Building the Block & Breaking Down Bias

Monét is flying solo in this episode as Quay enjoys some well-deserved family vacation time, but she’s joined by an incredible guest: filmmaker and media storyteller Saleem Reshamwala. Together, they dive into how local media is changing in North Carolina, why it’s harder than ever to get good political coverage, and how YOU can spot bias in the news you consume. Plus, Saleem shares his unique approach to simplifying complex topics and the art of storytelling, all while building a literal family block in Durham! 

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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.

00:00:03 - Monét Marshall
Hey, y'all. Welcome to Down Ballot Banter. The podcast puts a spotlight on local elections and what local government actually means for you. I'm Monét Noel Marshall.

00:00:13 - Quay Weston
And I am Quay Weston.

00:00:14 - Monét Marshall
Yeah, you are.

00:00:15 - Quay Weston
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, because we are not. Hello.

00:00:27 - Monét Marshall
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.

00:00:34 - Quay Weston
Because when it comes to building new worlds, all of our inputs matter.

00:00:39 - Monét Marshall
Yes. So if you're ready to learn with us, let's go. Hey, y'all. Welcome back to another episode of Down Ballot Banter. I am Monét, and Quay is not here today. Cause he's out being a family man on vacation. And I hope he's having a great time, but we do miss him. But I am here with my dear, dear friend Saleem Reshamwala. Hey, Saleem.

00:01:08 - Saleem Reshamwala
Hello.

00:01:08 - Monét Marshall
How are you today?

00:01:10 - Saleem Reshamwala
I'm good. I'm good. It's been a day when I've been finishing things and shipping things and feeling positive. There's momentum.

00:01:16 - Monét Marshall
That's always a good feeling, the finishing. Will you share with our folks who are listening and watching who you are and who you're bringing into this conversation with you?

00:01:28 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yeah. I'm Saleem. I am a filmmaker, primarily making short films, documentaries, bit of journalistic work here and there, have hosted some nonfiction podcasts and try to do a little of everything I am bringing into this space. My family, always my parents, who now live next door to me here in Durham, my brother, who's about to live next door to them. You're in Durham?

00:01:59 - Monét Marshall
Yes, the block.

00:02:00 - Saleem Reshamwala
The block. We're slowly getting a little reshalla block. So that's what I'm here with.

00:02:04 - Monét Marshall
Oh, awesome. So I know Saleem. We've collaborated on projects. We also have a practice called the CBQ, which is a chicken biscuit quarterly, where we get a chicken biscuit quarterly.

00:02:16 - Saleem Reshamwala
Ish.

00:02:17 - Monét Marshall
Quarterly. Ish. But I wanted to bring you on because I, like you, have such a wide range of experience when it comes to journalism and storytelling and really working to make complicated messaging simpler for people to understand. And I think you are really expert at making connections between, like, local and personal issues and, like, larger international issues.

00:02:42 - Saleem Reshamwala
Thank you. That's such a kind introduction. Thank you.

00:02:44 - Monét Marshall
Oh, yeah. Like, you're dope. You're the best. So I wanted to jump right in and get your perspective on the media ecosystem. Yeah, I know. Big question, right? The media ecosystem, the journalism ecosystem, particularly here in North Carolina around politics.

