I went back to the Career Coach, and she pretty much just helped me with my resume, resume building skills. And I've been able to network a lot with like different people, which has been really beneficial to me. One, she helped me, you know, improve my resume and interview skills and things like that. I secured an even better job with what I do now.Stanislas Berteloot  15:51  So tell tell us about what you do now.Louise  15:54  I work for family preservation services in Mercer County. I do intensive in home counseling for families at risk of losing their children. So, um, interventions that I do is just helping them become more stabilized in the home so that they're able to keep their children and not have them removed by decently up.Stanislas Berteloot  16:20  Wow. Yeah. Do you think that your personal history help you better understand those people?Louise  16:30  Definitely. Yeah. And that'sso there's a fine line that you have to draw in terms of boundaries. But and I never go and tell them my story. But when I hear their story, I can easily relate to them, which makes it easier for them to relate to me. And, you know, it's crazy because I just had a conversation with one of my supervisor, she pretty much told me she said, You're really good at what you do. And that really meant a lot to me because This is something that I'm passionate about. Like, for me, it's kind of like, someone paved the way for me. So paving the way for others is just my goal right now. Which is why I got into the whole social, Social Work field. And even now like I'm still even though technically I graduated from him, they have been of like, so much help to me that I still maintain like, communications with them. And even now, like I have, like, Miss Rebecca just reached out to me with an opportunity of a lifetime like, I I'm filled with so much joy just talking to you about this right now because she called me and she was like, you know, congratulations, because I got into like this on this program. It's called the women unlimited organization for mentoring, education and networking. So even like stuff like that, that I'm still doing Getting, like the blessings is just it keeps coming in my mom words were true because Malcolm, I feel like he came with so much blessing. I know that they're preparing me to be able to provide a living for my son, which is something that I've always dreamed of.Stanislas Berteloot  18:19  You come from Liberia, you come from Africa, how do you experience this country being black, but you are not a black American, you are black from Africa. In this country, I mean, you are sort of in between culture, right.Louise  18:37  Big time.Oh, that's a good question.I try not to allow the outside the outside world, for lack of better words, intervene with the goals that I've set for myself.Unknown Speaker  18:58  Okay, that makes sense.Stanislas Berteloot  19:00  Sort of. So you you, you try to hide out all those racial tensions? Yes. Because you want to focus on on your goal, which is the carrier and yeah, and to build a good life outcome.Louise  19:18  Yeah, like I like I've dealt with. And, you know,it's I think it's interesting that you say this because moving to prison has not always been easy. I've had my shares of racism, for lack of better words, but it's the mindset that I've had and I actually talked to Mrs. Glenda about it is that I've worked so hard to get to where I'm at right now. I'm not going to allow anyone to try to dictate, um, my outcome, so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna I'm not going to let people try to push me out of my dreams. You know? So, for me, it's justUnknown Speaker  20:12  tunnel vision.Louise  20:14  Pretty much but i do i do address it when I see fit. So, you know, there was an incident with my, my my son school, it ended up working out in the sense that, you know, the same support system that I have with it. They were able to reach out to a professional who was then able to assist me with the situation. I'm in and it worked out.Stanislas Berteloot  20:40  What is America to you?Louise  20:44  America is giving me the headstart is pushing me to a place where I can just pretty much build up my character to take something back home for other children, you know, I feel like and I feel like I'm here for a purpose. Like, I know sounds like a cliche, but I gene, because I just find it unbelievable how things have just been working out. For me, and then, you know, for Malcolm and on that, I feel like that I feel like I, there's a purpose for all of this. So it's just soaking everything in, you know, right now, I'm kind of like a sponge. You know, I'm, I'm getting all the education that I need. Because a part of being like a therapist, or striving to be a therapist is I feel like mental health is really important. So it's just going back home and things like, you know, abuse and things like that, and taking that back with me and trying to just stabilize other children. So I guess, Stanislas Berteloot  21:54  And when you say going back home, you mean home in Liberia? Yeah. Is that what you want to do? Ultimately,Louise  22:01  Oh, yeah, yeah, I definitely want to, I've been planning because bear in mind since since I came here in 2001, I have not seen my family. So what I'm going to do is, you know, I want for Malcolm to get to an age where, you know, his memories serves him, right. Because when I, when I go back home, I, you know, obviously he has to be his grandma, and his uncle and his arm. So I want him to get to an age where, you know, it'll be good, good enough for him to go and experience, my side, my culture. And hopefully you can take something from that. So I'm definitely planning within the next year or two to go back because I need to meet my mom, like, you know, I haven't seen my mam forever.Stanislas Berteloot  22:51  I'm sure you do. But where do you plan to settle, in the US over there.Louise  22:59  So I want to do I want to travel back and forth. And he will sound crazy for this. But it's kind of like I can't just abandon America because America gave me that stabilization, I guess. And so, but I can't, you know, I can never forget where I've come from. So it's kind of like, maybe I can build a home back, back home where I can just travel back and forth, go on vacations and stuff.And just experience my roots too.Stanislas Berteloot  23:38  Yeah. Well, I don't blame you for that. Do you have any and that will be my last question. Do you have any advice for people who are going through a tough time?Louise  23:48  Yes. Um, stay true to yourself. Just know that the storm does not last forever. There's always there's always light at theStanislas Berteloot  23:59  End of the Tunnel looking back at at your own experience, would you do anything differently? Louise  24:06  No.Stanislas Berteloot  24:11  Thank you. Louise  24:12  Thank you.You too. Thank you so much. Bye-bye 

 In this episode, I talk with Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price about the current racial unrest, about meritocracy, the values, culture, and identity of this country. We speak about the separation between the military and the government and of the current administration.Lieutenant Colonel Bryan Price is known for his published research on terrorism and counterterrorism.  He holds a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy in U.S. history, an M.A. in international relations from St. Mary’s University (TX), and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.Bryan and I talk about leadership -- he is the Founding Executive Director at the Buccino Leadership Institute at Seton Hall University. During the interview, Bryan shared a story that exemplifies George Washington’s leadership skills, he then asked: “You can probably guess some individuals that that are in power today. What if they were the George Washington at that time? How differently would our country have a look like?”I ask him if he thinks that the military will escort Donald Trump from the White House should the president loses the election and refuse to leave his office. For my guest, American is a dream, not a reality. Yet he believes that American is the greatest experiment of democracy that the world has ever known and that's a worthwhile cause to fight for.   Book ListAlexis de Tocqueville -- Democracy in AmericaDavid Lipsky -- Absolutely AmericanRon Chernow -- Washington: A Life FacebookTwitter @BryanPrice7Top Mental Game  TRANSCRIPT Bryan C Price  0:11  It wasn't the institutions that were protecting us, because there were no institutions no one knew what a democracy was, like, you know, no offense to France. You know, no one knew what like that experiment was gonna be like over here. And so it depended on Who were those people at that time. Not to name any names, but you can probably guess some individuals that that are in power today. What if they were the George Washington at that time? How differently would our country have a look like, I think a lot of Americans like to look back on the fact that we've enjoyed this experiment over time as because we're Americans. And I look back at that seminal moment with Washington and I say, maybe we're not good. Maybe we just got really lucky early on, and we had the right person at the right time to put us on this path. We're not there yet. But I think the ideals are there. They're worth fighting for.  Barak Obama  1:02  If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the internet,try talking with one of them in real life. Jon  1:16  Welcome to back in America, the podcast. Stanislas Berteloot  1:26  Okay, I think we should be good and I'm also recording here has a backup so it's all good.  I am Stan Berteloot and this is Back in America, a podcast where I explore The American’s identity, culture, and values. My guest today is a Retired Lieutenant Colonel, a Ph.D. and the Founding Executive Director at the Buccino Leadership Institute at Seton Hall University.  He spent the first half of a 20-year Army career in operational assignments as an Apache helicopter pilot, including combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.  From 2012-2018, he was an Academy Professor in the Department of Social Sciences and the Director of the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at the U.S. Military Academy.   He is known for his published research on terrorism and counterterrorism  He holds a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy in U.S. history, an M.A. in international relations from St. Mary’s University (TX), and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.  As the CTC Director, he was invited to testify in front of Congress and frequently briefed the nation’s top counterterrorism leaders. In 2019, he founded Top Mental Game LLC which provides professional coaching and mental skills training for elite high school, college, and professional athletes.  I am delighted to welcome Lieutenant Colonel Bryan C. Price.  Bryan C Price  3:13  Thanks, Stan. Thanks for having me, Stanislas Berteloot  3:15  It's fantastic to be speaking with you, Bryan. And I have the feeling that you may be instrumental in my explorations of the American identity, culture and values. So let's jump into it. Most Americans like sport and respect the troops, and you embody the two. In 2019 when you Top Mental Game, why did you choose to coach athletes?  Bryan C Price  3:40  Sure so I've been an athlete all my life. I grew up playing multiple sports as a kid, I played three sports in high school, I played football, basketball and baseball. And then when I went to West Point for college, I was I played division one baseball there and so When I came back to teach at West Point in the second half of my military career, I was a faculty member. But I was also able to serve as an assistant coach on the baseball team there too. And they had this great place there called the Center for enhanced performance, which provided a lot of sports psychology concepts to the division one teams and I felt like it's a natural, you know, it's one of my passions. Leadership is one of my passions. And sports is one of my passions and starting Top Mental Game was a way to kind of get back to both. Stanislas Berteloot  4:33  Yeah, you get the best of both worlds, right. I was wondering what kind of leadership skills you think that you learn in your military career that you teach today to your civilian clients? Bryan C Price  4:48  Sure, so um, I think the best way to kind of sum it up in terms of what were the leadership skills that I learned in the military that now I am providing to the students at Seton Hall The Senior Leadership Institute, essentially it kind of boils down to how do you be the best servant leader that you can be. And servant leadership is about, you know, I think the best kind of metaphor for it is in traditional kind of Leadership Studies in the past, like in the, you know, second half of the 20th century, you might think of a pyramid, right, where the workers are at the bottom employees, and then middle management and then up at the top are senior leaders, and I think both military and, you know, a couple of these other, you know, things that are other fields that work in leadership, the most effective leadership is actually servant leadership. And it's where you inverse that triangle upside down. So that, you know, the senior leader is actually working when that person comes to work every morning, they're working for their employees, not the other way around. And I think, you know, leading by example is obviously a characteristic trait of effective leadership in the military. And that's what we're trying to do with our students at Seton Hall. Stanislas Berteloot  6:07  Let's go back to the beginning of your own career and maybe your own life. As I mentioned, you dedicated your life to this country. And I'm very curious to hear how or who made you want to join the army? How old were you when you decided that this was going to be your life? Bryan C Price  6:25  When I was a senior looking at different colleges, I wanted a place where I would be challenged. Money was also a, you know, a driving factor. And for those of you that don't know, you know, you can go to the US Military Academy or the Naval Academy, or the Air Force Academy, and I don't want to call it free because you have to pay back the time. You have to serve in the military for five or six years as an initial commitment. But I went to a bunch of different recruiting visits and the one place where I felt like Home like this was with me was West Point and the US Military Academy. And, you know, I knew I was going to be challenged. I knew that, like, I was not going to be a financial burden on my parents, it was an opportunity to play division one baseball. And as a kid, I didn't really know what I wanted to do in life. So I felt like, well, if someone's going to tell me what to do for the next six years after graduation, you know, that would be I was okay with that to see if I could find my way. And the ironic thing was, I thought I was going to get out of the military after my initial commitment. And the joke was on me because 20 years later, I was still ended. I wouldn't regret it for a second. Stanislas Berteloot  7:41  What's your best memory from that time? Bryan C Price  7:44  It's interesting because I could say the same thing about sports or what I'm doing now. I think the best memories always relate around the people in the military. You are obviously put in a crucible of several different moments where All of the veneers gets removed, right? And you are in a very stressful situation with people that you care deeply about. And so to me, it's those moments when you are facing incredible odds and unbelievable adversity, but you're doing it with people that you care about. And, you know, I could point to a ton of those moments. But that's those are the moments and I can say the same thing about my experiences in sports or, you know, the academic world. That’s in Look, that's one of the reasons why it's, it's well known that there's such a strong bond with folks military. So people Stanislas Berteloot  8:43  Well talking of people and talking of West Point. As I prepared this interview, I went to the website of the Academy and notice that they had published a note regarding the current events. I wondered if you saw it? Bryan C Price  8:59  I did I have Yep. General Gerald Williams, that kind of made the rounds on the internet amongst graduates. And yes, I have seen it that I have in front of me. https://s3.amazonaws.com/usma-media/inline-images/about/Public%20Affairs/homepage/pdfs/superindendent_sends_06.04.2020.PDF Stanislas Berteloot  9:10  Good. Can I ask you to maybe share this letter or part of it with the audience? Bryan C Price  9:17  Interestingly, it starts out with USMA, which is the acronym for the US Military Academy, and it says USMA teammates, which I think is very telling from a leadership perspective. It said As you are aware, our country is experiencing civil unrest. During these unsettling times, I want us to recommit to eradicating racism from within our ranks by treating all people with dignity and respect. We must show one another the kindness and compassion necessary to build cohesion and trust in our community. The oath to support and defend the Constitution binds us together as one team dedicated to defending our nation and upholding its values. We strive to embody these ideals and aspire to live by our core values of duty, honor and country. Every word, every action, and every attitude should uphold these values so that we may live and lead honorably. The Nation looks to West Point as an example of what is possible, but people from diverse backgrounds unite and aspire to honorable living. Consider how your words actions and attitudes impact other people. Are you building up others and making them feel valued? Are you strengthening trust within the team? Are you extending forgiveness and actively listening to other points of view? Are you inspiring others to greatness? If so, encourage others to do the same. If not, then choose to improve immediately must have the moral courage necessary to confront and solve problems with effective audits and empathetic dialogue that seeks solutions rather than sowing seeds of division and disunity. I am proud to serve alongside you as we pursue excellence while respecting the dignity of our teammates. Together, let us show the nation that they’ve trusted us as well. very respectfully, General Darrel Ray Williams.  Stanislas Berteloot  11:03  Wow. Wow. So when I read those lines, I couldn't help but try to read between those lines. On one hand, it felt like sort of a fluffy feel-good patriotic statement. On the other sentences such as, "consider how your words action and attitude impact the other" or "muster the courage necessary to confront on solving the problem with effective, honest and empathic dialogue" made me really wonder if we should look into this address as a message to the current administration. What do you make of it? Bryan C Price  11:46  First off, I think the sentiment behind this, you know, reflects a lot of the military and specifically you know, the officer corps that comes out of the US Military Academy. You know, I think when you want to look at what right looks like in terms of race relations, about, you know, what a, as a close to meritocracy is you can kind of find West Point is one of those places where, you know, we like to think that it is representative of the entire country. There are cadets from all 50 states, there are cadets from every walk of life. We we are not there yet when it comes to ethnicity or gender. But those are important, you know, metrics for the administration in order to kind of get to and I think that it's almost like a microcosm of the country, to be honest with you. And you know, all those things about when he talks about living honorably, and mustering the moral courage. I mean, those things are not, I will tell you, they're not fluff to those that are at the Academy. Just to give you one quick anecdote And maybe you have heard of this or maybe not. But there is a there's an honor code at West Point says that cadets won't lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do. And they are, they are serious about that. And so, you know, it's not just about living honorably. But if you see someone else behaving in a way that is antithetical, whether it's like cheating or stealing, it's, it's your duty to call that out. And if you don't, and you get caught, and you knew about it beforehand, you also face consequences of potentially being removed from the Academy. So yeah, I thought it was a strong address by General Williams. Stanislas Berteloot  13:39  And to my second point, do you think it's a message for the administration? Bryan C Price  13:46  Oh, I can say kind of categorically, like this message was not directed. externally. It was directed internally. To Yeah, but by no means was this directed out by any means. Now there's, you know, could the administration apply some of this and maybe do it? I would. I would. I would concur with that. I think, not just the administration. I think, you know, any American or any corporation or any organization in the United States can benefit from that type of message in that type of sentiments. For sure. Stanislas Berteloot  14:25  Okay. Well, I once again, want to ask the man of the military here, James Mattis, the former defense secretary described Trump's as a threat to the Constitution. And he wrote that Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime, who does not try to unit the American people. He does not even pretend to try instead, he tried to divide us. So as a military man as a leadership expert, as a strategist. What is Trump doing? Bryan C Price  15:01  Yeah, so this is one where I know the military is kind of conflicted in this. So first, let me kind of state. I have the utmost respect for General Mattis and what he's done. In his career, I think has proven that he is he's like, he's a true kind of warrior scholar, and well respected by almost, I don't know anybody that doesn't respect General Mattis in the military, to put it that way. And there is a long line of in the military, you know, even dating back to like pre World War Two times of it trying to be as a political of an entity as possible. So, you will not find like in other countries, you will see, you know, the military kind of dabble in politics or try to do stuff behind the scenes. And in the military, at least in the US military. There's a kind of an ethic where there is the commander in chief and there His civilian rule the military, and that's respected. Afterwards, you know, once you retire, it's interesting to see general officers. And this is a trend I know a lot of my colleagues have written out about, of what is the role of former general officers after they retire. When it comes to getting involved in politics and making comments. This is what I'll say about General Mattis. You know, his military credentials are impeccable. He served in the administration. So he has a front row view of what went on. Now, you know, again, where how you feel about General Mattis, his comments, probably, you know, we'll split along partisan lines. What I will tell you that is, I have no reason to doubt any of his words when it comes to his credibility, Stanislas Berteloot  16:54   What kind of strategies is Trump playing? Bryan C Price  16:57  I think right now, you know, obviously, this is a difficult time for any administration when it comes to the civil unrest that we're facing the pandemic that's going on, what's happened to the economy, and our country is is deeply hurting. And then on top of all that you have a re-election coming up. And so, look, you know, when it comes to a strategy for all this, I think, you know, I would be hard-pressed to say that we have a strategy at this point for solving all those things. And, you know, it'll be interesting to see what comes out in this election to see if whoever is going to be the next president, whether it's going to be President Trump for a second term or president. Sorry, Vice President Biden is the new president. Whether or not they have a solution to solve some of this stuff. Lord knows we need it.  