The Unpacked Project

Today we sit down with Patrice O'Neil for an exploration of how local level approaches can combat hate. Patrice is the leader of Not In Our Town, a movement of people across the country working to build safe, inclusive communities for all. Her work in collaboration with hate crime victims, civic leaders and law enforcement has made her a nationally recognized leader in the anti-hate movement, and as a filmmaker, she has focused on stories about people in local communities working together for change. Her work seeks to embolden and honor unsung heroes whose everyday actions can lead to a larger impact.

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Patrice: I remember, there was a group that was forming in Southern California. And there was a woman who got up and said, 'you know what I did after I saw that movie', it's called Not In Our Town, Manhattan Beach, you might want to check it out, 'my husband and I went out on date night and we started talking about it. And we talked about racism in our town. And we realized that we never really had this conversation before. And then we went home and talked to our kids about it. And then we invited our neighbors over, and we started having this conversation.' And, and so it, it opened up this discussion, and it led to this other discussion that became equally powerful, 'then we invited our friends, a LatinX couple and they said, "I'm sorry, we're not moving to your town, we don't feel safe there"', which opened up this whole reason and need to-like, THIS is why we have to do this work. You open a discussion, you are brave with one person, and then another and another and you start talking, the need for change becomes more apparent, and then the force of change becomes more powerful.

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Listen in as we discover how communities can find courage and strength in the movement and continue to push out hate and pull in unity at a local level, and join us for the rest of season 2 as we explore extremism, the Alt-Right, hate crimes, and the blurred lines of religion underneath it all.

Show us some love by liking, subscribing and reviewing our podcast; and to stay up to date, follow us on Instagram  the_unpackedproject.

Our country was built on this idea of racial superiority. With America's long standing and deeply rooted history of white nationalism, Dr. Damon Berry, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at St. Lawrence University, joins us to discuss the role Christianity has played within the Alt right and American white nationalism.

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Noelle: Can you give our listeners a little bit of some historical background here with that?

Dr. Damon: Sure. Sure. You know, the elements that become modern white nationalism had existed before. For example, Charles Lindbergh. The Charles Lindbergh wanted to avoid World War II when he was part of the America First movement. In part because he didn't want to see Europeans killing each other again. He felt that the actual threat was the rising tide of Color to call upon an earlier work of white nationalist idealism, so that the notions that inform pan-European white nationalism post-World War II didn't necessarily get invented after World War II but they come together in a particular way after the defeat of state-based fascisms in Germany and in Italy, and they come out of… a lot of the ideas come out of the work of an American named Francis Parker Yaki, who is then championed later by people like Willis Carto and a person I wrote a lot about, Revilo Oliver, in rethinking exactly what the right wing in America should look like. So, the things that primarily identify American white nationalism is of course pan-Europeanism, right? So, their allegiance is not to the American government, as a matter of fact, they by and large view the American government as the enemy and they view racial identity or white identity as the basic political motive and foundation of any state and that that's what they try to create. Now, how they understand that is different? So, and as that continues post-World War II, leading off of Yaki, Oliver and others, you get further developments of this and of course the latest mutation, if we can use that word, that people are probably most familiar with is in the context of the alt-right and especially articulated by people like Richard Spencer.

Miranda: Yeah, definitely. Well, then over time, Damon, we see… well, at least we've… we perceive that there's been kind of two different camps that have emerged. You know, there's this one that rejects religion entirely and then one that incorporates it into white nationalism, you know, as you've been speaking. So, can you tell a little bit more about that evolution?

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Join us for season 2 as we explore extremism, the Alt-Right, hate crimes, and the blurred lines of religion underneath it all.

Show us some love by liking, subscribing and reviewing our podcast; and to stay up to date, follow us on Instagram  the_unpackedproject.

We're on vacation this at The Unpacked Project this week! You know - trying to maintain that work/life balance, so instead of skipping a week, we thought it would be fun to throw it back and reflect on all things Season 1!  

