Transcript

 

Alicia Garza:

Hi, I’m Alicia Garza.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

And I’m Ai-jen Poo. And we are pumped because we have one of our favorite journalists joining us today, Errin Haines.

 

Errin Haines:

Hi.

 

Alicia Garza:

Yes. We’re so excited to have you. Errin is a long time journalist, an editor at Large at The 19th, which is a woman led nonprofit newsroom and an author. She’s done incredible work reporting on Breonna Taylor, the presidential campaigns of 2020, and more recently created portraits of a pandemic. A close look at how the pandemic has disproportionately impacted women. She’s a powerhouse, someone I’m glad to call a friend. Errin. Welcome.

 

Errin Haines:

I’m so happy to be here. I’m so happy to be in conversation with both of you and it’s going to be weird because I’m so used to asking both of you all the questions to make my reporting better. So now you get to turn the tables, please be kind.

 

Alicia Garza:

Yes we do. Yes we do. I love it.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

It’s so exciting.

 

Errin Haines:

You look very sinister over there. I don’t know, how is this going to go.

 

Alicia Garza:

I think for a lot of people, this last year, there’s been fear and separation, isolation, anxiety. What has kept you going physically, emotionally and spiritually over the last year? How have you navigated this kind of rocky terrain?

 

Errin Haines:

I thought I was going to spend most of the last year focused on this hugely consequential election, which was consequential even before the pandemic happened, right? But then the pandemic hits and it’s like, nope, we have a lane to cover every way that women and marginalized folks are being directly impacted by in responding to this crisis. A lot of people in that moment were feeling kind of hopeless. They felt like they didn’t really have control of their lives or what was happening in their lives. But honestly, one of the privileges of being a journalist and having this role is that I got to channel all of that energy into something that felt productive and useful in like what I needed to do, so that there was a record left behind of how women and marginalized people responded in this moment and what life was like for them in this moment in particular.

 

And so that honestly felt like my best and highest use in the pandemic. But there also was just so much more of an awareness and an appreciation for the folks who didn’t really have a choice about being out in the world, because they did have to make a living, even in this terrifying environment, right? Where people were absolutely at risk from a public health standpoint. But because they didn’t want to exacerbate that with economic crisis, they were working and I’ve thought a lot about those folks in the pandemic and wanting to make sure that their stories were told.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

I can’t thank you enough, really, because it’s hard to imagine the story of 2020 without The 19th and you, and the fact that people understood what was happening in the pandemic, through the eyes of women and women of color and women on the front lines. Really, I think you played a huge role in opening up that story. And the fact that like we are talking about a she session, the fact that we’re talking about all the women of color who’ve been pushed out of the workforce, the fact that care is as much a part of the conversation as it is. I just have to say thank you for holding those stories and telling them in a way that really did shape the narrative and help people see how this pandemic was really playing out for the majority of us, right? Women.

 

Errin Haines:

You can’t talk about this economy getting back on track, unless we’re going to address the things that decimated women in this pandemic. 2.5 million women having to drop out, women having to make such difficult choices and the ones who were working, being exposed, but also understanding that even before the president decided to make this part of the infrastructure plan, knowing that these essential workers, right? Of course, essential workers are part of this country’s infrastructure, right? Because we don’t get back to normal, whether you have children or not, whether you yourself are in the caregiving industry or not, like shoring that up and making that better for the people doing that work. Like if we don’t figure that out, whether you are a government state local or federal, right? Like if you are not thinking about these issues, your community will not be getting back to normal in the way that you would want it to or expect it to.

 

Alicia Garza:

Well, let’s talk about this normal piece for a second, because we’ve experienced some pretty significant transformations as a country. And I guess I’m wondering for you, Errin, lots of people have said, right? That while some things may return to how we thought we knew them, that we are kind of forever transformed, this is actually our new normal. So I’m curious from your perspective, is there a thing in this last year, given all the changes that have happened both in our personal lives, in our professional lives, in our political lives, is there one that you’ve learned or had to unlearn?