00:03:06 - Saleem Reshamwala
Sure. So like the national journalism ecosystem, everything is so much more fractured than ten years ago. You know, I think when I was a kid, we got the news and observer, which was the first place I ever had like a real job. Actually after graduating. It was a contract job, but it was a real job as a graphic designer. Over there in the website, everybody read the news and observer. Every school teacher would bring up an article about it. They might like it, they might not like it, but everyone read it. And you did have an idea of what stuff was going to be covered. When I worked there, there were two buildings full of people. It's definitely a much leaner operation. Now shout out to some of my college daily tar heel friends who are working over there. They're still super talented people out of Durham. We have Mary Helen, this reporter over there, doing great work. But I don't think any of them would argue with their ability to cover as many stories in the past is undeniably not there. Just due to number of people on the ground. You are seeing really cool stuff happening simultaneously. Justin Laidlaw writes for a while, wrote a weekly newsletter, got picked up by the Indie to write for them. So it's fractured and I think you have to constantly reevaluate what sources are giving you. What. I was recently chatting with someone about the indian and they said, the question now for an alt weekly is alternative to what? And there's a few meanings to that. You might think of that politically alternative to what? Or you might even think there's not as much competition in the space. So sometimes something the indie week in the past has always had reporting and has shifted quite a bit here and there as to what it, what it it covers. But in North Carolina right now, an indie. Sorry, an independent alt weekly might also be doing some important coverage, like beat coverage of stuff that before their main job, might have been viewed, at least publicly, as giving an alternative opinion on it. Or, I mean, in the most positive sense, an alternative viewpoint. Yeah. Whereas now you might be the only one. You might be the only one. And so you might have. Even Justin going to these city councils every week was one of very few people doing that where it used to be a lot of people where. So let's say that you had, in the past, you had a certain number of reporters there. There might be a major story. They all land on that. Or after some meetings they might have slightly different takes on what the most important thing was, whereas now, again, it's not at all to slight anybody. Anybody doing that work right now of attending a city council meeting, I was part of like a group for a while where we used to all go together and we just hang out and draw and take notes on city council meetings. Anybody who's doing that on the regular right now is like a superhero. So I definitely don't mean it's default anyone involved, but I think everyone would agree that it's a more fractured ecosystem. I think because of that, you might have certain news outlets that were larger teams before where when you kind of look beneath the hood and see what's going on, they're just three or four people.

00:06:33 - Monét Marshall
Right.

00:06:33 - Saleem Reshamwala
And so it makes it more important to know who those folks are and who their standards are or what their standards are, because there's not as much of an institutional memory sometimes benefits to that at times as well. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

00:06:51 - Monét Marshall
Sometimes you gotta do something new.

00:06:52 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's some. Yeah. And there's some stuff that, you know, like, maybe in the past was not covered so well, and the fresh voice is really, like, what we need there.

00:07:01 - Monét Marshall
Yeah.

00:07:02 - Saleem Reshamwala
But at the same time, it just means that what an institution is can change so dramatically when it's a very small group of people. So, you know, you'll hear people be like, oh, I don't trust that publication or this. And you say, why? And they're like, you know, justifiably they published this article that was. That was messed up about, you know, this person I know, I know was untrue, talking about whatever organization it might be.

00:07:24 - Monét Marshall
Yeah.

00:07:25 - Saleem Reshamwala
Because of the rate of turnover right now. It might be that no person that was involved even tangentially works at that place anymore. So it's really good to keep checking in. It's real, you know, it's really challenging to have long term continuity when there is this much turnover and shifting and changing. But I think there is something that every large media institution is made of. People. Right. So flaws, beautiful things, all of that. Right. You can't really make a blanket statement about anything that has hundreds of people working there.

00:08:06 - Monét Marshall
Truly.

00:08:07 - Saleem Reshamwala
I'll throw out, like, a thing that I do think is nice that the New York Times does in their podcast space, which is they have these kind of. They're actually advertisements, but if you listen to New York Times podcasts, they'll occasionally have this advertisement for another part of the New York Times. Is it an advertisement? Is it promo? I don't know, but it will explain what their process is behind a story. They'll be like, I'm so and so. I work on this, and my days look like this partially because what their process is, is so distinct from the also valuable but very different role of someone who is, um, reading other news sources and giving commentary on that. Right. So being in the field is a really valuable thing. You can also do amazing things just by properly filing for information requests, by staring at the Excel spreadsheet that nobody else wants to stare at. Lots of great government work is done that way, too.

00:09:09 - Monét Marshall
Yeah.

00:09:10 - Saleem Reshamwala
But I do think the pie chart of commentary to reporting has shifted in a way that's a little imbalanced. Right.

00:09:18 - Monét Marshall
I agree. Most people are talking about the things that have already been reported.

00:09:22 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yes.

00:09:22 - Monét Marshall
Yeah, I agree. And I think that goes to my next question around, like, how would you advise people to be able to identify leans and biases inside of this commentary versus, like, getting to the truth of, like. But what happened?

00:09:37 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yeah, you know, like, it's a great question. It's a really challenging one. So I think there's a few. A few things that I consider myself. One is, what are, if they're working for an institution, what are this institution's practices around when they make a mistake? So, for example, you can look through and find their corrections, whether it's at the end of an article and there's some things that almost everybody got wrong, it happens every once in a while that you'll find out that a primary source was mistaken, and then almost everyone's article have some kind of correction on that.