Stanislas Berteloot  17:52  Joe Biden, as predicted the military will escort Donald Trump from the White House should the president lose in November, and refuse to leave office. Is that even possible? Do you see the army stepping in and doing that? Bryan C Price  18:07  The military, you know, even though the president is the commander in chief in terms of formal authority, we swear an oath as officers or we take the oath every time that we are promoted. And when you get the military, you know, you swear an oath not to the President, you swear an oath to defend and support the Constitution of the United States. And so, you know, in this case, if there is a, if the people vote in president, I'm sorry, Vice President five to be the president, then there should be a peaceful transition of power. Stanislas Berteloot  18:42  So what you're saying is that if it is not the case, the military will honor their oath to the constitution and will step in to make sure the Constitution is respected. And that ever happened in this toy? Bryan C Price  18:56  Not that I know of in terms of presidents leaving or a president has lost an election and has had been forcibly removed from the White House. Stanislas Berteloot  19:06  Knowing Trump, do you think that would be feasible? Bryan C Price  19:12  He's full of surprises. So look, I would hope that President Trump would understand the impact that that that move would have on a country kind of moving forward. And but he has been known to surprise us before. And so I hope that is not one surprise that he has left up his sleeve. I hope the process, you know, works itself out and it's respected by both candidates. Right. Stanislas Berteloot  19:42  So we mentioned the civil unrest and I'm wondering how you as a white American man, what you've personally learned from the conversation that this country has had about race and inequality. Bryan C Price  19:59  It is Interesting. You know, I've had obviously a lot of different conversations with, with people since, you know, the unrest started. And I'll say this, you know, what the two kind of biggest places that have shaped my, my own personal race relations are kind of to two mediums. One is the sports world. And the second is the military. And in both of those, and I think this is probably gets to like when you're trying to aspire to achieve some larger goal bigger than yourself. And you are in those moments I talked earlier about about adversity and you know, having that veneer stripped away. Race doesn't matter in those moments. You know, religion, ethnicity, sexuality doesn't matter in those moments. And so it's been really painful to watch what's happened in this country, you know, in the past month. I'm a white male, right? I mean, when you look at the advantages that I've had over my lifetime, and you ask yourself, Is my successor the things that I have achieved, how much of that has been based on this system that has been built? On the flip side, you know, you ask yourself, Well, how do we make that system better, so that we are more equal and aspiring to those goals that, you know, our forefathers kind of talked about in terms of making this place? All we're all men are created equal, you can obviously add women to that now. So it pains me, I think, what I have learned personally, in this whole thing, I don't think that the average American particularly the average white person, has a very good understanding of what it's like to grow up in this country. As a minority. In this case, we'll just talk about black Americans. I certainly don't have any clue of what that would be like. And I know I've listened to previous episodes and I know that you've had other people on here that have shown That experience, and it's been kind of eye-opening to me. On the flip side, I would say that I also think that the average American has zero clue about the pressures and the adversity that an inner-city cop has to go through on a daily basis. And, you know, I was telling somebody the other day, like it's very easy to get outraged these days. pick your poison. I'll use the you know the terminology of the far right if you want to take a look at anarchists and looters and violent protesters doing horrific things and acting you know, horribly in a violent way. I'm not talking about the non violent protesters, then go flick on fox news right and you will probably see one or two clips that you know, even if you are on the left you look at you go oh my gosh, like this is this is horrible. Equally if you want to look at, you know, you're the greatest hits album of police brutality and police doing horrific things to what You believe as ostensibly peaceful protesters, well then go click on CNN or another, you know, venue. And I don't think that we're getting the whole picture here. And to me, unless we get the folks that can articulate what that is like to be a black American living in this country in this day and age, and the folks that are, you know, on the front lines in law enforcement and articulating what they have to go through, you know, we got to get those two, two sides in a room and come up with a better solution. But the last thing I'll say is, you know, I get asked a lot because I'm in the military, this question of kneeling and the flag, I was always brought up and raised of the flag, you know, represented the best of our country. You know, patriotism, you know, all of the values and ethos that kind of goes into being an American, not to mention that it is a reflection of those that have fought for our country in the past. Those have paid the ultimate sacrifice, you know, but last full measure of devotion. As President Lincoln said, If I am a young black American in this country, and I experienced racism and bigotry and prejudice, and all those things that are not what we are about as a country, you know, when a person looks at the fly, they might see something very, very different. Right. And I think it's important to kind of have that conversation, of what that looks like. In the end. I'm an eternal optimist when it comes to this country. I've learned a lot and I've tried to do way more listening during this episode, then speaking, that I think that I don't know if everyone is taking the same advice. Stanislas Berteloot  24:44  And you're thinking that these protests will lead to structural changes, or that they will slowly die out, and the things will continue the way they were before. Bryan C Price  24:57  I don't know. I'm 44 Just looking at like this compared to previous things, it feels different. Stanislas Berteloot  25:05  How do you think they are different? You know, and you are a historian so... Bryan C Price  25:11  yeah. So I'll just give you a couple of anecdotes, which if you told me in 2019, that this would happen a year later, I would have told you, I can't foresee that. If I would have told you that NASCAR was going to ban the Confederate flag at their events a year ago. You would have thought I was crazy. You know, I spent a lot of time in the south. You know, there's a lot of military bases in the south. So I spent a lot of time in the Sun Belt and in the south, you know, and obviously, NASCAR is big down there. So, like, I was very surprised by that. And secondly, I don't know if you've recently seen but the Marines have come out and have banned the use of the Confederate flag on any installation in you know, barracks on cars, and offices. And so, again, these are all kind of really interesting moves that I don't think would have happened without these protests and without the outrage that occurred after George Floyd. Now, let me say this, you know, where does the pendulum end with some of these things, right. And so I am I don't have any heartburn at all about removing Confederate General statues in town squares and that sort of thing. If you ask me about Gettysburg, I think they should remain at Gettysburg, because it's a national battlefield National Monument. That's the kind of place for those sorts of things. But on the on the statute question I am I have zero heartburn, with that stuff being removed. All of those things I would tell you is, I think, are good things. When you start talking about the more extreme versions of some of these things like their you know, defund the police is obviously a very Prominent subject. Again, I go back to my notion that I don't think any, most of us have zero clues what it takes to be a police officer in the inner cities. And so this notion that we're going to either remove police or, you know, completely change, and I'm sorry, not change, but remove that system of law enforcement and replace it with community activities, to be honest, I think is also a pipe dream. Do we need reform 100,000,000,000% but this gets back to my notion of like, those two sides need to kind of get an expert. So that those reasons I think that this is different from previous ones Reform and training, maybe. Yeah, hundred percent. You know, again, you know, it's funny to look at some of the police forces that are in kind of suburbia, being outfitted with, you know, equipment that we were using in Iraq. You know, and What type of messages that set center folks will look, there are some places where the violence is at such a level where the police do need extra protection. And I've offered I'm all for that. I think both sides could benefit from a little reform in the situation. Stanislas Berteloot  28:16  Earlier on, you talked about the values, which the flag represents, what are those values? Bryan C Price  28:25  So, I mean, it kind of bleeds into the question of like, what is America? Stanislas Berteloot  28:30  Right? Bryan C Price  28:32  And, you know, I have a separate answer for that. But just to answer your specific question, you know, it's things like freedom, opportunity, equality, I would also add kind of meritocracy to that. And again, these are all when I say they're aspirational values. They are ideals that we strive for. I'm not saying that we are there yet. I don't know if we'll ever be there yet. Those are the things that I think what America stand for. You know, I talked earlier about you can flick, flick on the news and pick your poison, whatever, whatever you want to be outraged about, you can go find it. Look, there's a ton of stories out there of Americans doing fantastic things that are not being amplified. And you know, it's funny if you ever go to my social media feeds, you know, I used to be kind of a snarky  and so where should we find you?  I mean, I'm on Facebook at Bryan Price. If you want my business stuff, you can go take a look at I think on Instagram, on Instagram, Twitter, and where else you can go to Top Mental Game but if you want to go to like my personal stuff, it's at you know, Brian price. And on Twitter, it's @BryanPrice7. I used to be kind of snarky, and you know, I have a dry sense of humor. So I would kind of poke fun at stuff. And about six years ago, five years ago, I was like, man, there's so much negativity on social media right now. And so I made a conscious decision to change up how I, what did I put out there to the world. And I started a thing. It's called, I just called sports. So I find these fantastic, like tear-jerking, like emotional people's stories about sports like that represent the best of us, like the best values that we want, taking care of each other, sacrificing for others, you know, sacrificing for your teammates, choosing the harder right over the easier wrong, which isn't the cadet prayer by the way. And I would just write sports dot, dot and I'll just leave it there. And a cool thing happened because there was like a little mini-movement that has taken place where other people will now send me things that say, hey, Brian, sports and it's a clip of a story or a video, and it's like, then we need more of that. You know, we need more of that stuff populating our social media feeds But I'm not saying that we need to stick our heads in the sand and you know, be pollyannish about what's going on in the world. But again, if all you do is watch, you know, the news on whatever favorite news channel you have, you're going to be a pretty negative, miserable person. And there's a big world out there. Stanislas Berteloot  31:19  I hear you. And karma. Right, you send good stuff. Good stuff come back to you. Oh, yeah. And you alluded to that early on. I would love to know what America is to you. Bryan C Price  31:34  Alright, are you ready?  Stanislas Berteloot  31:35  I'm ready. Bryan C Price  31:38  All right. So when I thought about this question, obviously, there's a number of different ways you can take it and a lot of your guests have, you know, chosen various aspects of it. But when I sat down and I thought about this, I wrote this and, you know, I, I think what is even better is a poem that I'm going to share with you, which you may have heard before, but maybe not So when I think of what America means to me, I wrote, it's the greatest experiment the world has ever known. Where we are chasing an ideal that we may never achieve. But it's ideal that is worth fighting for, and worth dying for. So here's my poem. It's by Langston Hughes, which I'm not sure if you've ever heard of him, but he was a black American in the early half of the 20th century. And this poem, I definitely recommend you look up the whole thing. I'm not going to read all of it just for time purposes. But it was written in 1936. Okay, so it's not it's not recent. But I think it's, it's telling it, it kind of puts in poetry form, what I just shared with you. So I'm going to read it a couple snippets. Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the Pioneer on the plane, seeking a home where he himself is free. America never was America to me. Let America be the dream The Dreamers dreamed. Let it be that great strong land of love, or never kings connive nor tyrant scheme, that any man be crushed by any above. It never was America to me. Let America be America again. The land that never has been yet, and yet must be the land where every man is free. The land that's mine, the poor man's Indians negros me, who made America, whose sweat and blood whose faith and pain, whose hand at the foundry whose plow in the rain must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose. The steel of freedom does not stain from those who live like leeches on the people's lives. We must take back our land again, America. Oh, yes, I say it playing America never was America to me. And yet I swear this oath, America will be. Stanislas Berteloot  34:09  Wow, very, very timely. Bryan C Price  34:13  It's when you read the whole poem it speaks to that the fact that everybody has bought into this American dream and everybody's willing to fight for that dream, but that dream isn't a reality. And, and there's a lot of people that you know, feel that that dream is hypocritical or not serving them and are and are upset if we're not there yet. It's still a worthwhile fight to try to get there. And so, like, to me, that's a real it's not like a warm and fuzzy patriotic poem, but it's also not a you know, to me, it's like it's it's the best articulation of what I was trying to say in my faulty words but Langston Hughes found a better way of saying it. Stanislas Berteloot  35:03  Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Would you have any books so movie that how origins should read all watch? Bryan C Price  35:12  So in terms of the books, and I think I shared this with you before he had your like the modern day, Alexis de Tocqueville from France and his great book Democracy in America. So it that might be an interesting book to kind of go through. He was trying to understand America and American culture, you know, many, many moons ago, and now you're trying to kind of do the same thing. So I thought that was interesting. For those that might want to know a little bit about that meritocracy that I was talking about at West Point and the microcosm of the country. There's a great book called Absolutely American by David Lipsky, which again, paints a pretty realistic both good and bad of what life is like up there. And then from Ron Chernow's autobiography on George Washington is pretty amazing. Call Washington a life. And so that's that's another book that I would definitely recommend a movie that represents the best of us and America. There's a couple out there. If you want a military movie that talks about kind of the greatest generation and what that was like. I think Saving Private Ryan is probably a really good star by Steven Spielberg.  Stanislas Berteloot  36:18  Okay, great. Thank you, Bryan, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for sharing all this with us today. Bryan C Price  36:27  Awesome. Thanks, Stan. Appreciate it.  Stanislas Berteloot  36:29  Thanks.  Bryan C Price  36:29  Can I share with you a quick story about George Washington. But to me, it kind of speaks to a lot of the craziness that's going on. And when you talk about true leadership, this is definitely it. After the Americans had this great victory against the British and the war was essentially over talking about Yorktown. I think a lot of people thought the war was over, and that the Americans had won. And yet, we were on very tenuous ground at that point.  And so fast forward to two years to 1783. Washington was actually based just north of Westport actually in a place called Newburgh, New York at this time, our government, you know, was essentially dysfunctional. They could not pay the soldiers because the Articles of Confederation banned taxing on the people. And so there was no real money. They had promised to pay veterans of the war, a half wage, and that had never occurred. And on top of that, you had reportedly a third of the Washington's forces did not have shoes.  And so, you know, here we are about to take down at the time, you know, the world's one of the superpowers represents France. And so we're at this big moment. And Washington catches wind that there were senior leaders in his outfit, were circulating a letter to organize, essentially what was a military coup to go down to Philadelphia to take over the government and demand that they get paid, and you know, they get clothes and, you know, treated with respect. And at the time, you can imagine, like after, you know, fighting for, you know, at that time, seven years or so, there was a lot of support for the soldiers who had left their families and we're had fought for this country and that we're not being treated properly. And so there was a lot of ground well support for it. But Washington catches wind of this, and he's old an age. And so he calls for all officers to, to meet in this evening. And he comes in, he wants to read a letter that he was talking to somebody about and so he’s kind of fumbling with the letter. He can't read it because of his eyesight. And he puts on his bifocals, and he says, "gentlemen, you must now pardon me, for I have not only grown gray, but almost blind in service to my country." And then he goes on to talk about essentially paraphrasing Washington at this point, like we didn't fight this war, we didn't do all this stuff for this great experiment of America, to go back to what would have happened in Europe, to go back to a military dictatorship or military rule of government, that if this whole thing is going to work, at this troubled time, we need to respect the civilian rule of authority, that that's what makes this whole experiment different.  I don't know if anybody else other than Washington could have made that happen at that point, because he was so respected. He was obviously a military General, he did come from the aristocracy, but you can relate to you know, the common man. And when I look at what our country you know, I was in Iraq and Afghanistan. And when I see these people get put in power of young democracies that pole for centralization, that pole to centralize power and to become corrupt are so overwhelming that like, it's failed in both those countries, you know, this, we can't just Take this experiment and outsource it like we thought we could. And yet, here we are in America and we had that leader at that time, make that decision. And I wonder if where we would be today if that decision was a base 

