I spoke
with activist and author Kimberly Jones.
We talked about her book, I'm Not Dying with You Tonight,
and about her powerful speech about the plight
of black Americans that went viral.
You broke the contract for 400 years.
We played your game and built your wealth.
You broke the contract when we built our wealth again
on our own, by our bootstraps in Tulsa,
and you dropped bombs on us.
When we built it in Rosewood
and you came in and you slaughtered us.
You broke the contract, so (bleep) your Target!
(bleep) your hall of fame!
Far as I'm concerned, they could burn this bitch to the ground,
and it still wouldn't be enough.
And they are lucky that what black people are looking for
is equality and not revenge.
Kimberly Jones, welcome to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
(laughs) I'm so happy to be here with you?
Let's-let's get straight into that video
that went viral
in-in a way that few videos can.
What was interesting about this video
was that so many people have been talking
about what's going on in America,
but-but this connected with people
who maybe didn't understand what was happening before
or didn't quite grasp the subject.
I had a friend, personally,
who was like, "I don't know, I don't know."
And he sent me your video, and he was like,
"For the first time, I truly understand."
And I was like, "Wow, what am I? Chopped liver?"
So, talk me through... talk me through the video,
like, because it seemed organic.
It seemed like you were... you were in the middle of...
you were in the midst of, like, it looked like
there were protests or something had happened.
Talk me through how that video came to be.
So, my-my friend David Jones was working on a documentary.
He and I had both been out
at the protests, um, you know, separately,
and he had taken his camera out and was recording.
And, so, he called me that Sunday morning and said,
"Hey, you're really good at, like, man on the street stuff.
Can you come do some man on the street for me?"
And I was like, "Sure." So, we stayed all day.
We ended up being at a protest later that day,
but the time at which the video was recorded,
people were out cleaning up, um, Downtown Atlanta.
There was this-this large group of African American people
who were downtown, cleaning up downtown,
um, and they had spent their own money
-purchasing cleaning items and things like that. -Wow.
And I kept interviewing these people,
and the consistent, you know, notion
was that, you know, the focus was on the looting.
And they were... they were focused on the looting,
and they were focused on what that was gonna do
to the narrative,
and it just struck me in a really odd way
that I felt like this is the direction
that the narrative is going,
that everyone was gonna center the looting
and lose focus on the... on the real issue at hand.
And, so, I just started talking,
and David hit record on his camera,
and that almost seven-minute video is what came out.
Yeah, it-it was a really wonderful analogy.
It was apt in the way that it captured a story
that so many people have struggled to tell
about America and, in many ways, the world.
You know, I mean, using Monopoly was-was the perfect metaphor,
because it was... it was like, that's-that's what Monopoly is.
It's a game where the rich get richer
and, you know, some people,
you end up in jail and you don't get your $200.
And-and, I mean, most Monopoly games I know of
end up with people flipping the board and hating each other.
Do you think that's where America is right now,
is people are flipping the board, saying,
"I don't want to play because this game is not fair"?
Yeah, I think that's exactly where people are.
I think people are saying that the game, it's fixed,
and I think there are people who are finally waking up
and being empathetic to that, right?
And saying, "Hey, you know, I've been on the board,
"and I've-I've watched what's happened to you.
"And, you know, now I'm recognizing, too,
"that the game is fixed,
and, like, I'm-I'm outraged on your behalf."
I'm not even, you know, I'm not surprised even a little bit
that this outrage has come on the back of a pandemic,
because I think it's the first time
that people have been still
and they've actually been able...
You know, they're not, like, taking the kid to soccer
and going to work and doing all these things,
and so they actually had the time to sit down
-and grapple with the issues, because growth... -Right.
Yeah, growth only comes from discomfort.
And, so, you can't avoid, you know,
something that's gonna make you uncomfortable
if you're sitting on the couch, stuck with it.
One of the lines that struck me the most
and has stuck with me ever since is when you said
to people who were watching the video,
you said these people... And I'll paraphrase it.
You basically said these people should be... should be grateful
that black people want justice and not revenge.
And-and that struck me, because I...
You know, maybe because of South Africa's narrative, as well.
So many people assume that what black people want
is, like, revenge or-or an advantage
as opposed to an equality.
That-that struck a note with so many people.
What do you think some people don't understr....
understand about the struggle?
I think, you know, one of the bigger issues
that people don't understand
is, you know, we talk a lot about the murders,
and we should, because they're devastating,
and we have to get these crimes solved,
and we have to have a better way of handling these situations.
But one thing that people don't talk about
are the daily indignities that black people suffer
in this country at the hand of the police.
Officers are being sent to marginalized neighborhoods,
you know, to do excessive ticketing in areas
where you know that people are economically disadvantaged,
and there are gonna be extenuating circumstances
that are gonna cause them to not have certain things in place,
like registrations and insurances and things like that.
And then you put them in a system where they have
these huge, like, $1,500, $2,000 tickets
that they can't pay, and now they're on probation.
And, so, it's like this-this ability
to, like, feed the penal system.
Um, but, again, for me,
that's why I made the Monopoly analogy,
because it's economically based.
And that economic disadvantage
allows people to continue to brutalize people.
And, so, if you don't see the daily indignities,
you think these occasional, uh, murders that make the news,
which, for the record, there are tons of them.
