Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating
the end of slavery in the United States,
observed annually on June 19.
Happy Juneteenth, everybody.
It's Kalen Allen here.
We are back with OMKalen.
And today is a very special episode,
for we are celebrating the one holiday that often
gets overlooked, Juneteenth.
Joining me are two very special friends of mine,
actor, producer, and human rights advocate Angelica Ross,
and civil rights organizer and activist and co-founder
of Campaign Zero, DeRay Mckesson.
How are you both doing today?
[INAUDIBLE]
I'm good.
So much work to be done and so much great
work already happening.
I've never been more hopeful about where we
can go for moments like these.
It's been a very challenging and interesting time that we've all
been experiencing.
And we're all in different areas.
Angelica, you're in Atlanta, and I'm here in Los Angeles.
And DeRay, you are in New York.
So we're all experiencing this on different types of levels.
So we're just going to jump into this.
And I think my first question that I
want to start with is, why are we taught the origin of July 4
but not Juneteenth?
Let's just be real.
We know why.
They don't want us to know our rights.
The more we, as black people, are
conscious about the whole history,
the more you can't sit down.
But when you look at our history,
slavery was still happening 155 years ago.
That's not that long ago, OK?
And even though the Emancipation Proclamation
was issued in 1863, it wasn't until June 19, 1865
that all slaves were actually free.
When we talk about "the slaves were freed," I guess,
because it's like, we realize now
that we haven't really been freed,
or that America just created a different version of slavery.
Part of what it means to usher in a new world
is that we actually have to put those constraints out of mind
and say, you know what?
If these weren't the rules, what would we do, right?
What do we deserve?
And that's part of the fight, right?
Is that we actually fight for what we deserve.
We don't fight for what we think we can get.
And I think that we have to help people get to that place.
This system of white supremacy has done such a number
on our community that it has created not only trauma,
but it has created internalized white supremacy.
So when you have internalized white supremacy,
you have black people who have a white perspective
against themselves and their communities about how
to get through this white-centered world.
All black lives matter.
But I think sometimes people will then--
especially white people looking in--
are like, well, isn't that the same as "all lives matter?"
To zoom all the way out, right?
It's a reminder that anytime we focus solely
on black people, people struggle with it, right?
When I go to a breast cancer rally,
I'm focused on breast cancer.
That doesn't mean I don't believe
in the end of other forms of cancer.
It doesn't mean that I don't care about those, that I'm not
rallying for those.
But in this moment, at this walk, at this march,
I'm here about breast cancer, right?
Yes.
So that's how I think about-- when I say Black Lives Matter,
it is, like, we are focused on this issue right here.
That doesn't mean we aren't thinking about other issues.
That doesn't mean we aren't organizing around issues.
But in this moment, in this rally, in this march,
we are marshaling resources towards this.
And if it was true that all lives matter,
we wouldn't be out here in the first place, right?
Because it would just be true.
White people can trust America in ways that we,
as people of color, cannot.
So the conversation then has to go back to trust.
That means I can't trust you.
If you trust in a system that I can't trust,
that means I can't trust you.
Now, DeRay, I want to talk about the 8
Can't Wait, which is a campaign that
introduces eight policies that can decrease police violence.
8 Can't Wait-- when we launched it,
I think that we probably could've done some better
framing around the purpose.
I've read a lot of the criticisms about the plan.
I don't think about this as reform.
I think about this as harm reduction.
I think about this as the path to transformation.
And our idea was really simple.
We were like, if there are any police officers that
exist tomorrow anywhere, they should have less power.
Now, I was talking to the chief of staff
of a major senator in the US Senate,
and he said to me-- he's like, DeRay, oh, we've
already banned chokeholds all over the country.
And I'm like, we haven't--
Check.
--actually.
We've only banned chokeholds in 28 of the 100 largest cities.
That's not a majority of the country.
And we actually haven't even banned strangleholds in all 28
of those places.