 

Errin Haines:

I think what I had to unlearn was the idea that, because women are so resourceful, women, marginalized folks, we are used to figuring things out for ourselves, right? Because we usually have to, but that actually shouldn’t be acceptable. People should respond, just because of how necessary we are to the daily lives and experiences of people in so many ways, right?

 

Like asking the people who were those frontline healthcare workers, who were those domestic workers, who were caregivers, whether it was for children or elderly people, the people who deliver all of those Amazon Prime packages that we had ordered over the past year, who were delivering your groceries to your door so you didn’t have to go into the grocery store and put on a mask. And I think as a society, we have expected, well, if you have children, for example, it’s on you to figure out what to do with those children. It is not our responsibility. The child leave policies and childcare policies that frankly are not adequate, right? We know that now that they are not adequate. And the idea that these are decisions that should be made in a personal household, as opposed to ideas and policy that we should be reckoning with as a society, we have certainly been thinking about that much more deeply, I think, at The 19th, for sure.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

One of the things that people have been saying is that the pandemic, because it changed everything about how we live and how we work and how we care for each other, that it’s kind of helped us see things that we needed to see for a long time. And I think your reporting has also helped to tell the story and on some gut level, we all know that being seen is really important, but let’s talk about that for a second.

 

Errin Haines:

And I’m going to ask you, because certainly. Before I came to a newsroom where I was writing about race and now gender, right? I was writing about inequality, these disparities for years before we had a pandemic, just like both of you were working on these issues for years as activists and organizers, right? It’s not that we had not been saying these things. It’s not that these things did not exist and that there were not people that were trying to point them out. It was that, it was not urgent for people in the way that it has been urgent in the past year. So I wonder if the both of you, do you feel like there is a momentum coming out of this pandemic, especially for those women, essential workers, caregivers, do you feel like they are just not willing to go back to the way that things were before last March, right? Their lives can not be that again, as the people who are used to being served are ready to get back out and be served.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

Well, we have seen is that people are ready and the urgency that they felt is amplified by the fact that a lot of people understand and see just how essential they are, just how hard it is without the care infrastructure or the good jobs and the paid leave. And the fact that all of these calls for justice and equity, I think the fact that we saw just how interconnected and interdependent everybody is, and the fact that the economy just collapsed underneath us in this moment has emboldened people who have been marginalized. I’m hopeful that the stars are aligning and we can turn kind of this awareness into actual structural change to address all these injustices that we’ve been screaming about for years. But I think that on some level that’s still up to us and still yet to be seen. But I also think that this is probably our biggest moment in my lifetime.

 

Alicia Garza:

Errin tried to turn the tables, this ain’t your show [crosstalk 00:10:13].

 

Ai-jen Poo:

I was just thinking that, I was like, what is she doing right now.

 

Errin Haines:

Now that you mentioned it, I actually want to know something from you. I can’t help it, it’s my default settings. My mama said I was nosy when I was growing up. It’s never going to go away. I just get paid for it now.

 

Alicia Garza:

We talk about what it means to go further, to be bigger, to be bolder. And you’ve been covering this election cycle, you’ve been covering the changes in this administration and in the white house, you actually landed the first-

 

Errin Haines:

Yes Hunty.

 

Alicia Garza:

The first interview with the first black and Indian woman to ever be vice president of this country, Kamala Harris. You also had some first of your own, right? In terms of being the first to offer national news coverage of Breonna Taylor’s murder, talking with her mom and her sister two months after it happened. Talk to us about how you think about, first in this context, right? You being the first, you getting the first, you interviewing the first, right? But also tell us what that might show us for this kind of transformed world that we’re now trying to navigate.

 

Errin Haines:

So I do think a lot about first, 2008, Barack Obama, first black president. 2016, Hillary Clinton, first woman to be major party nominee for president. I think about the fact that next year is the 50th anniversary of Shirley Chisholm’s pioneering presidential campaign, right? 1972, first black woman to ever run for president of, on a major party ticket. So thinking back over this past presidential election cycle, because compared to 2016, when you had this one woman running, right? And so you had a lot of voters saying, well, it’s not that I wouldn’t vote for a woman. I just don’t want to vote for that woman. And it’s like, okay, I don’t know how true that is. Maybe that’s true, but we don’t really have anyone else to kind of counter that argument. So okay, we let you say that. Fast forward to 2020, six women run for president, right?

