Tiffany Dena Loftin has been in this work for over two decades — from a TRIO student at UC Santa Cruz organizing against tuition hikes, to leading the United States Student Association, to fighting for student debt cancellation at the NAACP and the Debt Collective. She's a labor organizer, a voting rights strategist, a founding member of Freedom Side, and one of the most disciplined relationship builders in the movement. She also served on the advisory board when Dr. David J. Johns led the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans. Today, she steps into the classroom for the first time.

This conversation goes everywhere it needs to go. They talk about how authoritarianism uses isolation as a weapon — and why people are making intentional, physical, sometimes spontaneous choices to gather again. They get into what it actually means to find an organizing home when you care about everything. Tiffany tells the truth about the Debt Collective, the SAVE program, and what borrowers sitting in default right now actually need to do. And she closes with a charge that lands hard: we are not going to get free being comfortable.

We're dropping this episode the week of Juneteenth. The promise of freedom is real. The weight of this moment is real. Both are true at the same time.

Find your organizing home. Not tomorrow. Now.

SHOW NOTES

Connect with Tiffany Instagram, LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Threads, Bluesky: @tiffanydloftin How We Get Free

Podcast: @howwegetfreepod

Organizations & Resources Mentioned

• Freedom Summer 2026 / All Roads Lead to the South blackpowerwarroom.com/dayofaction 
• The Debt Collective — the first union of debtors in the United States debtcollective.org
• United States Student Association (USSA) usstudentassociation.org and @usstudentassociation.
  
• The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) ticas.org
• The Education Trust edtrust.org
• NAACP naacp.org 

Referenced in This Episode:

• DeJuana Thompson / Black Voters Matter Courtland Cox, SNCC veteran and mentor Carmen Berkeley — on building relationships, not titles Marshall Ganz — on relationships as the currency of power (Harvard Kennedy School) Kingian Nonviolence Certificate Program

Support the Show spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support

Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter is back in the classroom — and this time, the lesson is urgent.

One week out from Equity Week 2026, Dr. Hunter — professor of sociology and African American studies, author of Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation, and NBJC board member — walks us through everything you need to know. Why the week exists. Who it was built for. What it asks of you.

Then we go deeper. The Trump administration’s $1.7 billion fund to compensate January 6th participants is not just wrong — it’s a moral inversion. Dr. Hunter breaks it down: the difference between hush money and reparations, what the Central Park Five actually had to wait for, and why enslaved people didn’t need pardons because they never committed a crime.

He also gives the class a new frame: reparative justice. What it is, why it covers everything from police reform to educational equity, and why — when it comes to reparations — our work has already been done.

Equity Week 2026 is June 10–13 in Washington, D.C. Register at nbjc.org/equity-week.

EQUITY WEEK 2026

• June 10–13, 2026 | Washington, D.C.
• Register: nbjc.org/equity-week
• Equity Ball tickets: NBJC Eventbrite page (or pay at the door)
• OUT on the Hill Advocacy Day — meet directly with lawmakers and their staff
• Equity Ball at the Historic Howard Theatre

NBJC RESOURCES

• nbjc.org
• nbjc.org/nbjc-policy-agenda

LEGISLATION REFERENCED

• H.R. 40 — Federal Reparations Commission Bill (Rep. Ayanna Pressley)
• The Third Reconstruction Bill — Rep. Barbara Lee (Poor People’s Campaign)
• G.I. Restoration Bill — Rep. Seth Moulton, with Rep. Clyburn
• Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Act — Rep. Jamie Raskin

IN THE NEWS

• theGrio: Trump’s $1.7B Fund for J6 Participants — May 20, 2026
• Central Park Five / Exonerated Five — context for the fund comparison

BOOKS & ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

• Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation — Dr. Marcus Anthony Hunter
• Substack: open.substack.com/drdavidjjohns

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.

There are moments in this work when you sit across from someone and realize you're not just talking to a lawyer. You're talking to a son. A keeper. A man who has spent his entire adult life making sure that what happened in Greenwood — and what Greenwood actually was before they burned it down — is never forgotten and never left unanswered.

This week, we’re joined by civil rights attorney, author, and Justice for Greenwood Foundation executive director Damario Solomon-Simmons. His first book, Redeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America, just dropped — and it is a history, a legal thriller, and a blueprint all at once.

We talked about what it felt like to knock on Mother Lessie Benningfield Randle's door at 106 years old and ask her to run toward justice one more time. We talked about Greenwood as a love story. We talked about exhaustion, rest as a revolutionary act, and what it means to keep fighting when the courts keep saying no. And Damario left us with a name we all need to know: Hal Singer — a survivor, a musician, a man on hospice who still wanted to fight — whose words became the foundation of the Justice for Greenwood program.

Get the book. Get in community. Show up.

Class is in session.