00:10:12 - Monét Marshall
Yeah.

00:10:13 - Saleem Reshamwala
If someone says, I have never made a mistake, you know, that's. That's a unlike, statistically unlikely scenario.

00:10:23 - Monét Marshall
So they are humans.

00:10:24 - Saleem Reshamwala
They are humans. They are humans. And there's nothing, like, for me, it's just like with people, like, I'm not interested in sorting people into, you know, distinctly good or bad categories. I want to know, what are you doing and what are your processes around that? The same thing with media institutions. So what are kind of the processes for when a mistake happens? The other thing is looking for transparency, the way they talk about transparency. So I think there's been a big, pretty big shift in the way media talk about transparency of individual reporters with stories. There was a time when, and all these things are shifting and moving. So really, I'm just talking about the multitude of ways that people can exist in the media space. There are many, many different ways people can do things. But you have seen a big shift similar to in the documentary world where it used to be that the reporter was supposed to be sort of invisible and there would be a transparency statement that was like, if you read the Washington Post, the Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos.

00:11:31 - Monét Marshall
Yes.

00:11:32 - Saleem Reshamwala
I actually kind of think that the Washington Post goes a little harder on Amazon because they're trying to prove that.

00:11:37 - Monét Marshall
They'Re not, like, owned.

00:11:38 - Saleem Reshamwala
Right.

00:11:39 - Monét Marshall
But we're not owned.

00:11:40 - Saleem Reshamwala
Right, right. But so they'll just say that anytime they mention anything to do with Amazon, anything to do with Jeff Bezos, they'll say, like, the Washington Post is owned by so and so. That's like a very strong, traditional disclaimer. I think it's a really good sign. It's weird because some people are hesitant to use those disclaimers because you feel like, like, oh, people won't trust my story if you see that up front. But I think the opposite. You know, if somebody says, oh, I have a relationship to this in the way that the Washington Post does, that makes me say, like, oh, cool. They're at least telling me what's up. My guard is up for sure, but I trust them as a source. Right. It's like if somebody says, hey, I'm an alcoholic, I'd rather not be around alcohol. You're like, you're not judging them for their situation. It's like, cool. Yeah. Thanks for letting me know. Let me help you out. I'll keep that in mind. When we make decisions, it's a similar thing. Like, oh, there might be this tendency. Keep an eye on it. You know, it's not a positive or negative. It's just a process.

00:12:39 - Monét Marshall
Yeah.

00:12:40 - Saleem Reshamwala
So for me, you know, kind of knowing folks in the local media scene and even in just what we're doing right now, right on the way in here, I was talking about all the different Kickstarter videos I've done. If I tried to not talk about in my work anything that was related to anybody who's ever given me money.

00:13:05 - Monét Marshall
You'D be like, I can't talk about.

00:13:06 - Saleem Reshamwala
It's a little silly. So I worked at the New York Times for a four month project. I had to turn in everybody who'd given me money over the last three years. And it was really funny because it was like, oh, this company. Oh, I guess I'm going to put this $50 that this person gave me for this photo of their event that was kind of on the love with a trade for, you know, it's like. But I just put everything in there. I think that's a great, it's a great, it's great. That they require me to do that on the local level. I've been having a lot of conversations with, you know, I have a few journalists I meet up with every Friday and we chat things out. And one of the things we've been talking a lot about is transparency and disclosure. And these conversations are really valuable because they make me, even though I'm not actively weekly putting out stories at the moment, they make me wonder what would I do in that situation? Right. So it's unreasonable to expect that someone who is an active member of Durham society and is reporting on it will never have some kind of bias. Right. It's silly. I mean, they'd have to like sit at home and only order things from out of town on Amazon. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's not the way we want people to live.

00:14:15 - Monét Marshall
No.

00:14:16 - Saleem Reshamwala
So, you know, one thing that has shifted or one thing that I'm seeing more of is in a story. I want to know the relationship of the writer to the subject. And once I know that relationship, it might even be a plus.

00:14:32 - Monét Marshall
Right? Oh, you have a deeper knowledge, you know what's going on.