So the different-- why this matters
is that a chokehold is your airway.
A stranglehold is the muscles.
So I heard people be like-- they were like, well, chokeholds
were banned in New York City, DeRay.
Why are you even--
it's clear.
It doesn't matter.
And you're like, well, you know what
wasn't banned in New York City?
Strangleholds.
So the moment Garner gets killed,
you know what the police union said?
They said, we didn't choke him.
We put him in a stranglehold.
We don't want to argue semantics with you.
Just ban it all.
When we think about defund, that's also a simple idea,
right?
Who should respond to a mental health crisis?
An expert.
Who should respond to suicidal ideation?
An expert-- a mental health expert,
not somebody with a gun.
Who should respond to homelessness?
An expert, right?
In LA, a third of all uses of force
are used against a homeless person.
That doesn't make sense, right?
The police are the first people to tell us that they're not
social workers.
And we should just say, we agree.
We agree.
And we should move all that money and all those resources
somewhere else.
So in the United States, if you get killed by a police officer
and a newspaper doesn't write about it,
you don't exist in any of the three big databases.
So that, in and of itself, is wild.
Angelica, I want to know how you've seen, since your career,
since you've entered the public life in this way,
how have you-- have you seen the industry change?
Have you seen culture shift around some of these issues?
As a black trans actor in Hollywood, in the industry,
I will tell you it's as if my fairy godmother, Ryan Murphy,
gave me a ticket to the ball--
OK.
--and a ball that I would never have been invited to,
and I'm still not invited to when
it comes to certain places, like BET and other platforms,
you know what I mean?
They just still don't invite us to the ball.
So you call us to tokenize us whenever it makes sense to you
that you know trans people.
So in order to not lose their jobs, they're showing us a face
that they're OK, but there's no action.
There's no heart.
They'll talk about black men being murdered,
but they will barely talk about Breonna Taylor, let alone
Tony McDade and Nina Pop.
I love that you brought up this fairy godmother
thing, Angelica.
Ellen was my fairy godmother.
And what is interesting to me, and what I've always
struggled with, is that sometimes I
do feel as though I do get a little bit of pushback
from the black gay community sometimes
because of my proximity to whiteness.
But that does not threaten my blackness.
I know that I have an audience that is majority white.
And so I look like--
I said, OK.
So in this movement, how can I best advocate?
How do I, in my best way possible, educate?
Because another thing that's very important to realize--
You are white famous, Kalen.
Baby, we went to Disney, and we couldn't-- oh, Kalen!
Every white person within a 5-foot radius
was trying to take a selfie with Kalen.
So the question becomes, how do we
make sure that our values stay present in every room we're in,
right?
And we make it really clear that we
don't compromise because of our proximity
to anything, let alone whiteness--
Yes.
--right?
When I walked into the set of Pose season one,
everyone in the hair and makeup trailer was white.
And let alone, nobody was trans.
And I'm like, how the heck is this going on
on a black and trans show?
And Ryan-- he always listens.
So everything that I--
I push, every time, to the point where I cause tension.
But I always cause tension in ways
that people know that I'm not trying to completely
disrupt and dismantle the entire thing,
but I am trying to create more opportunities.
And by speaking up, last year, a black trans woman
was nominated for an Emmy for makeup--
Deja Smith-- because we're speaking up
and trying to get these folks into the room.
Yeah.
OK, so with Pride also being in June,
and also talking about Juneteenth,
I want to know, how do you balance
the fact of being black within the Black Lives Matter
movement while also having to deal with being queer?
How do you handle the duality of that all?
For me, I have been challenged to reimagine pride.
And I think that's what's happening
as we reimagine America.
I think that's one of the ways that we
shift the narrative from "all black lives
matter" to just black pride.
All of these BLM, Black Lives Matter, protests
that are happening in Atlanta, in Chicago, in LA, all
across the world--
again, like I said earlier, they just organically turn back
into a pride parade--
like a pride thing for black people--
black pride.
