Live from No Preference Fest: Faith, Freedom, and the Black Church

Recorded live at No Preference Fest, this panel breaks down the powerful intersection of the Black church and North Carolina politics. Monét leads the conversation as Jesse Huddleston, Brea Perry, and Donna Coltrane Battle explore the Black church's expansive traditions, role in liberatory movements, and deep connection to justice work. Tune in as we explore how the Black church continues to stand at the forefront of the fight for freedom and justice.

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Down Ballot Banter is hosted by Monèt Marshall and Quay Weston and is a production of Earfluence.

Creators & Guests

Host

Monet Marshall

Director. Playwright. Arts Consultant. Cultural Organizer.

What is Down Ballot Banter?

Welcome to Down Ballot Banter, the podcast that puts the spotlight on local elections and what local government actually means for you. Hosted by Monèt Marshall and Quay Weston.

Monét - 00:00:03:

Hey y'all, welcome to Down Ballot Banter, the podcast that puts a spotlight on local elections and what local government actually means for you. I'm Monet Noelle Marshall.

Quay - 00:00:13:

And I am Quay Weston.

Monét - 00:00:14:

Yeah, you are.

Quay - 00:00:15:

Local elections are extremely important, and we're on a mission to learn together and to break down local politics in a way that makes sense to us and doesn't require us to be experts.

Monét - 00:00:25:

Because we are not.

Quay - 00:00:26:

Hello.

Monét - 00:00:26:

So whether you're a seasoned voter or this is your first opportunity, we've got the insights and information to keep you informed and engaged.

Quay - 00:00:34:

Because when it comes to building new worlds, all of our inputs matter.

Monét - 00:00:39:

Yes. So if you're ready to learn with us, let's go. So today's episode is special. It is a live recording from No Preference Fest, a gathering for the ambivalent voter, which was held on August 3rd at North Star Church of the Arts. And there were four different conversations, and we really wanted to include them in the podcast so you'll be hearing them throughout the season. This was on black church and North Carolina politics. It featured Jesse Huddleston, , and Donna Coltrane Battle. And you can learn more about them in the show notes. And it was facilitated by yours truly. So, Quay, you were there. Is there anything that's still really sitting with you, stirring in your spirit from that conversation?

Quay - 00:01:27:

Yeah, I think a lot about the quotes that Jesse laid out. From Baldwin, brought in Pauli Murray, who's critical in Durham's history. And there's, yeah, many pieces in it that feel relevant to my own journey with spirituality and faith. So I'm excited about sharing this one.

Monét - 00:01:45:

Yeah, me too. And just as like a quick plug, you know, I was listening to your podcast, Yonda, just yesterday going for a walk. And you were in conversation with Reverend Lisa Yebuah. And I think the way y'all talk about black church in that space also felt really connected to this message. So, folks, if you want another listen after this, I would go listen to the Yonda season two podcast episode with Lisa Yebuah. But yeah, let's get right into it.

Monet - 00:02:12:

Hey, y'all.

Monét - 00:02:14:

Hey. Thank you again for your yes. You don't know how grateful I am that you all said yes to the invitation. It really means a lot to be in this conversation with all of you. So to introduce yourselves, I would love for you to say your name, your pronouns, and like a brief explanation of your relationship to faith and Christianity in this moment.

Brea - 00:02:41:

Well, my name is Brea Perry. I go by she, her pronouns. I use she, her pronouns. And to start that question, I will say that I am a child of the, what I like to call the expansive Black Christian tradition, the Black church tradition. And I use that term specifically because however, however cliche it may sound to say this, black folks are not a monolith, which means that the black church is not a monolith, which means that black Christians are not a monolith. And so I love to say that we are, our traditions, our faith traditions, our denominations, our histories are expansive. They're diverse. They span the gamut of theological, political theology and worldviews based on our sacred texts. We read our sacred texts differently across these different traditions, liturgies, worship practices and things. So I'm a child of that expansive tradition. I grew up what a lot of people like to call Baptocostal. I was both missionary Baptist and Pentecostal by way of the Kojic, the Church of God in Christ tradition. That's where I grew up. I was born to a long, long line of preachers, of evangelists, of church musicians and quartet singers on both sides of my family. So I had no choice but to be deep within the black church pocket for all of my upbringing. And of course, at some point, because I still consider myself a Christian, I chose to continue that faith journey for myself. But today. I would describe my relationship to, I would kind of go two ways. I would describe my relationship to the black church as very much deeply embedded in my worldview and in my daily activity. But I mean that, but by that, I mean that I am a part of the body of Christ. That is what it means to be a part of the church. Normally, when you think, when people think of being a part of the church, it means that you go to a building on Sunday, every Sunday. Occasionally, every Wednesday, if you do Wednesday night Bible study. Occasionally, every Saturday, if you sing in a choir. Occasionally every Tuesday, if you go to a community group, small group, however your tradition goes. And that has been a part of my life as well. But right now, I'm just a part of the body of Christ. And I find church wherever I go. And for me, the church are the people who are on the side of the marginalized, who are on the side of liberation for the oppressed, who are on the side of this is the mission that Jesus said that he was sent here to do, to set the captive free. And so as a current organizer and as a current just worker and speaker and writer and listener. I find church wherever there are people who are doing that, who are participating in that activity. So that's kind of my relationship. Yeah, I'm not part of a building right now, but I am part of the body of Christ. And that definitely shapes my daily activity.