00:14:36 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yeah, totally. If you wrote a ten page article about a close relative of yours and it was a positive story about their life, I would totally be into that. It would be super weird if you didn't tell me that was your mom.

00:14:50 - Monét Marshall
Right? We just no relation. We haven't had the same name and.

00:14:55 - Saleem Reshamwala
The same face, but it's so much more interesting. So I think people can do that a lot more locally. So these are like, I bring that up to speak on the ecosystem which you were originally asking about because I think we're having to make all these little adjustments to be able to work outside of just having like, these institutions that formerly had so many resources in the relative sense to resources to spare in coverage. And so now if we don't let people write about things where they're, quote unquote, biased on, we just won't have enough. There's so many fewer people writing.

00:15:34 - Monét Marshall
You know, I hear that. Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I think that's so helpful because I think sometimes in journalism, like, I would not consider what I'm doing journalism, right. I'm just like, I don't know, I'm just telling stories and talking to my friends and talking to people. I know. But I think there's something about like, that you have to be ordained in a particular way, train in a particular way. And there's like a subjectiveness that you need to be able to bring to the subject, or else you're just talking like, you're just telling, you know, like, that is how you become a, like, journalist, TM. And I think what I'm hearing from you is like, actually, no, because we don't have those spaces anymore that are doing that sort of journal like we do. But they're not covering Martin county. They're not covering Cabarrus county, you know, in the same way. So we actually do need people who have that, like, deeper, intimate connection. Let's figure out how to name that and be transparent about our relationships in these spaces. But we need people to show up and be like, I am talking about my community. And let me tell you how I know about these things.

00:16:36 - Saleem Reshamwala
And just to piggyback off that, I think both things can be true, that there is a need for us to operate outside of these institutions that don't exist. We, by definition, can't operate in an institution that no longer has the resources. There's nothing to operate with. At the same time, we can still look to those folks for best practices. We can still, you know, try and find a reporter who's experienced in an area like, I've learned crazy amounts from reporters who have been doing a beat for years. And I, you know, I was, I was doing some work on implicit bias and talking to researchers of color about what they wanted people to know about implicit bias. I talked to a reporter who had been working on the issue for years, was not the same angle I was taking, but they, in five minutes, no exaggeration, were able to tell me all the scientists I should be speaking to save me days of just making random cold calls. So I don't mean it at all, ever to diminish the knowledge that comes with it. We're finding ways to work outside of the institutions, partially by necessity in circumstance, but we can still try and find ways to reach out to those folks. I think there's a lot of organizations that are starting to. I really should have written down the names of some of these, but maybe we can throw in the show notes. There's a few organizations that are actually looking to be more experimental in news. When people hear future of news, they think like, oh, this somehow involves interneting harder, like ticking more. But it could also be, hey, what's it look like to have a fact check documentary poem in your alt weekly? What processes of journalism? Fact checkers are awesome. And people who have, you'll occasionally work with a fact checker who has been, you know, doing this gig for years, and people always talk negatively about having to go through fact check. Like, it is a pain, you know, but I love it. Those people help me avoid making terrible mistakes sometimes, and they have processes that, you know, they, they know to check things that other folks might not check.

00:19:04 - Monét Marshall
Yeah.

00:19:04 - Saleem Reshamwala
And so what I'm very curious about in news and media locally is are there ways to connect some of these people who are doing really cool things in their own communities to processes? I'm not saying it's necessary all the time. I'm just curious, like, an interesting thing to do with funding would be like, centralize some fact checking. You know, I was working on a story. It was a heartbreaker. We worked on a story for a very long time, me and a producer, and I can't give specific details of the story, but we found out once we were very close to publishing what was a really cool, fun story. There was a fact checker who made me keep asking questions about this person's military experience. And I honestly, a part of me was like, I feel rude at this point. And they weren't, it was not what they said it was, you know, and so we ended up not running the story. And it would have been terrible for the organization as well if the story had been run and it had been found out that this wasn't true. And now I always ask that stuff. So I'm very curious with how can we integrate just as much knowledge and good processes as possible and make that available to folks who are maybe doing work and have come up in a way that's outside of these institutions around journalism?

00:20:34 - Monét Marshall
I know that's something you're experimenting with. You have a project that you've been working on.