 While President Trump has been calling the Coronavirus the Chinese virus and while the US is facing unprecedented protests against police violence and racial discrimination, Back in America is examining how these events have affected the Chinese Community.In this episode, I speak with Cecilia Birge a former Montgomery, NJ mayor, a form bond analyst on Wall Street, now a head coach and a member of the Princeton High School Speech and Debate Team.Cecilia shares her experience organizing fundraising with the Chinese community to help local first responders. For us, she revisits her childhood in Chineses labor camps. As a student in Bejing during the Tiananmen Protests, she talks of her fear at the time and the turmoil in the city.Today America is her home and the way she talks about this country and understands it help us see America in a different light. TranscriptBarak Obama 0:00 If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try talking with one of them in real life.Jon 0:14 Welcome to back in America, the podcast.Stanislas Berteloot 0:23 Welcome to back in America, the podcast why explore the American's identity, culture, and values. In this episode, I look at the experience of an American of Chinese origin and how the current pandemic has impacted her life. My guest is a former mayor from Montgomery, New Jersey. She grew up in a Chinese prison camp and was a student in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square protests. President Trump is trying very hard to blame his failure to contain the COVID-19 pandemic on the Chinese. In turn, anti-Asian racist action had raised to about 100 reported cases per day in February, according to Congresswoman Judy Chu.Donal Trump 1:28 COVID COVID to be specific COVID-19 that name gets further and further away from China as opposed to calling it the Chinese virus. By the way, it's a disease without question has more names than any disease in history. I can name 'Kung-Flu' I can name 19 different versions.Stanislas Berteloot 2:06 Hi, Cecilia, welcome to back in America.Cecilia Birge 2:09 Hello. Thank you for having me.Stanislas Berteloot 2:12 So Cecilia, back in March, you were instrumental in launching several fundraising to help first responder here in Princeton, in their effort to fight against the COVID pandemic. I wonder if you could tell us what motivated you to run these campaigns?Cecilia Birge 2:30 Well, first of all, it actually wasn't me. It was the entire Chinese community, led by a group of, we call it the organizing committee, which is a group of 10 people or so. This happened probably around February or so. When Coronavirus first hit China in late December and early January. Many of the Chinese residents in Princeton and frankly in all of the world experienced that remotely. And many, many of them participated in fundraising donations to back home to their relatives to their colleges, and so on and so forth. Nobody expected Coronavirus to hit America so heavily and so abruptly. And nobody certainly expected that our government responded in such a slow fashion. So as it gradually moved inland towards us, and Princeton, unfortunately, is one of the first places that had Coronavirus in New Jersey. People got really worried. And as the government was formulating its ideas, gradually, the next piece of news we heard was, we didn't have enough PPEs. And so as you can imagine, as someone who just went through this experience remotely and now seeing it happening in our own community, people got really anxious and people wanted to do something and so that When these 10 people jumped in and got the community organized and quickly came up with a plan and execute executedStan 4:07 PPE?Cecilia Birge 4:09 Personal protective equipment which is, which includes goggles, masks their different kinds of masks. And this is something I've learned a lot that way as well. I'd never imagined that there could be so much specifications, different classifications and certifications and approvals that could go into masks, medical gals, face shields, anything that you can imagine that protect, protect our first responders that includes policemen, em as, and of course, our doctors and nurses and everybody in the hospitals.Stanislas Berteloot 4:41 So would you say that because the virus originated first in China, the Chinese community was particularly concerned about this pandemic?Cecilia Birge 4:51 Absolutely. And also, don't forget this is also at least you know, I have been, I've been in this country for 30 years. I don't have a strong connection with China anymore. But many residents in Princeton still have that strong connection. And many of them actually witness the SARS some years ago. So this is not only the second time around by the time you hit America, it's third time around. So in a way they are they know what kind of speed to expect for our government to handle this kind of thing to keep it up to keep it under control. And we were not doing that at the time.Stanislas Berteloot 5:27 And how much did you raise them together?Cecilia Birge 5:30 The total value exceeded about $62,000. We actually initially set the fundraising goal. There are two parts, we raised money. We also collected donations because we identified the needs in the community. It's not just personal protective gears for first responders but also the most vulnerable segment of our community which is especially the kids free and reduced lunch programs in our schools. So we collected food we collected To daily essentials, we also collected money. The fundraising goal was initially set at $10,000. And we reached that goal overnight. So we quickly you know, added to that. Eventually we raised it. We raised over $26,000 in cash in total. And then the rest of it are all donations of PPS and can food and daily essentials.Stanislas Berteloot 6:25 Wow. So you saw you saw the entire Asian, our should I say Chinese community come together in order to help the local community fight the coronavirus, and yet, President Trump calling it the Chinese virus. How do you think that made you and other Asian people feel?Cecilia Birge 6:51 So it's so infuriating and frustrating in so many ways. I think That just the fact that we have to explain to you know, the leader of this country, why it's so wrong to identify a virus based on this location and specifically link, link it to, to to a certain ethnic group and almost with the sole intention to insult someone you know, I've reached the point where I'm so angry and mad I don't even I don't have words for it really I don't.Stanislas Berteloot 7:31 And what do you make of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused China of putting the world at risk because of his lack of transparency?Cecilia Birge 7:43 It's another lesson learned for all of us that you these kinds of bias and prejudice and racism comes from the same place which is ignorance and for someone who deliberately to use the power of words use their positions to, you know, practice this kind of racist views and, you know, filled with bias and hatred and even that is just wrong. They don't deserve the office that they hold. It's an insult to all the citizens, not just the Chinese. It's an insult to the office as well.Stanislas Berteloot 8:23 So let's come back to you. Cecilia Birge, you are Princeton High School head coach. You're also a member of the Speech and Debate Team. That's quite a stretch from your career on Wall Street where you were a bond analyst.Cecilia Birge 8:42 I guess so. Um, I, you know, I grew up in the academics family. And I think that my I have lots of physicists and mathematicians in my house. However, they were awesome. mathematicians and physicists who are very devoted to community affairs. My grandfather was the president of Peking University. He led the effort against the Three Gorges Dam. This was back in the 80s. And I was still in China at the time as a teenager, I I witnessed what he did back then against the communists.Stanislas Berteloot 9:26 Can you tell us a bit more about this, this effort and what it was?Cecilia Birge 9:30 Sure. So, the Three Gorges Dam is, I believe it's still the largest dam in the world. You know, as many people know, the Yangtze River, you know, carries a lot of heritage. And it's a lot of people identify that with China. It's the second-longest river in the world has lots and lots of cultural heritage along the way. It starts in Tibet. ends in Shanghai. So it cuts through China literally halfway through. And this was in the 80s and potential pain, sleep leadership, the government decided to build three courts to spin. This partly was to fulfill the need for hydroelectric electricity in China, because the country was beginning to develop it needed that power. But more importantly, it was more for building a legacy for potential pain because it's located in the province where he came from. My grandfather, being a scientist throughout his entire life believed that these things, decisions as such, should be made, should be made based on science rather than political convenience. So he led an A team of scientists, journalists, local politicians, citizens, and initiated an opposition at first They went all the way up to, I don't know, the English translation of it. I think it's called people's political consulting firm. It's almost like, it's like in the US, we have the Senate and the Congress. This is the equivalent of the Congress. The Three Gorges Dam vote received 30, more than 30% of no votes, which is the highest no votes in the entire country. It humiliated the communist party at the time. So that's the history of it. And now it's been built and it has created a lot of environmental military. You know, other issues as you can imagine.Stanislas Berteloot 11:38 So you come, you have a history of activism, I guess few people knowing you, either as a bond analyst, as a teacher, know that you grew up in labor camp in China. Can you take us back to that time if I were to ask you to close your eyes and tell us what you see and what you feel from your early memories, what would it be?Cecilia Birge 12:08 To begin with, I always said that I have a happy childhood. And it's not as dark as most people assume. So, but I was born in the dark ages of the modern Chinese history. I was born at the end of the cultural revolution. My mother, who grew up in America, she spent her teenage years here with my grandparents in California. I was born right when she was about to finish what he called it's not a term in the labor camp, but basically all these intellectuals were sent down to the labor camps to be re educated because Chairman Mao thought that they were too worthy. They only know how to use their words. They don't know how to use the tool in the country side. So let's send millions of these intellectuals go down to get re educated so that they can appreciate what we peasants went through before we took over the country and then they would appreciate what we have been done for the new country. So that was an oversimplified version of the Cultural Revolution. And so I was right, born around then. And as soon as I was born, she was sent back down to the to the countryside. I was left at home.At the time my grandfather was hiding from the Red Guards in Peking University where he was working as a chancellor. So my grandpa raised me a little bit. My father was probably the equivalent thing in today's in this country as a house arrest. He was considered a quote unquote, counter revolutionary, intellectual. My my father was also educated here went to University of Michigan, medical school, and He actually was the one who introduced with Western any theology to China. But because of these affiliations, he wasn't allowed in the operating room in China for almost 10 years. And so every day he was supposed to be home late at night. He would start the day very early, go to the hospital, have to do a loyalty dance in front of mouse portrait. And then he was spent the whole day to reform himself by cleaning all the bathrooms. So he was the janitor in the hospital for that many years. And then maybe in the evening, he was supposed to stay in the hospital writing his confessions, reflections of what he has learned from the mouse works, the little red books that he read again again again, and then he was he was allowed to come home late at night, nine o'clock, 10 o'clock or so, and the next day would would begin. In the meantime, the place where I was born, and it was a traditional Beijing style bungalow. But, you know, back then it was the affluent families had those those homes. The Chinese idea was to have four generations living under one roof. All the rooms were taken by the proletariat's.So, my family was left in the 12 square meters small room with you know, no toilet no nothing. So, so that was the environment I grew up but of course, I remember some of this my memories are there were very many happy memories of playing, you know, with stones and sands whatever I could find on the street. There were also stories being told about me spitting you know that the court there eventually once was taken by this many proletariats's in the corner became a have open-air kitchens so to speak. So people make food there and then they were brought in into the rooms and then ate with their families. So there was this granny who was supposed to be very relevant revolutionary. She always spied on my family. She always reported to the hospital, where my dad worked about what we were doing if we had visitors at all, we really didn't have many visitors. So apparently, I was told to what when I was for one day, I disliked that granny so much that I got into her pod. She was cooking, and I spit into her pot, which obviously created invited political problems for my dad. Then he ended up doing more loyalty dances. when things got worse in the city, at the age of four in the age of six, my mom took me I went to the labor camp with my mom. Again for kids. That was a happy time I got to play in the mountains. I do have memories of us living in a shed in the middle of the field.And the scary part was that our job was to make sure that the, the crops that was planted was not taken away by birds or other animals. So that was my mother's job. But at night, we didn't have any electricity. We didn't have any running water. And the meantime was so dark and the mountain is right there and you hear these wolves, you know, hollering, and then the next morning you would hear reports from you know, we call them peasants, I guess today is farmers. They the farmers lift in the canyon, and that's where it's more concentrated, we lived in the field. So they would report how many chickens were taken by the wolves, how many rabbits were eaten by the fox, and so on and so forth. So, you know, as the little kids four years old or five years old. I was actually that was when I felt like, oh, are the wolves gonna take me? When am I gonna do when they come and attack me? So yeah, that'sStanislas Berteloot 18:13 Wow, some kind of memories you've gotCecilia Birge 18:17 A different world.Stanislas Berteloot 18:19 And then you studied in Beijing and in 1989, you participated to the Tiananmen Square protests. How were those days?Cecilia Birge 18:34 In the 80s, the economy began to grow. And it was growing very unevenly. And actually then shopping the leader at the time, announced that it was okay for some people to be rich first, which was very different compared to the socialist ideology that the country had been holding on to. But unfortunately, certain people meant those with access to higher power. So there's the creation or the labeling of the clubs, which is, to some extent by them, my family got rehabilitated. And we're a part of that club in many ways. children whose parents are in power, have access to everything, you know if the country is developing and needs concrete, so we could probably with somebody's letter, and then all of a sudden everybody else got to know from certain manager, but because we have the letter from someone from higher up, that manager is going to sign up on that. So you know, all of these privileges that came along, so it was very unfair. And it was also a time when American school of thoughts begin to get into China. So the concept of equal opportunity become more and more became more and more prominent. And it was at that time who yelled bond who was a strong actor, ticket to for China to shift westwards they're closer to America and Western European countries, which is very, very different mentality in philosophy from the traditional approach of being allies with Soviet Union and, and other countries. So he died sadly. And because the students in particular viewed him as a champion of free speech, of equal opportunity, and because then shoppings suppression over who yelled bunkers he got shoved away. Later in his political career. The students made a request in Tim and square, which is the, you know, it's the center of Beijing, right in front of the Forbidden City, and the government ignore the student again again, and it just got escalated to the point. I think it was April 26 1989. People's Daily which is the official government newspaper, had an editorial and called the students margin student protest, a terrorist attack. And that's when things erupted. It paralyzed Beijing. There was no school anymore. All of us college kids, or tenements square we occupied the square with tents. hunger strike was going on, we demanded a conversation with a government. So eventually the government did come out. It took them a long while to come at it to engage in a dialogue with a student. So here again, my grandfather by then he retired, but it's a recognizable voice, probably one of the most recognizable academic voice. He got 10 college presidents together as a consortium and and wrote a letter a joint letter, as submitted to the central government. Asking the government to come out and speak to the students and hear their voices. Like I said they did eventually meet a wasn't a productive meeting, that hunger strike and it's soon after that. So arguably, if managed properly, it would have just died down right things we actually a lot of students were prepared to return to school expecting school to reopen the following September, but all of a sudden in early June you know, uniformed military trucks and whatnot descended upon Beijing occupied the major arteries and sort of cornered the students in in tenement square. And, you know, we all got the news and some people I wasn't on the square that evening, but I was there the previous nights and whatnot. And and before you know it, you hear bullets. That night, I was at home. I did not know never in my life. Did I Imagine that guns would be pointed at students but you know I heard non stop bullets. I actually thought you know who is getting married to now and who's getting getting married late at night that the fire works it's nonstop how much fireworks did they did they But it wasn't until the next morning when I got onto the street that I see students with blood you know, on their shirt on their faces and come you know, with eyes, you know, crying, bawling with eyes being red.It was it was a disaster. So my first instinct was to protect my family. I was living with my grandparents at the time. They were you know, the either These are people had who had gone through wars. So I remember we we used every single container we could find it the house, bathtubs, you know different trays and what We filled it with water because we were afraid that water was going to cut off. The next thing was I rushed to the to the market, we just got everything we could get our hands on, especially canned food, to prepare for who knows what to come. It was three, four days of a city, one of the largest cities in the world with no government, every now and then there will be a truck of soldiers driving by and some just drop by quickly with nothing others, you know, you will hear bullets as soon as you hear bullets, everybody is on the ground. So it went on like that for three four days before finally the government came out and pronounced it a terrorist attack. So the government had to come out and put down in the meantime, and the part with Tiananmen Square was all sealed. No people are allowed to enter but gradually people were going on their bicycles around town in Beijing trying to have a peek into what's happening in there and you see burnt trucks burn tires, you see, you know, bloody clothes left somewhere. So there are some pretty gruesome scenes around them. And up till today, nobody knows how many people died on this square. Nobody knows who's responsible for it, although in or I should say everybody knows who should be responsible for it. And if you go to China today, the topic is heavily censored. Nobody talks about it. And that concerns me more than anything else, honestly. And it's gonna be one of these things. Not going down in Chinese history. Well, I don't know how, whether it's by force or by will if a country of its people especially if it's forced, as is the case, not to remember its history, I can imagine the impact they will it will bring upon humanity.Stanislas Berteloot 26:12 You mentioned it early on when you started talking about Tiananmen Square and, and throughout, you know, your memories I could not avoid but think of the current protest with Black Lives Matter, especially when you said, you know, country not remembering his past and its history, the protests might not have much in common, but what do you make of the current protests in the US?Cecilia Birge 26:41 I support it, you know, the current one is much, much more complex. And the Chinese immigrants community is divided. There is a group of people like myself, who strongly supported and i think that you know, I take Myself, for example, it's been a process. The racial discrimination in this country has so much history and it's so complex. And it's