SHOW NOTES

• Book: Redeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America Available now wherever books are sold. Community toolkit (free): redeemanation.com Join the 11,000 Campaign: redeemanation.com
  
  
• Justice for Greenwood Foundation: justiceforgreenwood.org Get involved in genealogy work, legacy protection, narrative work, and legal advocacy.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.

This one is different. No guest. Just me—and the truth I can't stop sitting with.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is gone. Not weakened. Not under threat. Gone. The legal architecture that turned 7% Black voter registration in Mississippi into 60%—dismantled, decision by decision, by a Supreme Court that was never neutral and was never on our side.

But that's not even the whole story. Because while the courts were killing the VRA, the Justice Department was being turned into a weapon. FBI agents raided a Black state senator's office mid-day—Fox News already on the scene—while allies under federal investigation had their evidence destroyed. Ballots from Fulton County are in federal custody. Arizona. Michigan. They are building the architecture of election interference before the midterms. In public. And most people don't even know it's happening

This episode is about all of it. The Proud Boys as a militia. The Roberts Court as an antidemocratic enforcement mechanism. The Southern Strategy, sixty years old and running on steroids. And the organizing tradition—Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, Hungary's opposition movement—that proves rigged maps can be beaten and stolen futures can be reclaimed.

This is the class I didn't want to have to teach. But you need it. Pull up.

SHOW NOTES

• The death of the Voting Rights Act—Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Brnovich v. DNC (2021), and the April 29, 2026 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, which Justice Elena Kagan called "all but a dead letter."
• The pardon of 1,500+ January 6th participants and the DOJ's move to vacate the seditious conspiracy convictions of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders.
• The FBI raid on Fulton County's election center, the subpoenas targeting Arizona and Michigan 2024 ballots, and what it means for the midterms.
• The mid-day FBI raid on Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas's office, with Fox News cameras already rolling—and not one charge filed.
• The two-tier justice system in plain sight: evidence destroyed for allies, prosecutions launched against opponents.
• Elie Mystal's proposal to add 20 justices to structurally change the Supreme Court's incentive for extremism.
• How Hungary's opposition built 208 local chapters and 50,000 poll watchers—and won a supermajority against a gerrymandered map.
• The Afrofuturist tradition of Ella Baker and Bayard Rustin as the organizing inheritance we carry forward.
• Black Power War Room — blackpowerwarroom.com 
• National Black Justice Coalition — nbjc.org 
• NBJC Equity Week — nbjc.org

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.

Jamilah Lemieux is a writer, cultural critic, and — officially, loudly, and necessarily — a published author. Her debut book, Black. Single. Mother.: Real Life Tales of Longing and Belonging, dropped in March 2026, and it is already doing exactly what the best books do: making people uncomfortable in the most clarifying ways.

In this conversation, Jamilah and I go deep. We talk about what Aunt Toni Morrison taught us about writing the books we need—and what it means to actually do it. We trace the wreckage of the 1965 Moynihan Report, the myth of the absentee Black father, and the way respectability politics decides which single Black mothers this culture chooses to celebrate and which ones it chooses to punish. We talk about Nia Long, Taraji P. Henson, and Cardi B. We talk about the African ancestral village and why every-other-weekend is not enough. And we talk about what it costs all of us—not just women—when we fail to love one another fully.

This is one of those episodes you share. With the single mothers in your life. With the men who need to hear it. With anyone who's ever made an assumption about what a Black family is supposed to look like

The class is in session.

SHOW NOTES

Resources & References

• Black. Single. Mother. by Jamilah Lemieux — [BOOK LINK PLACEHOLDER]
• Jamilah Lemieux on Instagram: @jamilahlemieux 
• Jamilah's conversation with Nia Long — https://www.playboy.com/read/entertainment-culture/the-playboy-interview-nia-long?srsltid=AfmBOoocTvvAgpTBuKE2yVFLct-1QDEHfeQspaIQBISiJT7GC0s81gaP 
• "Freaks and the American Ideal of Manhood" by James Baldwin — originally published in Playboy, 1985; submitted to Walter Lowe Jr., the magazine's first Black editor. Essay also published as "Here Be Dragons" in The Price of the Ticket (1985).

The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (The Moynihan Report, 1965) — U.S. Department of Labor

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.

The news cycle will not save you. This month, Dr. David J. Johns breaks down the stories that slid quietly past the headlines while our communities’ futures were being decided. We open with a win—the Global Black Economic Forum sued the state of Texas for stripping HUB certifications from 15,000 minority- and women-owned businesses, and on April 13th, a Travis County judge said: not so fast. Then we get to work: voting rights under coordinated assault, the weaponization of an 1866 civil rights law against Black scholarship programs, the true cost of Liberation Day’s tariffs on working families, a 100% pharmaceutical tariff arriving September 29th, and the faith-rooted organizing happening right now across 10 cities that nobody’s covering. Class is in session. Pull up.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.