00:20:38 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yeah, I've got a few things. So I wanted to do a, my October project. I really want to have this very related to stuff you're doing. I want to make a video explainer on some aspects of local government and just to help folks right now, so much discussions about the national and even the governor's race, which I think most people are pretty strongly decided one way or the other, right?

00:21:07 - Monét Marshall
Yeah, I think so.

00:21:08 - Saleem Reshamwala
But when it comes to a position, like we were just chatting about just before we came on, positions that people might not even know exist.

00:21:15 - Monét Marshall
The council of States.

00:21:16 - Saleem Reshamwala
There you go.

00:21:16 - Monét Marshall
Council of State.

00:21:17 - Saleem Reshamwala
So a little more information around that could be really useful. I also think it is hard to. People were like, oh, nobody's interested in local elections or nobody's interested in local news. Like, people just aren't interested in local news coverage when it comes to political insidery things. It's just hard to be interested in things when you don't have enough kind of pegs to hook that knowledge, to.

00:21:47 - Monét Marshall
Bring it to the ground. Made me understand what it means for me and my family.

00:21:50 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yes.

00:21:51 - Monét Marshall
And then I will be very interested.

00:21:52 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, help me meet some of the characters before there's a scandal. Like, help me understand how those systems work. You know, one of the things I really want to do, it's I haven't figured a way to do it yet, but I want to do a garbage ride along where I ride with my garbage, a few stages all the way out to. To where it gets thrown away.

00:22:16 - Monét Marshall
Where does it go?

00:22:17 - Saleem Reshamwala
Where does it go? Yeah, I do think there's things like that that can help connect people to the news.

00:22:22 - Monét Marshall
Yeah.

00:22:23 - Saleem Reshamwala
I did tell you about a story I did once.

00:22:25 - Monét Marshall
Please do.

00:22:26 - Saleem Reshamwala
I worked with a few excellent producers in Venezuela to do a story on a project called El Bus Tebe. And what they did was they were journalists whose operation had actually been shut down. Just means bus tv. Their tv station was no longer, they were no longer able to do their jobs in the capacity they had been in the past. And so one day, one of the reporters, collaborating with a theater artist, made a cardboard box cut out of a tv and went on a bus and stuck her head through it and started delivering the news. And it's now expanded, like, and it was, what's. What's really cool about that is she's bringing her work, her experience, her processes, and it's so directly to the people. Like, you can't get more to the people than they're in front of you on the bus in a cardboard box, in a card. Like, you're, like, literally doing the thing. And that was just kind of like a gimmick to get. But the things she learned were really interesting. So, you know, some of the things they told me were they found that they had to make some deals to get to be able to do it. So one of their deals was giving sports information because the bus drivers couldn't really get sports news during the day. So it wasn't so much for the people on the bus. It was so the drivers would let them be on the bus. Yeah, they found that they had to make their news hyper local and extremely hyper local. Like, literally, we're riding past this movie theater. Here's some of the movies that are playing. Here's what's happening in national. Like, just really hitting people with what they want to know. And then they'd have people ask them questions immediately, and they'd have to figure out whether or not they had the answer. And it's all really real when.

00:24:15 - Monét Marshall
So cool.

00:24:16 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yeah. The cardboard tv made it more of a real interaction, you know, I love that story. So I've been really curious with what kind of events we can do, what kind of ways we can be out in the community more. I really love. I'm a little burned out on making things for phones. Very valuable work is being done that will only end up on phones. But sometimes, you know, if I'm staring in a little box and working really hard, and then the thing goes out into another little box, and then it's on a phone. It's on a phone, it's on a watch. I mentioned to somebody that, you know, over the past few months, I've just been alone with a laptop. I was like, I think I've got a new phrase. I think I'm intellectually lonely by just throwing stuff out into the void. But I'm very interested in projection, and I did a project not too long ago during lockdown called lockdown Secrets, where I collected people anonymously. I set up a phone line, and people could anonymously send me stories.

00:25:19 - Monét Marshall
I remember this.

00:25:20 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yeah. Of things that had happened to them in lockdown that they'd kept secret. And so me and John Law, excellent local filmmaker, shout out to John Law. Shout out to John Law. He's also a local everything as well, and he has an amazing voice. So, you know, put him on all your podcasts. So we made a short film that illustrated all their secrets and projected it at a dance party. And it was just at a dance party in the background, and it became this, like, really beautiful thing for me because some of the people who had sent me secrets kind of revealed themselves at the party.