it's, and especially it's not just black and white as it was the case in the Civil War. It wasn't even black and white as the case as the civil rights movement anymore. It's much more embedded into our culture in to some extent, it's so much accepted, right? It was, I accepted the fact that a black person living right next to me is stopped more frequently by cops. Did I know about the fact? Yes. Did it shock me as it does today? No, it didn't. So I think it's been a process for all of us. For someone like me who's been here for 30 years, I've got a lot more opportunities to hear how black folks go through life. Anything from being killed like George Floyd did because of a $20 counterfeit or because of nothing. So regardless what it is It comes from the same place again, it's about ignorance, so, so I absolutely support it. I hope that as an country, this reminds us how important it is to talk about some very uncomfortable topics. I think part of the reason we got to where we are today, in large part is, and to some extent is the Anglo Saxon culture of sweeping that discomfort under the carpet. And let's not talk about it so that we can have, you know, a perfect image in front of everybody. But if we want to be perfect, if allowed to strive for that perfect union, we have to face the reality. And the reality in many, many ways is black and white. As an Asian American, I think we straddle the two board, two worlds, we get some of the benefits from especially the civil rights movement. We get some of the privileges from the white community, but every now and then Like the case we talked about earlier about the Trump calling a china virus, like, especially bamboo ceiling. And all of these examples are the same kind of, you know, we suffer from the same kind of decisions made by people who are ignorant about our culture and about ourselves.Stanislas Berteloot 29:20 So tell me in 2007, you became the first and only Asian American woman, Mayor. In New Jersey, you were the mayor of Montgomery, right? What can you tell me about daily and lifelong experiences of racism and discrimination against Asian American? For you personally, you know, were you impacted by that in your life in your experience?Cecilia Birge 29:50 You know, like in many immigrants when I first came to America, all I thought about was I'm just gonna work hard racism doesn't bother me, I will just hunker down, work hard and work harder. And I will make it you know, I did that I did work hard, I did work harder, and I did quote unquote, make make it right.However, through that process, I've also, I've been very lucky that I haven't experienced that extreme kind of racism. Butthrough that process, I definitely became a lot more aware and certainly recognize the racist incidents that happened to me, with or without me recognizing it, that when I was mayor in Montgomery, there were people who would come to the township committees, and monopolize the public comment, you know, timeframe, just to complain, and they are just there. They just want their own platform. And when I try to impose certain rules, just to keep the new In order, I was called a communist. Right. And before I became mayor, I was deputy mayor here. And it just happened so that the mayor at the time was my mentor and good friend is also female. So the comment from the fellow male counterpart on the township committee is now you girls can do whatever you want. Right? So, right. So there is, you know, there is, that's the thing, if we allow those kind of discrimination, whether it's based on race, or sex, or ethnicity, whatever it is, you know, there's no end to this war. So some people complain, why do we have to be politically correct all the time? It's not that we're political. We try to be politically correct all the time. It's because words have power. And as the coach of of our debate team at Princeton high school, I see That every day I hear that from my kids every day, they carry weight, they carry power. They can help us love and they can help us hate. And we all hope that that helps us love.Stanislas Berteloot 32:14 Thank you. Finally, Cecilia, I would like you to tell me what is America to you?Cecilia Birge 32:21 home!America's home. The reason I say I came to America. I think now that I know what America is like Obviously, I'm more American than Chinese in many ways, you know, very proud of my Chinese heritage. But because of my family's connection to the west, I came to recognize the way I was raised was half western half Chinese, and which have to take my family thank god left it to be rather than forcing it upon me. So to some extent, I never quite fit in in the Chinese culture, especially in the Chinese school culture. Part of my family was also separated for many years because the two countries didn't have any connections back then. So one of my uncle's finally went back to China. After marrying my aunt, it was the first time we met in the 80s. And then he, he met me and you know, for a Chinese American who left China for so long, they really didn't function very well. So I was the tour guide, assigned by my family to help him out to take him to different places to around the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, so we got to know each other. And at the end of the trip, he said, I think 'this girl will be happier in America, I'm gonna bring you to America'. So that changed my life and I'm eternally grateful for that. And he spent I think that for someone like me who enjoys challenges, who enjoys doing different things in life, who tried to be as thoughtful as I can be. There's really no better place on earth than America for me. And not to mention now that I have four kids. And especially, you know, we were talking earlier that you and I both have a high school graduate, witnessing how they have transformed from the little baby that I held on day one, when I literally touched love to the young ladies and young men that they have become, and the transformation that they have gone through, both physically, academically and socially, emotionally, and for them to be filled with so much passion and love and kindness, and have so much expectations for the world. I really can't imagine any other country can do it better than then what we have done and our job for our generation as an educator in this country, is to make sure that tradition continues.Stanislas Berteloot 35:01 And I see, talking of kids, I see your kids coming and waking up in the kitchen behind you. And that's quite all right. Thank you.Cecilia Birge 35:11 Interview coronas via COVID-19 style.Stanislas Berteloot 35:15 Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, Cecilia Birge, thank you so much for your time today.Cecilia Birge 35:21 Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

  Marina Ahun's website: https://www.marinaahun.com/ Stanislas Berteloot Hello, Marina Ahun or Ahun-Babaeva, Welcome to back in America.Marina Ahun Thank you.Stanislas Berteloot Marina, you are an artist and I would like you to tell me about your art. How would you describe your art styleMarina Ahun I have different art styles different. I move back and forth between two styles: realistic presentation of subject matter and abstract, and between two mediums.When I'm looking for urban street scenes that will become a realistic painting, I use watercolor. When I do abstract painting, I use oil. And I have no idea what the painting is going to look like when things the painting dictates its own source. The process complements one another beautifully and pure attraction, strengthen what I'm able to do when I'm painting I realistically.Stanislas Berteloot before being an artist, you began your carrier as an archaeology core artist. Talk to me about some of the projects you worked on at the time.Marina Ahun I draw all things archeological found in the ground, coins, sculptures terracotta, or whatever when they foundStanislas Berteloot and where were you working at the time?Marina That time I lived in Uzbekistan and married a native Uzbek.Uzbekistan is in Muslim countryand in 13 years I was in Uzbekistan I never felt welcomed. The attitude toward Russians who is almost all white people blue eyes in Soviet block Country after collapse where uncertain especially in Muslim oneStanislas Berteloot let's go back to your walk at the time. You were an archaeological artist. You told us that you were drawing artifacts that were found. Where? Where did they come from those objectsMarina from the ground in Uzbekistan is especially in Samarkand. They have real big archeologist objects, and years they working to find these big cities and just work on that.Stanislas Berteloot Okay. Did you like your work at the time?Marina Actually I drew, and I like what I did, and I see the result. And that result was published in a few books.Stanislas Berteloot You were born in the Ural Mountains of Russia. Tell me about your memories at the time. You know, when were you born? What can you remember from that early time of your life?Marina Oh I was happy as any child, around family a happy family. And I remember at the same time, I attended to middle school, music school to study play piano, art school, and study.my choice was art, but my sister's choice was to play the piano.Stanislas Berteloot So What year were you born?Marina 1962.Stanislas Berteloot How old were you when you move to study in St Petersburg? And how did it feel moving from, you know, your birth city to this big city in Russia?Marina After graduating high school, I immediately went to St. Petersburg, and six years I spent at the Repin Institute was hard but the rewarding that Institut current name is Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. And I was either very lucky or very talented to have gotten into one of the top art schools in Europe. From what I have seen, American art education is not as difficult because they don't emphasize the importance of basic education in the artistic style. This point between I think is important and after study, realistic discipline, you can move to any other style easily.Stanislas Berteloot but I'm also interested in your impression of the city and the life That you lived in St. Petersburg, you know, coming from the montane of this industrial city and arriving in St. Petersburg. How did it feel?Marina St. Petersburg is that big, big city and very, very beautiful. And every American who went there say how beautiful it is. And I was impressed. And when I felt like, not comfortable or something was going on right, we just went to the streets, just walk around the buildings, enjoy it and all my uncomfortable feelings went away.Stanislas Berteloot Were you living with other students at the time?Marina Yes, of course.Stanislas Berteloot Yeah. So was it a fun period of your life? Oh I think that time affects me in the best way as you can imagine, and built my character or they have totell me some of the best memory that you have from that time in St. Petersburg.MarinaOh, howMarina it's to deal with help from other students and from professors and they are still at high educated and they teach us each You know, brushstroke each pencil mark and but it's was a feeling realistically presentation all subject matter and we have to study hard.Stanislas Berteloot But that was some of your best memory the help that you got from your fellow students and your professors.Yeah.Okay, I see you smile on camera and I can imagine that it was a fantastic time of your life. So, despite all that, life was tough for you in Russia and you decided to move to the US in 2002. Can you give me some of the reason why you decided to move to the USMarina Oh! Reason one was the collapse of the Soviet Union because living in Uzbekistan in a Muslim country here under Muslim rule, rules both as a woman and as an artist, it was really hard and difficult to everyone.Stanislas Berteloot So you arrived in the US you apply for political asylum because of religious discrimination? That's correct, right?Marina Yes, correct.My family and my husband right now it's my ex-husband and my daughter came to the United State and relief in the form ofStanislas Berteloot what are some of the things that struck you when you arrived in the US? What are some of the details you remember of your first impression stepping in the US?Marina Oh, freedom. When I first came to America, I lived in a Russian neighborhood in Trenton because I had a friend in the group who had a friend who knew someone here. It was just the way it worked out, because I didn't know anyone here.Stanislas Berteloot Did you speak English when you arrived?Marina Oh, that time my English was really poor.Stanislas Berteloot So you say that one of the first feelings you had arriving in the US was freedom. But what are some of the visual images? You remember from that time? You know what are some of the things you saw? That was like very surprising to you?Marina Start with freedom some, my friends have picked me up from the airport and I just took around and was just impressed. She was something I never experienced in the Soviet Union. And in Uzbekistan, it's completely different architecture and completely different how people walk, how people talk, and how the are between each other. Everything is completely differentIt's a different playing ground.Stanislas Berteloot Yeah, of course, of course. How did you manage to make a living at the time? Were you supported by a government program by nonprofit Russian groups, you know, well, how did you liveMarina Actually. I camein and have just a tourist visa. And after that, I applied for a work permit and green card. And in order to survive financially, I started teaching droid to private student, and almost all my student was Russian.Stanislas Berteloot So in 2010, you became the only licensed and commissioned artist by Princeton University. What does that really mean? And how did it help you in your work?Marina That time it's mean a lot. Um, I was unknown artist andoveral thinking thatmy art is not perfect. But when I came to the Communication Office of Princeton University they immediately commissioned me to paint more and more and later on, they produce calendar official Princeton University calendar for 18 months and bought my 18 drawings.Stanislas Berteloot So that really helps you to be more known in the Princeton area more recognized as an artist rightMarina right, rightthat time I drew, just architectural renderings and some using watercolor draw flowers, portraits who is asking for having a portrait of themselves. And the time I didn't start any abstract paintings,Stanislas Berteloot and are you still doing this kind of realistic paintings or are you more focused on abstract painting nowadays?Marina Actually. I love realistic paintings. And I think it's the most beautiful painting which one can exactly produce what you see around in our nature for flowers and everything is so beautiful and just realistically representation can show you how they are.Stanislas Berteloot So then your life took a different turn in 2017 in the dead of winter in December, your apartment burned down and you lost everything. You have no insurance at the time, and I believe your daughter takes you with herIs that right?Marina Yeah.Oh it was a really difficult time and it was December 27 2017 end of the year and before the new year and cold cold weather and all my apartment was destroyed and most affected by that fire. And with the most affected 4 of 24 units in that building and one off that four units, it was mine and I had no insurance. I sustained the majority of the fireand fire Fighter damageand all my...It's difficult to talk about this because I still didn't get a reimbursement andI understand that having no insurance, renter's insurance, it's a real. bad choice and I can tell seven, just seven of 23 surviving tenants had renter's insurance. And it's not just me who had decided to live in a unite without renterIn unitedo not have any insurance. Oh, so soStanislas Berteloot yeah. How has your life been since thenMarina I'm still facing thehuge task of rebuilding my life and thinking God must really have a fantastic plan for me to put me through this terrible process. And I hopeone day I will not have a tear on my eyes when I talk about this and it's gonna be just memory bad my memory about just my memory. It's breaks my heart to think that this had all been a disaster without any reason. I tried to find why it's happened exactly to me. But I don't answerStanislas Berteloot your religious person.Marina Yes, I do believe in God. Yes. And I pray God, yes, I do believe in God.And I hopeall the religionsgive you some hope. And that hope canrebuild your life, at least hope.Stanislas Berteloot Why is your daughter not able to sustain you? To help you financially?Marina Because she's my daughter,Stanislas Berteloot and you don't want to depend I knowMarina we help each other I do somethings. She did some somethings. I care about, the preparing of the food and clean everything and see offer me some support with food.Stanislas Berteloot We are living in difficult times and this summer you were planning to teach at Mercer Community College. But the summer camp where you were to teach has been canceled. How did that affect you?MarinaOh yeahMarina all Coronavirus things and what happened with that COVID-19 affect everyone and that exactly how lost the job. Which one I think it's gonna help me survive.Stanislas Berteloot So what did you do when you learn that the job was canceled?Marina pray Godthis Coronavirus disappears.Stanislas Berteloot How did you manage to just survive day to day without any revenue?Marina I still work on my art and producing architectural renderings of Princeton University campus on Princeton. University Board bought my 18 drawings right now I produced 10 more drawings and start a new series of Gargoyles and of the Tiger of Princeton University. And I like how it's coming out. And I made postcards and I'm selling these cards through the Labirynth bookstore and Princeton University art museums tour, and they and I sold and still selling my drawing. So it gave me some sort of money. I just want to say how grateful I am that Share My Meals has been created assistance for people like me, who are in need. By providing food resourcesStanislas Berteloot so three times a week you receive a prepared meal delivered by one of the volunteersMarina Yes, I received three times a week prepared food and I'm grateful to Share My Meals, people, for the amazing supportStanislas Berteloot The rest of the time, where do you get your food from?Marina I got food from Arm in Arm and Jewish center Family Center and I participate to Corner Kitchenin a United Methodist Church,Stanislas Berteloot so given the situation and given all the hardship that you are going through, do you see sometimes regret leaving your mother country.Marina Oh, no.No, I wasreally happy to be born in the Soviet Union. And that time in the Soviet Union was a really powerful country and life until the Soviet Union collapse was really good. And I was happy to live there and I'm so glad that I was born there. But after, like 1990s life in the Soviet Union was so bad and still not really comfortable as I know from my friendsStanislas Berteloot Do you have a message that you would like to communicate with people or maybe something that your experience your life experience has taught you so far?Marina I think the most important is that you never know what life will throw at you and everyone can experience a terrible tragedy like a fire or flood and just need to come down and pray God `and I think the lesson which one gave to your lifestyle supposed to be taken and have some study from that plus some and I did.Stanislas Berteloot Okay, thank you. So finally, my, the last question I have, which I've always asked in every single episode of Back in America is, what is America to you?Marina America, for me, is a good country.And I wonder, if the same situation had happened in Russia, what I'm gonna do, and how are you gonna survived? And I think that it's gonna be a worse situation than what I experienced in the United States. And I just want to thanks everyone in the Princeton community for their help and support and God Bless all the people of Princeton.Stanislas Berteloot Marina, thank you so much for accepting to share your story with Back in America. And good luck to you.Marina Thank you, Stan. Thank you. Thank you 