We learned SO much during our first season. From faulty or difficult technology to eye opening interviews, we could have never predicted everything that went down. Despite wanting to throw the computer at times, we stuck with it, and we're here to tell it all!  

We know we're biased, but all of our interviewees dropped some eye-opening, must-hear knowledge last season. From personal stories about our criminal justice system, to real-life accounts of providing mobile crisis support as a means of public safety, to the importance and value of restorative justice approaches, we covered it all.   

Join us as we discuss those interviews that were close to our heart and hopefully encouraged our listeners to open their minds and challenge the status quo.

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Join us next week as we get back to exploring extremism, the Alt-Right, hate crimes, and the blurred lines of religion underneath it all.

Show us some love by liking, subscribing and reviewing our podcast; and to stay up to date, follow us on Instagram  the_unpackedproject.

There continue to be moments when we realize just how far we still have to go in America, and just what little ways we’ve actually come…

- In August, the Wall Street Journal reported that the first five months of the Covid-19 pandemic saw a 600% increase in membership in the ten largest QAnon Facebook groups.

- According to a Reuters poll, 13% of the US population supported the siege at the capitol.

- As of September 2020, nearly 60% of Republicans reportedly believed in QAnon, including newly elected members of Congress.

The above statistics were pulled from an article, “QAnon and Mass Digital Radicalisation: Peacebuilding and the American Insurgency”, written by Dr. Lisa Schirch, who joins us to unpack the context of these alarming statistics as we explore the impact of social media on amplifying issues of systemic racism and white supremacist ideology which has shaped the culture of the United States. Lisa discusses how easily hate speech and conspiracies spread on social media and highlights the need for a new fairness doctrine, the importance of media literacy education for the public, and regulation of social media companies to reduce the impact of misinformation.  

Lisa is currently a Senior Research Fellow for the Toda Peace Institute, where she directs the Social Media, Technology and Peacebuilding program. 

Lisa:  I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, which is a city that I moved to when I was 12 from Ohio and what I learned in public school in Richmond, Virginia is that the civil war is not over for many people. And I lived in a mostly white community and an African-American family moved in across the street from us and the hostility of our white neighbors to that family was so intense. All the other white kids started walking to a different bus stop and I was there with the African-American child who was my new neighbor and, you know, I had been taught racial justice, civil rights movement growing up in Ohio and I couldn't believe what I was seeing, I think and I didn't really realize how divided this country was and how much the civil war continued to live on. You know, that was back in the early 1980s when I was… when that was happening in Richmond, as in my childhood. And I think it shaped how I saw the world, that there were sort of historical injustices that had been suppressed and that people were divided and in conflict in my own country. As I went through college, I ended up living in Chicago, downtown urban Chicago, where I was often the only white person on the metro or the subway, the elves, say what they call in Chicago. And, you know, I became race conscious, I became really aware of the very different experiences that people with different skin colors have in this country. And out of that, you know, I wanted to devote my life to trying to figure out what do you do with historical legacies like we have in the US, and it took me to working in many other countries actually. I worked in Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan, Jordan, all over the Middle East as well as East and West Africa. And a lot of my international work in peacebuilding, which is… I ended up majoring this in college, peace studies and then doing a PhD in conflict analysis and resolution, trying to figure out how do you heal societies, how do you transform and become a more just and peaceful place for people to live of all skin colors or all religions. And, you know, that question, it's a question that I still ask today, how do we do this?

Join us for season 2 as we explore extremism, the Alt-Right, hate crimes, and the blurred lines of religion underneath it all.

Show us some love by liking, subscribing and reviewing our podcast; and to stay up to date, follow us on Instagram  the_unpackedproject.

This week we're joined by Dr. Mark Pitcavage, a leading experts on domestic terrorism and right-wing extremism in the United States. Mark has been employed by the Anti-Defamation League since 2000, where he currently serves as a Senior Research Fellow for their Center on Extremism. 