Jesse - 00:05:59:

Hey y'all. My name is Jesse Huddleston. My pronouns are he, she, they, we. Can't get me wrong, so long as you're being kind. Briefly, I will echo you in some ways. And so that's a mirror. My family is full of artists and educators and public servants, many of whom practiced in a context of faith. So they were artists of faith and educators of faith and public servants of faith. And that was the context in which they primarily operated. And so I've inherited that whether I want it or not. It's literally in my lap. And so while I grew up in black churches, I would describe them non-denominationally. But there were definitely some more charismatic elements of worship experience. Very embodied and expressive. I think as I've gotten older, there's very much a part of me that still feels very rooted and connected to not just the church, but the Black church. And there's a part of me that holds that with open hands out of necessity to reckon with the limits and the harms that have taken place, still take place. And holding sort of the possibility and the actual reality of other ways of gathering, encountering. The Creator encountering the Spirit that moves through all, encountering love and justice and recognizing that like. That's very black and also outside of that, and to your point, I'm interested in gathering where that is held and always appreciate, particularly when that's in a space that is unapologetically and self-determinately Black. But it's certainly not limited to that expression.

Donna - 00:08:34:

Thank you. Again, my name is Donna Coltrane Battle. She, her pronouns. I too am a child of the Black church. And as my friends and colleagues, my family folks up here have kind of named, I make a distinction between Black church big B, which is like institutionalized denominational church and Black church little B, which is more universal kind of black folk religious practices. And so I grew up in the Black church. I'm a product of it. There are gifts that the Black church has given to me. I'm also currently still a leader in the Black church. And I have spent most of my adult life as a pastor of some kind in the black church. I am ordained in the Missionary Baptist church, which is a Southern Black, not Southern Baptist, but it is of the South. It is two different things, but it is a, it is a black denomination that is, mostly housed in the South, but a large part of my work now in connection with the black church, both big B and little B is I have the privilege of walking with a lot of pastors who pastor in black churches. I walk with a lot of justice leaders and organizers who are organizing, who are very steeply, deeply steeped still in the black church and who are, who are accessing their faith as a means of doing the work that God has called us to.

Monét - 00:10:10:

Thanks, y'all. I'm going to jump right in. Where do you feel possibility in the church's role in liberatory movements? And Donna, I'm going to start with you.

Donna - 00:10:23:

I feel like the possibility is everywhere. So from a theological lens. So I move more in terms of like mysticism and womanism. And so for me, there is no moment [inaudible] really quickly to tell people what you mean when you say that. Okay, so when I say, so I think about the Howard Thurman, the Barbara Holmes, these are Christian mystics. And mysticism shows up in every faith, tradition, and religion. So the Sufis, you know, or the, so in every kind of area you will find mysticism. So mystics historically seek this deep, direct connection with divine and creator. Seek the truth of who we are in relation to God as creator. I use the term God, everyone does not use that language. Womanism is a term that was first coined by Alice Walker, womanist, womanish, but womanism really rose historically in the context of feminism when it was on the rise that was mostly focused on the experiences of White women that excluded the experiences of other women of color and Black women, but womanism is very deeply steeped in this radical inclusion in love. Hard stop. It's radical. No one is excluded. Hard stop. And the theology and the spirituality in which we move and breathe in the world is liberatory. Now, with that being said, as a Christian, I do not believe it's possible to be a Christian and not do justice work. As a matter of fact, in scripture, righteousness and justice are two sides of the same coin. It's the same word, okay? And so when we start to think about what is Christian and what isn't, I think we kind of get confused or because Christianity has been hijacked by what's at the very least by civil religion and at most about what Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove would call slaveholder religion that everything that we see out here ain't Christian, right? It's not Christianity, just because they're naming it that. So I say that to say, where's the possibility? To me, the possibility is everywhere. It's about inviting anyone who proclaims to be Christian back to themselves, but also introducing them to who God is. Because if you believe that justice is something you do over here or a part of the church does over here and it's not a core part of who you are, then I want to know who is the Jesus you've been reading about? You know, this Jesus who was a brown skinned Palestinian Jew who was poor, born to a single teenage mother who was from Nazareth, the modern day ghetto of that time. Jesus wasn't a person who went to the margins. Jesus was born in the margins. And by being born in the margins, Jesus covered everybody. So Jesus was not at the center. And so anything that we do in following after Jesus means that it has to be justice centered because it was literally the identity that Jesus assumed when Jesus took human form.