Stanislas Berteloot  0:01  I have recorded my first interview with Mark Charles on May 22 three days before the murder of George Floyd. Since then, protests across the nation have forced white Americans to confront the darker, racist history of this nation. I called back mark to ask him how he felt when he first saw the video of the arrest and of the death of the Black man. Mark Charles  0:28   Wednesday morning, I forced myself to watch the entire video of the murder of George Floyd. And it was painful. It was gut-wrenching. Not only did you have a white police officer over this black man holding his knee on his neck as a black man was crying out, just to be able to breathe. But there are other people black people women watching this pleading with the officer to take his knee off to let them intervene to check his pulse to come in. He was keeping them at bay with mace, threatening to mace them. And there was another officer standing guard keeping them on the sidewalk. And in the midst of this one of the women who were there, she wasn't on camera, but you could hear her voice and she said something to the effect of how do you call the cops on the cops. And that's the challenge people of color face in this nation is our country believes that it has these institutions white America remembers that there are institutions that have been established to protect them. The police forces, the government, even the military, and people of color, have the lived experiences that throughout history these institutions have been used to oppress them, enslave them and even kill them. And once you realize that once you see that and you see the injustice happening right in front of you, it's what do you do? Where do you turn? Who do you cry out to? How do you call the cops on the cop? And so, what hit me very strong. I saw that video. I lamented it for 24 hours. I couldn't even speak publicly about it. And what it reminded me of emotionally was the 11 years I spent living on the Navajo Nation where I watched these types of things happen to my own people. In his last state of the union, President Obama was acknowledging the deep divisiveness that existed throughout his presidency, the opposition he faced at every turn. And he was lamenting that and talking about the need for our nation to build a new politics. And he quoted the constitution he said We the People. Our constitution begins with these three simple words. Words we've come to recognize me and all the people. That sounds beautiful, even inspiring. He got a lot of applause for that line. But as I sat in my house listening to him, I asked myself I said, when when did we decide we the people means all the people the founding fathers absolutely did not believe we the people met all the people. Abraham Lincoln did not believe were the people meant all the people. As good as the civil rights movement was it did not get us to be the people meaning all the people present Trump does not believe we the people means all the people. This is the problem. We've never decided collectively as a nation. That we want to be a place where We The People, includes everybody.  Barak Obama  4:06  If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the internet, try talking with one of them in real life.Jon  4:20  Welcome to back in America, the podcast.Stanislas Berteloot  4:32  I am Stan Berteloot and this is back in America, the podcast where I explore Americans' identity, culture, and values. My guest today is a candidate running as an independent for President of the United States. A man who's not white, not black, but a dual citizen of the United State and the Navajo Nation. For three years. He lived with his family in a one-room hogan with no running water or electricity out in a Navajo reservation. He dreams of a nation where We The People truly means all the people. Yet as we prepare to celebrate Memorial Day, he reminds us of the ethnic cleansing and genocide the United State carried against the indigenous people of this land. Mark Charles  5:26  Thank you, Stan, it's very good to be with you please let me introduce (...) When we introduce ourselves, we always give our four clans we're matrilineal as a people with our identities coming from our mother's mother. Now my mother's mother's American of Dutch heritage and that's why I say Simba kid dinner. Loosely translated that means I'm from the wooden shoe people. My second clan, my father's mother is told him blini which is the waters that float together. My third clan, my mother's father is also syndicate. And then my fourth time my father's father's to the cine, which is the bitter water clan. It's one of the original clans were Navajo people. I just want to acknowledge as well that I'm speaking to you today from the traditional lands of the discard away. I live in what's now known as Washington DC, but it was the Piscataway who lived in these lands, they hunted here, they fished here, they farmed here, they raised their families here, they bury their dead here. These were their lands long before Columbus got lost at sea. And I want to acknowledge the people whose land them out of where I go around the country. And so I honored today that Piscataway. I also want to honor that you're speaking to me from Princeton, New Jersey, which is the traditional end of the Lenape. And I also honor though the not pay as the indigenous hosts of the land where you are conducting this interview from, but it's great to be on the on the show with you. So thank you for having me. Stanislas Berteloot  6:57  Thank you for making time for me today, Mark. So, let me start with a burning question I have got. Is this country ready for Native American president? Mark Charles  7:12  I understand why you would ask that question. I would actually say that that question is coming from the wrong perspective. What that question does is it it centers white land-owning men. And the challenge we face in this nation is the entire nation was founded on founded for even founded by white landowning men. So our Declaration of Independence, which says all men are created equal, refers to natives as savages. Our constitution which starts with We the People, first of all, never mentioned to women, it specifically excludes natives when it comes to African, just three-fifths of a person which in 1787, that literally left white men and it was white men who could vote. And so the nation which claims to be about equality, freedom and liberty and justice, was actually defined very narrowly. For white landowning men, and that demographic has controlled the narrative and placed themselves at the center of both politics, economics, social life, everything in this country. And so when you ask, is America ready for a native president? The question that is really being asked, Is, are white landowning men ready to have a Native American president? I don't know the answer to that question. That's one reason why I'm running. It's also one of the reasons why my campaign is trying to decenter whiteness. Now, I firmly believe that the marginalized groups within our country, women, African Americans, Native Americans, LGBTQ, other people who are not part of that center demographic.I think there is a very big openness to having knowledge as someone who's native, but also someone who's African American, someone who's a woman, someone who's a member of the LGBTQ community, outside of the center, which is the white landowning male, the rest of the country, I think is definitely ready for a much more diverse knowledge pool of candidates, but even actual presidents. The question is, are white men ready? And technically, I'm not convinced they are. But that does not prevent me from running. And it actually helps me frame my campaign, which is literally about decentering whiteness. Stanislas Berteloot  9:34  Thank you. Thank you. And we'll definitely come back to that. Before we do, however, in order to better understand who you are and what where you come from. I would love you to take me back to your early days. Where did you grow up? Talk to me about your parents, your siblings. Mark Charles  9:53  Yeah, so I grew up in the southwest of the United States, right near a border town. To the Navajo Nation, a small town known as Gallup, New Mexico. This is the area in the United States that in 1862, was ethnically cleansed by Abraham Lincoln. So, after signing the Pacific Railway act in 1862, he literally began very systematically ethnically cleansing native tribes from the states of Minnesota, Colorado and the territory of New Mexico to make way for some of the early routes of the transcontinental railway. And one of those routes went through the Southwest, which was right where are Navajo, the Mescalero, Apache and other problems were. And so in 1863 1864, they began the ethnic cleansing and genocidal policy known as The Long Walk, where they literally burned our villages, burned our homes, destroyed our crops, killed our livestock, and hunted our people rounded us out and moved us down to a reservation established by Abraham Lincoln Near busca donde. it, they called it a reservation technically was a death camp. Over 10th of almost 10,000 people were marched down there. nearly a quarter of our people died while in prison there. And then after we came back after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. We were moved to a much smaller plot of land north of what was to become Gallup. So I grew up in that area, off of the reservation right near the sporter town in a mission compound that was started by the Christian Reformed Church in the early 1900s. They actually came to the southwest to establish a mission, and they very early on after they arrived, started a boarding school. Again, the role of the boarding schools was to commit cultural genocide to forcibly assimilate natives the status goal of the boarding schools used by the government and the churches was to kill the Indian save the man. And so young children, Native children were taken from their homes put in these military-style boarding schools, punished for speaking their languages punished for practicing their culture. On the stories of abuse that I've heard, mental, physical, emotional, sexual, that happened in these boarding schools is gut-wrenching. And so I my grandparents on my father's side, my Navajo grandparents were both boarding school survivors. And they became Christians, again, a very colonized version of Christianity that rejected their culture, and their language and their understanding of the sacred. And so they emphasized Western education and the English language with my father and my aunt, and they worked as translators for some of the early missionaries. My mother then came down as a missionary nurse and she was actually on her way to Africa when she met my father. And they began dating and fell in love and got married. And this was in the late 60s, which is literally right after biracial marriage even became legal in the United States. For much of this nation's history, biracial marriage was not even legal  Stanislas Berteloot  13:18  Between the United States, Native Americans, and white people or for all races.  Mark Charles  13:24  Yeah, white people are not allowed to marry black people, native peoples biracial marriage was not legal in the United States until the late 60s. Yeah, and so and so they were married soon after that, and I, my siblings and I attended this Mission School, which was in the process of transitioning from a boarding school into a day school. And so we attended there I attended there as a boarding as a day school student. I had other friends and people who were Attending. There's a boarding school student and many times our experiences were vastly different. So that's the environment I grew up in, which was highly assimilated. Even though my Navajo grandparents lived on campus with us and I saw them every day, we did not speak Navajo in the home. The school I went to did not affirm Navajo culture. And it was it was a I so I was raised very much in  in a white evangelical setting. Stanislas Berteloot  14:34  I saw that you were widely mentioned in the Guardian. In the UK that's quite prestigious. Mark Charles  14:42  Yeah, they actually, they did a longer interview of me probably nine months ago. And then they quoted me on it on a story they did on the Navajo Nation. A week or two ago.  Stanislas Berteloot  14:56  Do you have a lot of coverage? at the moment Mark Charles  15:00  No, I've had a few national stories of very few. The press has largely ignored me, including literally writing me out of events that I've attended. The national press in the US does not want to cover my campaign.  Stanislas Berteloot  15:19  And why is that?  Mark Charles  15:21  Well, there's two challenges. The first is the history I'm discussing. Our nation doesn't know what to do with it. Again, there's a deep mythology in the United States of America that we have these foundations that are fantastic and great. And the press doesn't know what to do with someone who clearly articulates a counter to that narrative. I'm second, I'm running as an independent and the press is deeply invested in our two party system and maintaining the status quo of that two party system. And so they largely ignore third party and independent candidates. Stanislas Berteloot  16:00  Were you when you realize that Native Americans were treated as white Americans? And how did it make you feel? Mark Charles  16:07  So, again how growing up I knew I was native, I knew that my father was Navajo I knew I mean, the reservation and my all our my native relatives were literally just across the street are where the reservation began in some instances. And we would go on to the reservation frequently I, I was, you know, Gallop is a center for both native and kind of the settler culture out there. But had you asked me when I was in high school, or when I was even early college about what was the daily experience of native peoples, I probably would have told you that, well, the history was bad. But today, things are much better. And things have improved a lot. It really wasn't until I moved I, I went to college, attended and graduated from UCLA in Los Angeles, moved to Albuquerque, moved back to California, got married, eventually moved back again to the southwest. And then, after a few years was called to pastor a church in Denver, Colorado known as a church was called the Christian Indian center. And the congregation which was primarily Navajo was really wrestling with the question of what did it mean to be native and be Christian? Because the gospel was brought in a very colonial way, which said to be a Christian, you have to be a white, cultured person, speaking English and celebrating Christmas and the Easter Bunny and everything else and giving up your pagan heathen ways of your native culture. There was a renaissance if you will, going on not In the US, but globally, of indigenous Christians who are asking this question, what does it mean to follow the teachings of Jesus, but yet still be from the tribe and the cultures that we are from. And so, I began almost a 10 year process of building relationships with indigenous Christian leaders from all over the world. It was called the world Christian gathering on indigenous peoples. And we would meet every year every other year in a different nation around the world and would talk and challenge and learn about ways we would begin to deconstruct this colonial worldview. And this is where I really began to understanding how deeply embedded the colonial history of our nation was so closely tied to the history of the church. After a few years, our family, my wife, and I decided that if I was going to really be leading in this type of movement, our capacity that I needed to live on the Navajo Nation, we needed to live there. So we moved from Denver back to the Navajo Nation and we wanted to go because I grew up in a border town and on a mission compound and I, attended what essentially was a private school that was also operating as a boarding school.Um, I, wanted to actually live as traditionally as we could. And so we moved into a very remote section of our reservation. Six miles off the nearest paved road on a dirt road. no running water, no electricity. Our neighbors were rug Weaver's and shepherds, and we move they're prepared to live off the grid. We move they're ready to haul our water and cook by camp stove or are over an open fire to live by candlelight using an outhouse, all the things that life has like hurt sheep and everything else of life, what life is like out there and we prepared ourselves with that. What we what caught us by surprise. Literally slapped us in the face was how deeply marginalized we realized the reservation community was it literally like we felt like we dropped off the face of the earth. I learned very quickly that living on the reservation primarily the only nonnatives you ever see or interact with are those who come to give you charity or those who come to take your picture. Almost nobody comes to get to know you as a person or treats you as appear. At the same time I'm experiencing and witnessing and observing the historical trauma of our people from the boarding schools from the long walk from the oppressive history. I'm learning more about the history I'm I'm seeing things from a whole different angle. I'm seeing the oppressive economic policies of our nation and how they've, they've caused this unemployment and the challenges of the reservation tribes not owning their lands, but there being trust land held by the federal government, and I'm seeing all these problems experiencing them firsthand.  Stanislas Berteloot  21:00  How do you feel?  Mark Charles  21:00  and  Stanislas Berteloot  21:00  How do you feel? Mark Charles  21:01  I'm becoming more and more law I'm becoming angrier and angrier, I'm becoming very angry. And I'm trying to process through all this because again, I feel in some ways like a fish out of water because I'd never grown up experiencing this and thinking things used to be bad, but now they're okay. And now I'm sitting in this environment and I find myself just doing and I'm trying to process through it even with some of my non native friends. Again, we're doing this over the phone or email or, or even by letter because they're not coming to the reservation. And every time the topic comes up, I can feel the anger kind of welling up inside of me, and soon I have to hang up the phone so I don't yell at my friends. So I began to kind of disconnect emotionally so I can talk about it more. Almost like this is something I read the newspaper, then I can stay on the on the discussion longer, but it's not soon after that, that my friends defensive start rising. I didn't do that to your people. I wasn't the cause of that. And soon they would hang up the phone. So I was searching for a way to engage the dialogue that led me honestly articulate what I was feeling, but didn't drive myself or others from the conversation. And I was writing a letter to my friends this is after multiple attempts to get understand what I was feeling. And in my letter, I said to them being Native American and living on our reservation in the middle of this country, it feels like our native peoples are this old grandmother who has a very large and very beautiful house. And years ago, some people came into our house, and they violently locked us upstairs in the bedroom. Today, our house is full of people. They're sitting on our furniture, they're eating our food. They're having a party inside our house. Now they've since come upstairs and they've unlocked the door to the bedroom, but it's much later and we're tired. We're old, we're weak, we're sick, so we can't or we don't come out. But the thing that hurts us the most causes us the most pain is that virtually nobody from this party ever comes upstairs, seeks out the grandmother in the bedroom, sits down next to her on the bed, takes her hand and simply says thank you.Thank you for letting us be in your house in why I wrote that. I mean, that's it. That's when I'm feeling it. Stanislas Berteloot  23:22  I love that. I love the metaphor. I mean, I think this is right on. Why do you think nobody comes to you? Why do you think nobody asked? Mark Charles  23:29  Well, I think the challenge is, is because of the history because of the implicit racial bias of white supremacy. Because of the dehumanization of native peoples, African Americans and women, our nation. Our nation doesn't know how to deal with its history. It doesn't know what to do with it, and so and so our country There's this reversal of roles. One of the things our country, part of the national narrative that our country says about itself is that we're a nation of immigrants. Now, that's true for a majority of people. But when you call the United States of America, a nation of immigrants, you're excluding two groups of people. You're excluding Native Americans who were indigenous to these lands and did not immigrate to become a part of this country. And you're excluding descendants of enslaved people from Africa, who were brought here against their will, and then enslaved and forced to build this nation. So calling our nation a nation of immigrants excludes some of the most unjust and oppressive actions our nation has ever done. And so, there because we we have this narrative, not only of we're an immigrants, but we're a nation of exceptional immigrants, American exceptionalism. There's this reversal of roles where you literally have 300 plus million technically undocumented immigrants, people who've never asked for permission, nor have they been given permission to be here. And they act like they own the place. And then you have 6 million approximately indigenous peoples native peoples who have been pushed to the side and are treated like unwanted guests in someone else's house. And so we have this reversal of roles. Again, this goes back to the whole myth of America. One of the myths we have is that these lands were discovered. I have a book titled Unsettling Truths, the ongoing dehumanizing legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery. The first sentence of the first chapter says you cannot Discover lands already inhabited. You can steal lands that aren't habitation, you can colonize lands that are inhabited. You can ethically cleanse lands are inhabited. You cannot discover them. There's already somebody there. So the fact that we have this national narrative that says, Columbus discovered America, it reveals the implicit racial bias, which is that Native Americans who lived here, and Africans who were brought here and enslaved, were not fully human. And so this is why our nation doesn't even think to say thank you. Because then the belief is, and even if you go back to the boarding school, the goal the boarding school was to what to kill the Indian to save the man. The notion is that by the presence of white Europeans in this country, even by The bringing over of African people from Africa and then slaving them here, we civilize them and even humanized them.And wasn't that very generous of these white Europeans. Stanislas Berteloot  27:26  The interviews continue with part two. In part two of this interview, I asked Mark whether Native Americans should work within the system, or should they focus on dealing with the foundation of the problem. Mark also talks at length about the relationship, or lack of, between African American and Native American. He discussed the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls crisis in the US. We go on to talk about the impact of the Coronavirus on Native American community, President Trump is mentioned and Mark shares some of the immediate actions that he would take. If elected. Make sure you’re listening to part two of the interview of Mark Charles, an independent candidate to the presidential elections of the United States.

