Seen and Unseen - Technology, Social Media and the Fight for Racial Justice

In this episode I’ll be talking with bestselling author Todd Brewster who together with co-writer Marc Lamont Hill have written Seen and Unseen – Technology, Social Media and the Fight for Racial Justice.  

This powerful book is a riveting exploration of the ways in which visual media has shaped the nations narrative on race and has fundamentally altered the centuries long battle for racial justice.  

We’ll open our conversation as Todd outlines his career as a journalist for Time/Life Magazine, a senior producer for ABC News and his fellowship at Yale Law school. He’ll then explain the events that brought him and Marc together to collaborate on their book.  

Next, we’ll discuss the roll technologies, such as still photography and moving pictures have played in shaping our views and opinions, and why he believes the ubiquity of cell phone cameras has now democratized our ability to document history and drive social change. 

Later, we’ll dig into four recent high-profile events ranging from the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis to the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, South Carolina that have changed the way we understand race relations in America.  

And we’ll end our conversation by unpacking the limitations technology and social media have in sorting and prioritizing stories of significant social value from those that don’t. 

The Show Notes

Seen and Unseen
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Seen-and-Unseen

Todd Brewster
https://www.toddbrewster.com/

Marc Lamont Hill
https://www.marclamonthill.com/

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Transcript

Joe Cadwell: 0:08

Welcome to the Grit Nation Podcast. I'm Joe Cadwell, writer, producer and host of the show and on today's episode I'll be talking with Best Selling Author Todd Brewster who together with co-writer Mark Lamont Hill have written Seen and Unseen - Technology, Social Media and the Fight for Social Justice. This powerful book is a riveting exploration of the ways in which visual media have shaped the nation's narrative on race. As fundamentally all through the centuries long battle for racial justice will open our conversation as Todd outlines his career as a journalist for Time Life magazine, a senior producer for ABC News and his fellowship at Yale Law School. Well, that explained the events that brought him and Mark together to collaborate on their book. Next, we'll discuss the role technologies such as still photography and moving pictures of blade and shaping our views and opinions. And why he believes ubiquity of cell phone cameras has now democratized our ability to document history and drive social change. Later, we'll dig into four recent high profile events ranging from the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis to the unite the right rally in Charlottesville, South Carolina, that have changed the way we understand race relations in America. Wonder conversation by unpacking the limitations technology and social media have and sorting and prioritizing stories of significant social value, and those that don't. After the episode, be sure to check out the show notes for more information about Todd Brewster and his recent work seen and unseen. And now on to the show. Todd Brewster Welco me to grit nation.

Todd Brewster: 1:46

Yeah, thank you it's my pleasure to be here. Thank you Todd, for taking your time to be on my show. Today. I'm really excited to talk with you. You have recently written a book with Mark Lamont Hill called Seen and Unseen Technology, Social Media and the Fight for Racial Justice. And before we get into your book, Todd, I was hoping you could tell us the listener audience a little bit more about who you are and what got you to write this book? Yeah, sure. I am a longtime journalist. I'm originally from New Jersey, I then through Connecticut, and out to Indiana. I've spent my formative years in Indiana, I grew up there, went to Indiana University, became a journalist, almost right out of college, and I worked for time life for a number of years, then moved over to ABC News, where I was a senior producer, working very closely with Peter Jennings, I think some of your audience remember Peter? Oh, sure. We we wrote two books together and did a bit large documentary series. I went from there to Yale Law School where I was a fellow in journalism and then to a West Point where I was I ran an oral history center, doing a long video interviews with both soldiers and officers and, and policymakers. From there too. Right write a book on called called makers gamble, which I'm very proud of as well, which is about making the decision to emancipate the slaves. And this this, the months leading up to that, the sign of the Emancipation Proclamation, and from there, went to Mount Holyoke College where I taught for about five years journalism there. And I, what prompted me to do this book was that Mark and I have been friends for a while, he did a book called nobody and I wrote the foreword for that book. And we worked closely with him on the ideas in that book, and it helped them shape it. We have been in conversation as friends since then. And when all this news happened in 2020, when we became bombarded by these videos of, of racial violence, really that that were built up to 2020. When you think of Trayvon Martin, you think of Michael Brown, you think of Eric Garner, but it was George Floyd's killing two years ago that really rocked the nation and the world and our being journalism professors. Both of us were very curious about the role of the cell phone video, the role of video and social media and technology in the raising of the bar and a sense for racial reckoning in this country. So we talked about it endlessly and ended up with a with a mark is a professor I should say I had at Temple University, trained anthropologist as well as a journalism professor there. And we, we found that we wanted to go into some depth on the role of technology as sort of the conduit through which the stories are told and how that shapes our understanding of them. And so we drafted out a book idea that took a lot of got a lot of attention. And then here we are,