Monét - 00:13:41:

Jesse or Brea, anything you want to add to that question about possibilities that you feel in the black church.

Brea - 00:13:48:

Sure. Wow, that was beautiful. That's a hard answer to follow. That was beautiful. But I think that when I think of possibility. I also find it everywhere and am always thinking about what it looks like outside of the four walls of a church building. But in that, I'm also thinking about the historical roots of the black church. We wouldn't have a concept of a black church without slavery, without the fact that we were, that our ancestors were separated from our identity. And our faith practices and our cultures and our historical process was interrupted by the kidnapping of our ancestors and being forced into, violently forced into servitude to bolster the white supremacist landowning capitalist elite. We would not have a black church without that. And so I think about our historical roots. And, you know, I think about, I'm sure that many of us in this room have been either a part of conversations or have heard conversations about. This rising fascism is what a lot of people are kind of having conversations about. And I think that it's interesting to me when we think of fascism, a lot of times, you know, people's minds go to the image of Nazi Germany and these very naked authoritarian regimes. And rightfully so, they are fascist. But when we really think of fascist regimes, it's interesting that we don't think about the project of slavery, the antebellum South, as a fascist regime. It's interesting that we don't think about Jim Crow as a fascist regime. And if we thought about these things as fascism, which is the systemic violent suppression of uprisings of dissent against authoritarianism. Just the systemic oppression of the violent systemic oppression of marginalized people, if we think of these regimes as fascist regimes, then we would recognize that the black church is an anti-fascist tradition. If we recognize, if we're thinking about Palestine, if we're thinking about the Congo, if we're thinking about Sudan and the co-occurring genocides that are happening right now, we've recognized those genocides because black people have experienced genocide through slavery, through Jim Crow, through police violence, through the systemic dispossession of the resources that are in our communities to help us survive and thrive. That is a genocidal regime. And so if we recognize that as genocide, then we're going to recognize the black church tradition as an anti-genocide tradition. And so for me, the possibility of that exists within uncovering, recovering, recovering those roots and snatching our church, the body of Christ away from the direction that I see it going in at large, which is this neoliberal individualist direction where we build these silos of ourselves or for ourselves, where we don't have to interact with the outside world. We don't have to, you know, as long as we know that in our little safe silo, God is in control, everybody else can do what they want. That's not the Christian tradition. That's not the black Christian tradition. We have always been people of justice. We have always been people of righteousness. We have always been people that are against the powers and the principalities and the rulers of this dark world, as one part of the Bible says, as Paul says, that creates these systemic injustices. And so for me, I'm always a person who likes to learn from people who are doing the same thing that I want to do, regardless of what it is, but in the context of this conversation. Doing justice work, doing organizing for a better liberated future. I learn from the people who are doing what I want to do. I learn from the people who are doing the opposite of what I want to do. And I learn from the people who have already successfully done what I want to do. And an amalgamation of those things kind of creates lessons for me. But I also think that when it comes to the justice work of the black church, we don't have to go looking for other models. We have our own models. That's what we were established on. Like I said, we have a black church because people like Richard Allen established the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was the first autonomous black church institution. He established that because he refused to let his white slave owners and slave masters tell him how to worship. He established that because he refused to let these white pastors wield the Bible against black people, black enslaved people, to say, you got to come and serve me. This is what the Bible says. He refused to let white slave masters rule over his theology. That is why we have a black church today. And so...

Jesse - 00:18:54:

Can I tap in?

Monet - 00:18:55:

Yeah, of course. I want you to tap into the next question, actually.

Jesse - 00:18:57:

Okay. I was going to ask about that too, but keep going. You got it. I appreciate this.