 I am Stan Berteloot and this is Back in America, a podcast where I explore American's identity, culture, and values.My guest today is a candidate running as an independent for president of the United States. A man who's not white, not black but a dual citizen of The United States and The Navajo Nation.For three years he lived with his family in a one-room hogan with no running water or electricity out in a Navajo reservation. He dreams of a nation where 'we the people' truly means 'all the people'.Yet as we prepare to celebrate Memorial day he reminds us of the “ethnic cleansing and genocide” the United States carried against the indigenous peoples of this land.Welcome to Back in America Mark Charles. Transcript Stanislas Berteloot  0:00  Welcome. This is part two of an interview with Mark Charles a Native American and an independent candidate to the presidential elections of 2020. I discovered the the boarding school while in Phoenix, a Native American Museum, people were mistreated and dehumanized. What I also understood is that some Native Americans use that experience to politicize themselves in order to fight back the oppretion Is that something you know, agree with?  Mark Charles  0:44  Yes. My grandfather was one was a person like that. I mean, he he was a boarding school survivor. And he learned English well, he attended college. He didn't graduate due to the Great Depression and he actually went to he testified in front of Congress. advocating for more funding for Indian education. So yeah, there's there's a history of people, native peoples African people, women who have been trying to work within the system to get the system to treat these communities better. And on one hand, you could say, that's what I'm doing with my campaign for president. But I'm, I'm taking it to a level that our nation has never dealt with before. Certainly, I am advocating that we deal with the foundations because that's where the dehumanization, and the white supremacy, the racism and the sexism and I want to come back to that and Stanislas Berteloot  1:43  I also want to tell me a bit more about the Doctrine of Discovery. But before we do that, let me come back to something that you mentioned and that you're also mentioning in your in your video, the fact that you know, your experience is somewhat similar to, or at least you want to unify the black American with the Native Americans, yet my understanding that the relationship between the Native Americans and the blacks have not always been very easy or peaceful, some Native American, even enslaved blacks, you know, what's your what's your take on that? Mark Charles  2:29  I will agree that there there is some bad history in the past between both African Americans and Native Americans. And again, any other group of people you're going to see this and I would agree that that does exist there. My experience growing up was there was very little if any interaction between black and white because the three predominant demographics in the southwest are watching Latino or Latina dynamics, and natives, there's very few, if any African Americans in the southwest, there are some. But but it's a much smaller group. And so a lot of my experience growing up was there was just a lot of ignorance about even the history. And this is one of the challenges that we face. So because of the way race was constructed in America, again, where the, the narrative of our country was, these lands were discovered, so there were no people here. And then African people were captured and brought over here and enslaved. And the way the black race was constructed, was in part through what's called the one drop rule. So the one drop rule states that if you have a single drop of African blood, you're black. Now, the reason we have this rules Because blacks were the enslaved demographic, they were used to build the country. And so this nation wanted as many of them as possible. So the one drop rule allowed for a white slave owner to rape his female enslaved women and produce more people that they could enslave. Meanwhile, the native community, we had what's known as the blood quantum rule that was applied to us. The blood quantum rule stated that if there was intermarriage, or if you know, you could be full and then half and then a quarter of an eighth and a 16th. And soon your nativeness could be bred out of you. Why do we have this rule for natives? Well, because the myth of the nation was we discovered these lands there were no people here. And the US government had treaty obligations to native people. So they want as few of us as possible. And so the American Indian race was constructed so it could be bred out of existence and eventually assimilated into the broader nation. And so because of these things. And because most of the places where because of the way enslavement works, the way the black population increased was where there were a lot of white people. And because natives were being ethnically cleansed and removed from these lands, and that best put on reservations, if not just  silently killed wherever white people came, natives decreased. And so the Southwest was one place where there was some population of native peoples and there was some intermixing between the races. And so because of this there, there was very little interaction. Not none but very little interaction between the white or the black and the native races Stanislas Berteloot  5:46  today, what are your own personal interactions with the African American communities? And how does it works out? Mark Charles  5:54  I frequently get asked questions by people about how can they reach out to native peoples. How can they begin to learn the system And, and even build relationships within native communities. And oftentimes, they're not looking really to build relationships, they're looking for ways to kind of give charity or to learn some things and study a few new things. And I work very hard to direct people in a different path. And so I work very hard to tell people this is all about building relationship. And so I've tried to take the very same approach to my understanding about the African American community. Okay, because I grew up in an area where there were so few African Americans, I've learned that I have to be very intentional, to build relationships within that community. And so for most of my adult life, where we've moved around the country, even the churches we've attended, or sometimes the neighborhoods we lived in, we have been very intentional to put ourselves in a space where we are interacting with the African American community, and seeing some of the challenges and some of the struggles and then in the context of That beginning to be building relationships within that community, you know, the challenges is that as a nation, we see all these things in silos. And so the nation because of the way the population has worked out, it tends to deal primarily with white versus black and to focus on the issue the injustice of slavery. But the challenge is, it's not that siloed we have women who are dealing with issues of sexism and assault, we have Native Americans who are dealing with issues of genocide and ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide and boarding schools and removal have African Americans who are dealing with histories of enslavement and Jim Crow, and segregation and all communities of color dealing with issues of mass incarceration. And these are very much not siloed things and yet, often were put into silos. And so by taking this approach, of investing deeply in relationships within these diverse communities, This is what helped lead me even into this understanding of one of the primary visions of my platform, which is that our nation needs a national dialogue on race, gender, and class, a conversation that steps out of the silos and actually begins to look at the root of what's causing these challenges in all of our communities.  Stanislas Berteloot  10:31  How is it being welcomed by the community, the black community? Mark Charles  10:34  Well, again, so a lot of this is helping people understand the value of having this dialogue rooted in a much deeper history, not just in the history of one demographic, or one group of people, or even one narrative. And there there's a there's a native leader from Canada. His name is George Rasmus and when he was writing In regards to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that happened in Canada, out of their residential schools, he used this quote where he said, where common memory is lacking where people do not share on the same path, there can be no real history, or no real community. If you want to build community says you have to start by creating common memory. Now, this is a very good idea, not just for white people, but for all Americans to understand that there are so many stories of the people who live here, people who call themselves citizens, whether it's this the stories of enslavement, the stories of, of, you know, of the Holocaust, the stories of internment camps, the stories of boarding schools, and removal and massacres. There's all these different stories and we don't by and large as a nation have a common memory. People will know the story within their silos, but they won't know the stories of the broader nation that the more the narrative of the of the broader community. And so what I'm really trying to do is to say, hey, there's a value in learning all of these stories and giving, giving voice to all of these different demographics so that we as a nation can actually have a healthier community. And I get that, but then what that vision is, is heard Well, it's received well, the people who hear it think it's beautiful and really like it. Stanislas Berteloot  12:32  Yeah. And what I'm trying to get at is, you know, what concrete action Did you see from other communities, including the black communities in joining the common understanding and this common memory. You know, my, my experience, looking at my experience of, you know, white guy in this country, is that as you said, this is very siloed and the black say look our experience is so different from anything else that we need to fight for ourselves, nobody else but us can carry on this fight. You come with a very different view, saying let's bring together our common experience in order to create a memory that will never else fight to be even stronger. But did you see that actually being picked up by other communities? Mark Charles  13:30  What I find among the demographics is when when we are able to properly educate everybody with some of the true history of all the communities, and when you read the Constitution, and there's really three demin four demographics that the constitution defines very clearly. You know, it starts with the words in the preamble with people. That sounds inclusive. It sounds like oh, everybody is a part of this. But Article One, Section two, which is this Section of the Constitution just a few lines below the preamble that defines who actually is included and we the people. And first of all, it never mentioned women. And this is important because if you read the entire constitution preamble to the 27th amendment, you will find that there are 51 gender specific male pronouns 51 he him in his who can run for office who can hold office even who's protected by the document, there's not a single female pronoun and the entire constitution. So we have to know Article One, section two never mentioned women. Second is specifically excludes natives. And third accounts, Africans is three fifths of a person. So, in 1787, that leaves white men and it was white land owning men who could vote. So there's an expectation that everybody is included. And one of the most clear ways to identify this is this crisis that's going on right now in Indian Country known as missing and murdered indigenous Women and Girls, where there are literally hundreds if not thousands of Indigenous women who've been reported missing or reported more murdered by their families, to law enforcement, local, state, and even federal. And not only are their cases not being closed, but often they're not even being opened. Their families are literally left to go and hunt for them themselves. When I was at the Franklin Mayer Native American presidential forum, they were asking the candidates about this, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, who in Costco, Kamala Harris, and as they learned about this crisis, they were all responding and saying, We need a new law or new policy to protect this vulnerable demographic. However, as a native man who's read our constitution and knows our history, my response was and is, when your declaration calls Decker's independence calls native savages and your constitution never mentioned to women. You shouldn't be prize when your Indigenous women go missing and get murdered, and society and the government doesn't care, a new law isn't going to fix this problem because the law is ultimately based on our foundations. And it's our foundations that state this group is not included. If we want to fix this problem, we have to fix our foundations. Stanislas Berteloot  16:24  Yeah, and how do you explain it? I mean, besides, you know, what you just said about the Constitution, you know, why is this demographic missing? And my question is, is it because they are not reported properly at the first place? I mean, are they tracked Native American woman are they do they have papers I mean, are there listings? Mark Charles  16:46  that's the problem. There's no central listing there's nothing they even though they get reported, nothing happens or very little happens on the on the the system the the institutional side of the law enforcement And suddenly  Stanislas Berteloot  17:01  that's been going on for years, right? I mean, Mark Charles  17:03  yes. Everybody knows about that. And this is this is the problem. And this is why it's a crisis. And this is also why. And so one of the ways you you, I look at it. Um, there's an author named  William Jennings, who's talked about this idea of proximity to whiteness. When you understand the Doctrine of Discovery, you read our foundations and you realize that technically, the foundations were written for white, landowning, technically Christian men. That is like the sweet spot of this country. If you're a white land owning Christian male, the United States of America is your oyster. Y ou have every opportunity, every possibility, many, many many chances to come and find your fortunes.  Now, depending on what other demographics You are so myself I'm a male with dark skin because I'm Navajo. And I am a Christian, but I don't own any land. So I fit two of the four categories, right? I'm, I'm a male. I'm a native male, who's a Christian. So I get two and I missed two. So there's a few ways that I can have this proximity to whiteness to be included within the system. Lower down at the bottom, you have women of color, African American women, other women of color, they're not white, they're not male. They may be Christian, and if they work very, very, very hard, they might be able to become a landowner. So they have one, maybe one and a half of the four categories. At the very bottom, very bottom, a group that has almost no proximity and even very little chancer proximity are indigenous women.  A, if they're indigenous, and they're living on their reservation, there's a good chance they follow their traditional religion. So they're not Christian. Because they're on a reservation, which is federal lands held in trust for the tribes, they can't own land. They're not white, and they're not male. They fit none of the categories and have very little chance of gaining access to any of those categories. So they are at the very, very, very bottom. And so one of the things that I'm trying so hard to do is until we include the people at the very bottom, we're not going to be able to include everybody. So if I were just fighting for the rights of Navajo men, then I would still believing women of color, who have no idea opportunity to have those access points. And this is why I go back frequently to to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. Because again, this is the demographic that has almost zero proximity to whiteness. And therefore it's it we have to take note that this is the group of people that even when they get reported as missing or murdered, society doesn't respond. Stanislas Berteloot  20:29  I want to ask you about the current pandemic. For the past few decades, Native American nations have been increasingly taken on a greater responsibility for providing a wide range of governmental services. Yet, as Native American nation cannot raise tax, as you know, the rest of the government there were dependent on casinos or enterprises that because of the pandemic have been closed and that make the situation harder for the American Native American people now to deal with, you know, what's, what's your take on on this situation? Mark Charles  21:10  I would argue that the the root of the problem comes down to sovereignty or control over their own lands and land titles. This is this is at the root of what is causing so much the challenge for our native nations. If you follow the news  Stanislas Berteloot  21:30  and we are dealing with or you are talking about the challenge when it comes to the coronavirus  Mark Charles  21:35  Well, I'm just talking about in general the chat Yes, and this fits in very close to the Coronavirus and I can understand why. So, um how can I do this without going on for 20 minutes Um, so, a few a few in March actually mean go back in the Obama administration established reservation lands for the mashpee Wampanoag in Massachusetts. Joe Biden this was part of the Biden Obama administration. In his second term, he established reservation lands for the mashpee Wampanoag. In March of this year, march of 2020. The Trump administration disestablished those reservations. So essentially, if you think of it, that if you think of the US government as the landlord, and the native nations as the tenants, and the reservation as the apartment, what happened is, cousin Obama gave an apartment to the native nation. And then during a global pandemic, President Trump kicked them out of the apartment. So a it was unjust it was it was heartless but be the timing of it was horrible. This was like kicking someone out of their apartment during a hurricane. It just it's if there was not only is it heartless to evict evict people, but to evict them in the midst of a global pandemic is like, it's just it's completely heartless. And so there was a lot of outcry amongst the general population, people who knew about it. This was a cruel act by the Trump administration. And even President, Vice President Biden responded to this. And he wrote a letter responding to the the injustice of that, and I want to just read one of the quotes from his letter he wrote, he pointed out how it was cruel of the Trump administration to disestablish this reservation, during a pandemic, he reminded the country that the Obama administration and with him helped establish this result servation and then he went on and he said one of the most important roles the federal government plays in rebuilding the nation to nation relationship is taking land into trust on behalf of tribes. It is critical for tribal sovereignty and self determination. Now, that statement is dripping with white supremacy and dehumanization. Let's just for for fun. Let's insert France instead of native tribes. Okay. One of the most important roles the federal government plays in rebuilding the nation to nation relationship is taking land into trust on behalf of France. It is critical for French sovereignty and self determination. If President Trump or President Obama or anyone said that to another foreign leader, those would be words of war. Stanislas Berteloot  24:51  Yeah, that would be an outcry Mark Charles  24:53  you wouldn't you would. This is A this is not a nation to nation relationship. And this has nothing to do with sovreignty and self determination. Right. And so the fascinating thing about this is in joe biden's mind, Trump is bad because he kicked in the wife mashpee Wampanoag out, he and pressident Obama were good because they let them in. But neither one of them are understanding the injustice of the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island (Turtle Island is a name for North America, used by many Native Americans and First Nations people and by Indigenous rights activists), being considered mere tenants in the lands that were stolen, and ethnically cleanse by the government, of their people. And so this is, and this is where the Doctrine of Discovery lies. And so, because there is no sense of native rights to land, we are merely tenants we're merely occupants, and that is rooted in the Doctrine of Discovery. A Supreme Court case back in 1823 JOHN Marshall is the first case referencing the Doctrine of Discovery. Its reference as recently as 2005. I did a TEDx talk on this called we the people the three most misunderstood words in US history, laying out the court case in 2005, the United Indian nation versus the city of Charlotte in New York, I entered, I lay out how this is one of the most white supremacist Supreme Court opinions written in my lifetime that again, denies the United Indian nation rights to their land based on the Doctrine of Discovery. And that opinion was written by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.   