Join us as we explore the differences between various theories such as the far right/far left linear political continuum, horseshoe theory, and 4 quadrant political spectrum which all attempt to explain the different variables that characterize groups such as authoritarians, anarchists, violent extremists, and conservatives. The new "cult of personality" which describes extreme Trump followers is also considered and the concept of the lone-wolf terrorist is discussed.

Show notes and links found HERE.

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Mark: For most white supremacist movements, the core belief of white supremacists today is that the white race itself is in danger of extinction, that it is in danger of essentially being overwhelmed by a rising tide of non-white peoples who are being controlled and manipulated by Jews to hurt the white race and that if they do not do something about it, the white race will go extinct. That is the core belief for white supremacists. The core belief for anti-government extremists which differs depending upon the movement but the one thing they all share is a core belief that all or part of our government was some time ago infiltrated by a conspiracy which has essentially either replaced the government or rendered it illegitimate. And so, the government that you and I think of as a legitimate government, that we owe allegiance to, that we give allegiance to, is for them, not actually a legitimate government. And many of them want to restore government as they thought it used to be before the conspiracy got to it. So, you notice, the focus for those movements is all about the government. The focus for white supremacists is all about the white race.

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Noelle: So, when we think of the Capitol attack, I am just curious of what your opinion or if there has been research on this? I feel like in the media, a lot of it gets portrayed as these were anti-government or like, white nationalists, I mean they were there protesting that Trump had the election stolen but then there were so many images of white supremacy [...] what is your opinion about what happened at the Capitol?

Mark: There was a… sort of a convergence of a number of different fringe or other sort of other type of extreme groups and among those were a small number of white supremacists, a number of anti-government extremists primarily from the militia movement. So, other right-wing extremist groups like ‘the proud boys’ who played a prominent role in the storming of the Capitol. A variety of conspiracy theorists, especially QAnon conspiracy theorists. And then probably the majority of the people did not have ties to what you might call traditional extremist groups at all, had probably previously had no associations with them but were part of a relatively new phenomenon that you could essentially call ‘extreme Trump supporter’.

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From white supremacists, antigovernment and all the others in between, understanding the nuances between groups helps to better classify current agendas.  Because not all far right right extremist groups are created equal.

Join us for season 2 as we explore extremism, the Alt-Right, hate crimes, and the blurred lines of religion underneath it all.

Show us some love by liking, subscribing and reviewing our podcast; and to stay up to date, follow us on Instagram  the_unpackedproject.

From racial (battle) fatigue and stereotype threat to dealing with microaggressions, navigating racial hierarchies, or being the victim of overt discrimination, one thing reigns true...people of Color are tired!

Join us this week as we explore the dynamics of living in a white world.

Episode transcription and links can be found here

Engaging in our own personal exploration of intersectionality, we also dive into discussing Stereotype Threat and The Weathering Hypothesis (cited from the book Black Fatigue) to further explore the negative effects of racism on performance, psychological functioning, and the physical well-being in people of Color.

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Miranda: Alright. So, tell me Noelle.

Noelle: So, for me, the identities that I think about most often, one being my age. So…you know I had a lot of difficulty turning 35, Miranda. It was not easy for me. My age is something I think about a lot. [...] I always felt judged by being like, young in my field in that way. My experience as a woman in the world, you know, when I’m out in public, when I’m at work. Basically, wherever I am, whether I’m thinking about it from a safety perspective of if I’m safe in a parking lot or I’m thinking about it from, you know, at work being around men who are making the decisions or, you know, whatever I am. Even though I’m in a field really that's predominantly women, a lot of times the administration is male or the, you know, people higher up are male, so that is often one that I think about.

Miranda: Yeah. So, for me, the things I think about most, gender, race, ethnicity. Religion actually was an interesting one because I think about that more since moving to the South. Yeah, and it's not ever something that I took into consideration but because I come across more people that are religious and attend church, [...] I feel like an anomaly in many ways. Sometimes when I’m talking to folks and they're talking about religion, I’m like, ‘is this something that I can share?’ I’m not… you know, will I be judged? Right on top of these other factors, being in the South where it's predominantly Black and White.