Joe Cadwell: 4:50

And here we are in and having read your book, it looks like you've taken for sort of modern day situations and use that as a platform in which To give a historical analysis of the use of media throughout history to sort of create a narrative,

Todd Brewster: 5:05

exactly so, the four episodes are certainly the killing of George Floyd. The violence in Kenosha that was notable for the arrival of a 17 year old among those who were Kyle Rittenhouse. Kyle Rittenhouse exactly who was part of this sort of militia group that rendered into the city in order to protect private property and lead to a confrontation that where he killed two people and injured a third. The third one is the killing of ahmaud arbery, a jogger in Glynn County, Georgia. And the fourth one is the neo Nazi march on Charlottesville in 2017. That resulted in the death of one woman who was a protester there, right. And all of these have again in common they were captured basically by civilians, or just citizens will say that citizens on the street using ubiquitous cell phone with camera integration. Yeah, I mean, the big story of our own time, it seems, is the democratization of technology or communications technologies. And, you know, it would have been unthinkable that a generation ago that a teenage girl 17 years old walking down the streets in Minneapolis and seeing a police confrontation with a black man on the on the neck extinguishing is his last breath could be caught on video, by the use of a single small instrument that's hardly bigger than a postcard. But that's what happened in 2020. And it was the nature of that killing, I think, in part and we can go into more depth on this was the nature of that killing as well as the the sort of disinterested nature of the one who took it by disinterest. I just mean that she didn't have an axe to grind with no agenda. She was wanting to take care of her little sister, I believe it was to cut foods in order to get some snacks. And suddenly, she is best in the position where she is writing history. That video, of course, was shown the world over. Even more importantly, people who didn't see the video knew about the video, and knew about one aspect of this confrontation, which was the brutal killing that happened on the streets of Minneapolis, which drove people to the streets and contributed a sense of outrage worldwide, the powerless against the powerful. Exactly. And I think you know, for for the historical perspective, it seems like for so long, the people that were able to sort of drive the narrative were the ones with the money, the ones with the technology, the filmmakers, the the media, the mainstream media, the but nowadays, it seems like everyone can have an active role in in the democratization of racial justice when it when it you know, they have that powerful instrument in their hand, and they have the ability to livestream or just very quickly get it out where everyone can see it. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. So take your mind back to the early part of the 20th century, when the first major film appears The Birth of a Nation it's it's a very artful film, it was a terrific use of the medium funded by what we guess we call venture venture capitalist at the time, who were trying out this new medium called film, right. And, and done by a director named DW Griffith, who turns out to be one of the great innovators in film history, but who also was a Confederate sympathizer and a supporter of white supremacy. And so the film tells the story of two families, and one of Northern family when a southern family who are torn apart by the Civil War, and who eventually find their way back together, having both renounced the evils of the Negro race and black people are portrayed in that film as lazy, ignorant, stupid, fraudulent, corrupt. They are, are the period of that the history described of the of the reconstruction is is cast as a mistake in American history, a departure from the natural progression of the American idea. And the story of the Civil War is filled with the spirit of what's sometimes called the myth of the lost cause. Where the claim is that the South would have had the superior moral position in the war then only lost because they were outnumbered and out financed. And the interesting thing about that, that story told in the film, The Birth of a Nation is to help give rise to a lot of white supremacy that we know from the early part of the 20th century in the ads for the premiere the film in the Atlanta newspapers. The ads will appear next to ads for the Ku Klux Klan. And so the Ku Klux Klan had a revival in part because of the spirit around the Birth of a Nation. So you say who has the tools of Power? Well, the number of black leaders at the time of WB Dubois and Monroe Trotter, were enthusiastic about telling a counter story, you know, getting a film that would actually debunk what was being said an inverse of the nation. But they didn't have the funds. They didn't have the capital, they didn't have the cultural capital and financial capital. And so that story was untold. And the myth of the Lost Cause gained steam through most of the 20th century, not only in popular culture, but also in academia, and certainly in the minds of those who felt through the bitterness of the Confederate defeat. And again, this is 1915, the use of this new medium film The the motion picture, there was a silent film birth of the nation. And this was no indie film. I mean, this was professionally directed, produced, to some extent acted, and was actually the first film I understand to be shown in the White House. It was shown to Woodrow Wilson in 1915, a three hour movie at that. Yes, exactly. Wilson, expressed his admiration for the film and said, regrettably, the story that tells is all too true, I'm paraphrasing a little bit, but not by too much. So you can see that the cultural ascendancy at that time was towards white supremacy, and that the film represented that Yeah. So again, the