 

Other diverse candidates on the ballot. And yet we still get to March of 2020, and a race [crosstalk 00:12:52] that comes down to two white men in their seventies. Listen! That was what it was and I got this feed last year, just so much around the notion of electability and who was electable and what does that package get to come in? Right. Covering Stacey Abrams’s gubernatorial bid in 2018, right? Trying to be the first black woman ever in this country to become governor of a state didn’t happen. It’s like-

 

Alicia Garza:

And then who became it?

 

Errin Haines:

The thing about first, yes. We have to acknowledge the milestone. Yes, we have to recognize it. But anytime I see, a first, especially like on social media, oh, this is the first black woman to do this. Or the first time a black person has ever done or any person of color or any, basically anybody who is not a white man doing something for the first time. That shows up on social media.

 

It’s just kind of like, okay, well, first of all damn, why did this take so long? It’s 2020, right? Well [crosstalk 00:13:52].

 

Alicia Garza:

It’s 2021.

 

Errin Haines:

Even if I’m happy for that person individually, because they are smiling and they have accomplished something and that is great for them, individually. It’s like, damn, what does this say about our society? That this is the first time this has ever happened for anybody, much less as whichever particular person, right? But then also when we treat that first, like a unicorn as if there were not many other qualified, talented, capable people of color and, or women, LGBTQ folks, whoever, it’s not that they weren’t ready. It’s that we were not ready, as a democracy, as a society, right? To recognize these folks and what they brought to the table. And just because of the package that it came in, right?

 

You think about the vice-president, second most powerful person in the country at the end of the day, right? And so like just covering her as that is very important for me. Yes, when she’s at inauguration and she’s being sworn in, you know the historic nature of that moment, right? First woman vice president ever, first woman of color to be in that role. But at the end of the day, like the more we just cover her being vice-presidential, I think that that does so much to normalize women’s leadership, right? And normalize the leadership of people of color. So that if somebody is a first for me, they are an only until there’s a second and a third and so forth and so on, right? Like they’re the only person that’s ever had this job, because we don’t know if there’s going to be a second, right? Barack Obama is the only black president we’ve ever had. He’s not the first, he’s the only black president we have ever had.

 

Alicia Garza:

He’s the only.

 

Errin Haines:

Because we haven’t seen a second black president yet, right? So-

 

Alicia Garza:

That’s a real thing.

 

Errin Haines:

Normalizing the leadership of people who are not white and not male is how we get beyond first and onlys.

 

Alicia Garza:

That’s right.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

So when you’re preparing for interviews like that, and you have that in mind, that what you’re trying to do is create a new normal, right? I can’t even imagine how I would prepare for the first major interview with our madam vice president. How do you think about that?

 

Errin Haines:

Because I want to normalize her leadership. I’m going to ask her questions that I would expect her to be able to answer as the vice president of the United States, right? Asking her about her role as a partner in this administration. What is your response to this pandemic? What is your response to this economy? What is the administration doing about racial equity? Where are we on climate change? These are questions that you should be expected to answer because of the job that you have, right? But at the same time, we don’t ignore, not your unicorn nest, right? As being this first and this only, but the fact that you have a different lived experience than anybody else that has had this job, right? So we can also talk about how your lived experience is playing out in terms of the politics and the policy.

 

Because I think that that matters, right? Like when she is convening a women’s round table to talk about caregiving issues, right? And you were making a choice to highlight black maternal health week as the vice president of the United States, right? That sends a message that this is important because the second most powerful person in the country is saying, this is an issue we need to be raising awareness about this, second most powerful person in the country says anti-Asian violence is unacceptable. Yes, the president also said that and yes, the president also condemns this violence, but it is different when the daughter of an Indian American immigrant says that, people feel seen and heard, right? Because the vice president has now acknowledged you as somebody who shares their lived experience. So, as we understand that all politics are identity politics, but identity politics does not have to be a bad word. Like there is value in people’s identity in how it plays out in whatever role that they have.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

Absolutely. All the inputs that make us who we are, how and why we lead, right? And one of the things that we read about in your history is the fact that you grew up in the black church in Atlanta, and that your faith is a huge part of who you are and how you see the world. And talk to us about that, talk to us about how your faith informs and elevates your work, especially in times, like what we’ve just been through.