Tons of murders, like the case of, like, Jamarion Robinson,
who-who don't really make national news.
-Mm-hmm. -But there-there's just, like, a daily...
It's like... it's like this bully
that lives in our community, and nobody else sees it.
Yeah, what-what's really powerful
about just your analysis of the situation
is that it-it very aptly captures what's happening
not just in America
but-but specifically in Atlanta right now.
Atlan-Atlanta has become a hotbed of these issues.
You know? And the killing of Rayshard Brooks
has been one of the more interesting ones,
because I've-I've always felt like, you know,
it-it encapsulates everything
that's happening wrong in America,
you know, everything wrong that's going on.
It's interesting that he even had a video that-that--
of him a few years ago where he talked about what it's like
to be somebody who's served time but has no opportunity
to get back into society and how that then traps you
in-in a cycle of always going back,
as you said, into the carceral system.
Y-You know, the-the news came out now of the police officer
who shot him kicking him afterwards,
and-and, you know, if anything,
people, I think, were reacting to the fact
that it was, like, a further dehumanizing of this person.
You know, it wasn't just that you've killed the person
but now you're kicking them,
quite literally, when they're down.
What would you say is, like, the core essence
of what people in Atlanta are saying and feeling right now?
I think the main thing is that people in Atlanta
are super upset,
because the original narrative that came out
was that this doesn't happen in Atlanta, right.
Like, that-- the-- that was the--
that was the narrative that the people in charge put out.
And people who are experiencing this on a daily ba-basis
were completely insulted by that,
and they didn't respond well to that,
because they were like, "We can name situations.
"Have you guys just forgotten about Mr. Arbery
"that was just right before this,
-um, with the-- with the vigilantes?" -Right.
But even in terms of the police, again,
I bring up people like Jamarion Robinson,
Four years after his murder,
where over 90 rounds were fired at him
and 76 rounds hit his body,
his mother has still not received any justice for that.
There have been not been any arrests in that case.
So this is something that is happening here, too.
And so people were feeling that
at the time in which this happened.
And now, to have this happen with Rayshard Brooks
right on the heels of this--
And-and here's the thing--
the disconnect,
that you would even think to draw
and use your firearm in the midst
of this heightened state just goes to show you
how much there is a lack of concern
for the black form in this country
and how aggressive and how we have created
the warrior cop instead of the guardian of the community
that we actually deserve.
Because, at the end of the day--
I don't care what the circumstances were around that--
the sentence for what was going on in that video was not death.
And we cannot allow officers to be judge, jury,
and executioner in the street.
That is not how this works.
That is not the social contract that we all agreed to,
as I so eloquently stole from you.
(laughing)
Oh. Um, I will say,
I've stolen most of my things from a black woman
who I call my mom, so, um,
I guess it's just a cycle that goes around.
Um, let's talk a little bit about your work that,
you know, I guess, as fate would have it,
is tied to everything that's going on now.
You co-authored a book entitled I'm Not Dying with You Tonight,
and the book is a novel
that is inspired by the civil unrest in Baltimore
after what happened to Freddie Gray.
So, tell-tell me about the book
and-and why you decided to write a novel,
you know, that-- you know, a-a book that-that lives
in a-- in a fictitious world
about something that's really real
that's happening in America today.
My co-author, Gilly Segal, saw this clip, um,
in the news that the news, like, brushed over really quickly,
um, during the Baltimore unrest
about a group of kids who were caught behind a police barricade
because they did some really stupid things, right?
So, they shut down schools,
told kids to go home early and disperse,
but they had a-also shut down public transportation.
And most of the kids at the high school
-took public transportation home, -Wow.
so they couldn't get home.
And so there's this quick little story
about them getting trapped behind a police barricade.
And then we couldn't find anything else about it.
We-we called around.
We couldn't figure out what happened to these kids.
And Gilly and I are both moms, um, who,
at the time, had kids who were just a little bit younger
than those kids, and we were concerned.
We were like, "What happened to those kids?"
And so we couldn't get any answers.
We decided to write this book,
um, 'cause we're writers
and that's the way we process things.
And because kids are experiencing these moments
at the same time in which we are,
but we're not having real conversations with them.
And I think we're underestimating their ability
to not only have these conversations
and grapple with these moments
but actually to have some insights,
really fresh ideas and new energy
that could help us wrap our head around these situations.
And so we wanted to write something for those kids
to give them a moment. And it's interesting.
We were at a teachers conference,
and a teacher from Ferguson came up to us
and said, "Some of my kids were in middle school,
"uh, when the Ferguson unrest happened,
"and now they're in high school.
"And I gave them your book
"and we did your book as an assignment
"and it's the first time that they were able
"to process their thoughts and they were able
to utilize the book as a tool to do that."
And so I hope that's what it's doing,
is allowing kids to enter into really hard conversations.
Yeah. It-it is, as you say, a hard conversation.
But, uh, with tools like your book,
I hope more kids can get into it.
I hope more parents, you know, find your book.
It's called I'm Not Dying with You Tonight
It's a really, really beautiful examination
of what's happening in America
through the lens of younger people, which,
I think, sometimes connects with everybody a little bit more.
Kimberly Jones, thank you so much for being on the show.
Don't be a stranger. And, uh, I hope to see you again.
All right. Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you. Stay safe out there.