folks who had the money controlled sort of the narrative and again, trying to do a historical remembrance of a bygone era and change the outcome of people's minds by using that medium. Before that, you know, I understand that Frederick Douglass was, was a big proponent of photography, you know, before the motion picture, we had photography, and I was, I didn't understand that direct correlation until I read your book. There are two commanding technologies that emerged in the 19th century. I mean, we think of the 20th century is the era of technology. But the 19th century had two very commanding technologies, one of them is the telegraph. And the other one is the photograph. And those of you know, your, your, the story of Abraham Lincoln will be will nod your heads that that the telegraph was a compelling technology to our 16th president who love to sit in the telegraph office, if you remember those scenes from the from the movie Lincoln, he's composed is actually that the emancipation proclamation by sitting in the telegraph office, Frederick Douglass, who was born a slave, and made his way to the north and was one of the most commanding or rhetorical forces for abolition. He, he loved the photograph, you thought assassin, he thought it would have reformative influence upon the country. And one of the things that he felt was particularly important was that it could establish black people as human beings. Now remember, he was born in slavery he was this was a time when there was a lot of pseudo science that claimed that there was a racial hierarchy that, that put blacks more on the level of animals than on human beings. So believe it or not, the photograph was a way of showing that black people were human and deserve the kind of dignity that that they were demanding. He wrote number of autobiographies for the same purpose. The photograph represented his visual expression of who he was, and his texts represented the story of who he was. And he was the most photographed man in the 19th century, more than making himself and we think of as being photographed so many times by Matthew Brady and Matthew Brady's associates. So when we talk about the role of technology in the history of race in America, we have to include stories going all the way back to Frederick Douglass in the late 19th century. From there, we move into the motion pictures from the motion pictures, then we get into something that's more in the hands of professional photo journalist. Yeah, photojournalism becomes Storytellers for the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the 1950s. We know about the story of Little Rock, but the story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott about the story of the Selma march about the story of the March on Washington, largely through these iconic photograph that were produced by photo journalists. Many of those that I just kicked off, I'm sure your listeners are thinking, Oh, yes, I know that photograph because it's so famous. They help tell the story of riots in Birmingham, Alabama, after the killing and the bombing of the church there that killed those those young girls and the fire hoses used by bull Connor's police force on the protesters. Those pictures, interestingly, helped turn the tide towards the civil rights movement, because people had only had descriptions of what was going on in some of these racist communities in the South. Now they had photographs and the photographs were a a major factor in in pushing the country towards the acceptance of the Civil Rights Act. You think about that role there that you think about the role that the that the videos of the past few years, and particularly George Floyd video have had in terms of commanding public sympathy. And I think you see a similarity. And I think one of the downsides of the professional photo journalist and the in the mainstream media using those types of photography, again, going back to people that potentially could have an agenda or self serving interest to promote certain images. Now, that's sort of been taken away, again, given to everyone everyone has the ability now to represent both sides of a story, whether it's flattering to one side or the other. And, and that's why I think, you know, having observed the George Floyd video numerous times, not only the one that Daniella Fraser took with her cell phone outside the cup foods, but the one that the officer was wearing on his body cam and seeing both sides of the the incident. And again, people going into this either doing their job or without an agenda. And it really does spin a different narrative. And without that, technology, people are now resorting back to a time before photographs before say the advent of the the handheld digital camera that was used to capture the Rodney King episode back in the early 90s. And now we're relying on people's memory. We're relying on people's personal bias. We're relying on people's agenda, if you will, but all that's been taken away. And now you can see these images for yourself and make your own decision as to what is actually going on. Is there a downside to that? Yeah. So that was about to go to that if absolutely, just so you know, one of the things that you referenced that people might have that have had a bias who were doing the photojournalism and it 60s, it was more likely that it was a corporate media bias that anything wasn't so much a personal bias. I mean, the way that the power structures of media organizations work was that it was you were sent on an assignment essentially, to get what was there. But there had to be an attitude of right away that there was newsworthiness to what they were going to see. When he's shift ahead, however many years to our own moment, one of the one of the more impressive things that we're seeing now is the places that were photo journalists, might not never have been said before. And this was part of the title of our book seen and unseen, that we're seeing in this lives of people who have been unseen by cameras