 

Errin Haines:

Yes, so I am from the South, which means that there were no, certainly no shortage of black churches in and around where I grew up. My mom was somebody who was raised as a black Catholic, but certainly wanted to expose us to a lot of different worship experiences. And so if I had friends, for example, who invited me to go to their church, she was very open to that. I got to see different worship experiences, but yes, I was raised from a very young age with an understanding that a gospel of social justice, like those were not competing ideas.

 

Being from Atlanta, you kind of breath in Martin Luther King. You don’t just like learn about him, right? He’s like everywhere in the ecosystem. And so, I think that that absolutely helped to shape my reporting in terms of being thoughtful about who is not being seen and heard in our democracy and centering the voices of those people, whether they are political or apolitical, frankly, but who understand that our politics does have an impact on their daily lives, which I think is something that a lot of folks have become a lot more aware of.

 

My faith, I think is it gives me just yet another lens and another language to speak to folks about our society and the choices that we make and the priorities that we set and why we do that and why we make some choices and why we don’t make other choices. My faith helps me to have those conversations in my reporting, whether it makes it into stories or not, just to have an understanding on people’s perspective. But I will also say, just the historic roots of the black church, knowing that black churches relationship to social justice, particularly around voting, talking to black pastors, black voters, and being able to see them as faith voters, which, that’s not what we talk about, right?

 

We talk about evangelicals as faith voters, but we know the default setting in people’s mind for evangelical is a conservative white American, right? As if black and brown folks, voters of color can not be faith voters as well. Having that awareness, I think also helps me to kind of shift the narrative about the intersection of faith in politics as well, which I think is very important because I think that faith absolutely plays a role in people’s politics and what they decide to do at the ballot box.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

I agree. And I think it’s part of also reporting from a kind of the lens of equity and holistic stories about human beings, really thinking about people’s faith as a really important part of who they are and not wanting to ignore that, but actually lean into it and think about what it means for all of us. It’s I think really important.

 

Alicia Garza:

Can we talk about these books you’re writing?

 

Errin Haines:

We can definitely talk about book one, which is very much in progress right now. It is about a Vice President Kamala Harris, as kind of a case study for the rise of black women’s political power and what that means for the future of our politics. And I think we’ve seen black women, whether they were elected officials, whether they were candidates for office, whether they were voters, organizers, donors, just becoming so much more aware of their power and really demanding that they be valued for their input and not just their output. If they were not going to be part of the agenda setting, as opposed to that six week push before the election, where you need me to wrangle my community, my household, my sorority, my church, my link’s chapter, my whatever, to get people to the polls, like no, this will be a holistic approach where I think another thing, especially on the voter, organizer, donor side, for people, it was about their agency and not even necessarily about any particular candidate, right?

 

And I’m not saying there’s not a powerful narrative, but the idea that, especially for black voters, for black Americans, voting has always been kind of cast as this burden, right? Whereas for white Americans voting is really a choice. Maybe I go to the polls today, maybe I don’t, oh it’s raining, not going. Enough black people not showing up, it’s like, oh, you have let down the race, the community, the country, this democracy, how could you do this, right? Framing it in that way. There’s a new way of thinking about that, that I am looking to explore in this book. What does this look like more broadly, being able to get into that and figure out what that means, moving forward. In places where like, again, there’s still never been a black woman governor, like what else do black women think that they are capable of coming out of this moment? Right. And not just in terms of elections, but also in terms of governing and holding people accountable for an agenda that they want to see.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

I’m so excited about this. I just got chills.