Yeah, again. So so in the midst of this pandemic, the Navajo Nation now has the highest rate of infection of any if it were a state, we would have the highest rate of were higher than new New York and New Jersey, on the Navajo Nation. Health care is rural there. There's not enough hospitals. We have almost 200 thousand people on the Navajo Nation because of history and cultural differences and understandings. Social distancing is a challenge to get our people to social distance. Because of the rising numbers on the Navajo Nation, the county of McKinley, McKinley County, New Mexico, became the highest rate of infection in New Mexico, which is where this the city of Gallup lives, which is where I grew up, right, the end of last month, end of April, the outgoing mayor of Gallup was seeing this rising infection rate he was seeing what was happening to the two hospitals they have in Gallup and he was looking at what was taking place on their closest neighbor which is the Navajo Nation. Now the Navajo Nation is a food desert 200,000 people about 26,000 square miles 13 full service grocery stores.  The border towns are absolutely crucial because There's not enough inventory on the Navajo Nation to feed our people. So you have to go to the border towns on the weekends to buy groceries. Many of our people are on fixed incomes and they get a check from the government at the end of the month. And so the end of the month you're stretching your budget and your food. And then the first of the month when you get your check or your money, you have to go to the border town to buy groceries. The city of Gallup New Mexico cannot exist economically. Without the influx of money from the Navajo Nation. It cannot exist without without this business. On the last second the last day of the month, the outgoing mayor in April, sent a letter to the governor of New Mexico, asking her to invoke the riot control act so they could shut the roads into gallop. So they shut the roads into Gallup put police officers and National Guards they're literally at to keep natives from coming into town and buying groceries at gunpoint. Stanislas BertelootWhoa. So what happened? Mark CharlesThey shut it down for almost two weeks. How did the people eat? Stanislas Berteloot  29:23  Where did they find the food? Mark Charles  29:24  Well, they would have to eat understand in a long line at the one of the few grocery stores on the reservation or traveled to another border town to my to two hours in the other direction. Again, I fully admit this was a crisis 250 years in the making. There was no good solution to this problem. But of all the bad solutions they could have possibly found. invoking the riot control act on people who are not Riot who are not rioting, and who are foundations already dehumanized, and to lock them out of this town where they literally just trying to buy groceries That's probably the worst of the bad solutions they have in front of them. And so that's happening there. Meanwhile, you have in South Dakota, there are several roads that pass right through many of the reservations in South Dakota and the tribes in South Dakota fearing knowing how vulnerable their population is because of access to hospitals and access to healthy food and this the challenges they face knowing how vulnerable their populations are to COVID-19 decided to set up checkpoints not to keep people out but to monitor who's passing through so they could protect their population, and that the white governor of south dakota began challenging them and demanding that they not take these actions to protect their people, and recently is two days ago reached out to the Trump administration, asking for federal help to stop the tribes from doing this. So in New Mexico, you have the net, the Navajo, the native nations and Navajo Nation being told by the governor, they can't go into a border town. And in South Dakota, you have the the the governor telling native nations, they cannot protect their people on the land that's been established as their reservation. This is the problem. And Joe Biden thinks this relationship is just great.As well as Donald Trump does. Stanislas Berteloot  31:35  Mark we've been we've been talking for an hour and I have three more questions, which I really want to ask you. One question is from one of our listeners, who is asking what do you think of President Trump's actions regarding the world since the beginning of his governance, Mark Charles  31:53  So one of the challenges because our nation doesn't have a common memory because we have this mythological History is there's this narrative coming out of our country that President Trump is ruining our nation. He's destroying our nation. We used to be this great nation. And now we're not.  I absolutely agree President Trump has a problem. But he's not the root of the problem.  We have to do to this day we have a declaration of independence that calls native savages. To this day, one of our greatest presidents as a country that we hold up as our greatest President Abraham Lincoln was one of the most white supremacists and ethnic cleansing presidents in our nation's history. People act and I actually wrote that article, I wrote two articles there on my blog on my campaign website, which is MarkCharles2020.com. One of the articles is titled um, President Trump and Biden are both peddling this nostalgia and that's a problem. So they're both talking about how America used to be great. And now it's not so Donald Trump is running to make America great again. Implying it wasn't beforehand. Vice President Biden is saying, well, let's bring America back to its former greatness. Apparently, before President Trump.  The only people who can have a nostalgic memory about this country are white people. They're the only people there's a there's an ad by by President, Vice President Biden just a few weeks ago, that it was a brilliant ad. It was about the COVID-19 pandemic. And it said, it basically used quotes of Donald Trump of his denial of this pandemic and what was happening with it and it it ended was saying it had a quote, where it said, President Trump didn't build a great economy. He destroyed one. Okay. Now, again, that sounds most Americans are going to read that and say, yes, President Trump is doing all these things to destroy our economy and look. Well, this is implying that the economy our nation had three months ago was great. So three months ago, yes, corporate profits were an all-time high. Unemployment was at an all time low. But we had millennials drowning in debt from education. We have most people working a lot of our millennials working two three jobs in the gig economy just to make ends meet. Healthcare is abysmal. Yeah, for white landowning men three months ago, the economy was great. They were making money hand over foot. For everyone else. We were barely scraping by living paycheck to paycheck. See, this is the problem. The the whole notion that we used to be great, President Trump is ruining this great country completely ignores the incredible racism, sexism and white supremacy of our nation. I wrote another article a few months ago, this was during the height of the of the impeachment proceedings. And that article was titled, if you think simply impeaching Donald Trump is the solution, then you don't understand the problem. Absolutely. Donald Trump is a problem. He has appeared very narcissistic. He has this very short-sighted policy. He's, yeah, he's definitely not a very constructive president. But, so we're most of our even great presidents. Abraham Lincoln ethnically cleanse and literally was a white supremacist, blatant white supremacist. Ronald Reagan started war on drugs, which was technically a war on race. Bill Clinton perfected the art of mass incarceration and filled our prisons with people of color. So, not to think Trump is the only problem is has a very, it ignores most of the history of our country. Stanislas Berteloot  36:31  Do you think that this nation who's original sin includes the enslavement of black people, and the extermination of Native American? Do you think that this nation will ever be able to live together? Mark Charles  36:44  The vision of my country of my of my campaign is I am calling the question and I'm asking our country do we want to be a nation where we the people truly mean to all the people? I don't know the answer. answer to that question. I don't know what my nation is going to decide. If they decide No, then that's fine. That's great. We're doing a good job of that because we're obviously not a nation where we the people include everybody. If we do want to be a nation where we the people means all the people, then we have to deal with our foundations. We have to do some foundational level work, the United States of America is not racist and sexist and white supremacists, in spite of our foundations. were racist, sexist, and white supremacists because of our foundations. And we have to address that and so I cannot make my nation not be racist, sexist and white supremacists. I can present a vision and I can ask the question, do we want to be this or not? If we do want to be that, then we have to look at some very serious changes. We need to make And so yeah, that's really what my campaign is all about. And I, to be honest, I know there's a lot of people who like my vision. But there are also a lot of people who are pretty convinced that things are just fine the way they are. Stanislas Berteloot  38:19  One question I always ask is: what is America to you? Mark Charles  38:27  America is a colonial nation founded on stolen lands, broken treaties, enslavement, racism, sexism, ethnic cleansing and genocide. It desperately wants to be something else. But it doesn't know if it's willing to put in the work to become that And that's what I'm trying to ask. And that's what I'm working towards as a candidate for president. That's the vision I'm holding out. That's the very, very basic question. I'm trying to get my country to answer. And I'm being as honest as I can and saying if we want that we have some extremely difficult work that we need to do. Okay. Stanislas Berteloot  39:36  Finally, Mark, do you have any books or movies that you would recommend? Mark Charles  39:42  One of the first books about the Doctrine of Discovery that I was ever exposed to it written by a native author, his name is Steven Newcomb. He's Shawnee and Lenape and he wrote a book called Pagans in the Promised Land. And it's a very in-depth book about the Doctrine of Discovery and it was Once again, one of the first books I was exposed to regarding this doctrine, and I highly respect Steve for the work that he's done. And the way he has tried to press the conversation forward on the doctrine and even trying to get the nations and even the church to acknowledge it. While he and I may not agree on everything about about the doctrine, I highly respect his work, and I think his voice is one that needs to be heard. I also just recently published a book on the Doctrine of Discovery, titled Unsettling Truths, the Ongoing Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, my co author, Soong-Chan Rah, we published this book last November, November 2019. It came out and it really is the result of years of research looking and trying to understand not only what has been said about the doctrine, but trying to understand how it has become so embedded into the church and how it has affected on the foundation. of the country, but even our history and what we've done as a nation, and so it really is filled with a lot of unsettling truths. And it's a it's a book I'm very proud of. It's one I hope a lot of people in our nation will read, whether or not they're Christian, I often tell people that even if you're not Christian, you have to understand the history of the church. If you don't understand the history of the church, you will never fully understand the history of the nation because the two have become so intertwined over the past 250 years. As far as movies, there's two movies, they're both documentaries that I talked about, I referenced a lot and I really would like people to watch them. One is called homelands for portraits of native action. And it looks at four different tribes, Alaska, Maine, Montana and New Mexico are where they're from, and really wrestling with how these tribes are working reactively to maintain some sense of ownership. And sovereignty or space within their homelands. And I find a lot of insight in this documentary. And I highly recommend it to people. There's another documentary that just came out, even in the past six months is called Somebody's Daughter. And it's looking very closely at the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, tells a very compelling story goes very in-depth into the history and into some of the systemic problems with it. And I highly recommend this documentary. It's not available even online yet, but there's a trailer online but it's still screening in different places around the country. And I highly recommend that if people are able to see a screening of this documentary that they take time to do it. Once again, it's called Somebody's Daughter and was directed by Rain. Stanislas Berteloot  Okay, that's good. Anything else you wish I would have asked you? Mark Charles  One of the things I look most forward to, if elected president is appointing a Native American or nominating a Native American as my secretary of state. One of the reasons I want to do this is because not only does the US not have a common memory of its own history, but most of our allies don't have a common memory of our of their own history. And the reason most of the Western Europe is our ally is because we are all very colonial nations. France at one point was the largest colonial landholder in the in North America. And with the Louisiana Purchase, sold, not only vast amounts of land but huge amounts of people within those lands, to the US and I would really look forward both as president and with my secretary of state as being the head ambassador for this nation to the world, not to break these relationships, but to really challenge them. And to, to press the question, what does it mean for us collectively to deconstruct our colonialism and become better global citizens of this interconnected world we now live in? And I, you know, a lot of what I see going on in Europe, around immigration around closing borders, all these things, I see the root of that coming stemming from this unresolved on acknowledged colonial history that these countries don't know what to do with. And so I I'm looking forward to if I get elected president, to what can what not only what can we do here in the US to deal with our colonial past. But how can that dialogue also extend out to other nations, and even to heads of states of other nations to really challenge and initiate the dialogue about the colonial history that came out of almost all of Western Europe? And yeah, that's something I very much look forward to trying to engage in and to see where that goes and what happens with that. Stanislas Berteloot  If you are not elected president, would you be ready to walk with the elected government in order to improve the relationship with the government and the Native Americans. Mark Charles  One of the biggest challenges is because the things I'm calling for are so foundational, that most... Let me rephrase another way. I'm running as an independent. I'm running as independent because I am convinced after extensive research and an observation that neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party have any interest in making these changes at the foundational levels that I'm proposing. They are too much dependent upon these colonial racist, sexist and white supremacist systems, that they are not willing to address foundational level change. And so I'm still trying to work within the system, not the system of the two parties, but of our system of governance and our and our presidential system to introduce this dialogue and get the nation to address these things. But I am quite certain that neither Vice President Biden nor Donald Trump have any interest in engaging the conversations. I'm trying to engage at the levels I'm trying to engage them at.  Stanislas Berteloot  Thank you so much, Mark Charles, for this interview and good luck for your campaign.  Mark Charles  Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure to talk with you today and I look forward to having some more dialogue in the future. Books and Movie RecommendationPagans in the Promised Land: Decoding the Doctrine of Christian Discovery by Steven Newcomb Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles, Soong-Chan Rah Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action (2005)Director: Roberta GrossmanSomebody's Daughter by Rain  