before this. That includes not only the police violence on people of color, as evidenced by the George Floyd video, but also all manner of detail into the stories of black lives or otherwise of other marginalized people. And the ability not only as you said earlier to take to take a video, but also to show it to post it on Facebook to be able to tweet on on Twitter to be able to compose short little vignettes that you can post your hobbies and have be seen. That's changed the whole nature of our public conversation. Absolutely. And, and I can't remember where I heard it, maybe I read it in your book, maybe one of the many podcasts I looked, listen to, honestly, Todd prepping for this. But one of the downsides of just having this, this constant access to to information, streaming information on our phones is basically the size of the phone doesn't really give any emphasis to the magnitude of the story at hand. One minute, you're seeing the life literally squeezed out of George Floyd on a street in Minneapolis, the next you're watching some, some college kids, you know, do the latest dance craze. Next, you're watching a cat video, the next thing you know, and on and on it goes and then you're back to something horrible and graphic and that screen doesn't change. And I think in a way it sort of dumbs down our ability to process and understand, you know, the severity of what we're seeing, right? Which is why in the end, for all the benefits of having cameras be able to record raw truth on them. We need curators to help us understand the truth that are being sewn to us. And we tend sometimes to just count those as bias I would say don't discount those as bias. judge them for their attention to the detail of the truth that they're gathering and for the values that they bring to those truths, right what is it that they value I mean, it's very interesting to look at the video for instance of, of Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17 year old who kills two people and injures a third after he comes in as a member of the militia group into Kenosha and see that have a video of you seen by one pair of eyes and he's recorded as a as a as the aggressor and have seen by another pair of eyes who see him as a defender. So the video doesn't carry a moral compass you know the video doesn't have its does it brand new to the heroes and the villains for us. We have to still fit figure that out ourselves. And you're right to say this is very interesting point you make jokes about the, the, the way that the video as we see it as we recognize it across social media in particular, but on the internet in general does not carry a kind of sorting mechanism that allows us to know what's important, what's not important. You know, when I teach journalism, one of the first things I do with my classes, I bring in an old fashioned broadsheet. And for your listeners who don't know what that is, that's the long tall paper like the New York Times folds out, right? It's not a tabloid, which is which was invented in part two, for readers on the subway so they could easily open like a book and read it and then stuffing into their their briefcase or whatever the broadsheet not only rank the news that you're seeing in front of you, by virtue of its position on the page, it also allows the publishing company to determine which gets the big headline which gets the smaller headline which one gets the italic type for the handlebar, which one gets the bold, Roman type. And so doing our eyes have been prepared for receiving the information. According to the graphic treatment as being valuable, more valuable, less valuable above the fold below the fold, we don't have that on our screen. Our screens don't have that sorting mechanism. If you go to New York Times site, you might see a replication of it on a generational level, then below, or you can look at the times as showing you the stories with similar kind of graphic delineations. But particularly on our social media, we don't have that sorting mechanism. So you're right, you would watch a video of the killing of a man and then the next moment you'd see somebody dancing. And the next one, what you see a cat. Furthermore, is the way that we examine our video when we consume it. So we're likely to look at the death of a video about the death of someone and then switch over to look at our bank balances. And then switch from there to to an email to our friends and they've gone back to the killing someone. And they're all treated with equal size equal take face equal delineation so that we tend to then work upon the the video and the capturing of the death of someone something that I would hope most people would hold us tragic and solemn. And have it paired with a cat video trivializes it. So absolutely, we have to be one of the things that Mark and I do in this book is try to give people an understanding of the vocabulary of the media of our time. And that's really important. Every new technology has had a period where we are not adjusted to the new vocabulary of the medium as like new languages emerge. And until we get adjusted to it until we learn its syntax and its sentence structure, we are likely to be confused by it more than informed by it. So we need this kind of exercise of understanding what is the value of something. And that's why these curators, in a sense, we call that use that term. But they are really like editors. They're like, people who guide us through something who share our values are keyed or being able to understand the media that we are consuming day in and day out. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the First Amendment protects free speech and all its beauty and all its atrocity as well, when when it's weaponized. So Twitter and speaking of free speech and the recent acquisition by Elon Musk of Twitter, but potential acquisition, do you have any thoughts on that? Is that going to be good for for democracy? And in general? Well, I subscribe to you know, I'm, I think of myself as a bit of a constitutional scholar, and we spend time reading about the Constitution and in some detail, and I believe that the First Amendment, you know, I asked my students early on, because I taught the first amendment at the collegiate level, and I asked them, What does the First Amendment mean? And they usually tell me that you can say whatever you want to say. And I say, well, that's sort of true, but not entirely true. There's things you can't say constructions you can't me, you can't create child pornography, you can't have us fighting words, which is a sort of careful term, meaning you cannot threaten someone, you. There's certain libel laws that prevent certain things that you can say, but the notion of that the founders had for for the First Amendment was that it was productive speech. There are really two periods of importance for the First Amendment that the founding of the second one comes to the 20th century around the First World War and we expand the notion of what free speech really means. But in each case, there's a respect for the founders belief that speech should be constructive. Not that you would police speech that's not constructive, but that you would police speech that loses all of its communicative value and becomes in instead of like a physical act like an assault, so I am all for free expression. And I think most Americans would hold that very dear. But when you want to speak to the possibility of lifting some of the regulations that Twitter now imposes upon the speech that is on Twitter, I am worried about the non constructive, more salted of speech that can emerge and be a danger to our public discourse. I noticed, you know, a big part of your book also involves the social media and how the morality I think, if I can use that word of some of the subject matter, and you had Janique, with Charles, the, you're about to lose your job. Part of your book, and I, you know, when I first heard about this, I wasn't quite sure where that was going. Because it appears that the, the officer or the private security officer didn't actually lose his job that she was somewhat in the violation of, you know, what she was attempting to do get into a, I think it was a gentlemen's club at that point in time, yet she became a viral sensation, and really showed that the message again, can be can be weaponized to some extent if if needed. And I don't know if weaponizing is the right word, Mark, she definitely caught a lot of people's attention, even if she wasn't in the right at that time, but used it to shout a broader message of the force of the power that that medium class, the video camera and social media can can you talk a little more about that we include it in the book, because not because we think it's unique, but Charles, and for those your listeners who don't know, what this is about is a woman who, who is being detained by by a security guard outside a gentleman's club in South Carolina. And she is quite outraged that she is being detained. And she tells the security officer that he's got no basis upon which to detain her. And then she begins to sort of chant kind of rap, where she says You about to lose your job. And I think there was a dance associated with it, and the whole thing went dance. And the key element, of course, is that someone is is is recording it on their cell phone video. And that's what she's referencing is that your, you know, whatever you do now, as a public figure, you can be recorded by video, and that video will then be shown beyond that its immediate circumstances and could very well lead to you being disciplined, right? And the fact that she can do that the fact that she makes that claim is what interested us, because she or two things. Thanks, she made that claim was sort of she was saying what is sort of one of the touch phrases of our time, which is that there's always someone watching you, there's always a camera, which can be a good thing and a bad thing, as we know. But the important thing is that the power of surveillance now is not exclusive to the state. The power of surveillance now is held by every one of us in our pocket, so that we can police the police and offense, right, which I think is what she was saying. And you're sort of colorful way. Interesting thing about that episode is what happens with the video. So she, she, the video was posted by actually by another, I think one of the another member of the security staff. And it because it goes viral. And it ends up being remixed and turned out as this meme, where the phrase you about to lose your job becomes sort of popular and those of you have not seen it should go on and just put into Google you about to lose your job remix, and you'll see what I mean. There's there's this wonderful sort of taking of a raw piece of raw material, raw video, or media material and create and creating something completely new out of it. And that's one of the other charms of the technology of our time is that she her point which resonated with so many people because it was demonstrating a shift in our thinking from the surveillance now being held by the people who are used to be surveil. The second thing though, is the idea that you can play with these expressions right? You can take them and pull them like taffy and reassert them and put the the end of the beginning of the beginning of the end of May cultural references to Bugs Bunny or to Childish Gambino or to JMO. And suddenly you have this wonderful creative thing that you've that is both entertaining and poignant. And that's why we use her is that it's for that purpose not to examine whether she was in the right or she was in the wrong whether and here's the was the test of that in some respects. The Security offers himself as you said to not lose his job more than that he posted the video itself and said he really enjoyed the the rap that she came up with. So there was in some ways it was a it was a happy outcome to what was a confrontational moment for sure. And and it just drives home the point