00:25:56 - Monét Marshall
Because you didn't know who they were.

00:25:56 - Saleem Reshamwala
I didn't know who they were. I didn't know who they were. I had some suspicions here and there, but I didn't know. And I've been really curious about how can we get news into the physical space around us? Many people right now are trying to figure out how to get people downtown, both in the literal downtown sense, but also figurative downtowns, which might just be the strip mall.

00:26:21 - Monét Marshall
That's just the third space.

00:26:23 - Saleem Reshamwala
Exactly. Like just out, whatever you could walk to or whatever. I know businesses are really struggling. A lot of them are trying to figure that out. And I'm really curious, how are there ways to solve putting the news out in a way that makes people more lonely? It doesn't feel like the complete solution.

00:26:43 - Monét Marshall
Yeah.

00:26:44 - Saleem Reshamwala
I've talked to a lot of people who are kind of waking up, and I've talked to myself who waking up occasionally and just, like, seeing news of war first thing in the morning and that being just a terrible wait. I did a week last. I literally wrote on a piece of paper. A week without Instagram, Twitter, or threads. I put it on a piece of paper, and I took a picture of it, and I made it my phone background just so I'd remind myself, don't go on here. Don't go there, and just took a week off. And I know that's so cliche to say, but if you were designing the news from scratch, if we were designing the world from scratch, and we were like, I'm gonna start small, don't worry, okay? I'm not gonna go big. And we were like, how can we design the morning information? I don't think we would just spontaneously be like, let's make a list of the worst and most statistically improbable events and have everyone read that first thing when they wake up. First thing when they wake up before they. Now it might be before you greet your family. Right, right. That's just not necessarily. I can't imagine us starting that way.

00:27:59 - Monét Marshall
Yeah. You know, it makes me think. I've had this idea of doing a people's dinner or people's dinner. So I also feel like the ways that we, even for people who have the access to go to city council meetings, even those feel inaccessible.

00:28:13 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yes.

00:28:14 - Monét Marshall
I'm like, this is at dinner time. You gotta sit here and be quiet. There's no childcare. There's no food. I don't. You know, I'm like, can we have this instead where we can stream it somewhere, eat food, have people, like, playing with your kids, coloring, doing all the things, and then asking questions like, did you understand what that person just said? I don't understand what's going on. And, like, we can actually engage with each other around these issues.

00:28:41 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yes.

00:28:42 - Monét Marshall
That's one of my dreams. Like, to have spaces for us to engage what's going on, but together.

00:28:47 - Saleem Reshamwala
I love this because it hits on a few things at once. So, one, I have this theory that people are hungry. People are hungry. Well, there's actually a different theory, but this is related. To get an event right, you just need to think of people, myself included, like children or pets. Has everyone well rested? Has everyone taken whatever caffeine or other medicine they need to make sure that their day is okay? Have they had enough food and have they had enough time to run around and play? And if you haven't answered those things, like, you're gonna have a hard time with your conference.

00:29:19 - Monét Marshall
Right.

00:29:20 - Saleem Reshamwala
Like, I can't focus or city council meeting.

00:29:23 - Monét Marshall
Right.

00:29:24 - Saleem Reshamwala
If a city council meeting ends by the end of dinner, that would be a huge win. They occasionally run unbelievably late and times where, you know, I feel bad to my family for being out there. So that does feel like an obstacle.

00:29:41 - Monét Marshall
Yeah.

00:29:42 - Saleem Reshamwala
I love this idea of the food. I've wondered. I think that's a better solution. I was like, is there like a vh one pop up video version of city council meetings where the information kind of pops up in a little bubble on screen? Like, is there some way to make something like that? But I like this food thing also. Have you heard of planning academy?

00:30:01 - Monét Marshall
No. Tell me about it.

00:30:02 - Saleem Reshamwala
So Durham runs this thing.

00:30:04 - Monét Marshall
Oh, I do know about this, yes. But tell. Tell us more.

00:30:07 - Saleem Reshamwala
I did it. It was great.