Brea - 00:19:01:

But yeah, so I just think that we have to recover that tradition and really lean into it. And I think that we'll be able to reach the liberatory potential that is within our faith institutions.

Monét - 00:19:20:

That was a whole history lesson in a word. Thank you. Yeah. So Jesse, I want to start with you on this next question. I think I am curious about how we wrestle and invite, both wrestle and invite, black churches, both Big B and little b away from the project of upholding capitalism and fascism. What is the thing that is holding folks back? What is the thing that is seducing people into practices that are actually against their own best interests? How can we do that in this political moment?

Jesse - 00:20:00:

Thank you. I want to bring in James Baldwin. We honor 100 years. I also want to bring in Pauli Murray, beloved ancestors, black queer ancestors that I feel like sit on my shoulders. Pauli says, through emancipation, lies in the acceptance of the whole past and deriving strength from all our roots and facing up to the degradation as well as the dignity of our ancestors, is taken from Proud Shoes. The story of an American family. Pauli grew up here in Durham. I won't get distracted about Pauli. We can talk about Pauli later. I reference this because I think We look back to history to kind of figure out how to move forward. And it's important to me that we're being as honest as we can be. And I reckon with the parts of our history, some of which are still very true, that even within the black church as a site of liberation, it is a imperfect project with imperfect people. And we have to be honest about the ways in which, particularly in my experience, I feel like the patriarchy was well, at work and ingrained and internalized within my black church experience, so much so that the black church that I was a part of that was predominantly women-led, most people had no concept for that. When I said, my pastor's husband, they thought my pastor was gay, right? So while in my experience, I'm very used to having bold, brilliant black women speak on a thing, that wasn't the experience of others. Let alone queer, trans, non-binary folks and the kind of harm that we experienced even benevolently. So, right, where folks did the best with what they had, and that still was not enough for us to really understand our own dignity and value as beloved, full, whole human beings in a black church context. And so I want to name that in some of the context of what we're talking about, both historically speaking and personally speaking. And a part of, I think, the invitation, the challenge as we live into more liberatory practices, right? Because that's a part of why we're figuring out who to vote for. That's a part of why we're going to church or not going to church. And I think I know many young people, particularly in the United States South, who are like, I can't go to this church anymore, right? So there is a reclaiming. There is the deconstruction, if that's a familiar term. I think the invitation, though, again, one is like to be more honest about what it's been. And I know millennials have that practice in a way. But Gen Z and the ones coming behind them, really don't give a you know what from the you know where because they're just not, they're just, I'm trying not to curse. But yeah, I just feel like we need to be more honest and give ourselves permission to say the hard thing, to ask the hard thing. And so again, like I honor your willingness to create space for us to be honest about being ambivalent, to be honest about being unsure and that being okay, right? Regardless of what you end up doing, because the systems that we are in have not afforded us the opportunity to have more generative options unless we choose to give ourselves that option. And I think often we don't. I know for me, it took me a while. And it's still, I'm still learning how to actually give myself permission to have what I say I really want because I'm so used to internalizing an imagination that says it's not possible or it won't happen for me. And I'm grateful that I think a part of the practice as well is telling that truth and like building community in real time. We're able to actually co-create not just what's possible, but what is actually happening, right? Like, this is happening right now. This is an act of liberation and it needs to be reckoned with. Like it's like, we're not just in some game or some trial. We are alive. We are doing the things. And I think, Adrienne Marie Brown says, small is all, that we have to start with what we have. And so I'm grateful for the ways in which the ancestral assignments and the efforts and the projects that I'm a part of as an artist, as a practitioner, as a faith leader, an organizer. I didn't say this, but I direct the music at my church now. So, again, that mantle is still very much in my lap. But, those have been clear opportunities to put into practice what I know the beloved creator has given me. And, like, I'm less interested in proving the worth of that. I'm more interested in connecting with the people of peace that are interested in moving through these systems that we know are dysfunctional and not working for us. And I want to continue inviting people to be more honest about what hasn't been working for you. Because, mom, you've been praying for a while. Right, like, you've been praying for a while. And keep praying. And let's be more honest about what wasn't happening for you, that no one was visiting you in the hospital or bringing you food. But you've been serving faithfully in your church. My black queer ass had some moments of health concerns and oh, they were VIMOing you? They were sending you money? Like that's a thing? It's a care. But we're building it, right? Like in real time. And that's not I'm so special. That's just like, I'm a human being worthy. And if I believe that, how do we continue to be in that? So just trying to be more honest.