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Audre Lorde states," There is no thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single issue lives." This calls attention to the concept of intersectionality, a term coined by Dr. Kimberle Crenshaw, to conceptualize the fact that our identify markers do not exist independently of one another, but in fact overlap, to create unique experiences of discrimination and disadvantage for marginalized groups.

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Join us for season 2 as we explore extremism, the Alt-Right, hate crimes, and the blurred lines of religion underneath it all. 

Show us some love by liking, subscribing and reviewing our podcast; and to stay up to date, follow us on Instagram  the_unpackedproject.

Join us this week as we explore the context of the capitol riots, the need for an honest discussion about white identity, and why it is important to challenge white supremacist values within society.

Episode transcription and links can be found here.

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Miranda: We're baaaaack! Noelle and I are so excited to be here for season two with all of you. There's been so much that's occurred over the past couple months while we were away. There was an election like none of us have seen before. A new president, thank goodness. And then, there was the insurrection at the Capitol, which exposed what many of us already knew, that white supremacy is still very much alive and strong in this country.

Noelle: Yeah. Originally, when we started this podcast, we had a vision of taking all things social justice into account and talking about all those different topics, and actually our plans for season two were to start moving into gender and sexuality-based equity and justice work, but when that capital riot occurred and we realized there's still so much more that needs to be unpacked in terms of violent extremism in America, we just figured we need to continue doing this work for now. You know, what we usually see as a nation is hype around these situations like this and then ultimately, silence. [...] And so, you know, there's this tendency, there's this comfort in just forgetting and not talking about it. And so, you know, we even had national leaders, right? Calling for us to just move on for the sake of unity and we just… we call bullshit on that.

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History is experienced personally, but it is also socially constructed. The idea of white washing history is nothing new. We talk about slavery, America’s original sin, as if we are accepting our past. However, what isn’t accurately discussed and remembered is how every failed attempt at controlling the racial divide leads to more savvy ways of accomplishing what slavery and black codes attempted to accomplish - white domination.  

CNN commentator Van Jones came up with the term "whitelash" to describe why he felt Americans elected Donald Trump as president. This term should trigger us to remember our undeniable past: that anytime there is significant racial progress in America it’s inevitably followed by white backlash, or “whitelash” which stems from this need to maintain white political power and domination in this country.  

And unfortunately, this need isn't letting up anytime soon.

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Tune in over the next few weeks as we explore radical beliefs, the ecology of extremism and the impacts of domestic terrorism in America. 

And don't forget to like, subscribe and review our podcast, and to stay up to date, be sure to follow us on Instagram @the_unpackedproject.

Fernando Bermudez lost over 18 years in New York state maximum security prisons following his wrongful conviction of murder in 1991. Mr. Bermudez was proven innocent in late 2009 with help from pro bono attorneys in DC, Jersey and New York. Mr. Bermudez's exoneration makes him the first Latin American male in New York State legal history exonerated on actual innocence grounds.

Transcription and links here.

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Noelle: So, you know, one of the main methods that led to your wrongful conviction was that eyewitness identification, or really rather misidentification, we should say, and according to the Innocence Project, eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions. And in fact, nationwide, about 75% of wrongful convictions that were overturned because of DNA testing involved erroneous identifications from victims or witnesses. And I can't even imagine experiencing that. All those emotions you must have, you know, having to go through that, knowing that you're innocent, still being a part of the system, people not wanting to hear you, give you a shot to present this evidence that would prove your innocence. So can you speak to some of the issues around witness identification and exactly how it impacted your case?