What does it actually take to build a democracy that lasts—and who has always done that work? In this class session, Dr. David J. Johns sits down with award-winning political strategist, founder of Omara Strategy Group, and author Atima Omara to dig into her new book, The Instigators: How Black Women Have Been Essential to American Democracy (HarperCollins, May 5, 2026). From the Javits Center to the 107 days of the Harris campaign, from Shirley Chisholm to Sherry Beasley, Atima and Dr. Johns trace the through-line of Black women’s political contributions and what keeps getting in the way of the credit, the resources, and the wins they deserve. They get into the “white voter” trap, what it actually means to follow Black women’s lead, and why the most urgently sleeping-on lesson from history might just save us. Grab your copy at theinstigatorsbook.com—and get one for somebody else while you’re there.

Show Notes:

• The Instigators: How Black Women Have Been Essential to American Democracy by Atima Omara — theinstigatorsbook.com
• The Real Ones by Maya Rupert — TTB Episode: “A White People Whisperer on Authenticity,” aired March 24th

Support the Book

• Pre-order or buy The Instigators at theinstigatorsbook.com
• Support your local Black or independent bookseller — National Association of Black Bookstores (shoutout to Kevin Johnson, founder)
• Available in hardcover, audio, and e-book
• Find Atima: @atima_omara on LinkedIn, Instagram, Bluesky, and Threads

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.

What if the technology deciding your housing, your credit, your medical care, and your freedom was never designed with you in mind? Julie Wenah has been inside the rooms where those decisions get made-at NASA, the Obama White House, Airbnb, and Meta-and she's done something rare: she came back to tell us what she saw.

In this conversation, digital civil rights lawyer, tech executive, and Chairwoman of the Digital Civil Rights Coalition Julie Wenah breaks down how AI is already shaping the lives of our elders, our children, and our communities-often without accountability and almost always without our consent. From the Medicare algorithm that denied an 83-year-old rock climber his pain treatment, to the gap between how fast technology moves and how slow the law catches up, Julie makes the stakes plain. She also reminds us that we have more power than we think-if we choose to use it. The technology train is moving. Julie Wenah is here to help us find our seats.

Show Notes & Resources:

• Digital Civil Rights Coalition: digitalcivilrights.com | @digitalcivilrights
• Follow Julie: @juliemwenah (Instagram) | @juliemwenah (some platforms)
• Film: Rain to Reign (2022)-Julie's short documentary on Black womanhood, healing & the next generation
• Referenced: NCNW (National Council of Negro Women) & the Dorothy Height Foundation

Referenced: The Book of Genesis / Babel Tower-Zeke Ultra's album connecting scripture to tech

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.

AI is already here. The question is whether it's working for you—or leaving you behind. In this conversation, Dr. David J. Johns sits down with Dee C. Marshall, CEO of AI Training Plus, creator of the Free by 3™ methodology, and founder of the inaugural Global AI Adoption Day—a people-first movement she's building to be for AI literacy what International Women's Day is for gender equity. Dee breaks down the biggest AI myths keeping people stuck, explains why closing the AI divide is one of the most urgent equity issues of our time, and gives the class practical tools to start their AI journey today—no tech background required. This one is for the babies, the parents, the educators, the community leaders, and everyone who has ever felt like AI wasn't made for them. It was. And May 6th is your moment to prove it.

SHOW NOTES & RESOURCES

Resources Mentioned:

• Global AI Adoption Day (May 6): www.aiadoptionday.com
• AI Training Plus: www.aitrainingplus.com
• Google Gemini: gemini.google.com 
• Anthropic (Claude): claude.ai 
• Perplexity (research & fact-checking): perplexity.ai 
• Microsoft Copilot (enterprise/closed source): copilot.microsoft.com 

Connect with Dee:

• LinkedIn: Dee C. Marshall
• Instagram: @deecmarshall

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.

Vouchers aren't new—they're the same resistance to integration we've been fighting since 1954.

Fred Jones (Southern Education Foundation) joins the class to trace a direct line from Brown v. Board of Education to today's federal tax credit voucher program. The history is ugly: after Brown, Southern states created 450 laws to block desegregation. They funneled public money to "segregation academies"—and 300 still exist today.

Now it's happening again. The 2026 federal voucher program lets families earning up to $491,700 in some areas access public dollars for private schools that can legally discriminate. Meanwhile, public schools lose $51 billion annually.Fred breaks down what vouchers actually are, who benefits (hint: not Black families), and what the data shows after 50 years of failure. Most importantly, he tells us exactly what to do right now, whether you're a parent, educator, or concerned citizen.

Class, the babies are watching. What are we teaching them?

Read the Full Report:

• Federal Tax Credit Voucher Program Memo - Southern Education Foundation

Organizations Fighting for Public Education:

• Southern Education Foundation
• Public Funds for Public Schools
• Education Law Center
• Learning Policy Institute

Take Action:

• Contact your governor about opting out of the federal voucher program
• Attend school board meetings and speak up
• Request accountability data from your state on voucher spending

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.