 

Errin Haines:

I guess I better get busy.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

I don’t know how you have time for all this. You’re like reporting on the front lines of everything.

 

Errin Haines:

I don’t either.

 

Alicia Garza:

Reporting on the front lines of everything. And then also catting off on Twitter, tweeting about the Peppa Pig. Who I was yesterday years old when I learned who and what Peppa Pig is, I mean-

 

Errin Haines:

Really?

 

Alicia Garza:

You want to break this down for us, what is the fascination? Give us [inaudible 00:24:33] scoop.

 

Errin Haines:

This podcast is officially paying off because you have just brought up my favorite subject. You talk about self care, in the pandemic, I really leaned into my rage watching a British cartoon called Peppa Pig. It is about a young girl pig and her family, her little brother, mommy and daddy pig, the whole community. I rage watch this because this pig is not a good example for anyone, for how to behave. And yet they’re supposed to be lessons in every episode, probably getting, not the lessons that they intend for me to get from these. I’m picking up other things like daddy pig’s fat shaming and Ms. Rabbit being overworked in this community, she has like 18,000 jobs.

 

It’s like, what is happening here? Why is daddy pig being infantilized? They treat him like another child. Why is he not an equal parent here? They’re always making fun of him. If any child that I knew acted like this, I would be very sad for that parent. So, yeah. So I watch episodes and I end up live tweeting these episodes when they’re on, like the Nick Jr. marathon that I fall into. And it’s hilarious because people are just like, oh my God, how old are your kids? And I’m like, nope, no kids. This is my jam and I’m doing this but like anybody who’s out there, look, if you have seen Peppa, y’all know what I’m talking about. Like this pig is a disaster and yet this is a billion dollar international franchise.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

I know exactly what you’re talking about. Peppa pig is [inaudible 00:26:13] partially.

 

Errin Haines:

She’s a jerk. She’s not good, but like Ms. Rabbit is definitely an essential worker in the pandemic. Like every time you turn around, she is the bus driver and then when you get to the destination, she’s the cashier. Then you need some ice cream and guess who’s on the side of the road with an ice cream truck. It’s like damn, how many jobs she got it. It is hilarious to me.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

She’s a gig worker.

 

Errin Haines:

She’s definitely a gig worker. And I’m seriously thinking about just starting a spreadsheet with all of her gigs. Because every episode I’m like, wait, this is yet another, like literally they have like an episode where the family goes to the moon and who was on the moon, selling souvenirs, Ms. Rabbit. How did she even get up there? I don’t know. She’s a hustler. She’s the baptist life. The pandemic would not have stopped Ms. Rabbit, I’m determined that she would have-

 

Ai-jen Poo:

No. And she doesn’t have a single paid sick day. She can’t PPE.

 

Errin Haines:

Nope, no, she would have sold PPE, first of all, in hand sanitizers [crosstalk 00:27:11]. From day one, but like, no, she would have definitely had no choice, but to go to work every single day and she would not have gotten paid for her day off to get vaccinated, like none of this would have happened for her.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

This is so good.

 

Alicia Garza:

You know what Errin. Thank you. Truly, truly thank you. Everybody go and follow Errin @emarvelous, which is also just so amazing. Everybody go follow Errin @emarvelous on all the socials and while you’re there follow @sunstormpod also. If you have friends who aren’t listening to Sun Storm yet, what are you waiting for? This party is for all of us, till next time loves.

 

Ai-jen Poo:

Ciao, this is was fun.

 

Errin Haines:

Bye.

 

Speaker 1:

Sun storm is a project of the National Domestic Workers Alliance in collaboration with participant. Sun Storm is executive produced by Alicia Garza, Ai-jen Poo and Kristina Mevs-Apgar. Sun storm is produced by Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer of the Mash-Up Americans. Producers are Shelby Sandlin Mary Phillips Sandy and Mia Warren. Original music composed by Jen Kwok and Jody Shelton.

 

Alicia Garza:

These nails, Errin is giving me peach.

 

Errin Haines:

It’s peach for short girl summer. That’s what it’s for.

 

Alicia Garza:

Yes.