Fernando: Absolutely. Well, eyewitness identification is certainly a leading cause of wrongful convictions. You know, we have a total today of over 2,600 documented cases since cases began getting documented in 1989. And that's just the ones that are documented. That's nearly 2,700 cases of men and women and over 24,000 lost years since then. But in my situation, that began my problem because a young lady upon the incident was allowed to be in this room with other teenage witnesses and she took my picture and says--hey, look at this guy! And then she started sharing my picture. That became a contaminating, psychological instant play in which the witnesses then reinforced by saying--oh, yes, and sharing the picture. It reinforced their idea that they may or may not have had the right person, allowing them to proceed to the next step, which grew worse through the contamination of that when I was placed in a lineup, I was told to sit down to hide my height and weight difference. So the identification procedure is being skewed already. Then I'm also placed in a mug shot book and I'm directed as being the subject of the investigation, meaning--tell us who you think is responsible because he's in there. They already had seen me in other photographic identifications. It was a foregone conclusion they were aiming at. So this caused my problem. It really began the problem that made the situation grow worse from that. I mean, it could begin simple enough and honest enough that way, but the corrupting factor grows deeper if then police and prosecutors have a way of exacerbating that potentially wrongful conviction. And that's what happened to me.

Miranda: Thankfully, exonerations are increasing throughout the country. Still not at a pace that they need to, right? My guess is that 2,700 is a gross underestimate, you know, of people that are in prison for crimes they didn't commit. So according to the National Registry of Exonerations, there are a record number of 143 exonerations in 2019 alone. And the total since 1989, until end of 2019 was 2,556. So just like you said, so we know that wrongfully convicted persons they, like you, lose years of their life behind bars. And Research also shows that wrongfully convicted people are incarcerated for an average of 13.3 years before even being exonerated. And here you were sentenced to 23 years to life. Ultimately, you served 18 years, but still 18 years of your life, right? Just gone.

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Don't forget to like, subscribe and review our podcast, and to stay up to date, be sure to follow us on Instagram @the_unpackedproject.

In today's episode we're joined by Kara Gross, Legislative Director and Senior Policy Counsel with the ACLU, who gives valuable insight into their legislative efforts nationally and here in Florida. Listen in as we discuss laws that support the cradle to prison pipeline, the Tammy Jackson act, Rehabilitation credits, conviction integrity review units and so much more...

Full transcription here.

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Miranda: Kara [...] advocates for statewide legislation and policies defending and advancing Civil Rights and liberties. Her work primarily focuses on three main campaigns: criminal justice reform, immigrants rights and voting rights, in addition to advocating for reproductive justice and LGBTQ rights. She is admitted to practice in Florida, New York, New Jersey, and my personal favorite, the US Supreme Court.

Noelle: Kara, thank you so much for being here with us today. So the American Civil Liberties Union or ACLU, it's a national organization, we know they're state chapters as well. So can you explain some of the issues that the National ACLU campaigns for in general, and and just more about the work that you're doing right now?

Kara Gross: [...]So the ACLU has a national office, and then we have affiliate offices in each of the states and also Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. And I'm with the ACLU of Florida, and I'm based in Florida's capital, Tallahassee. And throughout Florida, we have several different offices, our main office being Miami, we also have one in Tampa and in Jacksonville and in Pensacola. And we have the same sort of general issues as the National and all the affiliates, right? So our general issue is protecting the individual rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and the laws in the United States. And all of the affiliates and National work together in courts, and the legislature and communities, to protect civil rights and civil liberties and to defend against those attacks. And we do this nationally, and also statewide, and also locally. And it depends on your affiliates. Some affiliates are larger than others, and some of them are smaller than others, but we're all fighting for the same types of work. Our priority campaign areas are criminal justice reform, immigrants rights, voting rights, reproductive justice, LQBTQ rights and free speech and privacy. And our Florida affiliate has been most heavily engaged recently in three campaigns, which are criminal justice, immigrants rights and voting rights.

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Join us for season 1 as we explore bias,  systemic racism, the roots of oppression, and barriers found within education and the criminal system. Show us some love by liking, subscribing and reviewing our podcast; and to stay up to date, follow us on Instagram  the_unpackedproject.