And that's what's centered there.
Then we don't have to separate.
We don't have to balance.
I have a complicated history of Pride,
because it wasn't even a thing in Baltimore.
Pride wasn't real to me until I became an adult.
As a kid growing up, I would have
died to see somebody wear a rainbow flag.
So some of my relationship with Pride
is, I wear those things, because I
want to signal to people around me in a way
that I wish that somebody had signaled to me,
especially before I had any public statements about who
I loved or my identity.
I'm interested in how we maintain these spaces that
are black pride-- are black, and prideful, and hopeful.
A lot of people have said that this feels different,
and I agree with that.
What actions do we need to continue
to take to make sure that we are both being inclusive,
and that we are standing up for Black Lives Matter,
and we are making sure that our voices are being heard?
I never want to erase the incredible activism of 2014.
It, as you know, changed all of our orientation to race.
It changed the country's orientation to identity.
And this moment is a continuation of that.
I also want to acknowledge that one
of the ways that white supremacy will get us every time
is that they will have us love symbolism
more than structural change.
So they are going to make the T-shirts.
They're going to paint the streets.
They're going to change the words.
They're going to change the color.
They're going to do--
that's the game, right?
While the structure remains unchanged.
Yes.
So part of our push has to be, we acknowledge the symbolism,
because it matters, right?
So take down the monuments and remove the Confederate flag,
because symbols of hate encourage hate.
If we don't have a lens towards structural change,
we'll be back here again really soon.
California has a law that says any investigation
of an officer that lasts more than a year can never
result in discipline, regardless of the outcome.
That's wild.
So if those things don't change, which people--
and I've been criticized.
People are like, that's reform.
It's like, no.
This is structural, right?
So when I think about, what do we do?
It's like, we acknowledge the symbolism.
We doubled down on the structures.
I would just add that us, as black people--
that we need to be radically honest about our experiences
in this country.
We need to be radically honest with America about that,
and then also be honest to ourselves about where we are.
If we're truly talking about freedom and liberation,
let's be honest about what that looks like,
both individually and collectively,
because you cannot just be interested in your own
liberation.
This can't be a selfish movement.
You have to think about everybody.
Beautiful.
Well, our friends at Venmo have been celebrating
those who are supporting their communities through a campaign
called #venmoitforward.
And they are giving us $10,000 each so we can pay it forward
to deserving people in support of the LGBTQ+ and black
communities.
Now, Angelica, who would you like to donate your $10,000 to?
Wait, so you're saying--
wait, so I could take $10,000 [INAUDIBLE]----
You get $10,000.
I know you know I've been struggling
to get money for TransTech.
So listen, TransTech to TransTech Social Enterprises,
whoo!
I'm donating to the Trans Justice Funding Project, which
is an incredible organization that helps redistribute funds
in the trans community for people
who are doing incredible work.
For me, I've been looking to see who has been doing good
for the LGBTQ+ community and black community.
And I have decided that I would love to Venmo $1,000 each
to 10 individuals.
Thank you all so much for all the work
that you have been doing on the front lines for our community.
Thank you both so much for being here.
Whoo!
I am feeling very motivated to continue
to have many more conversations like this to not only educate
everyone that is watching, but also myself
so that I can be a better ally.
Absolutely, Kalen.
I love you, boy.
It was an honor to be here.
I love you.
Angelica--
All right.
--great to see you again.
Love you both.
Good to see you, too, DeRay.
[INAUDIBLE]--
Love you, too.
We'll go to Disneyland or something together.
We'll reconvene on--
Yes.
--a later date.
Yes.
I've never been to Disneyland, so--
Just wear a shield, because it's COVID
so you've got to wear a shield.
But just do the one that's iridescent
so they can't see your face and know
it's Kalen Allen stopping every five minutes for a selfie,
please.
[INAUDIBLE] [LAUGHS]
[INAUDIBLE]
Bye, you all.