 The death of George Floyd, a black man who died on Memorial Day after he was pinned down by a white police officer, has sparked protests across the United States and even abroad.In France, the event has even revived anger over the death of Adama Traore a black Frenchman who died in police custody 4 years ago. Some 20,000 people demonstrated in Paris on Tuesday.I met my guest at the Kneel for justice protest yesterday in Princeton. She was one of the speakers. She is a Prospective Molecular Biology Major at Princeton University. Welcome to Back in America Imani MulrainShe recommends watching the following video how to financially help BLM with NO MONEY/leaving your house (Invest in the future for FREE) to help the Black Lives Matter movement  Transcript19 Year-Old Princeton Student: Being Black in the US is Like SuffocatingImani-Mulrain[00:00:00] Imani: [00:00:00] I'm just on a group chat with other students of color on Princeton's campus. And it's just, we usually use this group to have to talk about like the like issues or just to like be friends and be silly. But last night there was just a lot of questions, a lot of distress. And I was just one of the people trying to help my friends out mentally.[00:00:20] Cause it was a very distressing time. And I know for a lot of people of color, it can just feel like the whole weight of the situation is on your shoulders. You feel like. There's no way out. It's not going to change. A lot of my friends are just going through a lot right now.[00:00:44] If you're tired of arguing with strangers on the internet. Try talking with one of them in real life.[00:01:04] [00:01:00] Welcome to Back in America, the podcast.[00:01:15] Stan: [00:01:15] The death of George Floyd, a black man who died on Memorial day after he was pinned down by a white officer, has sparked protest across the United States and abroad.[00:01:28] In France, the event has even revived anger over the death of Amanda Traore, a black Frenchman who died in police custody four years ago. Some 20,000 people demonstrated in Paris on Tuesday.[00:01:44] I met my guest at the Kneel for Justice protest yesterday in Princeton. She was one of the speakers. She's a prospective molecular biology major at Princeton University. Welcome to back in America.[00:01:58] Imani: [00:01:58] So my name is [00:02:00] Imani Mulrain. That's my full name. Um, I'm the first person in my family to be born in the United States.[00:02:07] My family, um, immigrated here from Trinidad and Tobago. Which is the last Caribbean Island in the chain of Caribbean islands. Um, I'm originally from Boston and I'm a first-year at Princeton University.[00:02:23] Stan: [00:02:23] How old are you?[00:02:25] Imani: [00:02:25] I'm 19.[00:02:26] Stan: [00:02:26] How did you get involved with the protest?[00:02:29] Imani: [00:02:29] Um, so I moved to New Jersey, literally this Saturday and Valeria, who is, um, she's a daughter of, one of the women who was in charge of setting up. The protests. She just asked me if I wanted to be a speaker. And I said, yes. So it really was, it was just really, it wasn't that complicated. She just asked me and I said, I wanted to.[00:02:51] Stan: [00:02:51] And why did you want to be a speaker?[00:02:54] Imani: [00:02:54] Um, because I just feel like most of the time, like I watch a lot of YouTube videos about the protests [00:03:00] and stuff.[00:03:00] I feel like the media is intentional about who they choose to speak on these issues. And oftentimes I feel like they choose people who are quote-unquote: 'stereotypes'. So it's easy for people who are against the protests to make fun of these people or whatever, or they don't really listen to what the people have to say, but they look at what they're wearing, what their vernaculars are.[00:03:23] And they just really it's like the media intentionally choose these people so that the opposite side has something to make fun of and poke fun at as a reason so that they don't listen. And I know, I myself am privileged to go to an Ivy League school. So I feel like in that way, I don't necessarily fit the stereotype of what a black person is in America.[00:03:44] But I noticed a lot of other stereotypes that I, I fit like my hair is, um, I have locks, which is another stereotype. Mmm. But I just, I feel like out of, I can [00:04:00] like my voice, it can be helpful to put the, put, like move the protest forward and move the movement forward. Because I feel like, um, I don't have a stereotypical vernacular.[00:04:13] Um, I've been told by my black friends that I speak 'white' or whatever, or that I sound educated. Um, I don't necessarily agree with that. I don't think you can tell how someone, how educated somebody sounds by their vernacular or whatever accent that they have, but in cases like this, where you have. People against the movement, poking fun at people who have really important things to say, just because of their vernacular.[00:04:37] I feel like the people who fit the criteria who speak normal, their voices can really have an impact in this.[00:04:44] Stan: [00:04:44] You talk about Princeton. Um, tell me, how did you end up at Princeton?[00:04:50] Imani: [00:04:50] Um, so in Boston, I went to Boston Latin high school, um, which is, um, very, it's a very well known school. It was the first [00:05:00] school built in America.[00:05:01] And it, um, it's the reason why Harvard was built in the first place. So Boston Latin school, most of our students go to Harvard, but, um, a majority of our students go to Ivy League schools and really good schools. So of all the schools, I applied to Princeton was the second Ivy league. I also applied to Harvard, but I got waitlisted.[00:05:24] And since Princeton was the only other Ivy league I applied to and I got in, I just came to Princeton.Imani: my family gets financial aid and I really think it's only because my mom is back in school.[00:05:45] She's a nurse, but, um, she came from Canada, um, Quebec. So she got her associate's degree a very long time ago. She never got her bachelor's degree and she works at the Brigham and women's hospital. And so now she's decided to get her [00:06:00] bachelor's degree. So she'd go in to get her master's. So I think it's only because she's in school again and because I have a little brother and they also have to pay for his private school, that the school is giving us financial aid.[00:06:09] So my mom said that she'd be willing to pay 10,000 and the school's making her pay 11,000. So it's like within our, our range.[00:06:16] Stan: [00:06:16] So you told us that your mom is a nurse. What is your dad doing?[00:06:22] Imani: [00:06:22] My birth father and my mother are not together, but my birth father is a security guard and my stepfather is a custodian.[00:06:32] Stan: [00:06:32] Yeah. What's your experience being a black person in this country?[00:06:38] Imani: [00:06:38] I feel like I have a very unique experience because it's a big issue in the Caribbean community. The issue of colorism or an issue of accepting your American identity. Um, so like I said, since I'm the only person in my family born in the United States, I've always felt like I didn't really fit with my family or fit with America because Trinidadians [00:07:00] have an accent and I did grow up with an accent, but whenever we'd go outside, like to McDonald's, for example, the workers would always ask me to translate what my grandmother is saying.[00:07:09] A Trinidadian accent sounds like an Indian accent. You're speaking English. I'd always feel really embarrassed. So I taught myself to speak like an American.[00:07:18] And my family would always make jokes that Trump is my president  but not their president.[00:07:39] I've had issues in my school in particular, which has been in the news and media for racial discrimination, where students have, um, told me that I need to stop pretending like I'm special or that I have a special culture. I'm black all I was going to be is black. And I felt like that really just, they really tried to strip me of my national [00:08:00] identity.[00:08:00] Mmm. Because it's like, when people come to this country, you don't tell them to forget everything that they are, they don't have to be American, like, so it's just. Really hurtful in that way. Um, I've been followed in like corner stores and grocery stores. Um, people assuming that I stole something. Mmm. And I guess the biggest thing for me that was really hurtful Mmm.[00:08:26] Were comments about my hair again, which is a big problem in the black community. People trying to, uh, control black women's hair in particular and people would always tell me. Mmm. Like, Oh, is that a weave back when I used to wear my hair long and I used to like, press it out and iron it out. And it's just, it's really like self debilitating and it's really hurtful.[00:08:48] Cause it makes you feel like you're not a person, it shifts your identity. It makes me feel like I'm not special.[00:08:54] And I guess the only other comment that really bothered me was a boy, a white boy, my [00:09:00] class, a comment that my grandmother is a terrorist and she wants to blow up the United States because my family was originally Muslim.[00:09:07] Mmm. And when they came to the United States, everybody converted to Christianity except for my grandmother. So she's still a practicing Muslim. So that comment also is like, he claimed that he was joking, but it's like, why would that even be funny? That's not funny to me.[00:09:23] Stan: [00:09:23] Can you recall a time when you were young, a time when you felt that you belong to this country?[00:09:31] Like any other person belongs. A time before, you know, you felt looked at because you were black.[00:09:43] Imani: [00:09:43] I'd have to say, like, it's kind of hard to say that because even from a young age, you know, people treat you differently and you have to ask why and your parents tell you. So I think my first two experiences that was that I was around five. I remember, [00:10:00] um, going on the train with my family in New York.[00:10:03] And these two Asian ladies are on the seat across from us, kept pointing at us and taking pictures and like whispering. And I was just confused. I asked my mom, what are they doing? She said, 'just ignore them'.[00:10:13] Um, so it was the first time I felt like, Hmm, maybe there's something weird about me and I guess, Mmm.[00:10:21] The second instance, I was about seven, my family and I went to Applebee's in Boston. Mmm. And we were the only black people in the restaurant. They sat us down at the table and we sat there for an hour and no waiter ever came to us. Like we didn't even get to put in like the initial order of like bread or like water.[00:10:42] Like nobody came to us and we looked around, we saw the waiters were going to everybody else and we'll be the only black family in the restaurant we just left. So of course, since then I've had many experiences with racial discrimination, but I'd say those are really my first experiences of just feeling like, okay, I guess I'm not an [00:11:00] American.[00:11:01] I do like, and the reason why my family came in, in the first place, the opportunities being in America can offer you like educational wise, financial wise, housing wise. It's kind of ironic that the one country that offers the most opportunity is also the one country that oppresses people the most.[00:11:20] Stan: [00:11:20] How did you feel when you first saw the video of George Floyd being murdered?[00:11:28] Imani: [00:11:28] This is going to sound kind of bad, but I honestly wasn't surprised by it. And I just feel like it's because I've been desensitized to things like this, I've already. Seen many videos before of police brutality. So I did watch the video the full way through I was sick and by it, that doesn't change. But I guess the shock value wasn't there anymore because I've already seen so many other videos of black men or black people in general be killed by the police.[00:11:54] Like I remember the first video, I guess that really took my shock. I forget the man's name, [00:12:00] but he was in a car. With his girlfriend at the time. And he was trying to get out his identification for the police and they just shot him right in the car. They shot him like a good amount of times and he died in the car.[00:12:11] Um, and it all he was getting out was his like ID to show the police. And after that, I just feel like every video. So after that, just did it live up to that child value. So I get sickened by them all the time. They just don't surprise me anymore.[00:12:25] Stan: [00:12:25] What would it take to change this country?[00:12:30] Imani: [00:12:30] Honestly, it's going to take a lot of effort because I think, I don't think, I know, that this country was built on slavery and a lot of our foundational systems are intentionally discriminating.[00:12:42] Um, like one of the speakers said of the protest: is country. The society is a game and a again, you need winners and losers. And the way that our system is set up, the winners are the white majority and the losers are the minorities. So I honestly feel like the only way to fix the system is to completely create a new one.[00:12:59] You [00:13:00] can't just, it's like you have like an old car. You can't just keep fixing this and fixing that because eventually something is going to break. You just need to buy a new car after awhile. So I feel like that's what we are. Like our system is racist. Our system is discriminatory and we need a new system, but that's going to take a lot of effort.[00:13:19] And I don't know if America is ready for that, or at least our president.[00:13:23] Stan: [00:13:23] Hmm, Yesterday, during the protest. You ask us to, um, stay silent for four minutes and reflect upon whether we would rather, uh, suffocate for four minutes or live the life of a black American.[00:13:41] Imani: [00:13:41] Yeah.[00:13:43] Stan: [00:13:43] What were you thinking about during those four minutes?[00:13:47] Imani: [00:13:47] Honestly, that there's no difference between the two. They're really just the same thing. Because like what George Floyd went through, not being able to breathe. You're suffocated. You don't know what to [00:14:00] do. You just feel like you're trapped. Like there's no end to it. That's what I feel like being a black person every single day.[00:14:07] I wonder if I go into a store, like, I don't know if people realize this, but a lot of black people, especially if you're in an influential like neighborhood, you cannot just window shop. Because you're scared that if you walk into a store and you just look around, you don't buy anything. As soon as you walk out that door, that somebody is going to assume that you stole.[00:14:23] I get that fear every single day, that if I just walk into a store and decide, I don't want to buy something, I'm going to get the cops called on me. Cause somebody assumes that I stole every single time walking around Boston. If I noticed that I'm a white neighborhood, I'm so scared that somebody is going to see me and call the cops on me just because they think that I don't belong there.[00:14:40] Um, so I get actually really scared when I'm walking in a white neighborhood at night. Um, I have the urge in me to just run to the neighborhood, run down the block, and then I'm afraid that no matter what I do with where I walk or I run, they're going to assume that I stole something. It's like a daily fear, but one day somebody who's going to take my life just because of the [00:15:00] color of my skin.[00:15:00] And they assume that I'm a criminal.[00:15:05] Stan: [00:15:05] How did you feel yesterday when you saw those white students, white people were there on the streets of Princeton?[00:15:17] Imani: [00:15:17] Um, well, because I'm not originally from the Princeton area, um, I'm not really sure what the demographic or background makeup is of this neighborhood, but it was really, it was happy to see that people are coming out. Um, more than just black people, because if we want to change this nation, they can't just be one race.[00:15:37] It has to be everyone. So it's really a good feeling inside of me to see the diversity in the crowd and see that there's more than just one race, that a lot of people are starting to change your minds about how they feel about racial discrimination in America, and that they want to see change.[00:15:51] Stan: [00:15:51] Is there anything else you want to add?[00:15:54] Imani: [00:15:54] I just really want to reiterate Mmm. What one of the speakers said, [00:16:00] is that it doesn't. Like even go like more and more black people are having to give their children to talk about how to deal with law enforcement. That it can't just be a one-sided thing. Like everybody needs to give the children a talk to not be racist, especially white people.[00:16:17] That if we're just going to tell black people how to act around the cops, we also have to tell these people who are being cops going up to be cops to not be racist and to not discriminate based on racial bias. It's like, it's just another thing that we can, we can't just depend on one group to this. It has to be a national effort if we want to see real change happen.[00:16:36] Stan: [00:16:36] Okay. What are going to be the next steps for you in this fight for justice?[00:16:44] Imani: [00:16:44] Um, currently some of the Princeton students who are still on campus, they want to organize another protest. So I'm trying to see if I can help out with that. Um, but me personally, I'm actually immunocompromised, um, I'm a type one diabetic, so it was actually really nerve [00:17:00] wracking going out to that protest.[00:17:01] I'm not really sure if I want to do that again. Cause it was just really scary, but I'm personally, I'm trying to donate, um, money to different causes. And this is a video on YouTube that I'm streaming, um, that the ad revenues are going to support, um, different black lives matter movement. So I'm watching that.[00:17:19] I'm streaming it in the background[00:17:20] Stan: [00:17:20] And where should people go to find it?[00:17:24] Imani: [00:17:24] So it's called it's by Zoe. Her name is Zoe Z O E Ameera A M I R A. And it's called how to financially help  B L M with no money / leaving your house. Um, so there's a lot of videos like that. I don't trust the other videos because then again, they're not as well known.[00:17:43] You don't know if they're just taking that ad revenue money for themselves. But this, I know that this video is actually helping. So you can, it has 5.7 million views. You just stream the video in the background. Don't pause, don't skip any of the ads. Um, and all the [00:18:00] ad revenues will go towards black lives matter movement.[00:18:03] Stan: [00:18:03] What is America to you?[00:18:06] Imani: [00:18:06] America? To me as a country with a lot of opportunities. Um, a lot of opportunities. A lot of places for people to be successful about the same time. It's also a place we've. We have a lot where we have a lot of obstacles holding people back from reaching those opportunities and from being successful.[00:18:28] So it's a very ironic country, a very Hippocratic country that says that it's the land of the free, but yet not everybody is free here.[00:18:37] Stan: [00:18:37] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time. And, uh, well, good luck for the rest of the protests.[00:18:50] Thank you [00:19:00] have a good day. 

Hello Back in America's fan!I hope that you are well and safe wherever in the world you are. This is a short update about the podcast and myself.The podcast is doing very very well. I am receiving amazing feedback and have some exciting interviews lined up.On a personal note, we've moved over the memorial day weekend and we are living among boxes. Since my wife my 3 daughters and our 2 dogs are all sharing the same roof 24/7 I struggle to find a quiet space to record...Anyway, I want to find a way to engage more with you and this is why I would like that you go to backinamericathepodcast.com or the Facebook page Back in America and that you subscribe to our mailing list for exclusive content.Once part of the list, you will receive, from time to time unique content and opportunity to influence the conversation.Also, I am very excited to announce that I will soon release an interview with Mark Charles a Native American who's a candidate for the US presidential election. Rember to subscribe to the mailing list.Stay safeAnd share your love for this podcast!

In this episode, I speak with John Michael Greer (JMG) an author and blogger in the fields of nature spirituality, and the future of industrial society.  He is the author of more than fifty books and a blogger.  He lives in Rhode Island with his wife Sara.Our conversation takes us to the suburbs of Seattle in the 70s. We discuss Druidry since JMG is a druid and ecology.John is one of the leading minds, in the US, behind the concept of societal collapse.He was quoted on this topic back in 2008. In 2016, he wrote Dark Age America: Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the Hard Future Ahead. Since then John published eight books and countless articles on collapse.Collapse means that our fossil fuel-based civilization, cannot sustain itself and will fail.As our world is going through unprecedented pandemic and is bracing itself for what might be also an unprecedented recession.John’s blog can be found at https://www.ecosophia.net/Here is a link to his books on Amazon https://amzn.to/3cANDom

 A few words before this episode.Gil who's interviewed here has been laid off since I recorded this episode and the NYC Compost Project and the curbside compost collection in NYC, for which he worked are coming to pass. Curbside compost pick-up will end on May 4 and the Compost Project will be completely mothballed in July, he told me. However, Gil’s spirit is still high.“I’m doing okay,” he wrote to me. “I was laid off last month but I received my first unemployment check today.  I’m am blessed beyond words to have my community garden to go to and be outside in the sun and soil basically whenever I want”.Now, on my side, I am sheltering in place with my wife and three daughters. We never expected to have Zoe, our 21-year-old at home with us again and are enjoying this extra time with her.I hope you, my listeners are well. Please stay home and stay safe!   In this episode, I am on the phone with Gil Lopez the founder of Smiling Hogshead Ranch an urban garden in Queens New York. The Smiling Hogshead Ranch started 9 years ago as a “guerilla garden” on a set of abandoned railroad tracks. After many backs on forth with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, they managed to secure a lease.Today the Ranch is an agriculture farm and community garden by day, and a social club and cultural venue. -- Gil, I have read that you see the more important effects of community gardens as being psychological, off-setting mindsets of commodification and enhancing ideas of community.The coronavirus is devastating our economy, deeply impacting our way of life and putting a stop to production and consumption. It is a costly reminder that in order to survive our communities must transition to a more resilient model.  Here are Gil’s recommendationsBookBasic Call To Consciousness by Akwesasne Notes  Documentaries (YouTube)HyperNormalisation: by Adam Curtis The Century of the Self