00:30:09 - Monét Marshall
Tell us about the planning academy.

00:30:11 - Saleem Reshamwala
Well, Durham has a planning. It's actually, it's basically, I might get a couple details wrong, but fundamentally, planning academy is a thing where they do a certain number of classes. You apply, you explain why you want to be in it because there's limited seating, but they get an amazing variety of people to come. They talk about things that are a little dry. Right. Like, so zoning and codes and these types of things.

00:30:37 - Monét Marshall
Yum.

00:30:38 - Saleem Reshamwala
Yeah, but the food is hooked up. Well, the food is quality. And so every session they have food. I believe they also have childcare. We should check on that. But they at least brought up the possibility. It's at least been discussed. They get the food right, and you want to go every week. And I've had situations in the planning academy process where there's people who I know have stood up at city council and vigorously voiced opposing positions. And in the beginning, like anything in the beginning of any of these kind of things, lots of the questions are really kind of everybody's staking out their ground. But over time, after a few meals, people are actually really talking and you find out, like, oh, this person who has this, this view on housing in their area that feels completely incompatible with anyone ever being able to afford a duplex or something reasonably affordable in that area. Oh, their main concern is like, they're older and they have some mobility issues and there's a lot of traffic. And for them, if there's traffic, they might not see their friend.

00:31:55 - Monét Marshall
Yeah.

00:31:56 - Saleem Reshamwala
And that's an issue that. Oh, that reframes things. Now I can relate to this person. I don't know if we would have got there until the third arepa. You know, like, it helps to have something other than the conflict.

00:32:11 - Monét Marshall
Yeah.

00:32:12 - Saleem Reshamwala
You know, like, you can't. Conflict doesn't sustain you.

00:32:17 - Monét Marshall
Yeah, yeah. It can be helpful in relationships, but it can't be the place to start.

00:32:20 - Saleem Reshamwala
That's right. That's right. You can't just. Just be looking at the conflict, just eating the conflict, just sleep. You can't have. You need. There's a reason why when parents and kids often have, like, a very real conversation about sex, for sexual education, for talking to your kid about things, there's a reason why it often happens in the car where you're not facing each other that's too much and you have something else going on. So. Yeah.

00:32:46 - Monét Marshall
And another time, in another podcast, maybe I'll tell about the sex education I got from my parents in the early two thousands.

00:32:54 - Saleem Reshamwala
That sounds like a fascinating podcast.

00:32:58 - Monét Marshall
Saleem, thank you so much for your time. I have a couple more questions for you.

00:33:01 - Saleem Reshamwala
Sure.

00:33:01 - Monét Marshall
One, what are you dreaming for North Carolina?

00:33:05 - Saleem Reshamwala
I've had a lot of conversations. I grew up here, moved here when I was around ten years old. I've had a lot of conversations about what it would take for me to feel more connected to North Carolina, because sometimes I. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. You know, I just went to an event. Were you at, uh, Carolina days, the concert?

00:33:27 - Monét Marshall
I was not, sadly.

00:33:29 - Saleem Reshamwala
It was amazing to have an event that was North Carolina centric and music centric with amazing quality musicians that was centered around something other than, you know, I don't know how else to put it, except that it's nice to not have to walk past the Bacardi fun tower or, you know, the Toyota chair or whatever random object.

00:33:55 - Monét Marshall
Yeah.

00:33:57 - Saleem Reshamwala
And have something that was centered around something else. And so I do think that we. Your question's a really good one. It's one I want to think a lot more about. I think we have to keep inventing new things because one thing that's happening is we are justifiably and with great reason, throwing out some bad things from our history. And I just want us to keep. Keep envisioning new, positive things. I was just hearing the story about somebody was trying to make the symbol for either their school or their city. It wasn't North Carolina, but somewhere in the south, they're trying to make it a biscuit. So it wasn't like this, very weighted. I don't remember specifically what it was, but it was like some negative, terrible thing. So, yeah, who doesn't love a biscuit? That's what I'm saying. Quarterly chicken.

00:34:44 - Monét Marshall
Come on. Okay, here are our rapid fire questions that we ask.

00:34:49 - Saleem Reshamwala
Oh, goodness.

00:34:54 - Monét Marshall
Bojangles or cookout?