Monét - 00:26:48:

Yeah. Thank you so much, Jesse, for that. And thank you for bringing in both James Baldwin and Pauli Murray in this moment, particularly in polymer, I don't feel so much of this work would not be possible without their grounding and rudeness in Durham specifically. So one of my desires from No Preference Fest is that folks, whether you are a person of faith or not, that like you feel like you could walk away and say, I feel just a little bit more equipped to have better conversations with the people in my life. Not perfect conversations, not I know every single thing now and I can run you down the ballot, but just more human, gentler, kinder, more informed conversations. So I'm going to just, we're going to go Jesse, Brea and then Donna. And just what pragmatic, give us some pragmatic things. Like what can we do if we are people of faith or not? To be in better relationship and to continue to hold space for folks in our lives who are people of faith to open up how we can talk about this political moment.

Jesse - 00:28:03:

So, I'll say two things. One, I did this yesterday. My mother is a black woman, so she cares about what's happening with Kamala Harris as an option. And I just felt an easy, accessible, just being curious, I wonder. As someone who loves black women, loves my mother, what do you think? And she shared very candidly about, as someone that's going to retire soon, what she cares about is social security and things of that nature. And when she looks at the options, that's something that matters to her. And Trump isn't someone that's going to be helpful, we'll say. That's putting it kindly. So I think just leveraging the current moment that we're in, that now that Vice President Harris is an actual option. How do we reckon with that? Allow people to be where they are with that and Yeah, I don't think we can go on and on and on about that. But I just think that actually being curious, because I do think people are aware. And that feels like a low-hanging fruit that we can all reach to just be like, hey, where are you with that? And she's like, yeah, I think I'm going to vote for her. And we need to pray. And it's like, okay. And some more. So that's an ongoing conversation. I think the other thing that I just want to name too briefly is that locally, particularly across our state of North Carolina, please don't vote for Mark Robinson. And think about all the other things that are happening here with our General Assembly. Because even if we have Josh Stein, the supermajority is still a supermajority. And so there's just a lot there that I'm mindful of and want to invite folks into. My mom's in Georgia, so it's a bit of a moot point for her in that regard. But for folks who are rooted in North Carolina, I think I want to continue to invite people to be curious and wonder about what's happening like right here in our backyard.

Monét - 00:30:23:

Thank you, Jesse. Brea?

Brea - 00:30:25:

Yeah, that was good. And honestly, very similar to that. I think that I want everyone to be willing to actually struggle together. Because without, you've heard the adage that without, some of you have probably heard the adage that without struggle, there is no progress. And that's not just political struggle. That's interpersonal struggle. Don't run from a conversation. And I think when we're talking about queerness, particularly, queerness and gender, really just across the spectrum of liberatory movements. If you are serious about that work, you have to struggle with people. You don't get to run from conversations. One of my favorite revolutionaries, Kwame Nkrumah, says that revolutionaries can't can't get tired of explaining things, even the people who seem like hard-headed brick walls. Now, there is an aspect of discernment and wisdom with that and not exhausting all of your energy, but do not run from the conversations with the people who you know whose consciousness needs to be shaped. And it's so funny, some of the things that you were bringing up, Jesse, with just your personal experience with and really being honest about the less liberatory parts of our church tradition, of our faith tradition, really touched a personal part of my story because part of the reason that I am not a part of a building of a church right now happened. Now I'm about to tell y'all how young I am right now. So I graduated college at the the start of the pandemic, May of 2020. And at that same time, what was happening collectively for us during the pandemic, also during the 2020 uprisings against all sorts of police violence, with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, countless other names, what was happening in my personal life at that same time was I was recognizing I was queer. And at that point, I had been a very deep part of an actual, you know, church body, a member of a church. And I recognized. In the moment that I was recognizing my queerness, that I felt unsafe to share that part of people who were in my intimate community, who I had trusted with my soul. Trusted with parts of my life and soul care, I felt unsafe to share that with them. And the people that I did feel safe to share with proved themselves unsafe when I shared that part of myself. And not that they reacted violently. They didn't react at all. They stopped talking to me. They stopped inviting me into their community spaces.

Jesse - 00:33:06:

That's violence.