that with great power to steal a line from Spider Man and Marvel comic universe with great power comes great responsibility. And, you know, we, we have this ability to alter people's lives and maybe catch a snapshot or just a few seconds of a bad moment in someone's life. You know, we can look at the Amy Cooper, the Christian Cooper dog walking incident in Central Park, or maybe that was was, you know, inherent to her actual personal personality or maybe she was stressed out by that moment. But yeah, we can definitely alters people's lives. So that responsibility is is huge. And it's so easily I think it's important, it seems that that episode seems trivial by comparison to what the other things that we've seen. However, there's something to be learned by the fact that under stress, she reverted to a racist characterization of what was happening, right. I mean, again, for your listeners who don't remember what happened there, Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper unrelated by the way they happen to share the same last name, which is also sort of poetic in some way. Right, exactly. But Amy Cooper, white woman in Central Park walking her dog, Christian Cooper, a birdwatcher and a section of Central Park that's usually reserved for the bird watchers. And she he asked her to put a leash on your dog I think it is or actually yeah, she was walking her dog off leash Yes. And he says this require that you have a dog on leash and she unloads on him and then calls the police and says there's a black man threatening me while she filmed the entire incident by the way I think she was the ones holding the camera or am I mistaken on that? No, I think it no it was Christian Cooper was one of them. But but the but the resulting video portrayed her as is popular Parliament's here as a carrot in other words, a white woman who his caricatures black people as black men in particular, as scary and up to no good. This man couldn't have been up to anything but good when he was studying the birds of Central Park. And of course, so this I think the reason that that resonated was not because it was such a anything in comparable to some of the terrible things we've seen happening on video, including the taking of lives. Yeah, that incidences show. Oh, I was gonna say coincidentally, that incident happened the same week that George Floyd's death occurred. Yeah, it did. And so I think it combined with George Floyd in that way, but I think it also showed this sense that beneath a, a more simple exterior could lie very dark and disturbing caricatures that people have in the back of their consciousness. Well, Todd, when people read your book, what do you hope they come away with? I hope that they feel a deeper understanding of the things that have happened in the past few years that in particular, that they have not only an understanding of these episodes that we talk about in there, but that they see the rich and complex and disturbing history that led up to these episodes that these episodes don't happen in a vacuum, that the country has been dealing with a racial history that is been that is shameful. That is disturbing, that remains complex. And that, out of that they they feel the new sense of understanding of, of the people around them, people marginalized communities, people who are seeking racial justice, and that we use the media that we have met have revealed these truths, with care and attention to try to to discover more a more welcoming and loving community. Absolutely. Well, Todd Brewster this has been a fantastic conversation where can people go to find out more about your work the work of Mark Lamont Hill and more importantly, where they can buy your book seen and unseen? Sure, well, you could buy it at any any of the major booksellers, including Amazon, I would always encourage people to seek out the independent bookstores in their midst because they are they're the lifeblood of reading they tend to be much much more helpful as a as a reading kind of community and so I urge you to use go to a frequent your local bookstore that is an independent store but if you don't have access to internet store, Amazon, Barnes and Noble all the major booksellers are selling it. For me I've my personal website is taught through screwed up market, I believe, Mark Lamont hill.com And you can see us on social media. You can see us on LinkedIn and all the other major sites But Google our names and I think you'll see some of the other work that we've done. And and Joe, I thank you for having us on having me on this case alone. But um, I appreciate the attention to the book and you have a briefing going here with Grit Nation, so graduation.

Joe Cadwell: 35:17

All right. Well, thank you so much for your time, sir. It's been a real pleasure. I guess day was Todd Brewster, co author of the book seen and unseen technology, social media and the fight for racial justice, which is now available at Simon and Schuster.com. Or wherever you buy books. Well, that wraps up another episode of the grid nation podcast, please consider sharing the show with a friend, family member, co worker or anyone else you think may get something out of it. If you haven't already done so. I'd really appreciate it if you could take one minute to leave a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify. It definitely helps and grow in the show. As always, thank you for your continued support. And until next time, this is Joe Cadwell reminding you to work safe, work smart and stay union strong

Todd Brewster: 36:03

Yeah, and I love what you're doing. I think it's interesting this idea of the blue collar audience I grew up you know a simple simple town in New Jersey and then I was in Indiana for most of my my teen years and my college years and I still think that um, the working class of America is where we're our hope is I agree as well are the one of the last bastions of defense against the corporate greed that seems to be running roughshod over America and, and so I do my part