00:34:56 - Saleem Reshamwala
Okay, I'm gonna go bojangles. I would possibly go cookout if I wasn't lactose intolerant. And I just have to have the milk pills with me. And if I don't have the milk pills, then everyone else is getting the shake and then you generally, I just don't think. I don't know if cookouts, it's not really like all the way. The thing if there's no shakes for anybody involved. Right? Like, somebody's gotta get a shake.

00:35:14 - Monét Marshall
Oh, I don't. That's not my rule.

00:35:16 - Saleem Reshamwala
Oh, what's your cookout order?

00:35:18 - Monét Marshall
Oh, it depends on where I am in my life. What's going on?

00:35:23 - Saleem Reshamwala
Are there spicy things that cookout? That must be why. Bojangles.

00:35:27 - Monét Marshall
Okay, you want a spicy. Okay, I hear you, I hear you. Okay. Sweet or unsweet?

00:35:31 - Saleem Reshamwala
Unsweet. Not for any reason other than there's a lot of history of diabetes in my family, and I've been terrified of it forever. So unsweet. I do love the sweet when it's the only option. I'm secretly not sad. You're like, okay, that's my relationship to sweet tea. Yeah. So if it's the only choice, I'm actually happy. But if there's a choice, I go, it's sweet.

00:35:51 - Monét Marshall
Okay. Carolina or Duke?

00:35:53 - Saleem Reshamwala
Oh, Carolina. I went there. Public school education. Every step of the way. Problematic public school publication education. I'll even take it for now. Where it's at with all its troubles. That's where I'm at.

00:36:08 - Monét Marshall
Okay. Okay. Chijuana and Pepsi Cola.

00:36:12 - Saleem Reshamwala
Ooh, man, I think so. I don't drink too much soda because of the aforementioned beers and hereditary things, but I think when given the choice tier wide, it just feels like more. I just like the fact that in other places people are like, what is that?

00:36:35 - Monét Marshall
Right? It feels special. Like just a thing that we have.

00:36:38 - Saleem Reshamwala
And when you're a tiny kid and you hear about it for the first time, you're like, cheer wine. This is root beer. Like, yeah.

00:36:45 - Monét Marshall
Okay, last one. Who is your favorite North Carolina artist? Living or paste?

00:36:50 - Saleem Reshamwala
I. This is so hard. My favorite North Carolina. I wish I'd known so I could really think about this. This is such a tricky question. Oh, my gosh. You know, I'm just gonna answer really honestly. Okay. But this is, this is just top of mind. Okay, this is gonna seem completely absurd to most people right now. I just heard this album, my friend defacto, and it just sounds so different musically than anything that he's done. So that's in this exact moment that you're asking the question. That's my answer. That's not my. I'm not saying he's not. I'm not saying, you know, like, don't come at me. Don't come at me.

00:37:28 - Monét Marshall
As someone who has a lot of artist friends, that was a lot of pressure for you.

00:37:31 - Saleem Reshamwala
It is.

00:37:31 - Monét Marshall
I wouldn't be able to answer this question, so it's fine. It's fine. Shout out to defacto.

00:37:35 - Saleem Reshamwala
Shout out to defacto.

00:37:36 - Monét Marshall
Yeah. Saleem, thank you so much for your time.

00:37:39 - Saleem Reshamwala
Thank you for having me.

00:37:40 - Monét Marshall
We are excited about everything that you make, and as soon as you make it, we will be excited to share it with all of our audience, all of our people. So please make sure you share. And y'all, check out Saleem. He does all the things. Go to his website. We're gonna drop all the cause. He's really being humble about who he is. So please. Thank you so much, Saleem.

00:38:00 - Saleem Reshamwala
Thank you.

00:38:07 - Monét Marshall
Thanks for tuning in to Down Ballot Banter. We hope y'all enjoyed diving into the tentacular world of local politics with us.

00:38:15 - Quay Weston
Yeah. And don't forget, this podcast is an extension of Monét's beautiful dream, the down ballot brunch, where there are three simple steps. It's to eat, have a conversation, and to act.

00:38:27 - Monét Marshall
That's right, 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. 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.

00:38:46 - Quay Weston
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00:38:56 - Monét Marshall
Until next time, stay informed, stay engaged, and keep up with the Down Ballot Banter.