Brea - 00:33:07:

So you're right. That is absolute violence, absolutely. So they did react violently. And I bring up that story partly just to share that part of my story as context for this conversation, but also to tell the folks in this room who consider themselves allies of queer folks, which I thought I was before I realized I was actually queer, which sometimes that's the pipeline of queerness. I'm an ally. Oh, wait. Wait a minute. I am the community. But it is particularly you all's job to struggle. With your family members, with your friends, with your community members, who do harbor homophobic sentiments, and I'm talking specifically about queerness here, but this, again, this applies for across the spectrum of liberatory struggles. For those who are in community with people who would do violence to queer people, y'all are the ones who have to struggle with those people. Y'all are the ones who cannot run from the conversation, because when it is unsafe for us, y'all are the people who have to be that line of defense. So I really want to challenge the people in this room who consider themselves allies. I really actually don't like to use that term. I like to say, Um, I like to say principled, in principled solidarity with each other. So if you consider yourself that, that is your job. That's what I want you to do. And then just the other thing is No, you know what? That's what I leave it on. Struggle with people. Don't run from the struggle.

Donna - 00:34:57:

Thank you, Brea. Amen. Amen. What all my people said. And, you know, if there's any other Gen Xers in here who are going through the change, like, and you are coveting Jesse's fan like I am, I'm like, Lord, give me that fan. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We all get there one day. We all get there one day. Amen, amen, and flies all get out. Yeah, so a number of things have happened here that I just want to kind of name very quickly. I will not be long. One, I want to name the ways in which this conversation, the beauty of this conversation has also beat against the grain of white supremacist notions that create division, right? That in white supremacy, this idea that we have to be ultra polarized, right? And don't get me wrong, there are times where we take a hard line, where there is harm to be caused, but most of the time, that line is not one that we are approaching, but we take it anyway. And so to be able to move in a space that says, no, we can love what a group or an entity or a person gives to us, that we don't have to push them completely out. We can wrestle with them. We can struggle with them. We can be curious with them. And we can say assertively in relationship, but I want to call you in, not call you out. That's a beautiful thing. And that in and of itself, is something that I feel like we can all mature in a little more and beat against the grain in. I would also say that as a person who has been organizing for over 20 years in many different organizations across the nation. That Voting is one tool. Among many, it's one strategy among many for justice work. But it is a tool that we can all pick up and use. And so even when we are sitting within a climate like the one that we're in where we're not overly excited. About any of the leaders in a system, right? That's right. It's a tool. And so when we vote, we are not voting for people to save us. We are voting because justice work is hard. And we want to reduce as much friction as possible so that we can get our people what they need on the ground. So when I go to vote, I'm voting for my self-interest, for the self-interest of those who are struggling on the ground, because whoever's least likely to fight against me, that's what I'm about to vote for, right? But that we continue to do the work. It doesn't matter who's in office, I mean, it does, but whoever ends up getting in office, we still have to organize. We still have the same response to hold them accountable and to do the work of building power. It's been said here, and I think it's gonna be said again, over and over again, local elections are just as important, if not in some cases more important than national elections. Find out who aligns on the ground doing work to bring what your people need and then vote for those people. Last thing. The black church. As with any community that organizes, only 10% of the black church has ever really been a part of justice work. And that's true for every place, right? One of the things Jesse said, they're human. We're all human. We're all imperfect. Doesn't mean we don't hold people accountable, but it means I want us to understand that only 10% of faithful were a part of the civil rights movement. We romanticized that time, right? In a time where black women and queer folks were not acknowledged for the hard work that they were doing, just like they're not now, right? That has not changed, but that's what it means to be in relationship. It means to lean in. It is to honor people's dignity. It is to call them in and prophetically into correction. Why? Because we care about what happens to you because what happens to you impacts me, all right? And so when we set it within that pericope and we understand that it's never been the masses who do this work in any community, the black community is no different. Then what we do is we continue to invite people back to their humanity for the sake of all of us.

Monét - 00:39:14:

Thank you all so, so much. Thanks for tuning in to Down Ballot Banter. We hope y'all enjoy diving into the spectacular world of local politics with us.

Quay - 00:39:35:

Yeah, and don't forget, this podcast is an extension of Monet's beautiful dream, The Down Ballot Brunch, where there are three simple steps. It's to eat, have a conversation, and to act.

Monét - 00:39:47:

That's right.

Quay - 00:39:47:

Have a conversation using this podcast episode, the Down Ballot Brunch chat guide, or your own prompts. Write a note to an elected official on a Down Ballot Brunch postcard. Share quotes from your convo on social media with consent, of course. Or text three friends about their voting plans and find out what matters to them.

Monét - 00:40:07:

And if you're watching on YouTube, be sure to like, share, subscribe. If you're listening on other platforms, be sure to rate and review. Share it with your people.

Quay - 00:40:16:

Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and keep up with the down ballot banter.